He opened his eyes and saw Doctor Frank’s gloved hand twisting sharply in an unnatural circular motion. Caleb could feel a strange gravitational pull as the web of tendons holding his toenails to his skin began to tear.
Some of the nails came off easily, a sudden muscular twist, and then the sound of it falling into the tray. Others proved more difficult. He heard the doctor’s tired breath after a third attack on the stubborn second toe of his left foot. His body screamed that this was not right, that he should do something.
When Doctor Frank was finished, Caleb risked a glance downward. His feet were both covered in thick black blood. Sue was bent over them with a needle and thread.
“Seven of these need stitches. All of them need to be taped for a week.”
Caleb let his head drop back against the table.
“When the anesthetic wears off, maybe two hours, it’s going to hurt. You won’t want anything near your feet. No socks, blankets, or even sheets. Take some turmeric for the swelling. If that doesn’t work take ibuprofen, or you won’t run for a month.”
Caleb’s eyes widened.
“I know you guys don’t like antibiotics. Sue’s going to give you a tube of ointment, it’s holistic. For swelling and pain and cleaning. But if you see any green fluid through the bandage, then you get this filled and take it for ten days. She’ll make you an appointment to get the stitches out next week.”
Caleb nodded, reaching for the prescription that he knew Mack would toss away. Sue helped him into open-toed sandals and slowly eased him onto his feet.
“Don’t walk, just glide,” she cautioned him. “Like you’re skating.”
Outside, Kevin Yu was waiting in an old T-shirt and sunglasses.
“I got you, dude,” he said, slipping a surprisingly strong arm under Caleb’s shoulders. He glimpsed Caleb’s red feet, swelling madly at each end. They looked as though someone had held them over fire. The two of them shuffled slowly over to Mack’s Jeep, and Kevin eased him into the passenger seat.
“You’re shaking, Caley.”
Caleb leaned his head back. By the time they drove over the dirt driveway, and Mack opened the front door smiling, his feet looked no stranger to him than they had the day before.
• • • • • • •
June saw Mack across the street, in the doorway of Pedestrian Shoes.
Spring seemed to have announced its intentions. The mid-March mornings were cold but full of promise. A clarity had developed in the light.
She wore a long sundress in a floral print, a head scarf, and old sneakers Alice had given her. She held a yellow bucket of cleaning supplies in her hand and carried Lily in her purple Kelty Kids backpack. June was on her way back from her day’s second apartment; she had cleaned it for two hours while Lily napped in a queen-size bed. The African-American student who lived there had arrived home early. She had stared at Lily, and then back to June, as June had scrambled to leave.
Lily was wide awake now, excited to be out in the fresh air after a morning of cleaning fluids and rousted dust. She loved the energy of the street. The colors, people, and music never failed to elicit squeaks and excited arm-waving. From her perch just above June’s head, she looked out at the world like a welcoming beacon. Students on the sidewalks sometimes reached for her fingers. Mother and daughter stood on the mall and focused their large pale eyes on John McConnell.
He was stepping onto the Mall with the March sun in his face, carrying six green boxes of sneakers stacked in his thin arms. The Yosemite Slam, just eight weeks away, was the sole focus of his life. He had stopped the house parties, Thursdays at the Rocking Horse, even accompanying the house on their daily runs. These final weeks required group focus, and no outsiders, he explained. Everyone had gotten into it.
From across the street, June noticed that he looked older. The crevices running from the sides of his eyes to the corners of his small mouth seemed deeper, his legs bony in their blue running shorts, covered with tufts of black hair; even his beard seemed coarser. Maybe it was just the strong sunlight.
June watched him fumble with the Jeep’s back door and toss the boxes inside, many of which fell open and emptied onto the seats. When he walked back inside the store, June stayed where she was, letting people walk around her. A moment later Mack reappeared carrying another stack of boxes. From above her, Lily let loose a squeal of recognition, as if she were sighting land.
Mack heard it and looked suddenly across the street. He focused on them for a moment; then he waved. He placed his boxes in the Jeep, walked across the Mall, and reached up to the purple backpack for Lily’s soft hand.
“How’s the day?” he asked June, smiling at the baby.
“I cleaned two places. One of them gave me a five-dollar tip. She said to buy something for Lily.”
“Cool beans.”
“I have it here for you.” She patted her pocket.
“See those shoes?” Mack gestured back at Pedestrian. “Montrail just released the new line. Their bottoms are just solid. Incredible. The guys gave us a good deal. So, everyone gets a present for Yosemite. Hey, Michael Jordan wore a new pair of Nikes every game, why not you guys? The Michael Jordans of running.” He winked at her.
She smiled. “I’m more of a bench player.”
“You’ve been nailing fifties all year. I know you can take a hundred, Junebug. It will be great for you.” He looked up at Lily. “And the trip will be real good for our special lady here.”
June started hopefully. “You think so?”
“For sure. Different air. Less dry. New input.”
“Because it’s been harder this week. The winter was hard for her breathing, but the spring, I’m worried about the pollen and . . .” she waved her arms around, unsure what to say.
Mack nodded sympathetically. “Some local honey will help. I’ll pick us up some.”
They stepped aside to let some skateboarders explode past. There was a space afterward in which June could hear her heart pounding.
“She gets better when she works with you,” she explained, “but then it comes back.”
“Well, my energy levels have been low.” Mack became agitated. “I know that. I’ve been pouring everything into logistics, insurance, permits, press. It’s hard not being out there in California, doing this from our house. I’m talking with running blogs and magazines and the ABC folks, right? But Barry Strong’s guys are meeting with the park people, local police, hospital reps in person. I should be out there. I mean, I’m needed.”
“We need you too,” June smiled, wanting to soothe him.
“And it’s sapping me. I’m only running four hours a day. I’m fighting mental stress. When I work with Lily at night, I have less kinetic energy to give to her. I need to get my energy up.” He looked at her. “Swing by my room with her this afternoon. Bring me some green tea, yeah?” He looked up, smiling, the rivers around his mouth and nose deepening into oceans. “See you later, little Lily!”
She thought for a second that Mack would offer her a ride down to the house, but he drove off. So she stopped at Dushanbe and spent some of her cleaning cash on a pound of sencha and chamomile-lavender blend. While the barista measured the bags, June stared at the muffins and scones behind the glass. It had been a year since she had eaten anything like them, and she felt hungry in a way she had not in months. Her desire for one of them was dizzying. But she swallowed it back. The kinetic energy her body produced on the trails this morning would be wasted trying to process the sugars and additives, and not be available to help Lily during the reiki treatment Mack seemed to have promised. It did not seem worth Lily’s health to sample a scone.
She sang a little made-up tune as she walked with her daughter down Arapahoe into the darkening valley.
“I’m going to give you an amazing life,” she promised in song. “We’re getting you better. We’re getting you bett
er.”
At the house, June changed Lily’s diaper, kissed her soft belly, and brought her to Mack’s closed door. She knocked.
Mack’s nasal voice called out, “What?”
“It’s June and Lily. And tea.”
“Come on in.”
Inside, a thick musk washed over her. The window in here should be thrown open, she thought. Mack sat on his futon mattress, on the floor.
“Hey, princess,” he waved to Lily.
June set her down, and immediately she began a fast crawl to him, eyes wide, clear drool hanging from her smiling mouth. By the time she reached him, of course, she was out of breath and coughing, her tiny chest heaving.
Mack’s eyes drooped, and his voice was lower than usual. “She’ll be walking soon, you know.”
“Oh God, I hope.”
Mack stared intensely at her. “I think she should start on the program when she does.”
“The program?”
“Multigrain in the morning, as much walking as she can do on those red feet, root stew at five.”
“What about her milk?”
“No dairy, of course. We’re not meant to process cow lactose, that’s barbaric bullshit leftover from the times of leeches. No naps, no stasis. That’s what’s wrong, that’s why she hasn’t been able to build her own kinetic energy yet. She needs movement. Her body needs to work like ours. When she’s six, she’ll be running marathons. Right, little Lily?”
Almost on cue, the short and sharp inhales of Lily’s breathing became audible. “When she gets excited, it gets louder,” June explained.
“She’s excited because she understands what I’m saying to you.”
“Of course, Mack.”
Mack drank his tea and lifted Lily onto his mattress. She seemed to anticipate the great healing heat that came from him and lay right on her back to meet it. Spreading his left hand out, his palm hovering an inch over the gentle skin of her chest, shutting his eyes, he began to fix her. When June held her daughter’s hand, she could feel the hot energy shooting through her as she was entrained.
“Now you,” Mack instructed her.
So June rubbed her palms together and held each over Lily’s abdomen, her fingertips grazing Mack’s. She closed her eyes to focus on willing her energy into her baby. And yet June felt uneasy. Limiting Lily to just two meals a day and no naps? Of course she would try it, she would try anything for her daughter. But it felt wrong. She glanced at Mack awkwardly; the smell of him was so raw.
As usual, Lily had fallen asleep under his touch. Her wheezing was still pronounced as she was unable to breathe deeply even in sleep. A cloud shifted and sent the room into shadow, and then Mack broke out of his meditation and looked directly into June.
“Come here.”
June moved beside him, keeping her hands above Lily’s chest. Mack touched the back of her neck, and she felt a shocking heat burn through her skin. Then he lay on his back, keeping his hand on the back of her neck, pushing her head downwards.
“Wait,” she whispered, “what?”
“I told you, my energy is low.”
“Sure, but I don’t understand?”
“See June, what we’re doing here, what you’re asking? It depletes me. She’s taking all my energy. I need you to give me more. It’s something,” Mack told her, “all the women here help with.”
She recalled seeing Leigh, Rae, even Aviva, leaving or entering Mack’s room at all hours of the day. No, she thought, this couldn’t be why.
Mack pulled down his running shorts. His matted hair continued down his belly and below. June looked at the prone body of her infant daughter sleeping peacefully beside him.
Mack paused, staring straight into her. “You can start slowly.”
June looked away. “Let me just move Lily.”
June slid her hands underneath her daughter’s warm, beautiful body, lifted her off the mattress, and carried her to a yoga mat by the window. As she laid her down, she stroked her sleeping, open hand, those small and perfect fingers.
She felt the exquisite smoothness of her skin slip away as she stood and went to him.
6
• • • • • • • • • • • •
Shane picked up the phone to call Caleb at his copy store.
A nervousness that he had not felt in years swept through him as the phone rang. He felt as if he were calling his high school crush. A young man’s voice answered. “O’Neil’s Copies.”
“Hi, is, um, Caleb Oberest there?”
A pause. “Caleb doesn’t work here anymore.”
“He doesn’t?”
“Not in, I don’t know, like three months.”
Shane’s stomach clenched. “Do you know how I can reach him?”
“Don’t, sorry.”
“Wait, does he come in for messages?”
“Not that I know of.”
“I’d like to leave one. His brother. Tell him to call his brother.”
“Okay. Have a nice day.”
Fucking college kids, Shane exhaled. He stared at the pads of his cubicle wall. Meant for thumbtacks, he supposed, but similarly good for bashing a copy store clerk’s head into.
This explained why Caleb hadn’t responded to his letter about a present for Lily. Vague as it had been, Shane had expected some reply. There was no phone at the Happy Trails house. Where did June work, he wondered? Had she told him? If so, he could not recall. He stood, waved good night to Stacey, and walked slowly to his car.
This week, Dennis had sat him down to discuss adding a Phase Two Alzheimer’s drug to his workload. Two hospital oncology departments in Oregon that had not had time for him suddenly asked him to make presentations on Sorion. Nicholas was starting to teethe, waking at night in fits of fury. He was overloading.
On Pinon Drive he saw Prajuk’s white Volvo signaling out of a Taco Bell. He seemed to be manipulating a burrito in his car as he drove. Shane laughed; he liked this man very much.
The night had deepened; stars swept in from the ocean. Riding the elevator up with Prajuk, Shane felt a low rush of nicotine as if he were smoking by osmosis.
“We’ll see how Thailand is doing. This thing,” Prajuk explained, “should be generating some response by now.”
“And if it isn’t?”
“Then the dosage may be wrong. I will administer more, and we will wait another week.”
“How many times would you do that before you figure it’s not working at all?”
“Three, maybe four.”
“And after that?”
They stepped out on the third floor and walked past the other closed doors, some with muffled voices coming from inside. What were they stressing, Shane wondered? How close were they to their dreams, or to failure?
“After that, we have to ask questions. How many months do we have to test a range of compositions and dosages? How many more mice will this thing need? How much more money can you obtain to build them? How much time is there before the baby’s lungs atrophy?”
“I’m not a fan of those questions.”
“Don’t worry, please. Definitely we are not ready to ask them yet.”
Prajuk walked to the deep stainless steel sink to wash his hands. Shane moved to the cage and looked at Thailand. Prajuk did not seem, he thought, to have developed any emotional attachment to this creature. He must have unleashed impossible cruelties upon generations of mice by now, given them tumors, asthma, open sores, blindness, diabetes, heart attacks, strokes, worse. But Shane could not help smiling at the tiny thing as Prajuk lifted him by the tail and brought him over to the Buxco box.
Once inside, Thailand adjusted to his claustrophobic glass. Only this time, Shane was watching a totally different animal. Instead of curling up, the mouse was up on its back two legs, attempting to climb out.
“Jesus, look at the guy.”
Prajuk squinted at the levels meter. “He is processing significantly more air. Looks like eighty-five percent. Versus thirty percent when he arrived here.”
“Oh, man. Oh shit. It works?”
“Watch his movements.”
“I am. That’s normal?”
“This thing is how a healthy mouse behaves.”
They weighed and measured him. Thailand had been carefully constructed to have the same disease as Lily, the same train whistle wheeze, the same swollen feet, the same inability to exhale. Only now, he did not have any of those things.
“We need to send his blood out to measure liver and kidney function,” Prajuk explained.
“How long will it take to get results?”
“Two or three days. While we wait, Healy and I will humanize the drug.”
Shane felt his lungs pushing against his chest, as if the alpha-one antitrypsin deficiency had somehow been passed into him. Remembering Janelle’s worry, he asked, “Lily weighs a lot more than a mouse. And she’s growing. How do you know the right dosage?”
“This thing is not like Tylenol. It is not a question of dosage, it is a question of efficacy. The drug carries the protein into her genes, instructs it to switch on. Will her body respond? With this type of treatment, we give a dose periodically to keep the process in forward motion.”
“Forward motion,” Shane muttered. “I’m familiar with that concept.”
“Trust me, this thing will be the correct dosage for the baby.”
“You’re giving this to a baby?”
Shane turned around. When had Healy come in? He stood there with his head cocked, his short, cut arms plunging into his pockets, staring at them.
“Of course not,” Prajuk insisted, stumbling noticeably.
Right now, Shane knew, Healy was trying to re-create the conversation he had just heard. Everything would depend on his and Prajuk’s reactions. If they communicated no emotion, then Healy might let himself dismiss these words. Anything else, and he would come for their jugulars; it seemed to be in his DNA.
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