by Francis Tint
“Not to mention it’s a criminal offence,” said Tylor sternly.
“Or maybe from the funeral home? A little too solemn for my liking,” Julia continued her monologue. “Suicide prevention group? Nah… probably too insensitive. An old friend of Ellen’s? Maybe we should stalk her on the internet.”
“Seriously, I thought we were going to stop doing this,” Tylor whispered to Julia.
“Oh… it sounded fun. I got distracted.”
“I have a better idea,” Blake, oblivious to their sidebar, announced with a tone of finality.
After the workday was over, they brought Rachael along and arrived at Mrs. Welsh’s home. They rang the doorbell, and an old lady answered the door.
“Hello, Mrs. Welsh,” greeted Rachael. “We’re from Patient Outreach at Ashlea Edwards. These are my associates.” She presented the old lady with a flower basket and some sweets. “Please accept our deepest condolences. We at Ashlea Edwards care for each and every one of our patients, and would like to reach out and lend a helping hand during these difficult times,” Rachael spoke with swift adeptness. Her intern times at the Pharmacy team had really paid off.
“You are so very kind,” replied Mrs. Welsh. “Please, young fellows, come on in.” She smiled, but failed to conceal the grief in her eyes.
The gang stepped into a cozy home decorated with dated furniture. A toddler ran across the room to his grandmother, “Is mommy home?”
“No, sweetie. Not yet. We have some guests over. Do you want to say hi?”
“Hey there, big guy,” Tylor approached the toddler. “What’s your name?”
“Sam,” the hazel-eyed toddler shyly responded and ran away.
The old lady’s grief became more evident. “How am I supposed to tell a two-year-old that his parents…” her voice broke before finishing the sentence. She sat down on the couch and picked up a picture of her daughter. “My sweet, sweet child,” she lamented. “Been struggling with the same demon all her life.”
“I’m sorry to hear that our treatment was not more helpful,” said Rachael.
“Oh, no, dear, that’s not what I meant. Your medicine was very effective. The situation would’ve been much worse without it. She was doing so well for the longest time. But recently,” she paused to grab a tissue to wipe away the tears from her eyes, “she was having more fights with Mike. She would come over to stay the night and have a total meltdown. It’s very heartbreaking to watch. It must’ve been the stress from her new job.”
“You said ‘recently’,” inquired Blake. “How long ago was that? When did Ellen start to regress?”
“I’d say… about two months ago.”
Blake and Rachael locked eyes with each other for a quick moment, both thinking the same thing. Two months ago, Ellen had started participating in the experimental trial with new medication. Rachael didn’t learn much from the company’s database, but maybe an actual sample of the drug would provide more information.
“Oh, where are my manners?” said Mrs. Welsh. “Would you young fellows want something to drink? Fancy some tea?”
“We’d love to,” Blake answered. “Also, if you don’t mind, may I use the bathroom?”
“Of course, dear. It’s upstairs on your right. You can’t miss it.”
If Ellen had been staying over, she probably would have left some spare medication at Mrs. Welsh’s. Blake decided to try her luck pocketing some samples. There should only be a few obvious spots where people kept their pills.
When Blake returned to the group, tea had already been served. Julia and Rachael continued to make stilted conversation with Mrs. Welsh, while Tylor sat soundlessly enjoying his tea.
“Please take very good care of yourself, Mrs. Welsh,” Julia thanked the old lady. “The tea was marvelous.”
“We should probably get going,” Rachael added. “Here’s our contact information. Please feel free to reach out if you need anything.”
Mrs. Welsh bade them goodbye. The group left with a feeling of great sorrow. Blake looked back at the house as Mrs. Welsh closed the door. It couldn’t be a coincidence. The new drug must have contributed to Ellen’s eventual demise. Blake contemplated seriously as she held tightly to the bottle of tablets labelled C05I.
The group met up after leaving Mrs. Welsh’s. “So this is your idea of a treat?” asked Julia, “Discount mixed drinks at a student bar?”
“Booze is booze,” said Tylor.
“What’s wrong with this place? I love a low-key dive bar,” Rachael added.
“Girl, there are so many other better options,” said Julia. “Before your internship’s over and you go back to school, I got to bring you around town and check out all the hot bartenders.”
“What’s your plan after you graduate from school?” Tylor asked. “Do you want to come back here?”
“I haven’t quite decided yet,” Rachael responded. “Not sure if I’m ready to leave home and the town where I grew up. But it’s quite fun here. Bonus if Blake decides that I’m good enough to be part of her team.”
The group stared at Blake, who was deep in thought and was not at all aware of the conversation.
“Blake, are you alright?” Julia gave Blake a slight nudge, startling her. “Are you still thinking about the suicide victims?” With a sigh, she continued, “Listen. I don’t know if this will make you feel better, but hopefully it will help you get some closure. I just got a message saying that the Crime Unit came back with some evidence that corroborated our findings. They traced a recent purchase of some explosives back to the victims.”
“Do you have a copy of the receipt? Would I be able to see it?” asked Blake.
“No. Why would I have it?” Julia responded with a puzzled expression. “They said they have it. Then for us, the case is closed. We never question them.”
“You heard Mrs. Welsh,” said Tylor. “Her daughter had been fighting HMID her whole life. The added stress from the new job probably made it worse. The situation became unmanageable.”
“How can you explain my dream then? What I saw? What I felt when I was her? She did not want to kill herself!” Tears started to flood Blake’s eyes.
“Oh Blake, darling,” Julia gave her a tight hug. “It was just a dream. You’re not Ellen.” Julia held her hands. “Listen. You’ve been really stressed recently. We understand. And we are all here for you. Honey, I think what you need is a nice massage, take a me day, and forget about the whole damn thing.”
No way. It all just seemed too convenient. Blake was sure of it. Even if Ellen had been severely depressed, Mike would have never agreed with the plan. It couldn’t have been a murder-suicide either. Why would Ellen want to leave their son orphaned?
She explained her reasoning to her companion. There was no good counter. “Even if it’s a double-homicide, our hands are tied,” Tylor said simply. “It’s up to the Crime Unit now. I’m sure they will continue to investigate until they find out the truth. We’re just lab scientists.”
Was there nothing more they could do? Blake felt helplessly defeated. Ellen wasn’t just a random victim on the news. Blake had lived Ellen’s final night. She had felt all of Ellen’s struggle. But she had also felt all the love Ellen’d had for Mike and Sam. Ellen’s final moment with Mike before the explosion had been filled with hope and joy, not sadness or despair.
But they were right. Their hands were tied. They’re just lab scientists.
Blake promised her friends she would forget all about the victims and focus on herself. They celebrated her new opportunity and ended the night. She left the bar looking forward to the next day, but couldn’t help to wonder what had really happened to Ellen.
“Do you have the ring?” Blake was startled by the voice. A young man with a hood over his head appeared before her.
“Excuse me. Who are you?” Blake took a few steps back. Was she being robbed on a main street, in front of busy bars and stores? The streetlight shined over the strange man and she caught a glimpse of the platin
um blond hair under the hood. She immediately recognized him. “I’ve seen you before. You were at that restaurant. What were you doing there?”
He took off the hood and stared intently at Blake. “The same reason you were there. To find out the truth about the victim. You found the ring, didn’t you?”
“Yes, it was in the ladies’ room,” Blake replied before she could stop herself. She shouldn’t really be having a conversation with a complete stranger, but everything about the man standing before her felt very familiar. His eyes. His voice. It felt like they had known each other their entire lives.
“Naturally.” He nodded to himself and considered for a moment. “Do not lose it. Make sure they don’t find it. We can’t let them know we’re onto them.”
“Let who know? What’s so special about the ring anyway? It’s just a regular ring,” Blake protested.
“You know that’s not true.”
His words reminded Blake of the moment when she had touched the ring in the restroom. The shimmering tremor. “What more do you know?” She paused and enunciated, “Who are you?”
He paused at the question, showing slight disappointment in his face, as if she should have known who he was. “Name’s Corey. Be very careful who you trust. Get the ring and learn its secret. Call me once you find out more.” He gave her his number and started to walk away.
“Wait.” Blake placed her hand on his shoulder, and froze. Corey looked back and their eyes locked for a moment. Blake let go and retreated in shock.
Blake witnessed the strange man walking away briskly, glowing in the same tremor as she had seen before around the ring.
CHAPTER TWO
A Bird's Eye View
“Let’s play a game,” a prepubescent boy suggested. He proceeded to place three identical blue cubes on a table in front of a younger girl. “Look carefully. One of them is not like the others. Which one is it?”
The blue-eyed girl was sitting in a small chair, but not in one of those typically found in a kid’s play room. It was just a boring classroom chair. In fact, the entire space was void of any childhood toys and nursery décor. It was a sterile room, painted white throughout, reminiscent of a covert underground lab.
She reached out to the cubes, hoping her touch would give her a clue.
“Nuh-uh,” the boy announced, “that’s cheating. You cannot touch them.”
“But it makes me tired,” the girl proclaimed. She stood up in protest. “This game’s not fun anymore.”
The boy pushed back his platinum blond hair, and said, “Let’s make a deal. If you give me the right answer, I will ask your papa to bring your favorite ice-cream.”
Her eyes lit up by the thought of the frozen dessert. “It has to be chocolate chip cookie dough! Pinky promise?”
“When have I lied to you?” The boy frowned slightly at the sight of the younger girl extending her pinky. He sighed, and succumbed to the child-play gesture. “Ok, fine.”
The girl immediately sat back down and stared intently at the three objects on the table. She was visibly struggling. “I don’t know. I can’t do it.”
“I know you can. Don’t give up.”
The girl took a deep breath. Clank! One of the lights flickered and went out with a spark. She screamed. Clank! Clank! Clank! The other lights began to go out one after the other, slowly painting the room with an eerie aura. “No! Turn the lights back on.”
“Focus. Which one is different?”
The girl redirected her sight at the three cubes. Nothing changed but for one exception. The one in the middle started to radiate with a soft tremor. An unmistakable shimmering gleam. With her eyes glowing a luminescent blue, the girl pointed and yelled, “the middle one!” She shut her eyes, “Turn the lights back on, now!”
“Everything’s alright now,” the boy said calmly. “You can open your eyes.”
The girl opened her eyes to the same dark room. However, it’s now decorated with radiant sparkles scattered over the room, like a million fireflies in a forest.
“This is so pretty!” the girl exclaimed.
Their moment was interrupted when the door opened. A middle-aged man with a small chevron mustache entered the brightly lit room with one burned-out fluorescent tube. The man gestured to the boy and pointed at the malfunctioning light, “Did you do that?”
The boy replied soundlessly with a guilty look.
“I did it. I saw it without touching it. Corey promised me ice-cream. Can I have ice-cream?”
“Of course, you can,” the man replied, holding a mini-tub of chocolate-chip-cookie-dough ice-cream in his hand. “Good girl, Blake.”
Blake opened her eyes starkly in her familiar bedroom with accelerated heart rate. Was it another vision? Good thing no one had died this time around. It had only left her in an elevated state of confusion. Was she dreaming about a girl whose name was also Blake? She knew for sure her dad had never signed her up for any borderline torture child experiment.
She got out of bed and turned on the light. At least she didn’t wake up to the smell of burned metal, she thought to herself, staring at the light that had gone out.
“Here you go, Dad.” Blake placed a plate of breakfast before her dad on the kitchen table. He nodded dismissively. His attention was focused on the latest news feed on his phone.
Blake’s mom arrived at the table with three cups of coffee. “Don’t mind your dad,” she said. “He’s glued to his phone.”
Breakfast was soundless as always, void of any conversation. Blake wasn’t part of a chatty family, like the ones she would see on TV. That, however, didn’t mean they had a weak bond, Blake thought to herself. Not everyone had the same family dynamics. She didn’t have any vivid childhood memories, but she had grown up developing an exceptional admiration for her dad. It’s just like the little girl she had dreamed about. The little girl would run toward her dad at the very sight of him, who would immediately return her affection.
As she took a few sips of her coffee, she couldn’t help but to ponder on all the mysteries surrounding Ellen’s death. She took out her phone and examined the newly added contact. Hmm… the boy in her dream was also named Corey. She’d probably had his name in mind, and made up the whole thing in her dream to justify why she had felt a strange sense of familiarity toward him. As her friends had suggested, the whole thing with the car explosion was out of their hands. It’s up to the officials. They’re just lab scientists. These were all just distractions. She needed to focus on her new assignment. She couldn’t let her boss down.
“Dad, Mom, I had a chat with Ashlea.”
“Ashlea Edwards? Your CEO? Did you get into some sort of trouble?” Dad asked.
“No, the opposite actually. She gave me this new assignment. It’s super exciting.”
“That’s wonderful to hear,” Mom congratulated her.
“Good,” Dad said simply. Blake smiled warmly at the remark.
Blake glued herself to her workstation browsing through articles after articles on past research relating to the early detection of HMID. She needed a flawless plan. There’s only one chance to make a first impression.
“Blake, take a look at this.” Rachael, holding a stack of printed records, interrupted her research. “It took some time, but I managed to dig up some undigitized paper records of the amniotic fluid sample. Everything else completed on that day was scanned in, except for this one. The admin must have missed it.”
“What amniotic fluid sample?”
“From Ellen, the suicide victim. To be completely honest, I wasn’t deliberately looking into it. I was just sifting through a data dump, and I came across a missing record when I sorted them alphabetically. It turns out it belonged to the victim.”
Blake couldn’t resist the temptation to examine the record. She’s curious from a scientific perspective. She’s also subliminally invested at a personal level since she couldn’t quite dismiss the connection she felt with Ellen. She studied the record carefully. At first glance, the
test looked fairly standard and there had been no particular concerns with the pregnancy. Fetal development had been on track and vital organs had been healthy.
“Hmm… this is interesting,” Blake pointed at the results on chromosome 15. “Take a look at the OCA2 gene.”
“The OCA2 gene…” Rachael considered for a moment. “That’s the gene that determines your eye color, right? Oh, the kid’s eyes were a very unique shade of hazel. Sort of like yours, actually. An absolute tragedy to lose both parents at such a young age.”
“Look at what it says here. According to this, the little boy Sam has the blue-eye allele. His eyes should be blue.” Eye color was a very standard rudimentary test. An error like this would never make it pass through the layers of quality controls they had at Ashlea Edwards. Blake continued to peruse the report. “Look at this… does this look typical to you? This is very extensive testing on chromosome 12.”
“Some believe we can find the HMID genes on c12. Given the mother’s history, maybe she asked for it? None of those testing methods are actually officially approved. I’m surprised to learn we perform experimental analysis here.”
That was surprising indeed. Considering Ashlea had just assigned Blake to create a prenatal diagnostic process for HMID, why hadn’t she revealed more of the history the company had undertaken on this subject matter? Additionally, a lot of these tests had been highly subjective and circumstantial, not at all scientific.
But maybe it was just a test from Ashlea. To see how thorough she was.
“So,” Blake started to brainstorm with Rachael, “if we take a different approach on prenatal diagnosis for HMID, what would we do?”
“Well, according to the central dogma,” Rachael recited from her academic studies, “the flow of genetic materials is governed through the transcription and translation processes. DNA makes RNA, which in turn makes protein.”
“Full marks on the test,” Blake spoke approvingly, “but what does that mean in practice?”