The Proteus Cure (15 page)

But whenever she entered the Birthing Center and rolled down the long hallways, she felt renewed. The total now came to 8,172 births, all thanks to Tethys. Most doctors called themselves successful if they saved one life. Abra Gilchrist helped create brand-new lives everyday.

She didn’t know the exact figure of the babies her parents had damaged, but she doubted she’d surpassed it. Not yet. But she would. If not from the clinic, then certainly with VG723.

It was quiet this early in the morning. The birthing area was always busy, but on this floor, where they performed IVFs, she could be alone until 8:30. She gazed again at the walls of photos. So many healthy babies.

She shook her head, recalling the night she discovered the awful truth about her parents’ fortune, the night she knew she’d devote her life working to reverse what they’d done.

It had been the night of her graduation from MIT. She’d had a little too much to drink and had wandered into a closet she had no business being in. She’d found a journal written by her mother back in the days when Abra was a child and they all still lived in Germany. And in that journal she’d found the source of her family’s enormous wealth.

Her parents both worked for a company named Chemie Grünenthal and had invested heavily in its stock. The shares soared during the 1950s with the runaway success of its new product, Contergan. The journal said that even though her father had seen early reports and had questions and doubts about the drug’s safety in pregnant mothers, he’d said nothing.

Her parents sold their shares before the news of all the deformities hit.

Contergan was a brand of thalidomide.

The source of their riches had created thousands of infants with deformed arms and legs. Little flippers. Babies with flippers. That was the big project Mama and Dad had worked on. That was what had made them rich.

And her too.

She’d read the journal over and over, searching for redemption in the pages, something to justify what they did. She found nothing.

They’d known.

“Abra? Are you okay?”

Abra looked up and saw Marlene, one of the IVF nurses. “Yes. Just daydreaming.”

“You look a little pale.”

“I’m fine. Just haven’t had my coffee yet. I’ll be in my office if anyone needs me.”

She rolled her electric wheelchair down the hall, her twisted hands shaking.

I’ll make up for it. Truly, I will.

“Come on, Jamal,” Tanesha said. “Time to get you to the bus stop.”

The seven-year old hung back, eyes on the floor. He was set to go—knit cap, jeans, scuffed hightops, and his blue Pats jacket—a gift from his no-account deadbeat dad on one of his whenever-he-feels-like-it visits. The boy won't hardly take it off. Damn near sleeps in it.

“Jamal! Move or you’ll miss the bus!”

Eyes still on the floor, he mumbled something that sounded like, “Don’t wanna go.”

Tanesha put her hands on her hips—a stance she’d picked up from her own mother back in Mississippi—and gave him a hard look.

“Since when you don’t wanna go to school?”

“Since now.”

“Somebody beating on you? That it? That how you got that bump on your face?”

He’d come home yesterday with a bruised cheek. Said he fell on the playground, but Tanesha wondered now if that was true.

“No.”

“Don’t you be afraid, Jamal. You tell me who it is and I’ll put a hurt on him. On his momma too, I have to.”

Finally he looked at her. “Ain’t nobody beatin’ on me, Mom. They’s makin’ funna me.”

“Making fun of you? Why on earth—?”

“They just are. Can I go by myself?”

“Where?”

“To the bus stop.”

Jamal’s words set off a faint alarm in Tanesha, so faint that she wasn’t sure why it was ringing.

“Now why you want to do that?”

His eyes started checking out the floor again. “I just do. Can I? Please?”

“No. You too young.”

“It’s just down the corner.”

Making fun of him … not wanting her to take him to the corner … she didn’t want to see the picture she sensed forming.

“You tell me why they making fun of you. What they saying to you?”

He sobbed and kept his head down.

“They say you tryin’ to be white.” He raised his tear-rimmed eyes toward her. “Why you doin’ that, Mom?”

Tanesha closed her eyes and swayed. Oh, no. Please Lord …

She went down on one knee before him and gripped his shoulders. She felt her own voice on the verge of breaking but she kept a grip.

“Jamal, I ain’t tryin’ nothin’. It’s just happening. I been to a doctor and she’s gonna help me.”

Tears started sliding down Jamal’s cheeks.

“Jerome call you Michelle Jackson, so I hit him!” He rubbed his bruised cheek. “He hit me back.”

Oh Lord, oh Lord, oh Lord. Michelle Jackson! And Jamal getting hurt defending her.

Tanesha had been so worried about her condition that she’d forgot about how it might be affecting her little boy. Her heart went out to him.

“Listen, Jamal, you just tell them it’s a medical condition and—”

“Jerome say that what Michael Jackson said and nobody believed him neither. So can I please, please go down the corner by myself?
Please
?”

She wanted to say, You’re breaking my heart, child. You know that?

But poor Jamal … he was only seven and didn’t know how to handle this sort of thing. Lord, Tanesha didn’t know how to handle it neither.

She forced a smile as she hauled herself back to her feet.

“Okay, Jamal. You can go.”

It near killed her to see his shoulders slump with relief.

“But I’ll be watching,” she said as he wiped his eyes on his sleeve. “And if anybody gives you trouble you just ignore them, okay? Just remember that old saying: Sticks and stones can break my bones but names’ll never hurt me.”

But that old saying was wrong. Michelle Jackson … Lord, how that hurt.

As Jamal started toward the door Tanesha straightened his coat and hat.

“You have a good day at school now, hear?”

As he nodded and hurried out to the sidewalk, Tanesha closed the door till it was barely an inch from the jamb. She watched through the narrow opening. She broke down and started bawling.

She had a follow-up appointment with Dr. Takamura tomorrow. If that girl didn’t have some good news, Tanesha didn’t know what she’d do. Maybe jump off a bridge.

Sheila found a welcoming committee of one waiting by her Tethys parking space: Paul Rosko pacing the curb, wearing jeans, a windbreaker, and a troubled expression.

“Paul?” she said as she got out. “What are you doing here so early?”

“Waiting for you.

“Something wrong?”

“Could the test be wrong?”

“No. DNA is never wrong.”

He started pacing again. “You think the KB26 could have changed his DNA?”

“His blood DNA, maybe. But not the tissue and that’s what we checked. I’m sorry, Paul. I know it’s hard but you’ll have to accept the results.”

“I’m telling you, he’s changed right in front of my eyes.
Something is rotten in the state of Denmark
and I’m going to find out what.”

Another literary reference. What was that?
Hamlet?

He walked off in a huff toward the far end of the parking lot.

Sheila watched him go, struck by his intensity, his unshakable certainty. But it didn’t matter how certain he was, DNA didn’t lie.

But as she hurried through the chill air toward the Admin building, she wondered how to prove that to Paul. He was bullheaded, but no dummy. His education might have been limited to high school—she assumed a cable installer wouldn’t have progressed much beyond that—but he was undoubtedly smart, and extremely well read. One of those intellectual diamonds in the rough who, for one reason or another—maybe family finances—hadn’t fulfilled his academic potential.

Despite Paul’s emotional volatility, Sheila found herself drawn to him. She couldn’t say why or how, but she sensed a core of secret pain hidden deep within him. The healer in her reached out to that.

The first thing she did in her office was light up the computer. While it ran through its boot-up, she poured some bottled water into her Keurig single-cup coffee maker, popped in a Cool Beans Midnight Blend pod, and turned it on. By the time she’d hung up her coat and straightened her wind-ruffled hair, both coffee and computer were ready.

Okay, she thought as she slid into her chair, first I’ll pull up Coog’s record. Then go from there. But her search for “Rosko, Coogan” came up with only her own notes for his regular follow-up care. She modified the search with “+hospital” but came up with nothing but his recent trauma admission. Same with “+inpatient.”

Odd. He’d been a cancer inpatient here. Why weren’t his—?

Oh, right. Archived, no doubt. Just like Kelly Slade’s. And speaking of Kelly Slade …

A search for “Slade, Kelly” also returned null.

Not that Kelly was all that important now. But Coog … she wanted to straighten out Paul in regard to the DNA. Neither KB26 nor anything else had changed Coogan’s DNA no matter how much Paul wished it were so.

Bill visited the security room to check Sheila’s activity for the day.

Shen had programmed the spyware to notify him if certain words were being searched. That list got longer every day. A flashing icon alerted him that Rosko and Slade searches had been on her agenda today.

Oh hell.
Rosko, Coogan
, looking for hospital and inpatient records.

Bill didn’t have to wonder what she’d found. He’d erased everything in the file and then archived the empty folder. Even if she did manage to get hold of the folder, she’d find nothing.

He might have to find a way to explain that, but he’d worry if and when the time came.

She’d also searched for Slade.

Was she going to keep pushing and pushing until she’d backed him into a corner? The possibility made his stomach clench.

He made sure the video system was set to record and then left the room.

Sheila’s office phone rang. “Hello?”

“Hi, Sheila. Paul Rosko.”

She smiled. “Hi. You okay?”

“Listen, your hospital takes credit cards right?”

“Yes but any expenses from Coogan’s accident will be covered by the driver of the Hummer or his insurance.”

“It’s not about that. I want a new DNA test.”

Why did he need to hear again that his son wasn’t his? “Paul, DNA tests are never wrong. They hold up in court. People are executed based on the submission of DNA evidence. I’m sorry again, but they’re conclusive.”

“Sheila.” His voice lowered. Softened. Was he ready to explode or had he finally conceded his position? “Please. I don’t want Coogan to know and if I go somewhere else and they test him again he’ll grow suspicious. Please just do this for me. I know the insurance won’t pay for this twice and I don’t have much cash lying around but I have a Visa.”

For anyone else she would have said I’m sorry again or issued a lecture. But she felt his desperation. Wanted as badly as he did to find something other than what they did.

But that wouldn’t happen. Still, if the results of this test would bring him closure, she’d do it.

“Okay.”

“Really? Okay?”

She could hear him smile over the phone. If this brought him peace, one way or the other—

“Bring him back here so I can take another sample and label it myself.”

“Thank you. Thank you so much. I’ll be there in a half hour.” He hung up.

If she asked the lab to rerun it because of a potential error, there would be no charge. Paul Rosko would have enough to deal with when the new results came in without incurring debt.

Sheila wondered about KB26. Seven years ago Coog had been cured by it. She knew the name but wasn’t familiar with that protocol; it had been discontinued years before her arrival.

But if it had cured Coog, why wasn’t it still in use?

She turned to her computer. A search for “KB26” yielded a host of hits. But only within a two-year span. The most recent were six years old. She clicked on those and found mostly notes about completion of therapy on a variety of patients. But then she came across one that mentioned KB26 being withdrawn by its manufacturer. No reason given.

So she searched “KB26 +adverse” and got a fair number of hits. She scanned through a dozen or so but found that all mentions of “adverse” were found in sentences like, “no adverse reaction.”

She leaned back in her chair. How odd. A successful cancer therapy with no adverse reactions was worth millions—hundreds of millions. Why withdraw it?

Sheila had more questions than answers.

All of the moisture in Bill’s mouth seemed to have transferred to his palms.

He flicked his gaze from the video screen to the remote monitor. She was looking up KB26! Worse, she was going to run another DNA probe on the Rosko kid’s tissue! Next thing Diane Sawyer or Katie Couric would be interviewing Rosko about how his child was switched at birth. There’d be an investigation. And it would all lead back to Tethys. This was a catastrophe in the making, the beginning of the end of Tethys and all of his and Mama’s plans.

He could see millions suffering needlessly. Orphaned children whose parents could have been saved. Genetic mutations increasing with each generation. The cost of healthcare doubling, tripling over the next fifty years, crippling the economy.

And of course, his life would be over—imprisoned forever. A cockroach for a pet, and nothing but dreams of what could have been.

There had to be a way to fix this. If he stayed calm he’d find it.

Perhaps the KB26 problem wasn’t the awful threat he’d first thought. Years ago he’d seen to it that all details and references to the exact nature of the therapy had been expunged from the files. He’d held back from wiping all KB26 references from the medical records of the kids who’d received it because those charts were, in a very real sense, legal documents.

So Sheila would find nothing in the Tethys computer. And any search in the real world would lead to blind alleys and dead ends.