When a neutrophil can't digest a pathogen,
it lyses itself:
its phospholipid membrane disintegrates
and the granules containing hypochlorite--
which the crafty neutrophil built from free oxygen
and all the circulating halogens it could get its receptors on--
are released to explode on the surrounding tissue.
The microbe is caught in the cross fire,
its more permeable peptidoglycan barrier is exposed
and the single celled organism is made vulnerable.
But the neutrophil is no longer into the "hide-and-seek" routines that instructed its early life.
Because the neutrophil can no longer afford to play.
Faced with a monumental threat to the well being of the body that made it,
the very context of its life,
the polymorphonuclear leukocyte chooses apoptosis over an infection
by this disease that spreads and persists while blinding and contaminating, contorting and hurting, teasing and breaking cellular machinery.
The neutrophil chooses to send out one final message: a cytokine.
Specifically an interleukin that will reside in the area,
an intravascular sign jabbed into the endothelium of arterioles,
warning those who can understand it,
a voicemail message of resolve left for all its friends:
"If I can't have you,
nobody will."
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