The Proteus Cure Page 4

  Sheila held up her two Styrofoam cups. “What do we start with—caf or Starbucks?”

  “You choose.”

  “Let’s go with Starbucks. What did you get? Anything special?”

  “One’s plain old coffee of the day, the other’s a girlie model.”

  “ ‘Girlie model’?”

  “You know: a mocha-latta-flatta something. All the women in line were ordering them.”

  “I’ll try the girlie then.”

  “Deal.”

  He looked relieved as he handed it to her. She took a sip. Mmmm. Like liquid dessert, but with caffeine. Perfect.

  An awkward silence, filled only by the construction clamor. What to say? Paul was a nice guy, sweet, good-looking, but really, what did they have in common? How much could they have in common? Was Bill right? Too blue collar?

  “River’s running high for this time of year,” he said.

  She nodded. “Must be all last week’s rain coming out of the mountains.”

  This was so lame.

  Okay, so they had the river in common. What else?

  And then it hit her. Of course: Coog.

  Sheila knew that at six Coogan Rosko had developed acute lymphocytic leukemia. ALL usually has a good prognosis in six-year olds, but Coog was an exception. It proved refractory to everything and anything oncology could throw at it.

  A grim prognosis until he arrived at Tethys …

  The doctors here had used an experimental protocol named KB26 to rein in his stampeding bone marrow and it had stayed in remission ever since.

  Coog was so lucky. Shortly after his treatment, Tethys had discontinued KB26. She didn’t know why but thank God he’d gotten the treatment in time.

  This had occurred long before Sheila began here so she didn’t know the details. But when she’d joined the staff three years ago he’d been one of the first survivors assigned to her for routine follow-up exams.

  She turned as he raced by on his skateboard. He wore a helmet plus knee and elbow guards. As she watched, Coog and his skateboard lifted into the air. The board never left Coog’s feet during the brief flight. Almost miraculously he landed with a clatter and rolled on.

  “How does he do that?”

  “It’s called an ollie.” Paul’s tone held a touch of pride.

  “Is that a new term for defying gravity?”

  “It’s all foot placement and weight shifts. He tried to explain it to me but I think he uses glue.” He laughed. “I think it’s impossible, but then, I don’t see how jumbo jets can fly either.”

  She watched as Coog became airborne again, only this time the board didn’t stay with him—it rotated and fell away. He landed heavily on the pavement, stumbled a few steps, then skidded to a halt.

  “Missed that one,” she said.

  Listen to me: Mistress of the Obvious.

  “Yeah, but he wasn’t going for an ollie. He’s been working on a kickflip—that’s when you make your board do a three-sixty rotation while you’re in the air and then land on it and keep rolling.”

  “You’ve really picked up the lingo.”

  Paul’s mouth twisted. “A smidgen. It’s a way to keep myself part of his life.”

  Part of his life …

  Sheila liked that. Day in and day out she saw too many parents who lived on a different planet than their kids.

  Coog tried another kickflip with the same result, but this time he almost fell.

  “I see why you’ve got him padded up.”

  “I’d much rather have him into chess but”—he shrugged—“what can you do? I try to keep him as protected as possible, but I know it’s just staving off the inevitable.”

  “Which is …?”

  “Getting hurt. One of these days he’s going to be out by himself and he’s going to shuck his gear—’cause it’s so not cool—and break something trying a railslide.”

  “Kind of fatalistic, no?”

  Another shrug. “Emerson had it right when he said ‘a child is a curly, dimpled lunatic.’ Coog’s a thirteen-year-old boy, and thirteen-year-old boys do stupid things. I know I did when I was thirteen. I look back and it’s a miracle I survived all my hair-brained stunts.”

  “So,” she said. “Since we’re on teenage years, what about yours?”

  Get him talking about himself—the favorite topic for most people. Plus she’d learn about him. All she knew was he was a blue-collar who quoted Emerson and had a cancer survivor for a son.

  “Not much to tell.”

  She sensed a sudden wariness in Paul, as if he’d backed away a couple of steps.

  “Where did you spend them?”

  “Lots of places. I was what they call an Army brat—a Marine brat, actually. We never got to stay anyplace too long. Not until my father landed a steady position in Albany. I got married, Coog came along, he got leukemia, we brought him here, and here we stay.”

  Well, that was a condensation of a life if she’d ever heard one. But she found his reticence intriguing.

  A question popped into her head. She hesitated …

  “I’ve never met Coog’s mother. Is she …?”

  “Rose decided a few years ago that being a wife and a mother was holding her back—whatever that means. So she took off. Coog’s contact with his mother is now an annual birthday card and a Christmas present.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah, well …”

  Sheila got the impression Paul would have liked to add, I’m not, but had held back.

  “What do you think?” he said, nodding toward Coog.

  She glanced up as he did a spin on his rear wheels.

  “I think he’s pretty good.”

  “No, I mean his looks. Think he looks much like me?”

  Sheila watched the boy. Slim build, light brown hair, cleft chin. Coogan didn’t look a bit like him. Put them side by side and you’d never guess that they were related.

  Must be his mother’s genes, she guessed.

  But what to say?

  “I can see a subtle resemblance. Why?”

  “Nothing.”

  A father didn’t ask a question like that for no reason.

  He looked up at her. “Your turn. How about you? What’s your life story?”

  Her story? Not much to it.

  She’d grown up in North Falmouth along the shore, only child in an Irish-American household thick with tobacco smoke. Smoke seemed to define her childhood. Her fondest memories involved sitting on her father’s lap, breathing his cigarette smoke. Stray ashes would fall on her arms, but she hadn’t minded. On play dates she’d been startled to realize that some of her friends were growing up without gray air and yellow curtains.

  Both Mum and Da were gone now—lung cancer and heart disease.

  But they’d lasted to see her graduate summa from Harvard. Straight A’s since she stepped into her first classroom.

  “Not nearly as interesting as yours. Kind of boring, actually.”

  He smiled. “We all think our own lives are prosaic.”

  What sort of cable installer uses a word like that?

  Paul cleared his throat. “If you don’t mind my asking, how does someone with reddish blond hair and such an Irish face wind up with a name like Takamura?”

  Sheila was sure Paul knew the story—everyone else seemed to—but she played along.

  “Easy. All you have to do is marry a Japanese guy. Dek and I met—”

  Tires squealed. She jumped and turned just in time to see Coogan’s body bounce off the front bumper of a Hummer. She stood frozen in horror as his body tumbled through the air in slow motion until he hit the pavement on his side and lay still.

  “Jesus!”

  Paul was already on his feet and running. Sheila ran too and had to dodge Coog’s still-rolling skateboard.

  BILL

  Bill Gilchrist poured himself a couple of fingers of Jack Daniel’s neat while he waited for his sister. As usual, he’d arrived early. And, as usual, Abra was alrea
dy five minutes late. She always had one last thing to do that trumped being on time for their regular meetings.

  Bill sipped and gave a mental shrug. He used to take it personally. Now he knew that this was simply the way she was: Abra couldn’t be on time for anything. Her fertility clinic so occupied her that it shoved nearly everything else to the wayside. He admired her though. That clinic meant everything to her and to a lot a families. It didn’t generate much cash flow—not with all the freebies Abra approved—but it reimbursed Tethys in ways more important than revenues.

  Another sip as he looked around her living room. He needed a little ethanol when he was here. This space of hers drove him to drink. Not the décor—nondescript furniture, clearance-sale stuff. Beige carpet and dark green walls. A few framed pictures: their parents; Mama with her own mother, Grammy Hensle, long dead; Elise and Bill and the kids; and the only non-family member, Sheila. He smiled. His reasons for bringing Sheila to Tethys may not have been the purest, but serendipity had given Abra someone to care for. She’d come alive since Sheila had joined their staff.

  Then he glanced at all the terrariums. Or would that be terraria?

  The terraria drove him to drink.

  He didn’t get a lot about his big sister but understood why she’d given him the mansion and why she’d built this sprawling ranch house near the center of the campus; just not why someone worth eight figures—high eight figures—would want to live like someone who made fifty thousand a year.

  What he didn’t get were all these terraria in her family room.

  He wandered the walls, checking out the snakes and lizards and giant millipedes. He shook off a crawling sensation across his shoulders. Why surround herself with this stuff?

  He stopped by one of the smaller tanks, maybe a foot high and deep, and two wide. He didn’t remember this one. He leaned in closer but saw only sand, cacti, a couple of rocks, and a small hollowed-out log. Countless tiny indentations stippled the sand. But nothing moved. No sign of life. Maybe its inhabitant hadn’t arrived or was napping.

  He gave the glass a gentle tap—and in a blur of motion the biggest spider he'd ever seen launched itself from the hollow of the log and landed against the glass directly above his fingertip.

  Bill let out a cry and lurched backward. Heart pounding, he watched the big hairy thing scrabble against the glass, as if trying to claw its way through. He glanced up to check that the terrarium cover was firmly in place.

  Christ, he hated spiders. What on earth did Abra see—?

  “I see you’ve met Blondie.”

  Bill recognized his sister’s voice but couldn’t draw his gaze from the fat, black-furred monstrosity.

  “I could think of a thousand names for that thing, but Blondie isn’t one of them.”

  “You might if you knew its specie: It’s a young theraphosa blondi.”

  “You mean it’s not fully grown?”

  “When it’s an adult its leg span will cover a dinner plate. And speaking of dinner, I’ll bet it’s hungry.”

  “What on earth does it eat?”

  “I’m sorry, Bill. I didn’t hear that.”

  Bill tore his gaze from the creature and turned to face his sister.

  Abra smiled up from her wheelchair—custom built for her stature and afflictions. On those rare occasions when she was on her feet, she was only four-foot-two, so her wheelchair was child size. An adult model would have made her look like a misshapen elf.

  But then, Abra would look misshapen in any chair. Thin salt-and-pepper hair cut short around a triangular face, a barrel chest and scoliotic spine that made it impossible for her to sit straight. But Abra’s eyes were her most striking feature: deep blue irises surrounded by blue instead of white, a paler blue than her irises, but definitely blue, one of the hallmark traits of her syndrome.

  Bill, inured to her deformities, had never overcome his awe at her intelligence. But what he admired most about Abra was her lack of self-pity despite a life spent just this side of hell.

  A hundred medical procedures before her ninth birthday, but instead of wallowing in self pity or giving up, she dedicated her life to science, to curing genetic diseases. She played the hand she’d been dealt with no complaint, and played to win. Bill warmed when he saw her.

  He repeated his question, enunciating carefully. Abra wore hearing aids but rarely had them properly adjusted.

  Her smile broadened. A much nicer smile since she’d capped her undersized, discolored teeth.

  “Oh, well, it’s known as a goliath bird eater …”

  “Bird eater? Oh, you’re not going to—”

  “Of course not. Henry will give it one of the snakes’ feeder mice.”

  Though officially her chauffeur, sixty-year-old Henry doted on her like a child-obsessed nanny, doing everything, including feeding the pets that required live food. Abra never could bring herself to do that.

  Her smile faded. “Any further word on poor Kelly Slade’s condition?”

  Bill took a sip of Jack and held up his glass.

  “Can I fix you anything?”

  “Some white wine, if you don’t mind. Whatever’s open.”

  Bill heard the whir of Abra’s electric wheelchair as she followed him to the wet bar. He opened the under-counter fridge and pulled out a stoppered bottle.

  “Meursault okay?”

  “Fine. Anything. About the Slade girl?”

  “Well …” Bill stalled. He plucked a glass from a rack and began to pour. “I guess you could say there’s good news and bad news.”

  “I don’t like the sound of that. What’s the good news?”

  Bill turned but held off handing her the glass afraid she might drop it.

  “Depends on who you are. For us it’s good news, for Ms. Slade it’s bad: She’s dead.”

  Abra’s gnarled hands shot to her lips. “Oh dear! What happened?”

  “Sheila Takamura told me today. Some sort of fall.”

  She shook her head. “I feel guilty for feeling so relieved.”

  Bill felt guilty for another reason. But it was Slade’s own fault. He had met with her, begged her to let it go, did everything he could to downplay her symptoms. Told her she should be grateful to be alive and not obsess about some skin discoloration. She’d promised she’d work with him, but then he’d learned she had an appointment to see some New York specialist. Once someone else got hold of her, he and Tethys could be dead meat.

  At least he’d learned in time to stop the woman. He felt bad, still did, but he’d had no choice.

  He held out the wineglass, releasing it only when Abra’s gnarled fingers had a firm grip on its stem.

  “You’ve got to admit though that it’s a deus-ex solution. Which is kind of appropriate since you said the woman was a sign from God—”

  “I said perhaps a sign from God.”

  Bill remembered the fear her remark had struck into his heart. Unlike Abra he didn’t agree that the public’s demand for VG723 would remain high once its side effects were revealed. And even if the demand did continue they’d never get the FDA to approve it. Once they went public with the side effects, Tethys would be shut down, legal vultures would circle, and they’d be looking at huge civil suits.

  Abra, however, was so sure of their treatment, she couldn’t imagine anyone not wanting it. She was naïve about the public reaction and the need for regulators to regulate. He hoped he could keep her idyllic world from shattering.

  “Okay, Abra. Perhaps a sign from God that it could be time to go public. But I’m glad we don’t have to. We’re not ready yet.” And Bill didn’t want to be ready for a long, long time, didn’t want to go public until they were forced to. “I guess God didn’t think so either.”

  “Bill,” Abra said. “Her death is only half a solution. We both know there’s another problem out there, the mirror image of Kelly Slade’s, ready to surface at any moment.”

  Bill poured himself a little more Jack.

  “That we do, that
we do.”

  “How did this happen, Bill?”

  He stiffened. “Kelly Slade’s death?”

  “No, no. You just said that was an accident. I meant, how did all our fail-safes, well, fail?”

  Bill sighed. “No matter how carefully you plan, all it takes is a lapse by just one person to cause a major screw up. All these years … we’re lucky it hasn’t happened before.”

  “We’re so careful selecting the recipients, matching up the donors.”

  “Well, it happened. One careless lab tech and the samples got switched. We’ve got a load of controls and this guy circumvented them all.”

  “But the pictures. We code the pictures and the samples. Everything is supposed to stay together.”

  “Supposed to, yes. But there’s always human error. We have even stronger controls in place now. It won’t happen again.”

  “What if it there are more that we don’t know about.?”

  “Abra, we have to go on the assumption that it was only these two cases. If there were more, we’d know. Believe me, we’d know.”

  Bill gulped the rest of his drink and crunched the ice. He lived with that fear everyday; he didn’t need her adding to it.

  “Don’t tell me what to assume!” Her thin voice rose in pitch and volume. “We’re talking about my life’s dream and—”

  “Our life’s dream, remember?”

  Didn’t she understand it mattered to him too? She was the reason the whole family had slaved to develop this therapy, though for her condition they were too late. But it was his dream too, dammit. And he was putting his neck on the line to preserve it.

  She calmed. “Sorry, Bill. But when I think of all the years, the endless labor, the huge hope we’ve poured into Proteus … jeopardized by one foolish mistake …”

  “Well, if there’s another mistake, it will be made by someone else. The guilty tech has been removed.”

  “What about your Sheila? How did she take the news? Slade was her patient, right?”

  Bill couldn’t help bristling. “She’s not ‘my Sheila’ ”

  “What is she then?”

  “A colleague. And practically your daughter.”

  Abra’s lips curved into a coy smile. “If it weren’t for Elise, she could be my sister-in-law. How many other ‘colleagues’ make goo-goo eyes at you?”