Faces in the Fire

by Hines

  Yeah. Weekly blood tests. At least she could do those. She looked at her clock and headed toward the door. E-mails could wait. E-mails could always wait.

  At the hospital she jotted her name on the sign-in sheet and took a chair. She picked up a copy of the morning’s Seattle Times. The front-page story was yet another article about the firebug roaming the Greater Seattle area. Evidently he’d hit three separate businesses down in Federal Way last night. Over the past few months the firebug had struck at least two dozen buildings, and the police didn’t seem to have any leads.

  A few minutes later, one of the phlebotomists came out of the room at the back and called her name. Corrine stood and followed the woman to a row of chairs in the back room.

  “My name’s Leslie, and I’ll be drawing some blood today,” the woman said, looking at her paperwork.

  Swain would be proud; the woman didn’t look at Corrine’s face once. Leslie had drawn her blood at least three times in the last two months, but she never seemed to recognize Corrine. Modern health care.

  “Can you tell me your full name?” Leslie asked.

  Corrine gave it to her.

  “And your birth date?”

  Corrine gave that to her as well.

  Leslie nodded, then wrapped a band of rubber around Corrine’s left arm. She studied the veins on the inside of Corrine’s elbow for a few seconds, poked a needle into a vein, and attached a tube to collect the blood.

  At least Leslie was good at what she did. Always got it on the first try. Corrine stared at the dark liquid squirting into the collection tube, absently wondering just how many lymphoma cells were crowding out the red blood cells of her own bloodstream. The lymphoma cells, when you thought about it, were something like the spam of the blood.

  The needle suddenly reminded Corrine of Grace’s tattoo gun, and she looked at the fresh tattoo on her right arm. The catfish peeked out of the sleeve of her T-shirt, reassuring her. Yes, whatever else might happen now, the catfish would be her constant companion. She was comforted by its presence.

  Leslie pulled the full tube of blood from Corrine’s arm, put a cotton ball over the point of entry, and asked Corrine to hold the cotton over the wound while she wrote the information on the tube: patient, date and time collected, doctor, tests ordered.

  Corrine knew the whole routine, had been curious enough to ask about it the first time. But her interest had faded with each subsequent draw.

  A few minutes later, she was on her way, forcing herself to think about her next batch of e-mails. It was her work, after all. It needed to be done.

  Twenty minutes later, she was almost home when her cell phone rang again.

  She looked at the caller ID, although there really was no reason to; Dr. Swain was practically the only one who ever called her number. By design, yes. Everyone else she knew contacted her through e-mail.

  “Yeah?” she said, answering the phone, not really in the mood to talk to Swain.

  “Corrine,” he said. “You went in for a blood test.”

  It was a statement, not a question, but she answered anyway. “Yeah. Just a few minutes ago. You wanted to see me this afternoon, so—”

  “Yes, yes. That’s why I put a rush on the tests.”

  She felt the familiar Swain pause that always preceded bad news, but this time she wasn’t afraid. Not at all. Odd.

  “Have you been feeling okay?” Swain eventually asked.

  Ha. Yet another hilarious knee-slapper from the comic oncologist. He’d recently told her all hope of a cure had circled the drain, and now he wanted to know if she was feeling okay. A wonderful reprise of his earlier zinger. And yet . . . she did feel okay. Better than she had felt since starting treatment. Better than she’d ever felt, in fact.

  “Yes,” she said. “Why, are—”

  “They’re normal,” Swain said, interrupting her.

  She waited for him to say something else, but he didn’t. “What, exactly, do you mean by ‘normal’? Normal for the stage I’m at, or for the chemo I’ve been on, or what?”

  “No, I mean . . . they’re within normal range.”

  She closed her eyes, not quite ready to believe what he was saying.

  “I’d like you to come in for another blood test,” Dr. Swain continued, “just to make sure there’s been no mistakes. And I’ve already made some calls. We need another CT scan.”

  “I just had one last week.”

  “I know, I know. But if these results are right, I think you’ve maybe broken through a wall. Maybe the cumulative effects of the chemo are adding up. Maybe we’ll want you on another cycle, rather than looking at some of the . . . ah, more investigational clinical trials.”

  Corrine pictured herself swallowing the catfish pills. Embracing her vulnerability.

  “I’m headed back now,” she said and hung up.

  51.

  Late that afternoon, Corrine was in Swain’s office, looking at printouts of her two blood tests and the fresh scan.

  “Spontaneous regression,” Dr. Swain said. He looked at her, his face flushed, his mind obviously unable to wrap itself around the test results and lab reports he normally found so comforting. “That’s all I can come up with.”

  “Spontaneous regression?” she asked.

  He shrugged, looking at the scans rather than at her. “Happens in about 15 percent of follicular lymphoma cases—the lymphoma suddenly disappears. Not overnight, of course, which seems to have happened in your case, and it usually returns at some point, but still.”

  Good old Swain. A cloud in every silver lining.

  She ignored the last comment, instead asking, “So how often does spontaneous regression happen with diffuse large B-cell?”

  He bit his lip, shook his head. “It doesn’t.” He backtracked a little then, saying: “I can look at the literature, see what else I can find.”

  “I’m not that interested,” she said.

  “I’d like to see you in another three months,” he said. He seemed flustered. “No, I . . .”

  “How about we repeat blood tests in a couple weeks, see how we’re holding out?” she suggested.

  Swain nodded, obviously rattled. And Corrine had to admit: more than anything else, that gave her a bit of perverse pleasure.

  On the way out, Tight Blouse asked if Corrine would like to schedule her next appointment.

  Corrine smiled, sauntering by. “Nope,” she said. “Don’t need one.”

  She had to admit that gave her just as much perverse pleasure.

  As she made her way home, officially cancer-free for the first time in four months, renewed energy coursed through her body. Swain had told her it was the cumulative effects of the chemo, but she knew better.

  She looked at the catfish tattoo on her right arm, swimming just beneath the surface of her shirtsleeve.

  She had looked death in the face and said she wasn’t afraid. And now, paradoxically, death had loosened its grip on her.

  Grace’s Fu had paid off.

  52.

  When she returned to her computer, another e-mail message had popped into her master account, originating from the same IP address.

  Regrow LUXURIANT hair!! the subject line said. Corrine paused, unconsciously put a hand to her temple, feeling the few wisps of hair she had left. She’d automatically removed her wig when she entered her apartment; no need to keep up any pretense.

  She paused. There was something wrong about all this, something very wrong. Maybe the Catfish Cure had halted the cancer, but what else had it done? She couldn’t know; she had no way of even figuring out what was in the pills. For all she knew, she’d swallowed drain cleaner that was eating away her intestines.

  Well, okay, so she knew that wasn’t true. Based on her most recent CT scan, all of her intestines were intact, along with all the other normal internal organs.

  Plus, the shipment had come to her apartment, not to the fake name at the fake address she’d provided. Shouldn’t that be a concern? Shouldn’t
that tell her something sinister about all of this?

  Yes, it should. But she was sitting in front of this computer, cancer free, because she had already been impulsive and ordered something she really shouldn’t have.

  She went to the Web site for the hair foam, clicked the order button, filled out the form with fake information.

  Yes, in her head, she knew all those things should be red flags. But in her heart, a heart that now pumped lymphomafree blood to the rest of her body, none of it made any difference.

  Seconds after she completed the order, she heard another thump at her front door. She moved toward the door, unsure if she’d really heard the sound, checked the peephole, slid off the chain latch, and saw it sitting on the concrete: a square box with a simple multicolored label.

  She stepped onto the concrete pad outside her door, peeked toward the other apartments on her level, then finally looked over the iron railing to see if anyone had scrambled down the stairs and left the building.

  She saw no one.

  She bent over, scooped up the package, brought it inside the apartment. This time she didn’t go to the kitchen for a knife to help her open it; she immediately began tearing at the package with her bare hands. The chemo had bruised her hands, softened her fingernails, anyway. And she wasn’t concerned about her appearance. What did it matter?

  By the time she made it to her small dining table, she had one flap of the box peeled back. She put the box on the tabletop, perforated a bigger gash, then turned the box over and shook.

  Packing peanuts spilled out, followed by a small, oval jar of cream. HAIRESTORE, the plain label said in large, brightly-colored letters. Again, nothing on the label told her the ingredients or the origin of the cream.

  She twisted off the jar’s lid, sniffed at the milky-white paste inside. The immediate smell was minty. But she decided the mint was there to mask another smell: something earthy, fishy. The same odor as the catfish cure pills.

  Without hesitating, she dipped her fingers into the cream and began rubbing it into her scalp.

  Immediately, she felt exhausted. Maybe that was understandable; the events of the last day had been impossible, and venturing into the impossible had to be a soul-draining experience. Even though it was only dinnertime, and even though she was ravenous, her body told her it needed sleep.

  Maybe she was Snow White, she thought as she made her way to the bedroom. Maybe she’d bitten into a poisoned apple.

  Now the only thing she could do was fall into a deep sleep.

  53.

  She awoke, her brain feeling mushy. A quick look at the clock told her she’d only been asleep for a few hours. She didn’t remember lying down, didn’t really remember too much at all after . . .

  The hair cream. Yes, after that. She wanted to put her hands on her head, but she resisted the urge. She would walk to the bathroom, calmly, and look at her reflection in the mirror. She’d done it many times since starting the chemo, revulsed by the liver-colored bruises blooming like flowers beneath her skin, shocked by the sudden appearance of bright-red rashes across her chest, amazed at the sores and abscesses lining her lips and mouth. Yes, chemo made for interesting self-talk at the mirror.

  Corrine slid out of bed, careful to avoid swinging her head, careful to avoid anything that would give her an indication of change, and padded softly to her bathroom door.

  She opened the door, closed her eyes, and stepped inside the small room. She turned to her right and turned on the light switch, keeping her eyes closed, knowing the mirror was just in front of her.

  One. Two. Three. She opened her eyes.

  Her reflection stared back at her, her long, shoulder length mane of hair frizzed and tangled by a few hours of sleep.

  She stared for a few minutes, because that’s all she could do. How recently she’d mourned the loss of her hair, the odd realization that she would probably never live to see any on her head again.

  And now here she stood, looking at her reflection, her hair, her soul, fully restored.

  She finally let herself touch the hair. It was soft, as if it had just been washed. She wrapped a strand around her face, breathing in, smelling her new hair. Minty, like the cream. She tugged and primped at it, turning her face just so, smiling.

  She pulled out the top drawer in the bureau in front of her, then laughed as she remembered: about six weeks ago she’d thrown away her brush and curling iron, horrified by the sight of clumps of hair sloughing off her head.

  But now it was funny. She laughed, then cried, then laughed some more again as she looked at her tangled hair, her wonderful, tangled hair, in front of the mirror.

  The hair was clean, but she immediately wanted to wash it, to experience that daily ritual she’d done since her teen years. So she slipped into the shower, soaping and cleaning her body, and then used simple bar soap for her hair—overcome by a fresh bout of laughter when she remembered she’d also thrown out all her shampoo and conditioner.

  When she stepped out of the shower, she was as clean as she’d ever been. Reborn, even. A new child in a new world.

  She slipped on her robe and walked into the living room of her apartment. Over in the corner, her computer was emitting a steady beeping sound. An alarm she usually set, to tell her when scripts had finished.

  She walked to the computer, looked at the screen. Even though she didn’t remember doing it before she went to sleep, she’d obviously set up her e-mail harvest bot to search the Web, find e-mail addresses, and add them to her database of names. She scanned the script, noting the sites the bot had indexed; most of them, it seemed, were cancer sites. She’d already set up a section of her database specifically for cancer patients, filling it with names she’d harvested from Swain’s hacked electronic survey tablets and the computers of the oncology social workers.

  And now, apparently, she’d gone on the Web in search of more names.

  She didn’t specifically remember doing any of this, but she had to give herself a break. In the last few days, she’d cured herself of cancer and grown back a full head of hair. Her brain deserved a break, a night to recharge.

  Still, it was nice to see the bot had found several thousand new names overnight. She smiled, did a quick capture of the collected e-mail addresses, opened her master SQL database on one of her servers in China, and saved the new names to her main file of more than ten million addresses.

  It was early evening, she felt great, and she had been given a fresh start. She should start composing new spam messages, she knew, maybe even checking in on some of her ghost sites and other ventures. Maybe she was no longer a cancer patient, but she was still a bottom-feeder. This is what she did; more than that, it was what she was meant to do.

  And yet she didn’t want to. She simply wanted to celebrate, to take the night off.

  A flashing icon on her screen illuminated, telling her she had new e-mail in her secret account.

  She clicked on the icon and opened her mail client, revealing a subject line meant to terrify. Forward this to avoid DISASTER!! it screamed.

  Her mouth dry, Corrine sat in the chair and opened the message. She felt a rivulet of water, left from her shower, running down her forehead from the base of her beautiful new head of hair.

  Or maybe it was a rivulet of sweat.

  This message will bring GOOD FORTUNE to all who read it and forward it to five friends within twenty-four hours, it began. Then it detailed the circumstances of poor, unfortunate souls who had ignored the message. One woman in Georgia had succumbed to a sudden stroke. A man in Texas lost his family business to bankruptcy. A college student in Ohio had died in a horrific car crash.

  Meanwhile, the people who had kept the chain alive by forwarding the message to five friends had experienced wondrous joys. A retiree from California had won the lottery. A poor mother on food stamps had received an inheritance from a long-lost relative.

  The e-mail ended with a plea to forward the message to five friends within twenty-four hours or
face the dire consequences that would surely befall her for breaking the chain.

  Corrine noted the message had been sent at 12:07 the previous morning. Shortly after midnight. Hours before her adventures with catfish cures and hair cream began. She checked her watch: 8:32 p.m. So, would certain DISASTER!! befall her three and a half hours from now, twenty-four hours from when the message was sent? Or twenty-four hours from now, when she received it? And why had the message been delayed some twenty hours anyway?

  She shook her head. Like any of it mattered. The send time was likely forged, anyway, or set to the server of origination. This mail, in truth, seemed more like a true spam message than either of the first two she’d received. Corrine had seen a thousand—no, a million—just like this one. Maybe she’d even seen this very one. For that matter, maybe she’d even written it, many years ago, and now the endless waves of Internet forwarding had deposited it once again on her beach. These kinds of messages were something of a primitive way of gathering e-mail addresses; they contained a virus that searched computers for vulnerabilities, then retrieved e-mail addresses from people who opened the forwarded message.

  Kind of amateur hour, really. Corrine had passed this level of sophistication early in her rise.

  So there it was: this message was nothing like the others. She closed it and let her hand hover over the delete button for a few moments.

  So if this message was unlike the others, why did she feel a dark pit in her stomach? Why did the catfish on her arm twist and constrict as she read it? This message had come to her secret e-mail address, just like the other two mystical messages; couldn’t it be a test, as well?

  DISASTER!!

  She smirked at the screen. What could be more disastrous than cancer? She’d already beaten that in the last twenty-four hours.

  Corrine pressed the delete button and went back to her bedroom. Five minutes later, she was asleep again.