Decoded Dog

by Dianne Janczewski

  A roar from the audience follows Dr. Tennant, but Nathan moves to the podium, quieting the room with his own silence. “Thank you everyone for your time.” Nodding towards the audience, “I see that a line is rather lengthy so I ask that you keep to a single question, and if you are a member of the press, please state your affiliation prior to your question. Could I get a few extra microphones up here on stage so our folks up here don’t have to play hot potato with the single one?”

  “Dr. Winthrop, how long did it take you to make your discovery?”

  “Dr. Tennant, how does your company think it can compensate people for such a personal loss? Why didn’t Regnum discover this on their own?”

  “Dr. Franklin, did this start when you were at Regnum?”

  “Dr. Winthrop, has this brought you any closer to finding a cure for Addison’s?”

  “Dr. Tennant, how can we be sure that you have identified all the contaminated lots?”

  “Dr. Winthrop—”

  “Dr. Abrams—”

  “Dr. Tennant—”

  “Dr. Franklin—”

  We eventually exhaust the crowd and ourselves, and escape from the stage through a back door, down the hall, to a set of service elevators. The elevators open to a janitorial area on Nathan’s floor, and through a maze of hallways we make it to the quiet of the large conference room.

  For over two hours we answered questions directed mostly at Dr. Tennant and me. Mine were a mix of hope and curiosity. His were brutal condemnation. No matter how many ways he was asked if Regnum thought the compensation was fair, he repeated the mantra, “This is why an external committee has been established.” I would feel sympathetic towards his personal hell, were it not for the overt threats Regnum had launched at Anna and Neil. I’m sure his Board collectively came up with the plan, but I suspect he gave the final go-ahead.

  There is little to do now but go our separate ways. The lawyers finalized all the paperwork before the press conference since no one knew how long we would be at the mercy of the public forum. The Regnum folks, including Neil, follow us upstairs and huddle in a pack near the conference room door, then quickly bid us adieu. Neil does not engage me except for a moment when our eyes meet, and he melts away all concern with the slight smile I know so well.

  Like a meerkat standing on tiptoes, Karen searches above the mob and spots me. She smiles and makes her way over.

  “Excuse me Dr. Winthrop, you’re wanted in Dr. Abrams’ office for a few minutes.”

  I apologize for the leaving a conversation and welcome the excuse to escape from the crowded reception that has been thrown on our behalf. We had just half an hour to decompress before we were on again. Though the reception room is filled with university colleagues, select press, and invited friends, I still walk a tightrope careful of every step, cautious of every word.

  We head down the hall to the closed office. Karen opens the door and motions for me to enter, then closes the door behind me.

  Dr. Abrams’ office is a comfortable blend of requisite university formality: leather chairs and dark wood desk, mixed with an eclectic collection of photographs, memorabilia, and indigenous art. Nathan worked for a time for the Agency for International Development and his office offers a tour of the world via its encyclopedic collection. The objects are not displayed for admirers, but put to use holding pencils, offering brochures, and decorating the walls and floor.

  Neil is studying the photographs on the wall opposite the large window. I am relieved to find my friend. “You’re not joining the party?”

  “For now I think it best that I keep my distance from you university types. I’m on the losing team, remember? Besides, I was never one for cocktail parties and large social gatherings.”

  “No, you never were.” Though there is so much to say, I am at a loss for words. “So what now? Will I be seeing you anytime in the near future?”

  “Probably. At least for a while. They’re setting me up with an apartment in DC. I had to agree to spend 75% of my time on the East Coast for the next six months. After that, we will re-negotiate.”

  “That’s a big personal sacrifice leaving your life, your dogs, not to mention having to work for Regnum again.”

  “As a consultant only.” He hesitates but does not break his gaze. “I owe it to the other dog owners who weren’t so fortunate as I and have lost their dogs.”

  “You don’t believe you’re to blame do you?”

  “Not completely, but it did happen when I was in charge, so I’ll never feel completely without culpability.”

  “You had nothing to do with it.”

  “Maybe I could have stopped it.” He walks over to the window and stands looking out. He looks weary, so far from the young man I crashed into almost twenty-five years ago. There is so much I want to ask, but it seems cruel. He turns and smiles slightly, his soul bared.

  “Can you tell me what happened?” I ask. “How did we end up here?”

  “Sure.” He shakes off any emotion. “Were you surprised to see me this morning?”

  “Didn’t you see the look on my face?”

  “I told you you were going to love this.” He walks to the front of Nathan’s desk and faces me, propping his backside against the edge and crossing his ankles. I meet him half way and stand before him. “Remember how I told you how I knew many of the lab managers.”

  “Yeah”

  “In particular, I knew Kevin Duncan since he first joined Regnum as a researcher in my vaccine lab. He eventually rose to being in charge of quality control for all our feline vaccines.”

  “So is he the one who did it? How did Regnum figure this out?”

  “They didn’t. As of Saturday they were still planning to throw me under the bus, especially since you guys told their lawyers there would be no stopping the press conference.” He shrugs off my incredulous look. “I had already reached out to a few lab management folks with no success, but when I called Kevin he immediately broke down on the phone. I could hardly get him to calm down enough to explain to me what happened.”

  “Geez. Poor guy I guess.”

  “Poor guy my ass. He figured it all out the moment that he was told they were recalling a vaccine produced in his production line because it was connected to CRFS.”

  “They actually let someone outside of their inner sanctum know about a connection?”

  “I think they were testing a few people.”

  “So he knew all along that there was a problem with the vaccine?”

  “Pretty much, but not that it was connected to CRFS. He knew there was some sort of contaminant, as the quality data kept showing anomalies in the length of the vaccine virus, but he let it slide because he was trying to keep production steady and it didn’t seem to him to be significant. He felt validated as the months went on and no cats turned up sick. The only good thing he did was limit the output from that run. He restarted the production process with a different cell line, as soon as he could without looking suspicious.”

  “So it would have gone away in time once the store of the contaminated vaccine was used up?”

  “And no one would have ever known what happened.”

  “And everyone would live in fear of CRFS reoccurring.” I sit down in one of Nathan’s guest chairs and look up at Neil. “It’s unimaginable to think about the long-term ramifications if we hadn’t found out what happened.”

  “You mean you. I had nothing to do with it.”

  “Don’t kid yourself. Without your encouragement and funding, and yes, even denying me the grant, I wouldn’t have been open to looking in in this new direction.”

  He adds, “it was really Anna’s observations that were the key.”

  “Judges will accept that. She deserves most of the credit. But she won’t take it. That’s never been her style.” I sit back. “So what’s the deal with Kevin Duncan? Why in the world would he let a contaminated vaccine go forward?”

  “He was a promising virologist back in the early nineties and
was making a name for himself in stem cell transformation. Then the Bush administration put a screeching halt to his research by banning embryonic stem cell research, and his colleagues in other parts of the world started to rocket past him in discoveries. At the same time he got married, and his wife was not about to let him move to Europe where he would have the freedom to continue his work, but at a much-reduced salary. So instead, he opted for an industry job and worked his way to the head of quality control for feline vaccines.”

  “Not a bad job.”

  “No, not bad, but rather boring for a brilliant mind after twenty-some years. In the meantime, his wife left him, and he had a heavy divorce settlement to pay, so when he discovered that there was an extra forty-three-base pair sequence in one of his vaccines, he decided to ignore it rather than risk reducing production levels in his department.”

  “And risk losing his bonus.”

  “You got it.”

  “For someone who doesn’t like the gossipy, personal side of things, you seem to know a lot about him.”

  “He disgorged his life story on our call before I could get him to focus on the facts.”

  “But that doesn’t explain how the extra promoter got there.”

  “Apparently by accident. He didn’t actually know, but there is always a lot of turnover at the technician level, and it’s not uncommon to see mistakes like transposing numbers and then pulling the wrong vial of cells that have been transformed with an endogenous virus. There is supposed to be a double verification system, but that apparently didn’t happen. He said he would have noticed it but he was too distracted by his personal problems, which is fucking unbelievable.”

  “I guess that is better than on purpose.”

  “I suppose.”

  “So that’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  “What about Regnum. How did they find out? When did they find out?”

  “That’s the really fun part. They had been contacting all the lab directors and managers, and all but Kevin had responded. He was avoiding them when he got a call from me. Guess he knew sooner or later he would have to talk to someone, so he thought it would be better to talk to someone who knew him, who was also no longer up the chain of command. After he told me the whole story and cried on my shoulder about his personal life, I convinced him that it would be better for him to come forward. His career is over, but Regnum might be willing to cut him a deal if he publicly admits to what happened.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “Apparently he did a very good job of covering his tracks. There are no data that point to the problem with vaccine sequence length. He falsified them. It would be their word against his. The little guy in the laboratory against a giant pharmaceutical company. On Sunday, I contacted Tennant on Kevin’s behalf to broker the deal, exchanging his confession for them not pursuing any criminal charges.”

  “But—”

  “I know, they said publicly there will likely be criminal charges—‘likely’ being the operative word. But they are happy to let this all go away quietly without a lengthy legal action that would never do anything but make them look even more responsible and continue to remind people of their involvement. Regnum was able to confirm by Sunday afternoon that it happened just like you guys figured. A transformed cell line was used, and something went wrong in culture.” He grips the desk on both sides of him, containing himself. “They settled with Duncan, and switched to Plan B, cooperating with you guys to make it look like they were part of the solution.”

  He laughs at the irony and stands up. “So the guy they were going to pin it on ends up being the one who saved their asses.” He closes his eyes and shakes his head. “They are still going to pay big time for this, even though if you think about it, it wasn’t their fault.”

  I kind of see his point. But it is disgusting how their first reaction was to circle the wagons and find a scapegoat. I stand and walk across the room to the sofa area where Nathan holds informal meetings. I sit and try to relax. “So, they will continue the grants, including Kendal’s. Though I noticed her absence today. Why were the rest of them here?”

  “Let it go. It’s just a PR thing. They would look bad if they ripped the rug out from under all the recipients that they made such a big deal of just six months ago. It improved Regnum’s optics to parade them out today. But her absence is your revenge. I told them as a condition of my taking the facilitator role, she would not be here today and her grant will not continue.”

  “I still think she—"

  “Don’t.” He stands, facing me, “you know the drill, when they go low . . .” He cracks a smile, “besides, a cat fight is beneath you, beneath all women.”

  “Actually it would have been a dog fight, but Michelle is right, as are you.” We are once again in sync. “Did you know it was the wrong track? Or should I be asking how did you know it was the wrong track? You did know, didn’t you?”

  “What makes you think I knew? It was a bit more pragmatic than that. All I knew was that it was a crowded field and in some way I guess, I figured that if anyone could find a more creative, or right track, it would be you.”

  “Why did you think it was the wrong track?”

  “I didn’t. Like I said, it was a busy track. We received seven proposals with a similar idea and it ultimately wasn’t a good idea for you to get caught up in the frenzy.

  “I asked you back then how you could approve the funding for her over me.”

  “I remember. And I answered that the board approved. I am only one vote.”

  “How was I supposed to read that?”

  “Maybe give me the benefit of the doubt?” He comes to me and looks down. “My vote was the only dissenting vote. I came to tell you two weeks later but you weren’t too thrilled to see me.” His face shows no satisfaction, instead a faint trace of hurt. “I had given notice the day before I came to visit, and wanted to tell you the whole thing.”

  “Why didn’t you—never mind, don’t answer.”

  “You pissed me off.”

  “I said don’t answer.” I can be such a jerk. “I’m sorry by the way, for that and because I know it wasn’t your office that gave her my idea, it was my technician, Kate.” He looks genuinely surprised. “She didn’t mean to. She thought Kendal was a collaborator.”

  “What would make her think that?”

  “I told Kate she was an old colleague, when Kendal called to get some cat cell lines. But that was obviously not Kendal’s real intention. Odd that for a split second I actually thought she had changed.”

  “That’s amusing.”

  “It is now I guess. I didn’t think it was prudent to openly disparage another scientist—and I use scientist loosely. Kate resigned after she overheard our conversation about Kendal’s grant award.”

  “That’s a shame. She seemed to want to be helpful when I visited your lab.”

  “Yes, too helpful it seems.”

  “That’s why I like Perky, she knows how to be helpful without giving anything away.”

  “Touché. Wait, why is she here by the way?”

  “She resigned when I did. She was asked to stay on for thirty days after I left to transition the new CSO, but packed up her stuff and walked out the door with me. She retired, but has been bored to tears, so she jumped at the chance to be my assistant for the next few months.”

  “Guess I misjudged her significance.”

  “And mine.”

  His brown eyes have always been so disarming and mesmerizing. Enough said. We are good. He offers his hand and lifts me to him. Sinking into his chest, I will hold him close for as long as he lets me.

  “I have always loved you,” he quietly says.

  I close my eyes, taking in the last of this moment. “But?” I ask, not daring to look at him.

  “But. You fell in love with him.”

  We hold close for a fleeting moment longer.

  As if to shake off the emotion, he takes a step back and cracks a sm
ile. “Despite all the feelings between us, you never looked at me the way you look at Chris.”

  He’s right. There is no need to acknowledge. But I still love him.

  He walks to the window and stands silently for a bit, releasing the past. He picks up his coat and faces me to start the future.

  “Where are you going?” I ask.

  “To get my soul back.”

  “Call me?”

  “Always.”

  It is all I can ask of him now. I watch as he puts on his jacket and heads out the door. No reason to look back, only forward. True to form, he leaves me feeling confident and content. I sit back down on the sofa for a bit, grateful for a moment of calm. Grateful for a friend.

  “You okay?” Chris asks, as he softly enters the room. “Neil texted me that you were in here.”

  A smile erupts from deep within me. “We are good. I feel a weight lifted.”

  “I’m glad. He is an important part of your life.”

  “As are you,” I say as I wrap my arms around and merge with him. I am so blessed to share my life with two amazing men.

  Morning.

  The ringers on our cell phones are set on silent, our voicemail boxes are full. The reporters who were hoping to get an exclusive have mostly evaporated. The morning is newly serene. I open my eyes and there is a giant warm fuzzball six inches from my face. It’s slowly breathing. It’s a dog-butt morning.

  I am the last out of bed. Chris is standing at the top of the hill, eyes closed, head tipped back, the spring sun warming his face. The field down the hill is barely visible through the trees. The dogs are chasing down their morning prey. He looks up and sees me and gifts me with a broad smile.

  I call Anna. “You want to go out tonight and celebrate? We really haven’t taken a moment to take this all in, or for me to tell you how grateful I am to have you in my life.” I want her to know how I understand that without her, we would have never discovered the truth. “You know you are the one who really deserves all the credit.”