Ezembe

by Jeffrey L. Morris

  “Exactly. If you can do that drawing trick, so much the better.”

  James scratched his neck uncomfortably. “And what are you going to do with this information?”

  “Well, it’s just a kind of experiment is all.”

  “So the hospital will know about it, too? The students, your boss?”

  “Absolutely not,” Pat said flatly. “For starters, we’d be putting ourselves in the firing line in more ways than one if we got the hospital involved. No offense, Jimmy, but this whole thing screams junk science. And frankly, if it had been anyone but your mother bearing this little fairy tale, I’d have run a mile.”

  James nodded. “Okay, so what’s the plan?”

  Karen said, “Well, we’ll put you in a white coat and have you accompany us on rounds. We’ll have selected a few patients for you to meet.”

  Pat slumped in his chair, his elbows on the armrest, hands balled under his chin. “They’d be patients we have already diagnosed.”

  “And then we’ll compare notes,” Karen added, “It’s not exactly ideal scientific method, but it’s a good first step.”

  “Okay, I guess I can do that,” James said. He thought for a moment, then asked, “Will any of them be terminal?”

  Pat splayed has hands out and stuck out his lower lip, then said. “Well, we might not necessarily...”

  Karen interrupted him. “No, not if you don’t want to. We don’t have to do any of this, James. Only what you’re comfortable with.”

  James considered it for a few moments, and said, “Okay, deal.” Karen grabbed his knee and squeezed it.

  Pat craned his neck towards the paintings stacked in the corner. “Can I have a look at that painting you showed your mum?” he asked.

  “Um, yeah. I’ll get it. There’s loads more in the hallway, and some more in the studio. Help yourself.”

  Pat went to a stack, flipped the canvasses one after another, and saw, often in great detail, the same sorts of things he had been seeing in microscopes for much of his life. Not all of the canvasses had pictures of germs on them, but a substantial number did. There were strep, staph, all sorts of bacteria, as well as a variety of viruses. Any picture featuring microbes portrayed them meticulously, but the backgrounds were often absurd: cityscapes or desert scenes. One had a background made up of Fifties automobiles. Infesting the cars were what appeared to be crudely drawn insects, but Pat had no trouble at all recognizing them as a particular strain of virus.

  “Where is this famous self-portrait of your guts your mother was telling me about?”

  “Here.” James placed it on the coffee table. “Actually, I painted this a long time ago, but it’s pretty much identical to what I experienced when I was in the hospital.”

  “Okay, that’s S. aureus, all right. What’s with the bricks in the background?”

  “I don’t know. The other week, they were more like bathroom tiles. White tiles.”

  Pat furrowed his brow. “So what’s that mean, then? What do the tiles represent?”

  “I don’t know. You’re the guy who looks in microscopes; you tell me! There’s something else, though. I was with my girlfriend this weekend, and I think I saw an infection in her while I was sleeping next to her.”

  “When you say ‘saw’, this was actual visual contact?”

  “Yes and no. I guess like in the projector room for dreams. They looked like these.” James rummaged through a few paintings, and came up with a canvas. “Like this.” He pulled out a near-perfect representation of a Rhinovirus, the common cold.

  Pat pursed his thin lips, then asked, “Any particular reason for the winged sheep in the background?”

  “Um, actually, it was different this time with Peggy. The germs looked just the same as that picture, but they were attacking beach balls.”

  “Beach balls?”

  “Uh huh. I know, it sounds a bit weird.”

  “Do ya think?” Pat laughed. “Anyhow, go on.”

  “These things with the stars, the viruses, were puncturing them and then slipping inside. Then, after a while, loads of them would explode out of the beach ball.”

  Karen and Pat passed a quick glance between them.

  “It gets a little stranger.” James hesitated, grimaced, and then went on. “I could hear them talking.”

  “Talking. You heard a virus talk?”

  “Well, sort of. It was more like a song.”

  “Singing?” Pat’s eyebrows arched higher. Each new tidbit of this tale was getting madder and madder.

  “Yes, but sort of singing with instructions. They were talking about farming, and where to go to get the next crop, and things like that.”

  “You heard this? You actually heard those words?”

  “Well, no, but that is what the songs were saying, I’m sure of it.”

  Pat put the painting aside and, with his hands on his knees, let out a belly laugh that rattled the windows. “Oh c’mon, you can feck off outta that now! You two are having me on here. Where’s the hidden camera?”

  “No, really, I’m sure that’s what was going on. I’d heard similar things before, but this was the first time I knew what they were saying. It was like they were coordinating their efforts, I think.”

  “So you are trying to tell me that a bunch of sub-microscopic viruses, that don’t even have bodies, let alone brains, were singing Negro spirituals as they worked on your girlfriend’s sinuses?”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “Ha-hah. All right, lad, I’m not convinced, but you’ve definitely aroused the scientific hooligan in me.”

  Thirteen

  Mr. Nash in Ward 1-C regarded James suspiciously. “Why is this man drawing me?” he asked insistently.

  James was oblivious. His pencil flitted across the clipboard.

  Pat gave Mr. Nash a reassuring pat on the shoulder. “He’s just taking a few notes, Mr. Nash. Nothing strange.”

  “That boy is drawing. I know when someone is drawing.”

  Pat nodded, and James flipped the clipboard over to reveal a series of circles with squiggles emerging from their centers. “It’s kind of a medical shorthand,” Pat explained.

  “Oh, I see. Yeah, well, it doesn’t look too much like me.”

  “Yes, well, medicine is like a woman and you know what they’re like,” Pat said as he trotted to the next patient.

  James followed close behind and whispered, “Might be better to do the sketch after we leave the patient.”

  “Yeah, good one, Jimmy. If you can, do that.”

  They worked their way through Pat’s list, dodging an array of trays and trolleys, until they’d visited eight patients in all. Pat asked seemingly pertinent questions of each patient as he examined them, while James absorbed what he could. After leaving the bedside his hand flowed free, the lifelong aversion to hospitals forgotten. Pat did his best not to give anything away, lest it influence the result. He regarded the whole experiment as more than a little flaky, but he was willing to “give it a go”, as he put it. When they’d finished, he beeped Karen, and the three met back in Pat’s rooms for a confab.

  “Ta-da! Right, let’s see how the old bipedal microscope did here.” Pat viewed the first sketch carefully. “First, Ed Nash—Jimmy’s old friend Staphylococcus aureus. This one’s resistant to antibiotics, so it’s actually MRSA, but there’s divil the difference aside from that. Bingo, Jimmy, you got it bang on.”

  James beamed, though he tried to hide it. “Thanks.”

  Karen said, “Do it the other way around, Pat. Just look at the drawing and see if you can figure out which patient it is.”

  “Hmmm, I see what you mean. How and ever, I already know what each patient has, so I’m yet another fly on that pizza. Here.” Pat passed the sketches to Karen. “You do it.”

  “Okay, well, Number Two looks like some sort of spirochete. Syphilis?”

  “Jonas Quinn. Lyme disease. Let’s see that drawing a minute.” Pat scrutinized it and pronounced, “Yeah, the loops ar
e fairly loose on this. Closer to Borrelia borgdorfer than Treponema pallidum, so I’d call it Lyme disease, same as the diagnosis. Give the man a cigar.”

  Karen nudged her glasses up her nose and giggled, then looked at sketch Number Three. “I’m not sure about this one either, Pat.”

  “Right-oh, let’s see. Looks to me like Meningococcus and…” Pat checked Number Three on the list. “…poor little Louise has meningitis.” He turned to James and winked. “It’s okay, Jimmy, she’s on the mend.”

  Four had a Rhinovirus infection, and Five was infected with Adenovirus, the cause of his respiratory problems. Karen recognized the bean-shaped protozoa on Number Six instantly. “It’s your pet, Pat: Toxoplasma gondii.” Pat often referred to this strain of protozoa as his “pets”, or even his “little beauties”. Seven was another Rhinovirus, as well as what appeared to be a herpes virus.

  Karen squinted at Number Eight for a while, her brow pinched over her specs, and then passed it to Pat, asking, “Is this what I think it is?”

  Pat tucked his chin into his chest and snapped the paper flat. “Uh-oh. Wasn’t expecting this.”

  “What?” James asked.

  “This is what you saw?”

  “I told you, I don’t see anything. I just let my hand go when I’m sketching…” He tapped the sketch. “…and that appears on the paper.”

  “But didn’t you say you could see your own infection as well as Peggy’s cold?”

  “Yeah, but only when I was asleep.”

  “Wait, I’m confused. You can hear them when you’re awake?” Karen asked.

  “Well, yeah, sort of. I did get some impressions from that last guy.”

  “Well, if this drawing is accurate…” Pat pointed at the sketch. “…you’ve just made your first diagnosis. These little things that look like lunar landers? That’s HIV.”

  “What? AIDS?” James went wobbly and slid into a nearby chair. “But he didn’t seem sick at all! I got none of the vibes I got from the other people I saw who were very sick. Just a kind of weird buzz from him.”

  “Well, that’s it. He isn’t sick; he was the ‘control’. Mr. Walsh was only in for a routine colonoscopy. I expected you would find nothing here, and if you did, it would have been a positive negative. HIV doesn’t kill. It’s the illnesses that sneak in when the immune system shuts down that kill. Mr. Walsh isn’t sick.”

  “Shit. Listen, guys, I didn’t sign up for this!”

  “Easy, James.” Karen knelt next to him and curled her hand around the outside of his fist. “We don’t know he’s infected. If he is, you’ve diagnosed him early, which is going to be a huge advantage to him.”

  James was still reeling. “I really wasn’t expecting this,” he muttered.

  Pat said, “To be honest, Jimmy, I wasn’t expecting it, either. But you have to remember: you did not infect him. Karen’s right; you’ve probably made a huge contribution to his treatment by catching this early. And if you are right about Mr. Walsh, you got a hundred percent on this little test.”

  “So you believe me now, then?”

  “Ah, I didn’t say that. There are still a lot of explanations other than you jumping into people’s bodies and spying on their little passengers, but I am impressed. It certainly warrants a further look.”

  Karen nodded her agreement.

  “So what now?” James asked.

  “Well, let’s do a complete physical on you, blood work, all that, and see how we get on.”

  “What was that you said about impressions when you were looking at Mr. Adamson?” Karen asked.

  “Oh, yeah. Sorry. Yeah, it seemed like they were talking about harvesting or food, and it was like they were warning each other off their food. I dunno, there’s no words, but I ‘hear’ the meaning of what’s going on. Lots of mentions of worms or tubes or something.”

  “Tubes? Do they say what kind of tubes?” Pat squinted.

  Exasperated, James repeated, “There aren’t any words, but they’re definitely talking about tubes or worms. You’d have a better idea than me.”

  “Okay, that’s fair enough, but this phenomenon, whatever it is, strikes me as being very subjective. Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that you really are able to tune in. The evidence isn’t what you might call empirical, but it is compelling.” Pat put his hands on his head and puffed his cheeks out. “My guess is that you’re creating the audio track yourself.”

  “No! I’m not. I’m telling you, these things are talking to each other. Or singing to each other, I don’t know, but I’m sure—they’re communicating.”

  “Okay, fair enough. But the fact is, you aren’t able to be objective about all this nonsense by definition. We’d naturally be critical, but I promise you we won’t be dismissing anything you come up with out of hand, no matter how mad it sounds!” Pat winked.

  “Heh, okay. Sorry. I know how crazy this sounds.”

  “Good morning, everybody. What’s crazy?”

  Karen jumped like a schoolgirl caught shoplifting. “Hi, Bob.” Dr. Scholl had slipped in, unnoticed. Pat might have said “slithered”.

  Bob strode directly to James and introduced himself. “Doctor Robert Scholl, department head, and you are?”

  “Um, James Weems. How do you do? I’ve heard all about you, Doctor.”

  “You’ve heard about me, have you?” Bob slit his eyes. “So you’re Karen’s boy? Ah.” He whipped around to face her. “Karen, you never told me your boy was a doctor.”

  “Actually, I’m an artist.”

  The slits in Bob’s eyes were so narrow they might have been made with scalpels. “That’s what I thought. So the lab coat is for?”

  “He was just doing a bit of research for a painting, Bob,” Karen blurted.

  “Oh, was he? Excellent.” Bob thrust out his lower lip and nodded sagely.

  “Yes, Pat took me to meet a few patients is all. Just to get a feel for the place,” James said.

  “Ah, did he?”

  Pat said, “Yeah, we’re thinking of doing a bit of body painting to cheer the patients up, Bob.”

  Bob squeezed Pat’s shoulders like an accordion. “Ha-ha! I love this guy. He’s the life and soul of research.”

  “I’m a hoot and a half, Bobby. That’s three hoots for a dollar, or seven for two.”

  “I love this guy!” Bob slapped Pat on the back. Pat made a face as if he were about to be sick.

  “But seriously. We can’t have the patients thinking you’re a doctor, young James. And Pat, well, you should know better.”

  “Yes, Bob. I’ve been a bad boy. I’ll punish myself good by eating lunch in the staff canteen.”

  “Ha-ha! I love this guy.” Bob wandered off airily, waving as he went through the door. Pat waved back and, under his breath, said, “Twat.”

  “Your boss?” James asked.

  “Well, a pusillanimous pustule that purportedly passes for a proprietor.”

  Karen wagged a finger. “Easy, Pat.”

  Pat had taken a dislike to Bob almost from the moment they’d first met. When he’d seen the name on his office door, “Dr. R. Scholl”, he’d laughed about it for weeks. “R. Scholl! Bwahwhawhaw! Arsehole! Most aptly named manager ever. If only everything possessed such truth in advertising.”

  “He’s bad news, huh?” James asked.

  Karen said, “He’s not that bad.”

  Pat broke into hysterics at that suggestion, pointing at Karen in mock appreciation of her wit.

  “Well, he’s not, Pat, and you know it,” she said firmly.

  “Ah, give over, Karen. He’s the most useless administrator who ever lived.”

  “No, he’s not. He’s doing a difficult, important job.”

  “And he’s making shite of it.”

  James was sorry he’d asked.

  “Well, why don’t you do it if you think you can do better?” Karen demanded.

  Pat hooked his thumb to his chest. “Moi? I wouldn’t do management for all the tea in China. I, Mada
me, am an ar-teeste.”

  “Well, then, you should support him. Get to know him a bit. You might even like him.”

  “Sure, I just might. But where’s the fun in that? Bosses need to be maintained as abstract demons, arseholes.” He shrugged. “Nothing to do with me. It’s traditional.”

  Karen rolled her eyes and turned to James. “Obviously we need to keep Bob—”

  “Arsehole,” Pat corrected.

  Karen sighed and continued, “We need to keep him in the dark about this, to protect your privacy, among other things. A lot of people would be very interested in you, Jimmy. We want to keep this quiet.”

  “Sure, I know. I appreciate it.”

  Pat produced a swab kit. “Right now, Jimmy, let’s get crackin’ with some of your DNA. Say ahhhh!”

  Fourteen

  Pat snapped his head back from the microscope and pinched the bridge of his nose. He squinted hard, then fiercely set his eye back to the eyepiece. “Jesus wept, I’m fucking seeing things.” He knew he was not. “Well, this’d make you stand out from the crowd,” he said. He pulled the slide out of the optical microscope and placed it in the tray of the lab’s electron microscope. The scope’s screen lit up and he sat almost motionless, his eyes wide, his mouth hanging. The mitochondria, the little fuel cells within a cell, were larger than any sample he had seen anywhere, in any other cell, animal or vegetable. Substantially so. Also, they were configured in such a way as he had never seen. Their maze-like matrices were markedly more intricate than any known, anywhere.

  His gaze fixed on that unholy screen, Pat snapped his phone open. “Karen, can you bring your pretty little derriere down to my lab?”

  “Sure, Pat. Is there something wrong?”

  “Just come on down. All will be revealed.”

  Karen shuffled in tentatively. Pat, peering into the optical ’scope, barely noticed her come in. “You should be a hunchback for all the time you spend at that thing,” she said in a nervous giggle.

  “Ah, hiya. Here, have a look at this.” Pat dropped from his perch and patted the stool’s cushion.

  Karen slid into position, brought the image into focus, and found herself face to face with perfectly healthy cells. “What am I looking at here? Is there something I should be worried about?”