Good Chemistry (2 page)

Chapter 2

Two months earlier

At Weston-Mills Research, 1321 East Citrus, Doctor Bernadette O’Malley peered through her microscope at a paper-thin slice of brain tissue harvested from a donation body to further her research into brain abnormalities; specifically, as they related to problems of perception, and disorders like schizophrenia and autism.

Bernadette or Bernie, as her friends called her, was focused on unlocking a chemical solution for the problem of crippling shyness. She was trying to cure herself. As a child, she seemed perfectly normal but with the onset of adolescence she became impossibly shy. Particularly around people she didn’t know and more so around boys her age.

It was painful and diminishing to her. Nevertheless, to many would be suitors, her shyness was positively captivating. She already looked the part of some kind of woodland nymph. Her fiery red-orange hair and wide, innocent emerald-green eyes made her ivory-white skin even more pronounced. Her tiny, five-foot frame completed the image.

For most men who set eyes on her it was love at first sight. Yet, when they realized her shyness wasn’t a coy flirtation, but a state she could not be pulled from, they were left to admire her from afar.

If she had worn a medieval gown and lived in a castle tower the picture would have made more sense; however for Bernie, this was no fairytale and she was no princess. To her, it was as though she was living trapped inside a bottle. She could see the world bustling all around her but she remained locked away inside.

She felt as if she could scream at the top of her voice and no one would hear her. Other than Andrew McGee, her research partner and best friend, and Judy Marx, her former college buddy and current housemate, no one had ever successfully drawn Bernie out of her shell.

She met Andrew in a freshmen chemistry class at Florida State. He picked her as his lab partner. His gentle spirit soon put Bernie at ease. She felt drawn to him the moment he pulled up a stool next to her. Bernie turned her shy blushing gaze to him and looked into his soft hazel-colored eyes. He reminded her of the character John-boy on the television show The Waltons.

His feather-light ginger-colored hair always seemed on the verge of floating away on the next breeze. As he spoke, the slightest movement would send it fluttering.

Bernie said hello and introduced herself. Andrew reciprocated and their friendship was forged. It wasn’t until days later that Andrew learned how privileged he truly was.

‘You got Bernie O’Malley to speak to you,’ they all said in turn. All of the college horn-dogs were terribly jealous and now looked at Andrew differently. They all assumed he must really have game if he cracked the Bernie O’Malley case. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Andrew was terribly shy and awkward himself. Not to the same crippling degree as Bernie was, but enough that he gazed into her eyes and knew he had found a kindred spirit.

Andrew had a brilliant scientific mind but he had a deficit when it came to reading emotional cues. He wasn’t insensitive, but the wiring in his brain didn’t allow him to read people. When he finally understood someone was in pain, he was sympathetic. He’d had his taste of suffering.

When Andrew was thirteen his older brother, James Jared, or JJ as his friends called him, was stricken with schizophrenia. He couldn’t cope with losing his sanity and took an overdose of sleeping pills two years later. So from the age of fifteen, Andrew has had the single-minded obsession to unravel the biological basis for the disease.

Bernie admired Andrew. After her first semester, she changed her major from wildlife biology to chemistry so she could share more of her classes with him. She’d been by his side ever since.

Although they seemed like a perfect match as a couple things never advanced beyond the friendship stage. Bernie loved Andrew. She loved him with all her heart, but her shyness prevented her from giving him anything more than subtle clues with her eyes. The words were simply impossible to utter.

Andrew, for his part, missed all of the clues Bernie’s eyes communicated to him. An average man would have known the woman was madly in love with him, but Andrew remained totally oblivious of the fact.

So, for the fourteen years they had known each other, throughout eight years college and six years working side-by-side under a grant from Weston-Mills they’d remained the best of friends but nothing more.

Bernie, worked tirelessly alongside the man she adored, hoping to cure her crippling shyness so she could someday tell him how she really felt, while Andrew remained single-minded and obsessed with curing the disease that robbed him of his big brother and idol.

Time for the pair was running out. Their grant would expire in two months. Neither one of them had been willing to deal with the prospect of no longer working together. Bernie was approached by a headhunter who worked for a major pharmaceutical corporation located in her hometown of Madison Wisconsin. He’d done his research well and discovered a highly qualified candidate in Bernie. The fact that it was in her hometown was the hook. With the research grant expiring soon, he might just reel her in.

It all depended on what Andrew decided to do. Bernie was fairly certain he would find a way to stay. He had developed an obsession with a bartender named Heidi at Alexander’s, a local restaurant, three blocks away. He never had the courage to approach her but she was well aware of his feelings for her. She caught all the not-so-subtle glances.

Bernie looked up from her microscope and stretched her eye muscles. The concentration was giving her eyestrain. She heard the jangling of Andrew’s keys as he unlocked the door and then entered carrying a box of supplies.

Soon, the supplies would be absorbed into the tangle of Petri-dishes, test tubes, beakers, Bunsen burners, and a million other tools and gadgets filled with a profusion of various chemical concoctions.

“Hey, Bernie.”

“Hi, Andrew.”

“Bernie, I’ve got some terrific news. Come have lunch with me and I’ll explain.”

Bernie slumped and sighed deeply as she peeled off her white lab coat. Her pink cashmere sweater crackled with static electricity.

Andrew held the door and the pair emerged out into the brilliant glare of Florida sunshine.

They began their ritual walk along the three blocks of palms punctuated with bundles of elephant grass groomed to look like drums. Bernie dreaded this. They arrived at twelve sharp, as usual; sat in the corner both, as usual; and Andrew ordered a rib-eye medium with a loaded baked potato. As usual.

Then, like every other weekday for the past two years, he began to ogle the barkeep. Heidi was tall, blonde-haired, and fake. From her straight platinum hair and claw-like fingernails, to her fake D-cup breasts and her slight affect of speech, which matched no known country’s accent?

Her icy-blue Nordic eyes were every bit as sharp as her mind. Her chiseled angular face gave the appearance of a rat spying a piece of cheese. She was edgy and always on the lookout for her next victim to come along.

She glanced at Andrew and shook her head in mild disgust. Andrew quickly averted his eyes. He could not have been less her type if he tried. He became fixated on her, though he never found the courage to ask her out.

“So what’s the news?” Bernie interrupted with a note of irritation in her voice.

“Bernie, I’ve solved all our problems. I’ve made a breakthrough.”

“You found a cure!”

“No, not exactly. But I’ve stumbled upon something else that is going to make us rich beyond our wildest dreams.”

Bernie’s eyes narrowed with intense curiosity. “What? Tell me!”

“Okay, let me explain.” Andrew instantly came alive shifting in his seat and gesticulating with his hands the way he always did when he started talking about science.

“You know, I’ve been charting the effects of pheromones on the limbic system as they relate to the process of image formation.”

“Yeah?”

“Well, I took a molecule of pheromone produced in the brain during the stage when an offspring bonds and imprints on its mother. Then I took a molecule of pheromone produced when a mating couple bond. I found a way to fuse them together using a molecule of vascular material from a sample of arterial tissue.”

“Yes?” Bernie was hanging on his every word.

“So the result is a complex molecule that shares only one electron in its outer shell. It’s the perfect configuration to interlock with a DNA molecule and remain stable.”

“So?”

“Well don’t you see? You can put a DNA molecule in the chain. And when you introduce it to a subject they are immediately bonded to the donor DNA for life.”

“You lost me. What does any of this have to do with curing schizophrenia?”

“Well nothing obviously. This is a side project I’ve been working on at the house. Don’t you see what this means? I’ve created the perfect love potion. Now a person can choose anyone they want to fall head-over-heels in love with them and it will last a lifetime. We’ll make billions.”

“That doesn’t sound ethical to me. Love should be natural. You shouldn’t go messing around with Mother Nature like that. You can’t force things.”

“Well I’m afraid I already have. I’ve already tested it on mice and it works perfectly.”

“Andrew! People are not mice. This could be very dangerous. If it’s irreversible, that could be disastrous. Some people are meant to be together and some aren’t.” Bernie thought of the bartender, Heidi, as she realized what Andrew intended.

“That’s not the case. I have an antidote.”

“How’s that?”

“Well, the molecule of vascular tissue used is sensitive to snake venom. The hemotoxin dissolves the vascular molecule and the whole chain unravels leaving behind nothing more than a few pheromone molecules and a trace amount of venom.”

“Andrew, that sounds insane! That could be really dangerous.”

Andrew shot a glance at the barkeep as she ground ice for margaritas.

“You intend to use it on her, don’t you?”

Andrew’s expression was one of sheepish embarrassment as Bernie hit the nail on the head.

“Andrew, you can’t do that. It hasn’t even been tested on humans yet. Mice aren’t men. You can’t do it! It could have any number of unforeseen side-effects.”

Andrew’s expression grew serious. It took on a grim, almost desperate look.

“I know, Bernie. I realize that. That’s why I need your help.”

“My help! What can I do?” Bernie mouth formed a perfect O as the shock set in once she realized what he was asking. “No way! You’re not testing that stuff on me.”

Andrew took a deep breath and launched into his spiel, which Bernie realized was obviously well rehearsed.

“Don’t you see, Bernie? This is the solution to all of our problems. We’ll have enough money to never need funding again. That is, if we even want to keep working. And, Bernie, that’s not even the best part. This will solve your problem as well.

You could just pick a man, any man you want and he could be all yours.”

Bernie had to break eye contact with Andrew as a glint of frustration and despair flashed in her eyes since the very man he described sat not three feet from her. Her heart sank. The grant money running out was bad enough. She felt sure they would find a way to stay together even if their grant didn’t get extended. But this! This was a disaster. He would give Heidi the love potion and she would fall madly in love with him.

Andrew would be lost to Bernie forever. She was completely out of time now and had to think of something fast. Her life began flashing before her eyes. Her life with Andrew. The life that she’d envisioned for so long. Her whole future. Their future. Everything was crumbling down around her. Her eyes glazed over with sadness.

She had always imagined a huge wedding with her entire family in attendance. A honeymoon somewhere exotic. Rio maybe. She saw them having a couple of kids. Living in a quiet coral colored house down by the ocean. What was she going to do? She needed to talk to Judy. She needed to buy herself more time.

“All right. I’ll think about it. But, Andrew, you have to promise me you aren’t going to doing anything rash. I know how you can get when you get an idea stuck in your mind. You get tunnel vision and there’s no reasoning with you. Promise me you’ll wait until tomorrow.” Bernie leaned her face in so she could look into Andrew’s downcast eyes. She wanted to burn the seriousness of her words into his mind. She could already see the wheels turning in there. “Promise me, Andrew.”

“I promise. I swear. You know you’re the only person I could ever trust with this. Please. It won’t be bad. I promise. Just let me test it on you. It’ll be simple. I give you the elixir. You fall madly in love with me. We’ll wait and see if there are any side effects. Then I’ll give you the antidote and you’ll go back to feeling nothing more for me than friendship. The way you do now.”

Bernie’s head was swimming. She wanted to slap him but she knew it wouldn’t do any good. “This really means that much to you?” Bernie asked, her voice already half sunk in melancholy.

Andrew gazed at Heidi. His expression was wistful and a million miles away. “Oh, Bernie, this would mean everything to me. I see her and I see a whole future together. A huge wedding with our families there. A honeymoon somewhere exotic. Rio de Janeiro, maybe. We’ll live in a nice, soft pastel-colored house by the beach. A couple kids and a dog. Can’t you see it, Bernie?”

“Yeah, I guess so,” Bernie mumbled.