by Jesse Jordan
“Come on!” I yell, jumping to my feet, but before the ball reaches the target, everything goes black like someone just threw a switch in my brain.
The beeping tells me where I am long before my eyes flutter open and I see the ugly shade of white and pale green that tells me I’m in a hospital. “What happened?”
Su Lin is at my side, and she’s on her feet in an instant, taking my hand. “Rick! You… you passed out. Oh Rick I was so scared….”
She peters off into tears and Mandarin, and I take a moment to wish I had the time to learn the language more. I comfort her as best I can while giving her an awkward half hug with my free arm, the other one’s all trussed up with IV tubes, wires, and a bunch of other shit. “Shhh… it’s okay. I feel fine, a little woozy maybe, but nothing worse than a three tequila night out when I was younger. Where are the doctors?”
“Right here,” a voice calls from the doorway and I look up to see Doctor Gordon coming in. Freida is with him, looking like she’s been worried sick as well. I feel bad, today was a day off for her. Gordon obviously was enjoying the same thing I was, considering the Vikings t-shirt I see peeking through the opening in his coat. “I was just getting some labs analysis back.”
“Hey… did the Vikes win?” I ask, making Gordon stop before he gives me a rueful grin. “No? Shit.”
“They got the ball back, but couldn’t punch it in. Last second Hail Mary fell short,” Gordon says, crossing the room and coming next to my bed. “It was a hell of a Sunday.”
“Sunday? What do you mean?” I ask. “What time is it?”
“It’s Monday morning,” Gordon says. “I always wear this shirt after the last Vikes game of the year. Better than the alternative, one year as an intern I had to wear a damn Packers shirt.”
“And you survived your shift?” I joke, making Su Lin frown. “Come on babe, it was a joke. I know Gordon’s gonna get to the bad news eventually, and I can guess what it is.”
“It’s your health, Rick,” Su Lin says. “That’s nothing to joke about.”
“But it’s nothing I can change,” I say softly. “But alright. What’s the deal, Doc?”
Gordon takes a look at the clipboard at his side, sighing. “I’m sorry Rick, but it looks like things are going faster this stage. You’ve got a few more months, but you’re going to start weakening quickly. Have you felt it coming on?”
I nod, earning a sharp look from both Su Lin and Freida. “In the gym, mostly. Weights and movements that were easy, I couldn’t do any more. I didn’t say anything since I didn’t think it’d be worth the effort for everyone to worry.”
“Still-” Freida says, glowering at me. “Some people worry about you, Rick.”
“Rick…,” Su Lin says, clearly hurt. “Why?”
I shrug, holding her hand. “I can tell you care about me Su Lin, so I don’t want to worry you. They say stress is bad for the baby.”
“So’s growing up without a father,” Su Lin says. “Rick… I want to know from now on. I… I love you.”
Her words shake me to my very core, and I want to repeat them back. I want to tell her that she’s held my heart in her hands since even before she became pregnant, I just didn’t know it. But that would be cruel to her, to let her know she’s loved just to go away from her. So instead I squeeze her hand, looking into her beautiful eyes. “I know, Su Lin. But you need to focus on our baby. Keep yourself healthy.”
“Uh… there might be a treatment,” Gordon says, interrupting the conversation. “I hesitate to bring it up, but-”
“What is it?” Su Lin asks desperately. I can read her face so clearly, she wants to hear me say it back and thinks that if I can survive I will tell her. She’s right, but I can see it also in Gordon’s face, I’m not going to like what he says.
“There’s been some advancements coming out of Europe, a group at the Royal College of Medicine in London’s been working on Trikala for a while now. They’ve mostly been treating it as a genetic puzzle while perfecting some other technologies, but… that part doesn’t really matter. What does matter is, they think they have an effective treatment. Other primates that have been treated have shown remarkable improvement.”
“But there’s a catch,” I say, sitting up slowly. “I can see it in your eyes, Doc. What is it? Money?”
Gordon shakes his head, looking down. “If it was money Rick, I’d have told you about it long ago when it was just in the preliminary stages. But it’s not that. The treatments are genetic. Trikala works by rewriting your own DNA, which is what makes it so damn hard to treat. Your body shuts down because it doesn’t recognize that what’s going on is wrong. So the genetics people started with that. Their treatment depends on genetically similar stem cells.”
“Genetically similar stem cells,” I repeat, the words feeling like they’re dipped in poison. “You mean the baby.”
Gordon nods. “Rick, if we take a stem cell sample now, before the fetus reaches viability, it’d have plenty of time to regrow the lost cells. There’d be almost no chance of long term damage, and-”
“What are the odds of losing the baby?” I ask, cutting off Gordon. “You’re not talking about a simple procedure.”
Gordon pales, nodding. “The risk to Su Lin is almost zero. The risk to the baby is… higher.”
“How much higher?”
“Twenty five percent chance of miscarriage,” Gordon admits. “But if that doesn’t happen, then there’s less than a one percent chance of long term damage to the baby.”
“No.”
Su Lin shakes her head, looking at me. “Rick, please. Doctor, what are the odds of success with the treatment?”
Gordon shakes his head. “I don’t know. Rick would be the first human patient, but in other primates who have been treated, the success rate is over fifty percent.”
Su Lin turns hopeful eyes to me, but I shake my head, pulling wires off of me. “No,” I repeat, swinging my legs over the edge of the bed. “Doc, I’m not going to risk my child’s future on an at best fifty-fifty roll of the dice. I’m sorry, but I think it’s time to go home.”
“Rick-” Su Lin pleads, but I cut her off.
“No discussion on this, Su Lin. I won’t risk the baby for anything. Now, if I’m dying, I know where I want to die. At home with the people I care about.”
“But Rick-”
“NO!” I yell, glaring at her. “I’ve made my fucking decision, Su Lin. I know how you feel, I understand, but my mind is made up. Now are you going to come home with us or pout about it?”
Su Lin’s lip quivers for a moment before she flees the room, sobbing already. Freida glares at me but holds her comments. “I’ll go get the car.”
She leaves and I look at Dr. Gordon, who’s looking like he’d prefer to be anywhere right now. When the door closes, I take a deep breath and look down at my arm. “Gimmie a hand, Doc? I’d prefer to not take this damn IV out myself.”
Gordon comes over, grabbing a cotton ball as he does before extracting the IV from my arm. “You sure about this, Rick?”
I nod, my voice lowering as I watch the pearl of blood that forms on the inside of my forearm when I take the cotton ball away. “There’s so much at risk. I wish I could do it, but… I won’t risk the future for my present.”
“And your wife?” Gordon asks. “She’d risk it. You can always have another child.”
“Only if I live. And I think meeting her’s burned up all the good luck I’ve got in the world,” I say softly. “She’ll be pissed off, but I hope she’ll respect my decision. I can’t risk our child. Tell me, how much longer do I have?”
“If what Freida told me about your wife’s delivery date is correct… you’ll still be awake when the ultrasound says if it’s a boy or a girl. More than that, I’m sorry to say might be beyond my reach. Rick, if I could, I’d-”
I pat Gordon on the shoulder. We’ve known each other for over a decade now, and I consider him a friend as well as a doctor. “I know, Doc. You did
your best. But sometimes, there’s puzzles even us geniuses can’t crack.”
Su Lin
“He won’t even listen to me!” I scream, sobbing into my hands as I sit in my bedroom. I haven’t used this room as anything more than a changing room in months, not since our trip to the cabin and us starting to sleep together. But now I’ve retreated here, letting out my anger, my sadness, and my frustration in a safe place where I know I won’t hurt him with my.
There’s a soft knock on the door, and I wipe at my eyes furiously, knowing I can’t let Rick see me like this. He’s made his decision, and while I want him to change it, I can’t let him see me like this. I won’t let his final months be ruined by my crying. “Come in.”
The door opens, and Freida enters quietly, coming over and sitting down next to me. Without saying a word she wraps her arms around my shoulders. The simple gesture is all I need to start sobbing again, stroking my hair and holding me close. “If it helps, I understand,” she says softly. “I had to go have a cry myself.”
“I… I didn’t want to love him,” I rasp, sitting up and taking a tissue Freida’s somehow made appear from nowhere. “I told myself over and over again that this was all just a business arrangement, that the time with him was just a way to get more comfortable, to lower stress so that I could have the baby… but it didn’t help.”
Freida nods, wiping at her own eyes. “I could see it happening, but I didn’t say anything because I kept hoping that Rick would change his mind. But that man… maybe an inventor and businessman like him has to be strong willed, but he’s the most stubborn son of a bitch I’ve ever known. I swear the reason he’s been able to survive with his disease for this damn long is because he’s too damn hard headed to die.”
“But he is… and he won’t try to save himself,” I whisper. “I want him to stay with me. We can have another baby.”
“He won’t take the risk. Rick’s always been pretty altruistic, for all his self styling after Alexander the Great and all that shit when he was younger,” Freida says. “He knows, and I know, how dangerous Harvey Stone is. It’s not that he wants to start a war, but in the pursuit of power Harvey won’t care if the wrong irresponsible people get ahold of Rick’s technology. The stuff that’s in the vaults… Su Lin, a lot of it is scary. He’s actually held back on some of the ideas he’s had, but if he dies then Harvey gets them all. Rick can’t risk the baby on the odds, the danger is too much.”
“But… but I love him,” I repeat, feeling like the rest of the world can burn for all I care. “Why can’t he see that?”
“He does, I know he does,” Freida says. “If I could see it, you know Rick can.”
“But he doesn’t love me,” I half sob. “Aren’t you supposed to say it when the other person says it to you?”
Freida sighs, side hugging me again. “I don’t think Rick ever will say it. In his mind Su Lin, he’s saving you from pain and having to carry around a ghost in the long run. When he met you I could see it in the way he talked about you, he thinks you’re an amazing woman. And he wants you, after he’s gone, to be able to find someone who will love you as much as you deserve. So he won’t say it… even if he does love you.”
“You think he does?” I ask, and Freida nods.
“I think he loves you more than life itself. I think if he’s going to have a miracle and be able to see your child born, it’s because of that love, and something else.”
“What?” I ask. Freida turns on the bed to me, taking my hands as she looks me in the eyes gravely. “But-”
“But nothing. The only way he’ll be able to get that far is if he has your strength by his side. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
I nod, wiping at my eyes. “He’ll never see me cry.”
“And you have the notary’s form?” the clerk asks in a bored voice. She probably handles a hundred cases a day, and on the surface what I’m doing doesn’t look all that different than any of the other things she does.
The Mankato city office isn’t very remarkable, considering what I’ve seen over the months that I’ve been in Minnesota. If there is anything to make it noteworthy, it’s the bone chilling cold that seems to seep even through the triple paned windows and thick insulation, a product of the foot deep snow outside. The sky is leaden, I’m sure there’s going to be another snowfall this afternoon, which is why I asked Freida to bring me into town to take care of this.
“Yes,” I reply, handing over the form. Among other things, Freida’s a certified notary public. Sometimes I wonder if the woman isn’t a secret agent at times as well. “Here you are.”
The clerk looks it over, nodding. “The fee is twenty five dollars.”
I hand over the cash, and she stamps a receipt, handing it back to me. “There you are. Have a nice day.”
I can hear her call for the next customer as I walk away, looking at the simple receipt. It doesn’t say much, but I know it’s powerful. It’s proof that, when Rick is too sick to make decisions or is otherwise incapacitated, I have full power of attorney. It was Rick’s idea, as he reviewed his life in his preparations to die. The corporate bylaws that establish that Harvey can’t take over once our child is born also have a loophole that could allow Harvey to act in any gap where Rick can’t, but the baby isn’t born yet. Just in case, Rick wanted to make sure I’m triple covered, as he put it.
I pull the hood up on my sweatshirt as I walk out into the frigid Minnesota air, gasping as I always do and making me suck in more of the lung-searing Arctic atmosphere. Freida’s waiting for me behind the wheel of the big Toyota truck that Rick has for this sort of weather, tires swaddled in chains and four wheel drive making sure it’ll take a lot more than some snow to stop this beast.
“You know, you’ve really gotta learn how to hold your breath and breathe shallowly through your mouth until you’re used to it,” Freida says in an attempt at humor when I close the door, coughing and rubbing at my throat. “Didn’t it ever get cold in Beijing?”
“Sure,” I hack out, peeling off my scarf and feeling the heater on my face, “but that was at night, and it’d get a little below freezing or so. Not this. How do people live in this sort of weather?”
“With a good fireplace and warm food,” Freida says. Since my crying in her arms, she’s been a constant source of strength for me, her ever present good humor allowing me to go this past month without breaking down. She’s taken me to doctor’s appointments, helped Rick as his body’s weakened, and more. I don’t know what I’d do without her. “Come on, let’s get you home, you’ve got a prenatal checkup tomorrow.”
“Wait,” I say as I look at the paper in my hand, “Freida… this power of attorney, it starts working once Rick is unable to make his wishes known, yes?”
“Yes,” Freida says, shifting the truck back into park. “Why?”
“I want to talk to Dr. Gordon,” I tell her. “Tomorrow, when we go to the hospital, make sure he’s available too.”
Freida narrows her eyes, giving me a questioning look. “Are you thinking what I think you are? You know I won’t let you hurt the baby.”
“No, nothing will happen to my child,” I reply, taking her hand. “But… well, I’ve been doing a little bit of reading on the Internet, and I had an idea that I want to talk over with Dr. Gordon. I just hope there’s enough time.”
Freida nods, and we pull out of the parking lot. As we drive slowly through the streets, not rushing and getting into an accident, Freida turns the heat down. She doesn’t need it as much as I do, she’s used to this madness. As we turn away from downtown and start the drive back towards the estate, she speaks up again. “By the way, I know Rick won’t say anything… but happy Valentine’s Day.”
I smile, looking over. “I know he won’t, but I’m sort of at peace with that. You’re right, Rick can’t say it, he’s too stubborn. And I won’t annoy him about it. But if he can’t say it, then I’ll just love him a lifetime’s worth in the next few months.”
Fr
eida nods, swallowing back a lump in her throat and keeps driving. Just as we get close to the estate, she speaks up again. “Don’t ever change, Su Lin.”
I smile, rubbing my stomach. It’s starting to bulge now, which makes me happy. “I plan on doing a lot of changing. But I’ll need the help of a very strong woman next to me to make those changes. Know anyone interested in the job?”
“I might.”
Rick
“One fifty seven,” Su Lin says as she helps me off the scale. “You’re officially a lightweight now.”
I run my hands over my wasted stomach, feeling the outline of my ribs against my paper thin skin. It’s not that I haven’t tried to eat, it’s that my body just doesn’t want it any longer. When I tried to supplement by drinking weight gainer shakes, I ended up puking and passing out in the toilet.
“Yeah, a little more and I could walk for New York Fashion Week,” I joke, pulling on the thick robe I wear most of the time anymore. “We’ll book tickets.”
“I’d rather you make it to my appointment later today,” Su Lin says, putting her arm around my waist as she helps me out of the gym. I haven’t touched a thing in here in weeks, there’s no real point. Su Lin comes in every day still though, and the maintenance staff makes sure every surface is dusted and everything’s in perfect order.
“I’ll make it,” I promise. “They said they might be able to find out the gender today, right?”
“Right,” Su Lin says with a brave smile. “Come on, I’ll help you upstairs to get dressed. It’s still cold as hell out there, and let’s face it stud, you’re not fat enough to keep the cold out anymore.”
I smile softly as she helps me down into the wheelchair that I have to use most of the time now, walking more than fifty or sixty steps is agony as well as exhausting. If there’s any part of my rapid deterioration that hurts the most, it’s that I can’t sleep with Su Lin anymore. I need oxygen when I’m asleep, so we’ve converted my downstairs library into a bedroom, complete with hospital bed for me.