Blood of the White Bear

by Marcia Calhoun Forecki

  Socoro had bigger plans for Rachel’s breakthrough. They wanted to market P1601 as a drug for anyone over fifty years of age whose joints were swollen or stiff. So far, Socoro’s customer psychology team had not settled on a brand name for P1601. It would be a short word, ending in a vowel, with some phonetic link to words about happiness and well-being. On top of the short list of possible brand names for P1601, still secret for now, was ROMeze: ROM for range of motion and “eze” for easy. The word was vowel-heavy, easy to remember and impossible to mispronounce. Perfect for all those senior citizens who would one day ask for it by name.

  Today, Rachel put aside her fight against mass marketing P1601. Even a laboratory geek deserved a few minutes in the spotlight. The latest tests for the drug showed it could prevent a wide range of viruses from attacking people genetically predisposed to R.A.. She was excited to share her results with doctors and researchers, have a nice lunch, and get back to work.

  Rachel combed her thick blonde hair with her fingers. She had to tie it up and cover it in the lab, though she preferred it loose around her neck. The feeling of fingers through her hair, even her own, was calming. The feeling of someone caressing her hair was one of her earliest memories. It was so early that she had no idea whose hands were stroking her hair. She assumed it was her mother, but those fingers felt larger and stronger and rougher than the pictures she had seen of her mother’s hands.

  Dr. Bisette was introduced by Dr. Ghany, one of her dissertation advisors from Johns Hopkins University. Socoro sent a company jet for him. He was lecturing in British Columbia, and he had to be out of the city by noon to be back in time for an afternoon graduate seminar. “Totally doable,” someone at Socoro’s transportation scheduling desk told him, and so, it had been done. When Dr. Ghany’s glowing introduction was over and he was on his way to the airport, Rachel took the podium.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to announce a significant step forward in the treatment of one of the body’s cruelest tricksters. For centuries, young men and women have watched the hands, knees, hips, and feet of their elders become twisted, knotted, and frozen, knowing such an agonizing future surely awaited them. One of the most heartless maladies, rheumatoid arthritis, is no respecter of the young, and it regularly steals from children their freedom to play and explore life joyfully.

  “Current studies are showing that arthritis is more than a painful twister of joints. Links to other health problems, including heart disease, are clarified every day, and the urgency to defeat this disease has never been greater. Today, I am very excited to talk to you about the results of preliminary trials which have proved truly remarkable. Allow me to walk you through the data.”

  Dozens of eyes were focused on Rachel, but her voice did not break, and her knees did not buckle. So sure was she of the power of what she discovered, her nervousness all but disappeared. The science was fascinating and exciting, and she developed an obsession with the numbers and the details, but she was always about the patients, always about making the stroking of a grandchild’s hair as painless and comforting for the grandparent as for the child. Rachel spoke for nearly two hours without once touching her hair, pulling on her sweater, or referring to a single note.

  Chapter Seven

  After her presentation, Rachel was mobbed by her audience. Members of the hotel staff were trying to set up the room for lunch, but the tables were littered with laptops and jackets whose owners were crushed at the front of the room, waiting impatiently to ask her questions. Finally, the conference leaders asked Rachel to be available after lunch for an impromptu question and answer session. She agreed, and the crowd reluctantly began to break up.

  Rachel gathered her electronics and backed out the door. She walked down the stairs to the lobby and found a chair near the Park Avenue entrance. She wanted a few minutes of quiet. Ten peaceful minutes and she would still have plenty of time for lunch before the special session started. She rested on the back of the chair and let her hair hang freely behind it.

  Across the lobby, Ted Fuller watched Rachel smooth her hair. His own neck tingled, as he walked toward her. He did not want to disturb her, but if he didn’t say something now, she would get caught up in the afternoon sessions, and he wouldn’t have a chance to invite her to lunch. As he approached Rachel’s chair, his cell phone went off in his pocket. Rachel started and looked up at Ted, now close enough to touch her.

  “You better answer that, counselor,” she smiled.

  “It’s just business. I’m here on a more important matter,” Ted smiled.

  “Socoro business?”

  “Lunch, actually. I’d like to buy you some, if you haven’t got ten other obligations.”

  “There’s the conference lunch. I think I’m expected to be there.”

  Rachel was surprised to see Ted Fuller at the conference. He was part of Socoro’s legal team. She met him a time or two in meetings, as the company pushed P1601 closer to market. Ted attended the meetings in case legal questions about patents and advertising claims came up. Rachel thought Ted had a little crush on her, but the feeling was definitely not mutual. She wondered if he followed her to New York to make sure she did not make any unsubstantiated claims for P1601. He talked to her about the subject last week and asked for some of her files.

  Ted moved a chair close to Rachel’s, the better to speak confidentially, she imagined. She leaned away from him a little when he looked at her with the expression of a proud boyfriend. Ted held an imaginary pencil and pad, like a reporter interviewing a celebrity. “Moments ago in the largest Art Deco hotel in the world, you, Dr. Rachel Bisette announced an earth-shaking discovery… .”

  “The preliminary results of clinical trials,” Rachel corrected.

  “… the discovery of the cure for rheumatoid arthritis.”

  “These results suggest that the drug P1601 shows some promise in averting the triggering effect of certain viruses, which may cause the genetic disposition for rheumatoid arthritis in some patients to be activated.”

  “I like that. Stick to the facts,” said Ted.

  “I’m a scientist. Facts are my only business,” said Rachel. “I’m hungry. If we’re going to lunch, we should get going.”

  “You pick the restaurant and don’t hold back. I’ve got a Socoro credit card.”

  “Let’s keep it midtown. I have to be back for a Q&A at two o’clock.”

  “I promise to deliver you back to your colleagues on time.”

  * * *

  Rachel checked her e-mails while Ted got them a cab. She noticed a little girl walking across the lobby with her mother. The little girl wore a plaid shirtwaist dress over denim-look tights. She carried a small shopping bag out of which peeked what looked like a stuffed animal. As the little girl came closer, Rachel recognized the doll in her shopping bag. It was a little white bear. The bear’s face brought back the picture of the face she had seen in her dream. Seeing the chubby bear cub, Rachel was convinced that what she dreamed was a kachina. The head was squarish, and the body was long and slim. Rachel recalled seeing kachina dolls all over New Mexico, when she visited her aunt and uncle at their winter home near Santa Fe. She almost went to medical school there. Searching for a connection with her father, Rachel volunteered on an ongoing dig through the University of New Mexico for a few weeks during winter break. Something about the desert fascinated her, and yet she loved being near the water, too. Rachel saw Ted waving from the curb, an open cab door in his hand. She hurried down the stairs and out the door.

  “I’ll have seared salmon, if it’s wild, with spring greens and roasted fingerlings,” Rachel said, without accepting the menu offered by the waiter.

  “You’ve been here before?” asked Ted.

  “No, but it’s pretty basic for this kind of restaurant.”

  Ted reluctantly took the menu. He sensed impatience from the waiter. He asked for the lunch specials but did
n’t listen to the waiter’s recitation. He was only buying time to glance at the menu.

  “The prime rib sandwich with coleslaw.”

  “We don’t have coleslaw,” said the waiter.

  “Just come as close as you can,” said Ted.

  After the waiter left, Ted looked around the room. He wanted to avoid staring at Rachel. He finally blurted out, “I took you for a vegetarian,” he said. He gave more attention to unfolding his napkin than it required.

  “Fish is full of Omega-3 and Vitamin A.”

  “OK. Why ‘wild’?”

  “Fish bred in farms are heart-breaking. Thousands of them thrashing about trying to swim in a few teaspoons of water each. A wild salmon at least has a fighting chance.”

  “I hope I haven’t lost points for ordering beef,” said Ted.

  “Points? Oh, with me? No, no. Now, if you had ordered veal, I would have walked out immediately.”

  “Never touch it,” said Ted.

  Rachel excused herself. When she returned, her blonde hair was pulled back in a loose pony tail, straight and full.

  “You changed your hair,” Ted noted.

  “I just pulled it out of my way,” she said, as she resumed her seat.

  “It looks great to me, but loose was better.”

  Rachel raised her arms to pull out the band holding her pony tail, but she decided against it. It might look like she was flirting or trying to please Ted. She had no time for a boyfriend now. Boyfriend? What a childish term, she thought.

  The rest of the lunch was mostly shop talk. Ted asked about the next steps in Rachel’s work, although he knew all about the upcoming clinical trials. He had recently learned a great deal about Rachel’s lab, her team, and her work. He studied her files very carefully in the last few days. A law school buddy who worked in the Stamford FBI field office suggested he do that. Ted followed Rachel to New York, not because of what she might say in her conference presentation, but because he was afraid an overly zealous FBI agent might be there to arrest her.

  Chapter Eight

  Eva Yellow Horn stood on an outcropping, overlooking Hungo Pavi. Strands of her long hair, now coarse and gray as an old mare’s tail, blew in the wind. Eva breathed in deeply the canyon air. The smells of thousands of hearth fires and millions of bowls of boiled corn and jack rabbit stew rose from the canyon below her. The rocks on the canyon floor were not dead to Eva. Even though the site was unexcavated, she knew what had once been at Hungo Pavi. The great house without walls was not a collection of ruins. The kivas were not silent, and the granaries were not empty. Eva Yellow Horn felt life rising from the canyon. She saw the people, the ones the Navajo called “the strangers.” She saw them below her, living and working.

  Eva stood close to the edge of the outcropping and did not fear the height. Her ancestors crawled up the steep cliffs of the Four Corners for centuries and carried stones up narrow paths and wooden ladders to build their homes in the rocks. Eva’s sturdy legs held her against the desert winds, which whipped her faded cotton skirt around her legs. Eva felt the wind through the thin fabric and clasped her hands on her belly. Eva was proud of her ample girth; it meant she lived a life of plenty and brought children into the world. An Anasazi woman could ask for little more of her life.

  Eva closed her eyes and looked inside her memories. She saw a group of people like herself and her parents. They were crowded close together in a large room, cooking smells surrounded the people and corn roasted on a wood burning stove. Beans bubbled in a spicy brew of chilies. She looked up at the adults around her and saw smiles on the faces of her parents and others. They embraced and told the name of their clans on both their mother’s side and father’s side.

  Eva was a teenager when her parents went to Wounded Knee in 1973. People there were from all seven council fires of the Dakota people, those descended from the Algonquin Alliance came and others from the Mandan who had known Lewis and Clark. Eva’s parents came from the land where Navajo walked and before them the Hopi lived. Eva’s grandmothers walked the canyons that would become part of the American Southwest touching four states and known as the Four Corners.

  The people came to stand united at the sacred Wounded Knee. They were surrounded by enemies, but no one spoke of fear. Young Eva felt glad her parents brought her to this sacred place. Some people said the occupation was no place for children, but others said it was important that children be part of that unique gathering. Later, Eva would say she had been born at Wounded Knee, although her physical birth had been nineteen years before the standoff. She referred to her spiritual birth, her recognition of the power of the spirits of nature acting through the people.

  The sun had moved. It now fell on the crown of Eva’s head. When she climbed to the top of the butte onto the outcropping, the sun was on her face. Eva breathed deeply again. Her mind’s eye fell on other images from six years after Wounded Knee, 1979. She saw herself sitting outside a dwelling. No one could call it a house. It sat isolated on the mesa. The walls were made of stones dragged to the spot by Eva and her brothers. The walls formed a semi-circle only. The front of the “house” was open to the rising sun in the east. A canvas roof on a frame of poles covered the structure. Between the canvas and the rock walls, the desert winds blew. The canvas could be brought down and secured on the rock walls in a storm. Mud filled the gaps where the rocks refused to meet. Here, Eva grew herbs and stored them for cures. Here she prayed and listened to the voices of the ancient healers whose arts she revered and practiced.

  As she boiled water over a brushfire in front of the dwelling, Eva heard a rumbling in a cloudless sky. It sounded like the growling of a hungry coyote. The noise grew louder and nearer. When the sound suddenly stopped, the desert was more silent than Eva ever remembered. Then, the sky was ripped with a flash and an explosion. Fire rained down before her. Eva watched burning pieces of an airplane fall, and then the body of the giant machine hit the earth, and fire crackled in the dry air.

  Eva heard another sound, an animal sound, coming from the plane. She left her shelter and ran toward it. The animal sound was a child, crying in terrified gasps. Eva found three charred bodies in the plane.

  She grabbed the child and cradled her head against her breasts. She walked away from the plane, humming softly and stroking the child’s yellow hair. The hair felt like fresh corn silk, and Eva combed her thick strong fingers through the delicate strands. She felt the child’s body relax in her arms.

  In her stone house, Eva gave the child milk from a goat to drink. She washed someone’s blood from the child’s hands and sang softly to her.

  Poor little girl fell from the sky.

  No one left to love her but the baby goat and I.

  * * *

  Eva Yellow Horn breathed deeply, exhaled with a sigh, and opened her eyes. The sun was touching her back now. Soon, the wind would chill. The little girl with corn silk hair was gone, and the people in the lodge at Wounded Knee returned to their homes. The canyon below Eva was bathed in shadows as a coyote cried in the distance.

  Chapter Nine

  What a day it had been! Rachel ruled the conference. She talked to one doctor after another, through dinner, until the bar closed. She had not eaten or drunk anything since her lunch with Ted, so she ordered a beer with ice and lime. As she sipped her drink, feeling her shoulders finally start to loosen, her cell rang. It was someone high enough up at Socoro that his name did not show up on her caller ID.

  “Dr. Bisette,” she answered, in a quiet voice so as not to upset the other bar patrons.

  “This is Theo Walcz.” He paused a moment, and Rachel thought he would add, “CEO” after his name, but he did not.

  “Yes, Mr. Walcz.”

  “I’ve been hearing nothing but superlatives about the presentation today. Socoro was mentioned by Anderson Cooper on CNN, and I’ve been invited to appear on Sunday Morning. I’ve always wa
nted to meet George Will. Do you suppose that’s his real hair?”

  “I have no idea,” Rachel answered.

  “It’s a major coup for Socoro, and I wanted to call personally and congratulate you.”

  “Thank you. I might stay over for the taping. It’s been ages since I spent any time in the city.”

  “Taping?”

  “The interview on Sunday Morning.” Rachel assumed she would be included in the interview. P1601 was her research, after all.

  “I am handling the interview.”

  “You’re going to say that the findings are only preliminary, right? In your interview, be sure and mention the research of the labs in Geneva and London, whose work we built on,” Rachel said.

  “I know how to handle the press, Dr. Bisette. Drug companies have taken a few low punches in the last few years. The public needs a miracle every now and then to keep up their faith in us.”

  “You mean, their faith in the scientists?” Rachel asked. She was fishing.

  “I mean their faith in the fact that research and development cost money.”

  “How are share prices? Up quite a bit?”

  Mr. Walcz laughed loudly and immediately started coughing. Forty years of smoking had already taken its irreversible toll, Rachel thought. She did not feel sorry for him.

  “You scientists. The market is closed on the weekends. I expect the Stock Exchange will suffer some roof damage come Monday morning, if you get what I mean. Socoro’s stock is going to go through the roof.”

  “Good news for my retirement account,” said Rachel.

  “Oh, I almost forgot,” said Mr. Walcz. “When you come back on Monday, we’ll talk about a bonus for you and your next assignment.”