by Robin Cook
“You mean by using an adjuvant like BCG?” asked Dr. Keitzman.
“Something like that,” agreed Charles. He was in no shape to get into a scientific discussion.
“Well,” said Dr. Keitzman, heading for the door. “We’ll have to talk about it. Obviously whatever you did helped the chemotherapy she’d been given before you took her from the hospital. I don’t understand the time sequence, but we’ll talk about it when you feel stronger.”
“Yes,” agreed Charles. “When I’m stronger.”
“Anyway, I’m sure you know the custody proceedings have been canceled.” Dr. Keitzman adjusted his glasses, nodded to the technician, and left.
Charles’s elation over Dr. Keitzman’s news dulled the painful respiratory treatment, even better than the morphine. As the technician stood by, the positive pressure machine forcibly inflated Charles’s lungs, something a patient would not do himself because of the severity of the pain. The procedure lasted for twenty minutes and when the technician finally left, Charles was exhausted. In spite of the lingering pain, he fell into a fitful sleep.
Unsure of how much time had passed, Charles was roused by a sound from the other side of the room. He turned his head toward the door and was shocked to discover he wasn’t alone. There, next to the bed, not more than four feet away, sat Dr. Carlos Ibanez. With his bony hands folded in his lap and his silver hair disheveled, he looked old and frail.
“I hope I’m not disturbing you,” said Dr. Ibanez softly.
Charles felt a surge of anger, but remembering Keitzman’s news, it passed. Instead he looked with indifference.
“I’m glad you’re doing so well,” said Dr. Ibanez. “The surgeons told me you were very lucky.”
Luck! What a relative term, thought Charles with irritation. “You think getting shot in the chest is lucky?” he asked.
“That’s not what I meant,” said Dr. Ibanez with a smile. “Hitting your left arm apparently slowed the bullet so that when it entered your chest, it missed your heart. That was lucky.”
Charles felt a little stab of pain. Although he didn’t feel particularly fortunate, he wasn’t in the mood for an argument. He shook his head slightly to acknowledge Dr. Ibanez’s comment. In truth, he wondered why the old man had come.
“Charles!” said Dr. Ibanez with renewed emphasis. “I’m here to negotiate.”
Negotiate? thought Charles, his eyes puzzled. What the hell is he talking about?
“I’ve given a lot of thought to everything,” said Dr. Ibanez, “and I’m willing to admit that I made some mistakes. I’d like to make up for them if you’re willing to cooperate.”
Charles rolled his head and looked up at the bottles over his head, watching the intravenous fluid drip from the micropore filter. He controlled himself from telling Ibanez to go to hell.
The director waited for Charles to respond, but seeing that he would not, the old man cleared his throat. “Let me be very frank, Charles. I know that you could cause us a great deal of trouble now that you’ve become a celebrity of sorts. But that wouldn’t be good for anyone. I have convinced the board of directors not to press any charges against you and to give you your job back . . .”
“The hell with your job,” said Charles sharply. He winced with pain.
“All right,” said Ibanez consolingly. “I can understand if you don’t want to return to the Weinburger. But there are other institutions where we can help you get the kind of job you want, a position where you’ll be able to do your research unhindered.”
Charles thought about Michelle, wondering about what he’d done to her. Had he really hit on something? He didn’t know but he had to find out. To do that he needed laboratory facilities.
He turned and examined Dr. Ibanez’s face. In contrast to Morrison, Charles had never disliked Dr. Ibanez. “I have to warn you that if I negotiate, I’m going to have a lot of demands.” In actuality Charles had not given one thought to what he was going to do after he recovered. But lying there, looking at the director, his mind rapidly reviewed the alternatives.
“I’m prepared to meet your demands, provided they are reasonable,” said Dr. Ibanez.
“And what do you want from me?” asked Charles.
“Only that you won’t embarrass the Weinburger. We’ve had enough scandal.”
For a second, Charles was not sure what Dr. Ibanez meant. If nothing else, the events of the previous week had impressed him with his own impotence and vulnerability. Isolated first in his house, then in intensive care, he had not realized the extent to which he had become a media figure. As a prominent scientist who had risked his life to save his daughter, the press would be happy to hear any criticism he might have of the Weinburger, particularly after the bad notices the institute had already received.
Dimly Charles began to assess his negotiating strength. “All right,” he said slowly, “I want a research position where I’ll be my own boss.”
“That can be arranged. I’ve already been in contact with a friend in Berkeley.”
“And the Canceran evaluation,” said Charles. “All the existing tests have to be scrapped. The drug has to be studied as if you’d just received it.”
“We already were aware of that,” said Dr. Ibanez. “We’ve started an entirely new toxicity study.”
Charles stared, his face reflecting astonishment at what Ibanez was saying. “And then there’s the matter of Recycle, Ltd. Dumping of chemicals into the river must stop.”
Dr. Ibanez nodded. “Your lawyer’s activities got the EPA involved in that affair and I understand the problem will be solved shortly.”
“And,” said Charles, wondering how far he could go, “I want Breur Chemicals to make a compensatory payment to the Schonhauser family. They can keep their name out of the affair.”
“I think I can arrange that, particularly if it remains anonymous.”
There was a pause.
“Anything else?” asked Dr. Ibanez.
Charles was amazed that he’d gotten so far. He tried to think of something else but couldn’t. “I guess that’s it.”
Dr. Ibanez stood up and placed the chair back against the wall. “I’m sorry that we are going to lose you, Charles. I really am.”
Charles watched Ibanez as he closed the door silently behind him.
Charles decided if he ever drove cross-country again, it would be without kids and with air conditioning. And if he had to choose between those two conditions, it would be without children. The three had been at each other’s throats ever since they left New Hampshire, though that morning they had been relatively quiet as if the vast expanse of the Utah desert awed them into silence. Charles glanced in the rearview mirror. Jean Paul was directly behind him, gazing out his side of the car. Michelle was next to him, bored and fidgety. Way in the back of the refurbished station wagon, Chuck had made a nest for himself. He had been reading for most of the trip—a chemistry text, of all things. Charles shook his head, acknowledging that he was never going to understand the boy, who now said he wanted to take a summer session at the university. Even if it were a passing fancy, Charles was inordinately pleased when his older son announced that he wanted to be a doctor.
As they crossed the Bonneville Salt Flats west of Salt Lake City, Charles hazarded a glance at Cathryn sitting next to him. She’d taken up needlepoint at the beginning of the trip and seemed absorbed in the repetitive motion. But sensing Charles’s stare, she looked up and their eyes met. Despite the annoyance of the kids, they both shared a building joy as the harrowing experience of Michelle’s illness and that last violent morning faded into the past.
Cathryn reached over and placed a hand on Charles’s leg. He’d lost a lot of weight, but she thought he appeared handsomer than he had in years. And the tension that normally tightened the skin around his eyes was gone. To Cathryn’s relief, Charles was at last relaxed, hypnotized by the rushing road and the numbing blur of scenery.
“The more I think about what’s happened, the les
s I understand it,” said Cathryn.
Charles shifted in his seat to find a position that accommodated the fact that his left arm was in a cast. Although he had yet to come to terms with most of the emotions engendered by the affair, there was one thing he had acknowledged. Cathryn had become his best friend. If nothing else, that made the experience worthwhile.
“So you’ve been thinking?” said Charles, letting Cathryn pick up the conversation wherever she wished.
Cathryn continued pushing her bright-colored yarn through the canvas mesh. “After all the frenzy of packing and actually leaving, I’ve never really sorted out exactly what happened.”
“What is it you don’t understand?” asked Charles.
“Dad!” called Jean Paul from the back seat. “Do they play hockey in Berkeley? I mean is there ice and all that?”
Craning his neck so he could see Jean Paul’s face, Charles said, “I’m afraid there’s no ice. It’s more like continuous spring in Berkeley.”
“How stupid can you be?” groaned Chuck, tapping Jean Paul on the top of the head.
“Shut up,” said Jean Paul, twisting in his seat to swipe at Chuck’s boot. “I wasn’t talking to you.”
“All right, pipe down,” yelled Charles harshly. Then in a calmer voice he said, “Maybe you can learn to surf, Jean Paul.”
“Really,” said Jean Paul, his face brightening.
“They only surf in Southern California,” said Chuck, “where all the weirdos are.”
“Look who’s talking,” retorted Jean Paul.
“Enough!” yelled Charles, shaking his head for Cathryn’s benefit.
“It’s all right,” said Cathryn. “It reassures me to hear the kids bicker. It convinces me that everything is normal.”
“Normal?” scoffed Charles.
“Anyway,” said Cathryn, looking back at Charles. “One of the things I don’t understand is why the Weinburger made such an about-face. They all couldn’t have been more helpful.”
“I didn’t understand it, either,” said Charles, “until I remembered how clever Dr. Ibanez really is. He was afraid the media would get hold of the story. With all those reporters milling around, he was terrified I’d be tempted to tell them my feelings about their brand of cancer research.”
“God! If the public ever knew what really goes on,” said Cathryn.
“I suppose if I were a real negotiator, I should have asked for a new car,” laughed Charles.
Michelle, who had been vaguely listening to her parents, reached down in her canvas tote bag and pulled out her wig. It was as close a brown to Cathryn’s hair as she had been able to get. Charles and Cathryn had implored her to get black, to match her own hair, but Michelle had remained adamant. She had wanted to look like Cathryn, but now she wasn’t so sure. The idea of going to a new school was terrifying enough without having to deal with her weird hair. She’d finally realized she couldn’t be brunette for a few months and then become black-haired. “I don’t want to start school until my hair grows back.”
Charles looked over his shoulder and saw Michelle idly fingering her brown wig and guessed what she was thinking. He started to criticize her for stupidly insisting on the wrong color but checked himself and said mildly: “Why don’t we just get you another wig? Maybe black this time?”
“What’s the matter with this one?” teased Jean Paul, snatching it away, and jamming it haphazardly on his own head.
“Daddy,” cried Michelle. “Tell Jean Paul to give me back my wig.”
“You should have been a girl, Jean Paul,” said Chuck. “You look a thousand times better with a wig.”
“Jean Paul!” yelled Cathryn, reaching back to restrain Michelle. “Give your sister back her wig.”
“Okay, baldy,” laughed Jean Paul, tossing the wig in Michelle’s direction and shielding himself from the last of his sister’s ineffectual punches.
Charles and Cathryn exchanged glances, too pleased to see Michelle better to scold her. They still remembered those dreadful days when they were waiting to see if Charles’s experiment would work, if Michelle would get better. And then when she did, they had to accept the fact that they would never know whether she had responded to the immunological injections or to the chemotherapy she had received before Charles took her out of the hospital.
“Even if they were sure your injections had effected the cure, they wouldn’t give you credit for her recovery,” said Cathryn.
Charles shrugged. “No one can prove anything, including myself. Anyway, in a year or less I should have the answer. The institute in Berkeley is content to let me pursue my own approach to studying cancer. With a little luck I should be able to show that what happened to Michelle was the first example of harnessing the body to cure itself of an established leukemia. If that . . .”
“Dad!” called Jean Paul from the back of the car. “Could you stop at the next gas station?”
Charles drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, but Cathryn reached over and squeezed Charles’s arm. He took his foot off the accelerator. “There won’t be a town for another fifty miles. I’ll just stop. We could all use a stretch.”
Charles pulled onto the dusty shoulder of the road. “Okay, everybody out for R-and-R and whatever.”
“It’s hotter than an oven,” said Jean Paul with dismay, searching for some sort of cover.
Charles led Cathryn up a small rise, affording a view to the west, an arid, stark stretch of desert leading up to jagged mountains. Behind them in the car, Chuck and Michelle were arguing. Yes, thought Charles. Everything is normal.
“I never knew the desert was so beautiful,” said Cathryn, mesmerized by the landscape.
Charles took a deep breath. “Smell the air. It makes Shaftesbury seem like another planet.”
Charles pulled Cathryn into his right arm. “You know what scares me the most?” he said.
“What?”
“I’m beginning to feel content again.”
“Don’t worry about that,” laughed Cathryn. “Wait until we get to Berkeley with no house and little money and three hungry kids.”
Charles smiled. “You’re right. There is still plenty of opportunity for catastrophe.”
EPILOGUE
When the snows melted in the lofty White Mountains in New Hampshire, hundreds of swollen streams flooded the Pawtomack River. Within a two-day period, its level rose several feet and its lazy seaward course became a torrent. Passing the town of Shaftesbury, the clear water raged against the old granite quays of the deserted mill building, spraying mist and miniature rainbows into the crystal air.
As the weather grew warmer green shoots thrust up through the ground along the river, growing in areas previously too toxic for them to survive. Even in the shadow of Recycle, Ltd., tadpoles appeared for the first time in years to chase the skittish water spiders, and rainbow trout migrated south through the formerly poisoned waters.
As the nights became shorter and hot summer approached, a single drop of benzene appeared at the juncture of an off-load pipe in one of the new chemical holding tanks. No one supervising the installations had fully understood the insidious propensities of benzene, and from the moment the first molecules had flowed into the new system, they began dissolving the rubber gaskets used to seal the line.
It had taken about two months for the toxic fluid to eat through the rubber and drip onto the granite blocks beneath the chemical storage tanks, but after the first, the drops came in an increasing tempo. The poisonous molecules followed the path of least resistance, working their way down into the mortarless masonry, then seeping laterally until they entered the river. The only evidence of their presence was a slightly aromatic, almost sweet smell.
The first to die were the frogs, then the fish. When the river fell, as the summer sun grew stronger, the concentration of the poison soared.