Lethal Discoveries

by Erica Pensini

  I heard again the male voice on the background, and then Christine’s, “Give me a moment sugar, will you?”.

  “Perhaps we can talk more at a later time?”, I suggested.

  “We should. I must go now, but I’ll call you back”.

  Christine was shuffling something around as she spoke, then there was a thump on the floor.

  “Shoot, my make-ups are all over the floor now! Ok darling, I’ll call you back, we must talk about everything including this story. Love you plenty”, she told me in her usual flamboyant and rushed voice, then hang up.

  I held the receiver over the free line signal for a moment, thinking about what Christine had just said. I had a strange feeling about this whole matter, first the journalist at the Cross cancer institute, then my incredibly realistic dream, vivid in my mind even after I had awoken, and finally what Christine had found in NY. Something was just not right, although I had so little information that I could be making up the whole plot. I decided to postpone all thoughts about the subject and went to take a shower. It was so hot those days that unless one had AC – which was the case for all but anachronistic curiosities like myself -it was impossible not to shower at least twice per day. I let the water soothe me till it went cold, then I got dressed just in time to make myself another coffee. I was rinsing off the cup when I heard Brad’s honk the horn to let me know he was there.

  Chapter 32

  As soon as I got into the car I told Brad about my conversation with Christine.

  “It sounds a bit creepy, I give you that”, he started

  “But deep down you think I am making it all up”, I replied

  “But at the moment you really don’t have any proof that there are connections between what is happening in NY and what is happening here and we can’t even be sure if the words you overheard from the journalist are reliable”, he concluded

  From a rational standpoint Brad was undeniably right, but I felt there was a connection and the fact that I couldn’t prove it yet was no matter. I shrugged.

  “Changing topic, I wonder what they will tell us at the DNA research center this morning. By the way, I thought about the paper I found yesterday”.

  “And?”. There was a pitch of irony in Brad’s voice now.

  “And my view is that we should really dig into this matter further, maybe contact the authors and see what they think about our case”, I replied, ignoring Brad’s skepticism .

  “We can’t really contact outsiders and give out details about what we are doing”, he pointed out.

  “Of course we can’t. Why do you always assume I am naïve?”, I retorted, and realized I had snapped for no good reason as soon as I finished the sentence.

  “Well, I never said you are naïve, but I thought you just told me you wanted to contact the authors of the paper. So what do you want to talk about if not what we are doing?”.

  Now the irony in Brad’s tone was bluntly obvious.

  I snorted. “Maybe I could tell them what we are up to without going into the details…and see if they believe that it is possible that some bacteria are changing on us. Ok, I see this doesn’t make too much sense. And yet I think the author of the paper could be so helpful... In any case, I am going to see if they have any other publications on the subject”.

  “This sounds like a good approach”, Brad replied, completely chill, keeping his eyes on the road.

  I glanced at him and said nothing, knowing he was right but being unreasonably unnerved about it. I averted my eyes and looked out the window, in silence, till we reached the parking lot at FoodTech labs.

  “Do you want to wait for me here while I go upstairs grab the samples?”, I asked once we got there.

  “Sure”, he said.

  I went to the labs and organized the samples quickly, placing them in a nice cooler like the ones people use for camping. I liked the feeling of carrying around the lab cooler, as if I was fully organized for some fun. I knew the emotion I associated with the cooler was an echo from all the summers in the campgrounds with my family, when I still had one. The realization that those good times were irretrievably lost should have saddened me, and yet all I felt when I had the cooler in my hands was a surge of infantine joy, even when what was in there was a bunch of samples we could not sort out. I was heading for the door when I heard McMurrich’s voice on my back.

  “Let me present you Iris, our scientist who is working on the polymer”.

  Two guys in full suits nodded at me, a smile on their face. One of the two was chubby, he looked like a good dad who played basketball on the backyard with his kids on Sunday. The other one was thin, with trenchant eyes that cut right through me as he smiled, and made me uneasy as if I was lying. I felt I was, although I hadn’t said a single word yet.

  I stuck out my hand. “Good to meet you”, I said.

  “We are making great progress in perfecting the polymer for your needs, and probably we can have a meeting with Iris in the next future to discuss its potential further”, McMurrich continued, all professional smiles.

  It was obvious that the guys were from some food company, but which one? I wish I could know, more out of personal curiosity than anything else. After all the polymer was my creature, perhaps a wicked one but nonetheless mine, and I cared to trace its destiny, wherever it landed. McMurrich’s courtesy only went as far as her interests did, so of course she couldn’t be bothered to inform me.

  I managed to drown my negative vibes in a courteous and legitimate statement. “It’s great to hear that you are interested in working with our polymer”, I said.

  “We are very keen on trying it out on our dairies, and then we could perhaps expand it on some other line of products”, the chubby guy told me.

  “Which other line of products?”, I asked, deliberately looking at the thin guy. Now I am going to dig you out, I thought.

  “That’s something we could perhaps discuss with you”, he replied, without flinching or attenuating the intensity of his gaze.

  “It will be my pleasure”, I said, half as a courtesy and half as a challenge. Why I am taking this so personally?, I wondered, before remembering my cycle had started that morning and that my irritated mood had probably a lot to do with that. I excused myself and went to find Brad in the parking lot.

  “Can you believe it?”, I burst out as soon as I got into Brad’s car, “McMurrich is still so much into commercializing the polymer even though we explicitly told her how odd are the bacteria it breeds!”.

  “Relax, her job is to get people interested and commercialize the products we develop. It’s called creating job security. Now, let’s go to the DNA center and get the information we need. Can you pull out the map and help me find my way? I checked the street this morning but I could use a co-pilot”, Brad smiled.

  “Sure”, I said, with a honeyed voice

  I felt guilty that I had been so bitter with him earlier and glad I could have my small moment of redemption. If only I could be really help…Focus, I thought. I have always been terrible at reading maps, and although we had time we couldn’t afford losing our way if we wanted to reach the DNA center by 9.30.

  Chapter 33

  We were in the parking lot 10 minutes before our appointment. “Aha”, I said, “so we got here in time!”. Brad looked at me with an expression half amused half confused, and got out of the car without answering my inexplicable exclamation.

  At the reception we asked for Mark Gill, as McMurrich had instructed us to do.

  “Have a seat, I’ll tell Dr. Gill you’re here”, said the girl at the front desk. She was the kinky type that even the guys who feel very intellectual can’t help staring at.

  I caught Brad taking side glances at her, trying to pass unnoticed.

  “You like her, don’t you?”, I asked winking

  “Are you jealous?”, he teased.

  “Not at all, as a matter of fact I like her too”, I smiled slyly.

  Brad gave me an amused l
ook, shaking his head. I was about to prod him again when I saw a man walking towards us with a resolute pace.

  “You must be Iris and Brad. Mark, pleased to meet you”, he said, tending us his hand.

  His hand shake was firm and curt, and his clear blue gaze direct. There was something authoritative in this man, but he inspired my curiosity for reasons I could not fully define. He was the type who could be on top of someone like McMurrich, I thought.

  He’s her lover, I told myself without knowing why, and the idea fascinated me and revolted me at the same time.

  “Why don’t we go upstairs to the labs”, he said, accompanying his sentence with a gest showing us to the elevators. The elevator we took was crowded, and we went up looking at our feet, in the embarrassed and vaguely claustrophobic silence that accompanies rides in elevators packed with people.

  “This way”, Mark Gill told us once we finally reached our floor.

  The neon lit corridors gave out the same feeling of FoodTech labs: scientific, aseptical, efficient and completely impersonal. We stopped in front of a door labelled as “Flow cytometry lab”. Mark Gill scanned his badge and we got in.

  “You can leave your box on that bench”, he told me, and then walked towards a bulky machine and said, “I suggest we start from here”.

  “We are looking at identifying some bacteria…”, I began.

  Mark Gill cut me off nodding. “Dr. McMurrich told me about your scopes. Flow cytometry will tell us if we have more than one type of bacteria. After we sort this part out, we’ll run some assays to assess what are the main proteins in the bacteria present in your sample. How does this sound?”.

  “Great”, I replied, feeling that this was the only answer someone like Mark Gill could accept.

  “We appreciate your help”, added Brad, who had been silent up to that moment, “please let us know when we can pass by again”.

  “Most certainly. We will have this done by the end of this week, I will call you once the analyses are completed”.

  I nodded with a smile that probably looked like the one of a good high-school student.

  Gill headed to the door, “The elevators are down this hall”, he said, giving us a second curt hand shake, “it was good to meet you”.

  We were silent in the hallway and in the elevator, not as packed as on our way up but with a couple of other hosts. When we reached the parkade I felt finally free to talk again.

  “Whoh, what a man of steel!”, I said as we walked to Brad’s car.

  This time Brad agreed, “Yeah, not a very easy one to talk to”.

  “I think he’s McMurrich’s lover”, I said.

  “He could very well be, they pretty much deserve each other”, Brad replied.

  I laughed, “I am pleased and surprised that for once you are not being so cool about someone”.

  He shrugged, “I am not cool, I just like to mind my own business”.

  “Which amounts to pretty much the same thing…”.

  The sun was up high and hot in the sky, and after about an hour in the parking lot Brad’s red Hyunday was hotter than its color.

  “I could easily use a day off”, I said.

  “You bet, but McMurrich will not give us much time at this point. We should show Alice the paper you found yesterday and see what she thinks, perhaps she will find some inspirations to solve our quiz”.

  “Sure partner, let’s get going”, I laughed.

  “You’re odd today”, Brad laughed back at me, shaking his head and starting the engine.

  Chapter 34

  We were walking to the cell culture lab to find Alice when we met Mike in the hallway.

  “I was looking for you”, he said, with a weird expression painted on his face.

  “Everything good with you?”, I asked.

  “With me?”, he echoed my words, “For sure, everything is quite fine with me”

  “Do you have the time to come to my office?”, he added after a pause.

  Brad and I exchanged a perplexed look, more for the urgency in his tone than for the question itself.

  “Sure”, Brad replied, “We actually have news that might interest you after our last investigations on the polymer”.

  Mike responded with an alarmed stare, and we stood there in the hallway for a moment longer till Brad arched his brows shaking Mike from his worried trance.

  “I think you guys really ought to have a chat with me”. Mike started to walk to his office and gestured us to follow. “Have a seat”, he said when we got there, locking the door behind us.

  “What’s happening Mike?”, I asked, sitting at the edge of the chair, leaning towards him across the desk, my hands joint. I had seen Mike in a bitter mood more times than I could count, but I would have thought anxiousness was unknown to him up to this point. Mike was a methodic man with certainties and a hard shell impervious to external perturbations. If Mike was in this state something must have been terribly wrong.

  He looked straight back at me. “I don’t know what is happening, but whatever it is, I suspect it is very ugly”.

  “Can you be a bit more specific?”, Brad asked impatiently.

  “Sandeep called me this morning. I could tell he was very nervous. His precise words were that under no circumstance we should bring samples to the Cross cancer institute, and most of all we should not carry any pure polymer there”

  “But did he say why?”, I asked, feeling my stomach tighten

  “That’s what I wanted to understand too, but I couldn’t get anything out of him. He was scared, I tell you. I think he found out something and now somebody is threatening him. It must be someone who got a hold of your polymer, and wants to do something which is not so clean and fancy with it. Whoever the guy is, he must believe that there’s a lot at stake, or else he wouldn’t go so far as to threaten somebody. The question is who could be so interested in your polymer and why”.

  “Wilhelm”, I whispered.

  “Wilhelm?”, repeated Mike.

  “Sandeep asked this guy, Wilhelm, to help with the analyses because the guy is supposed to be a super-expert”, I explained.

  “Ehm, I see…”, said Mike, “But what would be using the polymer for?”.

  “I don’t know”, I replied, “but the other day when Brad and I were at the center there was a journalist at the entrance. He claimed that the mortality among the patients had been suspiciously high lately, he insisted on talking with some doctor. He was gone after we met with Sandeep, I am not sure if he succeeded…”.

  “It’s too early to draw connections”, Brad interrupted.

  “Maybe it is, but something is obviously not right”, I insisted.

  “I cannot see what our polymer would have to do with the death of some patients”, argued Brad.

  “I can’t either and I hope the answer is nothing”, I replied, “but what are we going to do?”.

  “Sandeep asked to send him an email saying that you’ve sorted everything out and that you will not need his help anymore, or whatever other story you wish to write as long as the conclusion is that he will no longer be involved with your work. He also asked that you don’t return to the institute and that you dismiss any possible offer of help coming from people who work there, “for everybody’s sake”, he said”, Mike told us.

  “Maybe we should talk to McMurrich”, I suggested, “After all she must be made aware of this”.

  “Not yet”, said Mike, “Let’s recollect our thoughts before taking any rushed decision”

  Brad agreed. “McMurrich can wait. Let’s go visit Alice now, perhaps some of her new discoveries can shed some light on the mystery”.

  “Ok”, I conceded in a half-hearted way.

  I still had no clue that what was to come would surpass my imagination, but something told me that my lab games had slipped out of hands and that something real, and terribly wrong, was about to happen.

  Chapter 35

  “You guys don’t look too hot, what’
s up?”, Alice commented when she saw us walking in the cell culture lab.

  “We might be involved in something which is beyond our control…”, I began.

  She looked at me with a questioning gaze.

  “We went to the cross cancer institute the other day and Iris heard a journalist say that there is one too many deaths among the patients”, Brad explained, “and she thinks our polymer might be in some way related to what is happening”.

  “But why do you believe so?”, Alice asked me.

  “That’s right, so far there are no proofs for this”, Brad replied to the question meant for me.

  “Well, let me fill you in on what happened”, I interrupted irritably.

  “Please do”, Alice said, her eyes bugged.

  “Sandeep phoned Mike and told him that we should stop any collaboration with him, or with anybody in the institute. Mike said that according to Sandeep we should refrain from bringing there more samples for “everyone’s sake”. The man was scared when he made the phone call”.

  I accompanied my account with hectic hand gestures, and noticed Alice shifting her gaze from my face to my hands and back. I placed my hands in my pockets to try and stop them from floundering around.

  “Also, a friend of mine, a journalist, told me that a similar story –the mysterious death of curable patients I mean - seems to be happening at one of the cancer centers in NY. Freaky, right?”, I continued

  “No doubt…”, frowned Alice.

  “The question is: why would anybody use the polymer on those patients? And if someone did for some obscure reason, would it be harmful to the point of killing people?”, Brad insisted

  I could tell he was trying to fight the feeling that a nightmare was dawning on us, and that things had gone too far for us to do anything about them. He wanted himself calm, but I could sense the panic was starting to dwell in him too.

  “I don’t really know if the polymer can do this…and honestly if we want to figure this out I wouldn’t be our best bet. I am not an expert on this”, said Alice.

  “Ok, but what is your gut feeling about this matter?”, insisted Brad, and there was definite pleading not in his tone now.

  “The best I can do is add some polymer to a colony of human cells and see what happens. Of course the cells can come from different organs, and I wouldn’t know where to start…”. Alice opened her arms in resignation.