by Annie Bellet
The first is a lateral decubitus view, taken with the baby on her side. It’s what Dana would expect if the doctor was worried about pnuemothorax, air bubbles on the surface of the lungs. The film is normal, not over-exposed.
The second film is an anteroposterior view and over-exposed. This baby has lung glitter as well, though more scattered patterns than Zion Williams’ film. Dana checks, finding the baby is almost two weeks old. Her chart says she was born at twenty seven weeks, almost as premature as Zion. Her lungs look a lot better than his, less dark and tight on the film. Less weird glitter. What she’d almost expect to see in a baby that wasn’t a preemie.
The other two babies’ radiographs show a similar story. Pinprick glitter scatter on the lung surface, no sign of pneumothorax, healthier-looking lungs than Dana would expect.
All the films are marked to be sent to Dr. Logan. The neonatologist on record for each of the preemies is a Dr. Victor Green. It doesn’t make sense that they would be sent on to someone else.
Especially since Aubrey Logan isn’t a people doctor at all. Dana puts the films carefully away, making sure to set everything back onto Turner’s desk exactly how it was when she found it. Then she slips out of Radiology and heads toward the elevators, wondering what the hell a medical physicist is doing receiving patient files.
* * *
Dana is in luck. Carolyn, one of her friends on the nursing staff, is on duty in the neonatal unit tonight. After the dead silence and darkness of Radiology, this place feels loud, over-full. The hum of machines, the soft whimpers and murmurs of twenty little bodies, and the scent of baby powder overwhelm Dana for a moment. Normally she loves it but tonight she feels only guilt, as though she’s betraying something.
“Hey you,” Carolyn says as she lets her in behind the glass, “what’s a nine to fiver doing out after dark?”
Dana smiles, hoping her expression doesn’t look as strained as it feels. “Wanted to see how some of the babies were doing.” She rehearsed her story on the way up here. “It’s tough not to get a little attached, you know.” That’s something Carolyn said to her once, confiding over lemon drop martinis.
“Don’t I know it. It’s been a good couple weeks though.” Carolyn smiles back.
“Yeah? How’s the Meyer girl, Lucy? She came really early, right?”
“Breathing on her own as of a couple days ago. Dr. Green thinks she might even be able to go home in another week or so. Her eyes might not ever be great, but she’s sucking in her own air at least. She’s the fourth baby we’ve been able to get breathing on their own. It’s like someone upstairs finally had mercy, you know. Like I said, been a few good weeks.”
“That’s good. How’s that poor Zion baby? Saw him earlier. It’s crazy how tiny they are.” Dana picks at a piece of peeling laminate as she leans against the narrow table that stretches the length of one wall. A baby starts crying, sounding more like a kitten than a human.
“I guess we’ll see.” Carolyn turns away and moves toward one of the plastic cribs that look more like pods in a bad late night movie than proper cradles for babies.
“I better get going before I turn into a pumpkin, right? Still up for movie on Tuesday?” Dana backs toward the door.
“Mmhmm,” Carolyn says over her shoulder. She’s got one of the bigger, older babies, a girl going by the pink blanket and little hat, in her arms. Dana doubts Carolyn even notices her leaving.
* * *
It is like a crazy logic problem, like something she’d dream up in a nightmare before an exam. The question flips over and over in her mind, a perpetual motion machine manufacturing only more questions.
What do a radiological technician, a radiologist, a neonatologist, and a medical physicist have in common?
At four a.m. she still has no idea when she stumbles into her seven floor studio and baby Zion’s film confronts her, still taped to her window. Dana has to be at work again in five hours but sleep couldn’t be further from her if she’d packed it in a box and mailed it to Russia.
She makes a large pot of instant chicory coffee and adds a cup of sugar. In the back of her mind she hears her mother telling her that she won’t stay so damn skinny once she’s over thirty and dumps in a little more sugar. Brain food, for sure.
What do a radiological technician, a radiologist, a neonatologist, and a medical physicist have in common?
Babies. She has the gist of the files from all four of the patients in her mind from skimming them earlier. All four were born severely premature, between twenty five and thirty one weeks. All four had serious lung problems and required help breathing. It wasn’t surprising. Dana knew that preemies often had issues with lungs and eyes being underdeveloped.
She sits on the edge of her bed and sips her coffee. All these babies would have had problems producing surfactin, a protein that allowed the alveoli, the lung’s cells, to expand with very little pressure. Dana remembers looking at alveoli under a microscope during her second year at Columbia. Her professor had described surfactants as someone starting a balloon for you, stretching out the rubber so it was easier to continue to fill it. Cells without the protein would be like blowing up a tiny, tight balloon with no help, no stretch. It’s a lot tougher to start expanding a balloon than to finish one.
Aubrey Logan is a medical physicist, who should just be dealing with research and technological development, not directly with the neonatology unit and the babies. The only reason Dana even knows of her is because Dr. Logan had recently been written up in the hospital newsletter for winning some kind of big award. The research stuff brought a lot of money and prestige to Children of Mercy. Dana sets her coffee down on the desk next to her bed that served as dining table and night stand, and cracks open her laptop. Something tickles at the back of her brain. Something about Dr. Logan’s research.
A quick search later and Dana leans back, snapping the laptop shut. Her eyes lift of their own will to the radiograph on the window as the logic puzzle starts to form an impossible picture. Dr. Logan had won a big award and a grant for her work in nanoparticles as applied in medicine. Lab work, not on human subjects of course. Supposedly.
The pinpricks of ghostly stars on the film wink down at her and she starts to believe otherwise.
* * *
She waits until eight in the morning to call Ryan. He’s clearly still not feeling well and only answers the phone the third time she calls.
“Someone better be dying besides me, Dana,” he croaks.
“What are Dr. Logan and Dr. Green doing to those babies?” She’s too damned tired to be anything but blunt. Ryan has been her best friend since before the fiasco with her funding at Columbia, since before she had to postpone all her glorious plans. He’s been there for her since freshman year as an undergrad and she’s had hours now to think about what he’s gotten into at the hospital, how many things he might be keeping from her. How deep this betrayal might go.
“Oh Jesus fuck. What happened?”
She hears rustling, guesses he’s sitting up now.
“The exposure was wrong. I didn’t notice. Now I’m staring at a film of a four day old baby with what I think are goddamn nano thingies in his lungs. Am I wrong?” Maybe she is wrong. She really wants to be wrong.
“I don’t know exactly, okay? I don’t fucking ask. All I know is that they wanted me to take slightly different films of some of the babies. And those babies are getting better. I don’t look at the films, I just give them to Turner.” Definitely some panic in his voice. “You can’t say anything, Danyka, you can’t. I need this job. Hell, you need it.”
“You threatening me?” Her eyes sting with tears. She’s too tired for this conversation. It was a mistake. All her clinical thinking, her practiced calm is gone. None of this fits in her plans. It’s not fair.
“No, no. I don’t know. Look. Just give me a day or so, okay? To talk to Aubrey and Dr. Green. Turner won’t even be back until next Monday. I just need to talk to them. We can figure this out together
, okay? Please?”
She chews on her lower lip, her teeth pulling at the chapped skin there. Tastes coffee and then blood. It’s Thursday.
“Okay. You’ve got today. I want to talk to them, too.”
“Thank you, Dana. I. . .” he trails off and she wonders for a moment if the call disconnected. Then he says, “It just gets to me. The dying. I just wanted to help and they said they were. They are.”
She has no response to that.
* * *
Ryan finds her in the cafeteria at twelve thirty. His black hair sticks to his head in a greasy mat and his normally red-brown skin still looks tight and sickly. There are bags under his eyes that probably rival the ones under Dana’s. She smiles at him before she remembers not to.
“Come on, Aubrey and Green are waiting for us.” He doesn’t meet her eyes but keeps looking at her in quick glances.
“Aubrey?” she says as they ride the elevator up to the neonatology unit. “Not Dr. Logan?”
Ryan runs a hand through his hair, leaving it standing up like a fake mohawk. “She’s, I dunno. She’s nice. And she insisted I call her that. Kinda like how Dr. Turner insists we never call her Angela.” His smile is a white flash through chapped lips.
Ryan leads her to one of the examination rooms off the neonatal unit. Dr. Green and Dr. Logan-call-me-Aubrey are already there. Dana recognizes Dr. Green, he’s one of the ones over fifty who always demands the paperwork be actual paper. Aubrey turns out to be an energetic white woman in her late thirties with dark brown hair cut into an asymmetrical bob. She smiles at Ryan in a motherly, reassuring way and then holds her hand out to Dana, introducing herself in a surprisingly soft, mellow voice.
“Ms. Woods? It’s nice to meet you. Ryan says good things.” Aubrey might be smiling, but worry lines crease around her eyes.
“Call me Dana,” Dana finds herself saying as she shakes the smaller woman’s hand.
“Yes, yes, this is all very nice,” Dr. Green mutters. He looms over all of them as he rises from the exam room stool. “What’ll it take to keep you from ruining our good work, Ms. Woods?”
“Victor,” Aubrey says gently. “Enough. This is not how we agreed to handle this.”
“I’m not letting some med school washout. . .”
“Stop!” Dana cuts off whatever he was about to say, cuts off Aubrey’s own interruption. “I went to Columbia, Dr. Green. I didn’t wash out. I quit to work because my funding got cut off and I didn’t want to be crippled with debt after seeing what it did to my friends, to my family.” The words come now, flowing from her tired brain, and she can’t seem to stop them. “I have guesses about what you are doing. I don’t want to ruin anything, but if I’m right, you guys are experimenting on babies. On goddamn babies! Why shouldn’t I tell someone? How can I stay silent about that and still become a doctor some day? Still live with myself? How?”
She does stop then, because she’s out of breath and her whole body trembles with adrenaline.
“Because we’re saving lives.” It’s Aubrey who answers her as Dr. Green has stepped back, his mouth drawing into a tight line and his arms folding over his broad chest as though someone just punched him.
“Surfactin?” Dana asks.
“Yes. The nanotech delivers the protein directly to the alveoli, stimulates the cells.” Aubrey pulls a thumb drive out of her lab coat pocket. “This is all the data we have right now. The labs, everything.”
“What? Aubrey, no. No.” Dr. Green grabs her shoulder, half-spinning the small woman toward him. “That’s enough to hang us all. You can’t do that.” His dark eyes fix then on Dana. “You need funding? Fine. How much? I can get you a hundred grand by the weekend.”
“Oh Jesus fuck,” Ryan mouths behind her. At least someone in this room knows her well enough to know that bribery isn’t going to get far.
Even though, for the barest moment, hardly more than a heartbeat, logical and ambitious Dana tries to speak evil reason to righteous and angry Dana. A hundred grand would move her timeline up. Could put Columbia and her degree within easier reach. Angry Dana wins, strengthened with guilt at even considering potentially letting babies’ lives pay for her future.
“I don’t want blood money.” Dana yanks the thumb drive out of Aubrey’s hand before the woman can change her mind or Dr. Green can take it away.
“We’re not hurting anyone. We’re helping.” Dr. Green stares now at the thumb drive and Dana wonders if he’s going to try to get past Aubrey and take it away.
“Dana, please. Look at the data. If you decide you can’t live with this, talk to us again. Give us warning at least. But please try to understand first, okay?” Aubrey says, moving slightly to put herself even more between Dr. Green and Dana.
For the second time that day, Dana finds herself nodding, agreeing to delay judgment. She and Ryan back out of the exam room as Aubrey turns and murmurs to Dr. Green. Whatever she says must placate him, because no one follows them.
“I’m taking the rest of the day, Ryan.” Dana dares him to argue with her, feeling only a twinge of pity over how tired and sick he still appears.
He doesn’t argue.
* * *
Carolyn and an older nurse, Beatrice, are on duty in the neonatal ward when Dana shows up late Thursday night. Beatrice sees Dana’s expression as Carolyn lets her in and says something about needing a snack as she makes herself scarce.
“You okay, nine to fiver?” Carolyn asks. “Thought you didn’t have to work either job tonight?”
“Trouble sleeping, I guess.” Dana says. “I wanted to see how Zion is doing.”
“His parents should rename that baby Miracle. Doc took him off the respirator a couple hours ago. Never seen anything like it.” Carolyn’s grin is contagious as she wraps a thick arm around Dana’s shoulders. “Want to hold him?”
“Yeah,” she says, “yeah I do.”
Zion is asleep in the way that only baby things sleep, his whole tiny body given over to utter boneless slumber. He doesn’t stir as Carolyn lifts him and gives him to Dana. He weighs nothing in her arms and Dana has the exhausted momentary fear that he’ll float away if she doesn’t keep good enough hold. His little brown face is wrinkled like an old man’s and his tiny fists clutch at the blue blanket as though he, too, is afraid he’ll drift into the ceiling in his sleep.
The image makes her think of balloons again.
The thumb drive didn’t make her computer explode. Dana had plugged it into her computer with a million stupid movie scenes running through her mind, but nothing happened. The data was there. A lot of it was too much for her. She’d need days and probably help to parse it all. But the gist was clear enough. They’d only been testing on the babies for a couple months. So far, minimal complications and the nanotech seemed to be behaving itself, delivering its payload and then slowly degrading and dispersing.
Aubrey, Ryan, and Dr. Green had all been correct. The babies were getting better. Since they’d started introducing the proteins, they hadn’t lost a preemie. It was, as Carolyn said, a damn miracle.
A miracle that might have long-term, unforeseen consequences. Side-effects not apparent now. All manner of future complications that added up to a huge question of ethics. She stands in the neonatal unit and for once, she cannot see her future. It is as murky as a poorly taken radiograph, as confusing as her first look at the glittering clouds in baby Zion’s lungs.
Dana cuddles the baby to her chest and leans in, listening to him take little, easy breaths. He smells like baby powder and under that the sweet, strange scent that is uniquely just baby. He smells like life.
* * * * *
FUBAR
As the drop pod dissolved around him, two things became clear to Lieutenant Sebastien Salvador “Captain” Capitan. The first was that instead of the flat, dry steppe promised in the mission parameter’s topographical overlay, his squad had landed on a spongy island of dying grayish plant matter floating in a tar-like swamp. His second thought was that clearly Co
mmander Jenna Tilly had taken the “it’s not you, it’s me” a little too personally. That or she’d found out about Sergeant Cameron Sossbe.
Apparently revenge was a dish best served in a sweltering bog that bubbled and hissed, giving off the stench of boiled cat litter. Well used cat litter.
“Captain?” A high-pitched but definitely male voice spoke up behind him.
Right. The mission. He turned around and surveyed his squad. Commander Tilly had, of course, given him the worst of the best, a crack crew each known for their inability to play well with others.
The man who had spoken was Screech, nicknamed because of the unfortunate implant some med hack had given him after Screech had taken a plaz shot to the throat. It made the short, wiry man sound like a neutered monkey addicted to helium. The implant’s quirk wasn’t helped by his verbal habit of using “fuck” with the frequency normal people used “the.”
Next to Screech stood the only female squad member, Rhino. She wasn’t any taller than Screech’s five foot nothing but had enough muscle on her to make a cannibal salivate. Captain had never known anyone without fear the way Rhino seemed to missing the emotion, and she had a way of charging into certain doom with the pure belief she’d win.
Beauty was technically his second in command, a man who embodied tall, dark, and handsome. Beauty’s vanity was almost as legendary as his celibacy, but he was the best shot in the Alliance with the medals and confirmed kills to back it up. Currently he shifted from boot to boot, making a face like someone had fed him the boiled cat urine. He was the only one of them who could wear the bulgy slick-suits without looking like a tumor bound up in electrical tape. The Alliance Naval Command literally used him as their calendar boy.
The squad was rounded out by Silent, a near-mute with a savant’s grasp of navigation who looked lost now, standing to the side with his hands flexing uselessly. He usually went armed like a gun came standard attached to his limbs, but this mission was a training exercise, recon only, no weapons allowed.