The Experiment

by Robin Lamont

  Jude complied, grateful for the old man’s assistance. Holding the bandana to her head, she watched as he got the engine going and backed away from the stop sign. She winced more from the smashed headlight and dent in the grill than from the pain in her forehead. Her good Samaritan opened the hood and took a careful look inside, touching this and tweaking that as if he knew what he was doing. Then he closed it up and wiped his hands on the back of his pants.

  “Think you’ll be okay to get it to a garage. But I wouldn’t do any long trips ’til you get it checked out.”

  She walked toward him. “Thank you so much.” She pulled the bandana away from her face. “I got blood on this, I’m sorry.”

  “You keep it. What’s your name, young lady?”

  “Jude.”

  He smiled and his eyes creased into countless tiny folds. “Jude, eh? The patron saint of lost causes.”

  She looked balefully at the car. “You got that right.”

  His face turned serious. “The thing is, Jude, I can’t let you just drive away until I’m sure you’re okay.

  “I’m not going to a hospital,” she insisted.

  “Very well. But I’m gonna insist that you see a doctor. I happen to know a good one about two miles up the road. He’s a friend of mine. John Harbolt’s his name. You follow me, and I’ll take you there.”

  “I really can’t ask you to do that.”

  “Don’t matter what you can or can’t ask,” he replied. “It’s what’s gonna happen.”

  It wasn’t until she found herself in Dr. Harbolt’s waiting room that she remembered about Rocky. She doubled over and hung her head between her knees, letting the red-hot pounding in her head punish her for abandoning him. Poor dog. Poor frightened, frustrated, angry dog. You get put in situations that you can’t handle and when you react the only way you know how, by scaring people away, they call you aggressive and put you down. She rocked for Tim. Oh God, I didn’t listen to you either. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

  “No, Miss Brannock, I’m the one who’s sorry.”

  She lifted her head to the visage of a country doctor straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting, complete with starched white coat and stethoscope around his neck. Had her thoughts voiced themselves? She clamped her mouth shut in case more of them escaped into the outside world. They were bad thoughts.

  “Sorry I’ve kept you waiting so long,” said Dr. Harbolt. “Come on back.”

  She followed him into an examination room and he motioned to the paper-covered table. “Have a seat. Mack told me you had a little car accident,” he said, dabbing at the cut with a moistened cotton ball. “Looks like you hit your head.”

  Brilliant diagnosis, Jude thought. But fighting the angry maelstrom in her head, she said, “It’s not that bad.”

  “Not bad. But you will need a few stitches. Anything else hurt?”

  “No.”

  “You got lucky then. Wait here while I get my sewing kit. It’s about quittin’ time, so I’m going to let my assistant go and put the ‘do not disturb’ sign on the front door. We’ll have you out of here in two shakes.”

  She wanted to like him because he was a friend of Mack’s and because he had big ears. But feeling perversely antagonistic, his folksy vernacular made her want to punch him in his face instead. He came back and had her lie down. Then he explained what he was going to do, numbing the area and putting in some sutures. “It’s right at the hairline here, so it’s not going to be noticeable.”

  “I don’t care.”

  He looked surprised. “No? Lovely girl like you?”

  “Are you hitting on me?” she asked testily.

  “Would if I was unmarried and forty years younger.” Unflappable, he went on chatting as he sewed up her wound.

  Jude had little choice but to submit to the sting of the needle and his friendly patter. She closed her eyes and breathed in the cool, disinfectant smell of the room while his practiced hands did their work. And then it was over. The doctor covered the stitches with an adhesive bandage and told her to lie still for a few minutes.

  Jude sat right up and asked, “Do you treat a lot of the people around Half Moon?”

  “Guess I do.”

  “Have you recently run into some unusual cases of bleeding that won’t stop?”

  He froze for a fraction of a second, just long enough to set Jude’s heartbeat going like a freight train. “You have, haven’t you?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Because a friend of mine has been getting nosebleeds that are out of control.”

  “Mmn.” Harbolt looked down, busying himself with his instruments and the bloodied gauze.

  Jude stood firm. “Just tell me. Have you?”

  He replied, “You’re awfully pushy for someone who came for treatment after hours.”

  “You have, though, right? Treated people for unexplained bleeding.” When he didn’t answer, she blurted out, “What if I told you I know why it’s happening?”

  He looked sharply back at her.

  She didn’t know what in the world she was doing opening up to him. Harbolt was a complete stranger. Even as she spoke, she tried to tell her mouth to stop, but it wouldn’t obey. “My friend Tim was working at Amaethon. They’re testing a heart drug, and I have it on good authority that it’s likely some type of warfarin, an anti-coagulant. I think it’s escaped from the lab somehow and is affecting people in town.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Escaped isn’t quite the right word because it didn’t come out of the lab so much as get into the lab.”

  He gazed at her sternly. “I think maybe you should lie down for a little while.”

  “Please, don’t pretend I’m crazy because I hit my head. You know what I’m talking about.”

  “Can’t say that I do, Miss Brannock.” But he didn’t try to stop her from continuing.

  “Let me start over. Are you aware that certain foods have natural blood-thinning properties?”

  “Yes,” he replied. “There are a number of them … uh, cranberries, ginger, pomegranate. Quite a few others.”

  “What if the genes that carry those blood-thinning properties could be inserted into another plant through genetic modification in such a way that the effect is magnified?”

  He wagged his head yes and no. “I don’t know much about genetically engineered plants, but I suppose it’s possible. What are you getting at?”

  Shut up, Jude. But she said, “Do you know the Amaethon Laboratory on Route 107?”

  “Sure.”

  “Right now, they’re testing what they claim is a new drug. It’s an anti-coagulant, which I gather is a class of heart medications.”

  “Your point?”

  “Amaethon is not a run-of-the-mill pharmaceutical company creating new chemical compounds. They’re in the business of developing new processes for producing existing drugs – a process that involves plants. I think that they have genetically engineered corn plants to grow enough anti-coagulant that the consumption of a small amount of corn effectively works like a prescribed dose of medication. This is what they’re testing on animals at the lab. And it’s working. They’re mixing in the corn with dog food, and the dogs – and I’m sure the other test animals as well – are showing signs of internal bleeding. With this drug in their systems, their blood can’t clot.”

  “Hold on a minute,” exclaimed Harbolt, putting up his hands to stop her. “Why in the world would Amaethon do this?”

  “First of all, it’s not just Amaethon. It’s an entire industry: plant made pharmaceuticals – PMP’s, they’re called. Biotech companies are experimenting with growing antibodies, vaccines, and drugs in plants. Why? That’s easy. They can be manufactured on a much larger scale and way cheaper than trying to create them in chemical factories or bioreactors. Think about
it. Acres and acres of free-growing corn or tobacco – just let nature do its thing.”

  He shook his head vehemently. “No one would cultivate something that potentially dangerous here in Vermont.”

  “Don’t count on it,” Jude replied. “Not if there’s a profit motive and an anti-regulatory environment. Go ahead and pay a local farmer to grow it. Maybe someone who’s struggling financially and would welcome a company offering the right money.”

  Harbolt eyed her keenly. “What makes you think that your friend or folks around here have ingested any of this … this genetically engineered corn? If what you say is true, it would all go directly to the laboratory.”

  He’s listening, paying attention. “I think they’ve eaten corn that’s been cross-pollinated by the GE corn. An ear of corn has to be pollinated to grow kernels. The tassels at the top of the plant—”

  “Release pollen, yes I know,” interrupted Harbolt. “I grow a little corn myself.”

  “So, then you know that any individual ear of corn doesn’t pollinate itself. It happens from other nearby corn plants, and it doesn’t have to be from the same field of corn, pollen can drift in the wind from other fields. This wouldn’t be the first time.”

  Jude shifted on the table to find a less uncomfortable position, then continued, “Several years ago, a company called Prolifitech genetically engineered a batch of corn to produce a pig vaccine. When the corn crop failed, they plowed it under and planted food grade soybeans. But some of the corn stalks got mixed up with the soybeans which made them, of course, unfit to eat. Now, who could have possibly foreseen something like that?”

  “And what happened?”

  “They caught the error and managed to intercept the soybeans before they got to market. Thousands of bushels. The company got lucky.”

  “And Amaethon didn’t?”

  “There’s an organic farm near the one that was growing the GE corn, and he sells his corn at the local farmer’s market.”

  “Are you talking about Kurt Buck?”

  “His is the neighboring property to this particular local farmer.”

  “And you’re saying that the pollen of the GE corn with the drug was blown onto Kurt’s field and infected his crop.”

  “I think so, yes. Maybe other fields, too. All I know is that people have been eating bad corn. First, my friend Tim who told me that he was getting bloody noses all the time. Then there was a kid that I saw at the market whose nose wouldn’t stop bleeding, and a girl with strange rashes all over her arms. Plus, the cases that you’re obviously seeing. How else can you explain it?”

  Harbolt’s frown creased every line in his face. “If you’re right, why isn’t everyone in this community getting sick?” he asked. “Like lots of people, I’ve eaten Kurt’s corn, and I haven’t been affected.”

  “I wondered about that myself. But then I thought, most people cook their corn, and maybe if it’s exposed to heat, the drug gets broken down and has no effect. But what if you ate the corn raw? Tim ate raw vegetables all the time. And he would have had the opportunity because he was shacking up with Kurt Buck’s daughter. Probably not many people eat raw corn, but you might not have to eat much to have it take you down.”

  The doctor tried one more time. “There must be regulations to prevent something like this from happening.”

  But Jude was one step ahead of him. “Oh, there are. There’s supposed to be a buffer zone between the drug plants and crops raised for human consumption. But who says the government is enforcing that? And besides, even if Amaethon thought they had secured a sufficient buffer zone … they were wrong, weren’t they?”

  Buying time, Harbolt took off his glasses to clean them on the hem of his lab coat. But Jude wouldn’t give him the respite. “So, I’m asking you again,” she pounced. “Do you have any patients who can’t stop bleeding?” She registered his stricken face and concluded, “I guess you do.”

  She got down from the table. She’d lied – everything hurt, and she sagged against the table.

  The doctor reached out to keep her from slipping to the floor. “Where do you think you’re going?” he admonished.

  “I have to find my friend.” Even to herself the words sounded mythical. Tim was gone. She hoped that he had run and run far, but she didn’t really believe it. Still, she had to know.

  As if she had again spoken aloud her buried thoughts, the doctor cautioned, “You’re not going anywhere right now. It’s highly likely you have a concussion.”

  “But—”

  “Slow down, m’dear. I want to help you.”

  “You do?”

  “I do. What you’ve told me is very disturbing.”

  Harbolt’s pager went off. He unclipped the relic from his belt and glanced at the incoming number. “I have to make a phone call,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”

  Jude waited on the examination table, the pounding in her head beating out the moments he was gone. She clung to the bright side. Harbolt believed her. There was someone who understood the craziness of what was happening and wanted to help.

  The door opened and he came back in. “I have an emergency at the hospital,” he announced. “But I’ll be back shortly. This will be a good time for you to rest. Here’s a couple of Tylenol,” he said, handing her two white pills, “for the pain. You shouldn’t be driving. When I come back, we can talk about what our next steps should be.”

  He handed her a plastic cup of water, and she swallowed the pills. All at once, Jude felt so tired that lying down was the only thing she could do. She nodded meekly. He led her to his office where a small sofa beckoned like a pool of water to someone dying of thirst. She succumbed to its plush fabric and curled up with her hands beneath her cheek.

  “You rest now,” said Harbolt.

  She wasn’t sure that she’d fallen asleep, only that she had gone somewhere else, a place of nothingness, and that it hadn’t been long – an hour? Five minutes? The sound of a car door brought her back … along with loud, hurried voices outside.

  Pushing herself groggily off the sofa, Jude stepped over to the window and peered through the blinds. Harbolt was talking with another man by a car in the parking lot. The man’s back was to her, but he seemed upset, clutching his fists against his abdomen. Something about the gesture made her think she’d seen him before. At that moment, the doctor glanced up in Jude’s direction. She drew back, the metal blinds making their whispered tinkling as they settled. When she dared look again, Harbolt was striding towards his office and the other man turned to watch him. It was Stuart Ostrovsky.

  It felt as though she’d been punched. Ostrovsky? Was Harbolt lying about a hospital emergency? After spilling everything she knew about Amaethon, had he rushed to call Ostrovsky? She looked around for a means of escape. There was no way out; she was trapped.

  When Dr. Harbolt came into the office, Jude was feigning sleep in the same position. She tried to breathe slowly, while she mentally rehearsed how she might overpower him to give herself time to run. He went to his desk and unlocked a drawer. He took something out and re-locked it. Then there was silence, and she could feel him watching her. It was all she could do to keep her breathing even and sleep-like. A moment later, he left.

  She waited until she heard the outer door close again before rushing to the window. Ostrovksy was still there. The doctor had a piece of paper in his hand. Holding it against the top of his car, he wrote something on it and handed it to the scientist. He looked at his watch and said one last thing before they both drove off in separate cars.

  Jude was rocked completely off course. She flipped through what-if’s in her head but couldn’t come up with a credible scenario that would explain the country doctor’s connection to Amaethon. Unless, because of his patients, he’d figured it out and Amaethon was paying him to keep quiet. Or maybe there was a more sinister explanation: he was being paid as a me
dical consultant and had been in on it from the very beginning.

  That thought triggered a new blitz of panic. What were the pills he had given her? Tylenol – or something else? Her head still felt as though she had slammed it on a doorframe, but adrenaline was bringing her back to life. If he’d drugged her, it hadn’t yet taken effect. She had to get out before Harbolt came back. Or sent someone.

  Her car started and she coaxed it onto the road. There was an odd noise coming from the right front wheel, but for now, it was operable. Jude began to drive back to her hotel. But as she got closer, she questioned whether she’d be safe there. Stupidly, she’d noted the local address on the insurance form she’d completed at Harbolt’s office. She drew in behind a Dunkin Donuts and called Lucas.

  Leave a message.

  “It’s me. Uh … think I’m in trouble, Lucas. I … uh … I don’t think Tim’s alive.” Her voice cracked, and she had to take a few swallows to get it under control again. “I think I know why, but not how. I have to know. If anything happens to me, it’s about what they’re testing at Amaethon. It’s … fucking insane. They’re growing an anticoagulant drug in corn, and it’s gotten out, and now people are getting really sick. I don’t know, maybe–”

  A rude beep signaled she had come to the end of her allotted time. What was the point in leaving another message? Lucas was in Washington and she needed someone in Half Moon, now. It was time to call Haydon.

  CHAPTER 23

  He was waiting for her when the Subaru limped into the motel parking lot. Jude couldn’t figure out how he’d gotten there already, it had only been a few minutes. But she felt relieved. No one would come after her after seeing a state police car in the parking lot.

  The sun was setting, leaving behind a golden-hued horizon, which would have been stunning had it not been for Haydon’s silhouette against the farewell light. He appeared bigger and more rigid than she remembered.

  “Thank God you’re here,” said Jude.

  “Jesus, what the hell happened to you?”