Lethal Discoveries

by Erica Pensini

  Mori diluted down the polymer from the stock solution, and began injecting it in the blood from a port in the tubing.

  “I’ll inject 10 microliters every minute”, he said, holding a stopwatch in one hand and a gastight syringe in the other.

  Our eyes were magnetized by the electrocardiogram, punctuated by a blipping sound. First shot. Blip, blip, blip. Regular sound, slower than the beat of my own heart. Second, third, fourth shot, and the blip was unchanged, the electrocardiogram too. My jaw was locked down painfully tight. Fifth shot. The slightest change in the electrocardiogram, just one peak slipping off its perfect position, just a tiny shift in the regular blipping sound. Sixth shot, and there was another shift.

  “Something is happening here”, Mori said

  “I know…”, I replied faintly

  Seventh shot. The blipping sound got fast, slow, fast again, the peaks of the electrocardiogram were far from regular now.

  Eighth shot, my heart beating fast, the artificial heart running wild, fading off, racing crazily again like a dying animal in its last struggle.

  “Oh my God…”, I said in a whisper

  I caught a glimpse of Jack, his expression was tense too, his tired eyes bugged and he seemed pale, although it could have been the light.

  “What have I done”, I said, placing my hands on my face

  “You’ve produced something you never meant to circulate, and that someone else did probably out of greed”, Mori said, but I shook my head no.

  “No…I did it. I…”, I whispered

  I felt crashed, had I killed someone? Or were the deaths in the hospital unrelated to the polymer? I tried to ponder the possibility but couldn’t believe it.

  “Anyways, let’s stop here and let’s see if the heart will recover if we stop injecting the polymer”, Mori said, “I have other tests in mind but you are too shaken now. Why don’t we take a break?”

  I nodded yes.

  Chapter 75

  “Do you mind if I use your computer for a moment to drop a line to my colleagues about what we just saw?”, I asked as the door of the lab closed behind us

  “Sure, and I’ll treat you a nice coffee after that”, Mori said, tapping my shoulder

  I reckoned I must have looked like a wreck, I attempted a smile but all I could produce was a grimace

  “Everything will be fine at last”, he tried to reassure me

  “Thank you, we really appreciate all you’re doing”, Jack said for me.

  He was walking behind us and hadn’t spoken in a while

  Mori stopped and turned around.

  “I myself want to know what happens if a polymer like the one Iris produced can affect the human body, and I also want to know why. This can help me in my own research. There is no need to thank me”

  “But if the heart doesn’t recover its functionality it will become useless for your own research…how long does it take you to produce a new one?”, Jack asked

  “About three months if everything works well”, Mori told us

  “And so now your own projects might be slowed down…”, I said, realizing this for the first time, worried as I had been by the last facts up to this moment to think of it earlier

  “Not really. We actually have other two hearts I haven’t showed you”, Mori reassured us

  “You do?”, asked Jack, and he was astonished

  “Yes, we do”, Mori replied quietly

  We had reached Mori’s office at that point, and he let me in.

  “Take your time, I’ll go chat with the people in the lab for a moment”, he told me

  I thanked him, let him log in the computer and sat on his chair, which was plush just to the right point, and large. In spite of everything, I felt comfortable sitting there.

  Jack sat on the other side of the desk, looking out of the window.

  I hadn’t been reading my emails since we had gotten to Milan, and the list of unread messages had reached a disturbingly high number. I browsed through them rapidly and stopped on one from Brad.

  “Brad emailed me, I wonder what he says…”, I said out loud.

  There was no subject on the email, which was odd because Brad had a sort of compulsive precision for things like this

  Iris, write back to tell me you are fine as soon as you read me. McMurrich died. She has been run over by the car during the night, whoever did it ran away. It does not seem like an accident, Mariam Avery came here this morning to tell me. She could not reach you on your cell, call her when you can. Will they kill us all?

  B.

  I cupped my hands over my face and stood still for a moment, taking in the blow.

  “What?”, Jack asked, but I couldn’t get myself to speak, so he walked up to my side and bent to read the email for himself. He craned his neck, re-reading the lines.

  When Mori got back to the office he found us that way, me with my face still half hidden between the palms of my hands, and Jack reading the email, his face practically glued to the screen. He stood at the door for a moment, and when we finally looked at him he asked, “What else happened?”.

  I read him the email to him.

  He pulled up the receiver of the phone, handed it to me and said, “Phone the detective you’ve been speaking with”

  “But she must be sleeping now”, I objected to the unnerving “blip…blip…blip” sound waiting for me to punch in the phone number.

  “That’s no matter, call nonetheless”, Mori said firmly and so I did, unable to think too much in depth at that moment

  Avery picked up the phone almost immediately, and from the tone of her voice I felt she had been only half sleeping, likely she had been trying to but was tossing around in bed.

  “Hello Iris, I have been trying to contact you, it’s good you called”, she said

  “Brad emailed me and told me…”

  “He did”, she said, the question sounding like a statement

  “Things have happened here too…”, I began, and told her about how I felt the cleaning lady had been following us, about Ronny and the dead body at the hotel, about the fact that there seemed to be something odd about how the matter was handled. And at last I described what we had just seen in the lab.

  “You should have called me earlier”, she said, her voice tired

  “All this has happened in the last 24 hours, not even”, I told her, realizing the fact in the moment I phrased it

  “I will try to find out what happened down there. But you should fly back as soon as you can”

  “I cannot. Why?”, I said panicking before I could understand the reason for my huge psychological reaction to the perspective of flying off back to the states in such a great rush

  “Because I want to make sure you stay alive but I do not have the power to give you any protection if you are in Italy. And it seems like some of your friends managed to follow you there”

  I felt nauseous. I looked at Jack and said, placing a hand over the receiver,“Mariam Avery says we should fly back as soon as possible because that’s the only way she can give us protection”

  Jack nodded

  “Ok, I will see when we can get back”, I told Avery

  “Let me know the details when you know them, I will find you at the airport when you land”

  “Ok…”, I replied, knowing I should thank the detective but somehow hating her for what she had just told me to do

  Mori was standing back against the door, leaning against it with his hands on the back.

  “So you must fly out soon”, he said

  I turned my palms up, making a vague gest of impotence with my hands.

  “I don’t know anything anymore”, I told him, feeling I was about to have a nerve crisis

  “You fly back home and make sure you’re safe, and I can run the other tests for you”, Mori told me, and smiled

  “Why are you so nice with me?”, I asked, tilting my head slightly, my tone too warm for the time we had known each other

  “Becau
se I see the circumstances”, he replied, his hand tracing an semicircle around the word “circumstances”

  “Because I understand how stressed you are”, he continued.

  “Well, thank you”, I said

  “So, I suppose you can call the airlines to see when you can get back. At least we’ll know right away how much time we have and we make a plan”, Mori stated calmly

  I was surprised at the way he was guiding me, and pleased because I was too shaken to take decisions for myself. Jack too seemed somewhat plunged in a stunned state, although he still retained his composure.

  After holding and speaking with a representative from the airline and holding again I managed to change our departure date to the next morning, for an additional fee of 300$ per person. I wasn’t keeping track of the expenses piling up on my credit card and wondered how much money I would have to pay the next month to cover up for the mess that was happening. Good thing the insurance had taken care of most of my time at the hospital.

  “So you still have an afternoon here”, Mori said once I hang up

  “What other tests do you have in mind?”, Jack asked

  “The first thing I have in mind is the coffee we had planned before Iris opened her mailbox. I’ll tell you what other experiments I believe are worth trying over the breakfast I still haven’t had this morning”

  “Fair enough”, Jack said, finally smiling

  I smiled too now, and we headed to a bar a block away from the research center, walking the street already warm and buzzing with urban life.

  Chapter 76

  We sat at a table outside, with the aroma of coffee and sweets flowing in fragrant whiffs from the bar, and waited for our order. Jack and I already had breakfast, but the smell of coffee was so appealing we ordered cappuccinos anyways. Mori had a large mug of latte and two cream filled pastries, which he began eating voluptuously, and yet elegantly.

  After he finished the first pastry he looked around contently, then smiled at me and said, “You shouldn’t let the events get you down”

  “Oh I don’t…”, I replied without meaning it

  “You must remember that what is happening is not your fault. You are an ethic scientist”

  “Not at all”, I said, and this time I meant it

  “Why do you say so?”

  “Because I never thought about any consequence of what I was doing until the shit hit the fan. Excuse the language”

  Mori smiled again, and looked at the street

  “You see, we are all doing what we do because we enjoy it, not because we want to save humanity. The point is not to damage anyone in the process, and you didn’t. You never intended your polymer to be released”

  I sighted and shrugged.

  “I never thought the polymer would kill people, but I intrinsically accepted the fact that it could do people some harm. The same way candy colouring, or hydrogenated fats do, just to mention few items among a long list of those that are around regardless of their effects on health”

  Mori nodded

  “The whole point is to learn from your experiences. You got it wrong, that’s fine. So where do you go from there?”, Jack said, and I started because I we never spoke about this before

  Where would I go from there? I wondered at times, and had no answers

  But before I could answer I saw Jack’s expression darken, so I turned to the point where he was looking and I saw it too. A car passing by and a woman on the passenger’s seat, her face looking like the face of the cleaning lady. Her hair was blond rather than dark, and yet the features were unmistakably hers

  “It cannot be true”, I whispered

  “But you think the face was hers…and I do too”, Jack replied

  I frowned in silence, and looked back to the point where I had looked before, staring blankly at the flow of cars running by

  “What is happening?”, Mori asked

  “Perhaps the lady who had been following us is still in business”, Jack replied

  “What do you mean?”

  “That maybe she wasn’t dead after all”, I said

  “She faked it to make you believe the danger was gone so that you would lower your guard?”, he asked

  “Something like that…maybe. I don’t know”, I said, shaking my head

  “Ok, let’s go”, said Mori getting up, throwing a quick glance at the pastry still on the table before heading back to the clinic

  We walked quickly, Jack and I throwing anxious glances around, wondering what would happen next. I felt sure that the people she was working for were involved in McMurrich’s murder, and that I was the next target. I didn’t even know if we would make it back home. A wave of sadness surged within me, and I tried to breath in the smells, take in the feeling of these streets. Would I be alive the next day? Would Mori be a target too? His pace was fast, but when we finally reached the entrance of the research building and stepped in I saw his expression was alert but calm.

  “I would call your detective lady in the States again and tell her about this”, he suggested

  “Yeah…”, I agreed

  When we got to Mori’s office and I punched in her number she picked the phone right away, and this time her voice was the voice of someone who was fully awake. I told her who we just saw.

  “That’s right”, she said

  “That’s right?”, I asked

  “I made a few phone calls after you phoned me, and there didn’t seem to be any shooting at your hotel. It was a bluff”, she said.

  Just as we thought, I told myself.

  “So the lady is still around. Will we be the next target?”, I asked, although I knew she couldn’t answer.

  She didn’t, and instead asked me if I had fixed the time of the flight back

  “I’ll be at the airport when you get there, if anything comes up make sure you call me”, she said

  I said I would, and hang up.

  “The lady is still around”, I repeated, looking at Jack and Mori

  “So what is the plan for the day?”, Jack asked, as if hadn’t heard my statement

  “We go back to the lab and continue our work”, Mori replied on behalf

  And we did, working until late in the evening. One test after the other we saw how the polymer altered the normal functioning of the cells and the organs. And one test after the other we kept working, strangely galvanized by the fact that we were seeing what we expected, although what we expected was terrible.

  At 9 p.m. we were still in the lab, exhausted and starving, and at that point sure of what the polymer could do to people.

  “What about calling it a day and going for dinner?”, Mori proposed

  “Sounds like a plan”, Jack agreed

  I didn’t say anything. I was numb and could have kept working all night. My mouth was dry and I felt raw, but I was in a self-destructive state of mind and I all I wanted to do was work, work till I fell on the floor unconscious, with guilt as my blanket.

  But then the food and the warmth of the air leaked into my mood as the evening flowed by, and by the time we finished our dinner I had regained some hope.

  “What will we do next?”, I asked

  “In terms of our research?”, Mori asked, and then, without waiting for my reply, “We’ll have to try and find an antidote for this, right? As I told you this morning I will run some tests in the next days, and I will tell you what I find”

  “I wish we could stay here…”, I sighted

  “I will keep you posted and you can come back once it is safe for you”, he reassured me

  “Don’t worry”, he added, leaning forward and pressing his hand on mine, smiling paternally

  All of a sudden all I wanted to do was let myself lean on this man, taking in the reassuring calm exuding from him, and fall asleep till I all of this would feel like a nightmarish dream.

  “Thank you”, I said instead

  “Don’t worry”, he repeated, “Let’s go get a good night sleep now”

&nb
sp; He accompanied us to the streetcar stop and waved us goodbye, saying, “Have a good trip and be careful”

  The next morning we were in the skies again, and about 15 hours later we landed on a hot Californian morning, worn out but still alive.

  Chapter 77

  Mariam Avery was waiting for us at the exit, as she had told us she would. She raised a hand seeing us, we raised it back, attempting a strained smile.

  “Thanks for coming over to pick us up”, Jack said

  “I’ll drive you home and give you some time to get yourself in shape and then I’ll have to ask you to come with me to the police station. I hope you aren’t too tired?”, she replied

  “To the police station?”, I asked, perplexed

  “We got a hold of a guy and I think you guys can help me understand if I hit on the right person”

  “Who is he?”, I asked

  “Let’s talk in the car”, she told me

  While we walked to the parking lot I observed that her expression was alert, almost anxious. I kept throwing glances at her but either she didn’t notice or didn’t acknowledge my unspoken questions, as her attention was drawn to something else. We walked past some doors and into the elevators.

  “I have the feeling a guy is following us”, she said at last, when the elevator door closed

  “Which guy?”, I asked

  “Small man, bold, innocent looking really”

  “Ronny’s back”, I said, and began laughing

  Jack and Avery looked at me with an astonished expression, as I kept laughing in an outburst of incontrollable hysteria.

  “I want you to get a grip on yourself now and pay attention”, Avery told me with an authoritative tone, holding my arms firmly, her gaze straight into me.

  She could have been trying to discipline her kid.

  “When we get out of this elevator, I want you to carefully, and I said carefully, throw glances around. If the guy I think is following us is Ronny, make sure I understand it. Don’t take initiatives, just follow me. Clear?”, she said

  I nodded

  “And I want you to do the same”, she said, addressing Jack

  “Sure”, he reassured her, looking calm

  But when we got out of the elevator the parking lot seemed deserted, with only cars and hot air filling the space. We walked to Avery’s car in silence. Avery had come here with a private vehicle, so that it looked like she was a friend or a relative who had come to pick us up from a trip.

  “So whoever was following has disappeared”, I said as Mariam drove out of the parking