The Orchid

by Robert Waggoner

  “So?” She asked, curious to know if any of the research had paid off.

  “Nothing yet,” I admitted. “But there is something that’s different.”

  She twisted around and looked at me. Her eyes positively glowed with interest. Her Boston accent had returned but I did not want to waste any more time so I told her straight up. “My butt started tingling last night.”

  Lindsey’s mouth flew open. She got off my lap and embraced me laughing and crying and trying to dance while she was bending over holding me. At last, she pulled back and looked at me with tear-glistened eyes. “Oh, my gosh!” she exclaimed happily. “It’s working!” She paced around the room looking at me and pacing. “Oh man! I’m so happy!”

  I nodded.

  “I had a dream, Jimmy,” she said suddenly. She sat down at the card table and looked at me and then away. “I dreamed you were walking!” She sat down suddenly. “I dreamed it!” She was practically hugging herself, unable to sit still. “I dreamed you rescued me.”

  I waited.

  “It was two nights ago,” she said softly. “I dreamed that I fell down the side of a hill showing off or something. You were in the wheelchair and we were out for one of our strolls. The day was really beautiful.” She paused in her narrative. “You looked panicky when I fell down and you rolled to the edge but the only way I was going to live was if you got out of your wheelchair. I was going to give up.” Her voice filled with awe as she continued. “So you did. You got up. I watched from down below, hanging onto a tiny bush, over the steepest cliff I’d ever seen, as you grimaced and then took a step and another. You got a rope from somewhere close by, tossed it to me and I grabbed it. I had to let go of the bush and that seemed important to me in the dream. But when I did, you pulled me right up.”

  Tears were streaming down her face. I wanted to get up right then and walk to her. I believed her dream. I was going to walk someday. I thought the part about rescuing her was her hoping for a cure. Maybe, just maybe, Steve and I could stimulate enough interest in Meckler’s Disease over the next few years to do just that.

  The joy of what was happening in my body mitigated the more painful part of the regeneration. The only time I did not feel the bugs crawling around my butt after that was when I slept.

  In August, Dr. Lang agreed to see me. He was coming through Tennessee anyway so he wondered if it would be okay to examine me at Doctor Singleton’s office. When Dr. Lang arrived, I introduced the two of them and later they talked about how Steve could help me as my spinal cord and nerves regenerated. Dr. Lang was extremely pleased with my progress. “It’s so fast, Jimmy,” he said. “I’ve never seen it move this fast.” He scooted back from the table. “It’s just been one year,” he said. A nurse came in to help me back into my wheelchair. “I can give you something for the crawly sensation,” he offered.

  I refused. “No thanks. I’m studying and don’t want my head cloudy, Doctor Lang.”

  “Well, congratulations, then.”

  I asked if he had heard of Meckler’s Disease. He gave it a moment’s thought and then shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

  I explained about it and he listened. “I come across a lot of weird things in South America,” he said. “I’ll keep my ears and eyes open. But I wouldn’t expect too much.”

  I began meeting regularly with Steve as my mentor. His task was to introduce me to the world of medicine on a practical level—the patient level. I got to sit in—literally—on patient consults if they gave permission and exams when those were routine. It gave me a real sense of practical medicine.

  “Most of the time,” Steve said after a day of exams, “the patient’s body will heal itself. Antibiotics simply help speed the process up or help the body get its immune system back in shape. The trick is in knowing when the body needs help and what kind of help it needs.”

  “This Meckler’s Disease,” I said. “It’s hereditary. How can you fight something that’s in the genes?”

  He shook his head. “You have to understand the human gene.” He sat back in the chair and reached into his memory. “Do you know how a virus works? Take the HIV virus for example. It has a couple of proteins. The first protein allows the virus cell to enter the human cell. That’s a big step. The next part of the virus, the second protein attacks and takes over the human cell. It sets up its own shop, sort of, like a crab takes up residence in a new shell. The problem with that is…human cells reproduce. Viruses like HIV—called retroviruses—actually create a new gene within the host cell. When the host splits, the new gene splits right along with it and the virus spreads. It doesn’t just attack human cells and destroy them; it gets inside and makes copies of itself until it takes over the body—like HIV.” He looked at me.

  “So to fight a defective gene,” I said speculating, “you take a virus cell’s first protein—the one that allows it to get into a human cell—and you replace the second protein with the protein that “fixes” the bad gene by creating its own gene type.”

  He smiled. “Yeah, that’s about it.”

  “So what we need is the second protein.”

  “Yeah, and that’s a simplification. We need to get the DNA structure of the defective gene and insert the second protein so that it fixes the problem but doesn’t cause another problem. If it mutates into the wrong part of the gene, it could cause rapid multiplication of the gene—“he sighed, “We call that cancer.”

  “That’s the big problem with gene therapy now?”

  “Those are the big problems,” he corrected. “Getting the right protein and getting it into the right spot.”

  “So this researcher, this Doctor Laird, the one who wrote the article about the orchid…maybe he found the protein?”

  “That’s the way I read it.” He scratched his head. “That’s a major step if that’s the case.”

  “Man, we have to find him!” I wheeled my chair closer to the desk. “How can we find him, Steve?”

  He shook his head. “My guess is that he’s still in Hawaii. I’ve sent E-mails to just about every publication I can think of in the medical field.” He grinned. “Yeah, I’ve been working on this one!”

  I reached over the desk and clasped hands with him. “Thank you,” I said fervently. “Thank you!”

  We had lunch together and later that night I told Lindsey the good news. Both of us decided to brush up on gene therapy.

  Some idiots are born that way, others grow up learning to be idiots from the people around them and some just choose to be stupid. That is the case with Frank Thornton. Frank was the idiot who shoved my wheelchair into Lindsey at the prom nearly rupturing her spleen. Thankfully, her spleen was able to recover on its own.

  I kept it touch with Chuck because Lindsey just would not talk about her problems if she thought she could handle it. It was the one trait I sometimes wished she did not have. I wanted her to talk about her problems so I could get to know her better. Chuck did not hesitate to tell me shortly after the senior year began that Frank was acting all apologetic following Lindsey around. Chuck was convinced it was an act. Frank was hitting on Lindsey, he said.

  I asked Lindsey about it one night. She studied me to gauge my reaction. “Right now he’s just a nuisance. I told him to back off, leave me alone, all the stuff they teach you in sexual harassment courses.” She grinned. “He’s just being a pest. I think he feels bad about what he did.”

  I frowned, not satisfied with the wait-and-see attitude she prescribed. She said quickly, “Hey, there’s nothing that you can do. Don’t worry about it.” She gave me that innocent, sweet girl look and added, “He doesn’t really want to unleash the tiger inside this body, now, does he?”

  My grin was from experience. “No, that’s the truth.”

  “You know his parents took him out of school last year after it happened.”

  I knew that because Chuck told me. I was glad. Now I was worried. He might have a grudge against her or a vendetta. “So does he seem to be hitting on you b
ecause he likes you or because he wants to irritate you?”

  She shrugged. “Who knows; anyway, I don’t think he’ll try anything stupid.”

  We talked for a while about gene therapy before Lindsey went home.

  The next day in school, as if our discussion had created it, Frank caught Lindsey in the hallway. He fell into step beside her on her way to gym class. “Are you still seeing the cripple?”

  “His name is Jimmy,” Lindsey said, not reacting to Frank’s barbed comment. She grinned, “I didn’t realize he was a cripple!” She pretended to be shocked at the revelation.

  Frank could not think of a comeback. He finally dropped off when Lindsey caught up to Cindy Hall, the girl who had been Chuck’s date during the prom. She had become very good friends with Lindsey. “He’s a jerk,” Cindy told her. “Just ignore him.”

  They changed into gym shorts.

  “Did you know he got arrested after his parents took him out of school?” Cindy continued.

  “You mean thrown into jail, arrested?”

  “Yup. He stole a car. That’s the real reason he was out all last year. He’s going to repeat his junior year this year.” Cindy gave Lindsey a malicious grin. “Guess who reported it anonymously?”

  Lindsey just stared at her friend.

  “Yup, me and Chuck; we saw it!”

  “Get out of here!”

  Cindy leaned over and whispered in Lindsey’s ear. “We were driving around, me and Chuck, looking for a place to park…and we saw someone trying to jimmy a car window. Chuck recognized Frank and he called 911 on his cell phone. He actually thought Frank was trying to get into his own car and did it to get back at him for what he did to you. But the car wasn’t Frank’s it turned out. So he has a rap sheet now.”

  “No wonder he’s mad all the time,” Lindsey replied.

  When gym class was over Lindsey headed to the library. She had permission to take her study halls in the library as long as she wrote a two-page report on some topic she researched. She was having her usual trouble: cutting her reports to fit the teacher’s expectations of what the rest of the class was capable of doing!

  The library was across campus from the gym. Cindy walked with her part way and then went to her biology class. Lindsey’s attention snapped back to the present when someone stepped into her path.

  She stopped abruptly to avoid running into the person. Frank stood grinning at her. “I asked you a question and you ignored me.” He looked around. The bell had rung for classes and there was nobody around. “Are you still seeing the cripple?”

  “Are you sure he’s a cripple?” Lindsey pretended to be shocked again.

  Frank was once more at a loss for words.

  “You better go now,” Lindsey said gently. She stepped off the sidewalk to go around him, but he grabbed her arm. She pulled away but he wrapped his arms around her and held her.

  “Frank! Let me go!” Lindsey was suddenly frightened.

  Frank had her so tightly she could not turn and put a knee in his groin. She briefly considered kicking him but could not figure out how to get into the right position.

  “Help!” Lindsey screamed suddenly and so loudly, that Frank let go and took a step back. Lindsey used the opportunity to run to the Library. She reported the incident to the librarian who immediately called security.

  When she told me about it that night, I had to peel my fingers off the armrest of my wheelchair. For the first time in my life, I wished for a gun. I was not mad at Lindsey, she did the right thing, but I took it out on her because I felt so helpless.

  “Damn it!” I said in frustration. “Why are there so many idiots?”

  Lindsey watched me rant and rave for a few minutes. When I calmed down, she touched my arm to say something. I shook her hand off me and glared at her. The heat inside me was composed of frustration, fear, helplessness and a mix of other emotions I could not name. Once again, I could not protect her!

  She waited patiently. She had frowned briefly when I shook her hand off. I raged at Frank for another minute and then saw her expression. The steam left me instantly.

  “I’m sorry, Lindsey.”

  “I said I would handle it,” she reminded me. “He’s acting like an idiot, you’re right about that. Idiots come to their own bad ends.”

  “Yeah,” I acknowledged, “but sometimes they bring innocent people down with them.”

  She nodded. “The police and the principal know about it so I think I should be safe enough.”

  “I just wish I was there with you!”

  “I’ve got plenty of people watching out for me,” she said calmly.

  “I feel so damn helpless!” I stared at her in frustration.

  She waited.

  “Have you told your parents?”

  She nodded. “He accosted me. They’re pressing charges.”

  I looked at her. She must be really frightened to allow that. “What charges?”

  “Attempted kidnapping, assault and something else, I’m not sure.”

  “What about his friends—you know, Harold and Mark?”

  She considered that. “I think Mark still hangs with him but Harold doesn’t. I’m not sure why. Rumor has it that his dad threatened to emasculate him if he ever took another drink of alcohol, smoked a reefer or got in trouble. I think Harold took that seriously.”

  “That’s what someone needs to do to Frank.”

  The tension in the room was the kind that had a hard time dissipating. Even after Lindsey left that night, I could not get rid of the anger in my heart. My whole body hurt with it. It affected the way she kissed me goodnight and the way I kissed her. It was the first kiss that seemed to originate and end at the lips.

  Chapter 12

  Lindsey was chess club president again her senior year and she was knocking down the competition. Our little rural school had developed a reputation. The Andersons began going to the chess matches. Before they watched Lindsey beat the prodigy her first year, they thought chess was equivalent to watching grass grow. But with Lindsey’s success and reputation, chess matches had become as exciting as football at our little school. Home games drew crowds of sixty to seventy kids and adults. The matches moved to the cafeteria to accommodate the onlookers.

  Chuck was vice president of the club. They did not face serious competition in any of the 2A School matches that year. However, Lindsey was more excited about the improvement of other members of the club who began to win more matches than they lost. That was something I had not accomplished as president.

  This year the 3A match moved to our school. The 3A boys were determined to win back their school’s prestige and trophy and this year’s club was the best the school had ever had. So important was this contest that the principal of the 3A School vowed to show up at the tournament and asked the student body to turn out in support as well.

  When the match began, the cafeteria quickly filled to overflowing with onlookers. I had a front row seat thanks to the wheelchair. Seated next to me was the principle of the 3A School. He introduced himself as Cletus Jones. We shook hands. “I think you were a past president, weren’t you?” He asked after hearing my name.

  “Yes, sir,” I admitted.

  I watched Lindsey play with confidence and poise. She never lost control of the board. The kids she played approached her with awe and fear. She won most of the games before she moved the first pawn. Her opponents were simply too nervous to concentrate on the game.

  “I’ve played some,” Mr. Jones said to me after watching Lindsey play for a while. “The brown-haired girl, Lindsey, is really good. How well do you know her?”

  “A little,” I said cautiously.

  “Enough to introduce me after the match?” he asked.

  “I don’t know you that well,” I said with a grin. After sitting in the exam room with a doctor a half dozen times this year I’d lost my fear of people. Everyone was a scared boy or girl somewhere down deep.

  He appreciated the comment. “I’d li
ke to invite her to enter a chess championship in New York.”

  “Why?” I was curious.

  “She’s beaten everyone she played in three years,” he said with a lopsided grin. Then, tongue-in-cheek he added, “In case you didn’t know.” He did not know about the one match she lost and I was not going to enlighten him!

  “I’m pretty sure she’d go if someone came up with the money.”

  He did not blink an eye. “Well, we can certainly discuss that.”

  Cletus Jones’ name did not ring any bells with me. I tried hard to come up with his name. He said he had played some and it sounded like he played for more than just pleasure.

  When Lindsey and Chuck swept the competition, the place went wild! Lindsey’s first act was to shake hands with her final opponent, and then she came over to me and planted a kiss on my cheek.

  The 3A School principal looked at me again. “You know her a little?” He grinned.

  I said, “Lindsey, this is the principal of Placerville High School, Cletus Jones. He wants to invite you to a tournament in New York.”

  Lindsey shook hands with the balding, rather rotund principal. “Maybe you should meet my parents,” she said. He nodded eagerly and walked with her to where her mom and dad were standing. I could see them talking for a minute before the crowd around Lindsey dragged her away from her parents. The principal stayed with the Andersons and they talked at length.

  Eventually, Lindsey made it back to where I was waiting. “Quite a spectator sport now, thanks to you,” I said.

  She sat down and groaned. “My hand hurts!” She flexed her fingers. “I could never make it in politics!”

  I pointed to the principal who remained chatting with her parents. “This guy seems pretty serious about getting you to that tournament.”

  “I’m game,” she said. “But only if you can go.”

  Lindsey’s parents seemed to like the idea and Mr. Jones. Apparently, he was somewhat famous even though we did not know him or his reputation. That night Lindsey had to stay home with her family so they could talk about it. It was not until the next day that she related the events to me. In the meantime I typed the principal’s name into Google and found a dozen articles dated five years earlier—about the time Lindsey moved in next door.