The Proteus Cure (24 page)

“Whatever, Kaplan is a dead end. He can’t tell them about where his company’s assets went because he doesn’t know. Kaplan Biologicals is dead and gone without a trace.”

“You’re sure?”

“Very sure. I took care of it myself.”

Abra looked at him doubtfully. “It’s easy enough to find who bought the assets. It’s public record. If Sheila gets close, Billy, I want to be the one to tell her.”

He usually let her pull the older sister routine, but not this time.

Bill didn’t mention that Sheila reran the DNA, or that he’d switched the sample. He shielded Abra whenever possible.

Sometimes he felt like a traitor to his sister, working so closely with Mama in Switzerland, keeping Abra on a need-to-know basis. But he had no choice.
He
was the one Mama trusted to keep it all together, at any cost. Not Abra.

“It’s all taken care of. She won’t find out a thing.”

He had this under control. Why couldn’t Abra accept that? Paul and Sheila would run in circles and get tired. And despite Tanesha’s threats, she wouldn’t be a factor. He hated bloodshed but Tanesha was the last piece and then their lives could go back to normal.

“Well, I trust you, Billy.” Abra smiled at him and wheeled herself over to the couch. “What would I do without you?”

She patted his hand and he felt his heart swell.

He
did
do good work. And Sheila and Rosko
would
reach a dead end and give up. They’d have no other options.

But he’d keep an eye on them to make sure.

He looked back at the family picture over the mantle. Work could wait. His kids couldn’t.

•

“Daddy!” April yelled as he walked into the playroom.

She had morning kindergarten and had been home a couple hours. Her dark hair was braided and her blues shone with delighted surprise. She didn’t often see her Daddy at this time of day. She and Nanny Maureen were playing a letter game.

April showed him a white card with “qu” on it.

“Nanny’s teaching me about q today. Can’t use q without u. Ever. Queen, quiet, quality.” She took a little bow.

He clapped. “That’s wonderful, April. Thanks, Maureen.”

The shy, blond, British girl offered a crooked-tooth smile. She never talked much to him but the kids adored her. April said she was a chatterbox when the grown ups weren’t around.

“Daddy really missed you kids today so I thought we’d pick up Robbie from school and go see a movie.”

“Yay!”

“Go get your coat.”

April ran to get her shoes and jacket while Bill told Nanny Maureen to relay their whereabouts to Elise when she got home from her exercise class.

He buckled his daughter into her booster seat then drove to Robbie’s school. Bill felt buoyant. He couldn’t wait to see Robbie’s surprise. Seeing his father shouldn’t be such a monumental thing, but Bill had been too absent a parent.

He went into the principal’s office and told them his son had a doctor’s appointment. Minutes later Robbie came down.

“Dad, what are you doing here? Is Mom okay?”

“You’ve got a doctor’s appointment, Robbie,” April said, giving him an obvious wink.

“No I don’t.”

“Robbieeeee.” She pulled his arm and kept winking her eye.

They got outside and she said, “Daddy’s taking us to the movies for a surprise because he misses us.”

“Really?”

Bill smiled. “Yup. Just us. No reason except that I wanted to see you guys. I even skipped an important meeting. You up for a movie? Tons of candy and overly buttered popcorn? Those big blue slushes?”

April jumped up and down and Robbie grinned, his equivalent of extreme excitement.

“You rock, Dad.”

Bill hugged him and kissed the top of his head. “
You
rock.”

He opened the car door and ushered them in.

“I have no idea what’s playing or when but if there’s nothing for a while we’ll get ice cream and play some video games at the theater. Sound good?”

They gave him high fives and started chanting, “Daddy rocks, Daddy rocks!”

As he drove by Tethys, unavoidable to get to the highway, he hesitated. If it weren’t for this place, and its fruits, April wouldn’t be the energetic kid she was now. Despite his complaints about the pressure, he loved that he had been able to cure his daughter, could cure others. Maybe he was obsessed with work but anyone who did what he did would be. Saving a life was the greatest thing anyone could do. If Sheila didn’t stop sniffing around, if she got too close to the truth, well …

Didn’t matter what he’d told Abra. No way in hell was he letting all this fall apart because one woman wouldn’t leave well enough alone.

Bill looked in the mirror, gave his son a wave and released the brake pedal he hadn’t realized he’d pressed.

He told himself to forget Tethys. Today was all about his kids.

Billy seemed so sure these little bumps in the process were nearly over that Abra decided not to spend any more time worrying about them. He was competent to take care of matters. When he’d left, Abra logged into her computer to see what the Tethys Foundation could help with today.

She read through her email requests. So many people suffering. She wished she could help everyone, but how much could only one person do? She was already spending Tethys’s profits to help as many people as she could.

Next to giving people babies, this was her most fulfilling mission.

She had an appointment in a few minutes with a desperate woman. Abra didn’t know what she wanted or why it couldn’t be handled over the phone, but she’d insisted. Abra was achy today and didn’t want to venture out so she told the woman to come here and she’d see what she could do.

In the meantime she replied to a missionary about a severely deformed child he’d found in the jungles of Zambia. The girl needed extensive plastic surgery to correct a hideously deformed face.

She typed an email:
Bring her to the Floating Hospital in Boston and tell them to send me the bill. If you need help with transport, we’ll take care of her.

Abra also approved funds for an MRI machine at a strapped hospital in Bolivia, and some electric wheelchairs for Belize City. She copied her accountant on all.

Funds … she had all she needed to pursue Proteus, and plenty left over. All because she listened to that young broker, Ernest Tinsdale, who’d urged her on a winter day back in eighty-six to buy Microsoft. As that stock soared and split again and again, she made Ernest her financial advisor. For the last twenty years she’d listened to him and his advice had been flawless.

She’d made great strides in balancing the thalidomide scales. Improved so many lives. Surely that helped atone for the sins of her parents. She had long since forgiven them, and wondered now if, in the idealism of her youth, she’d treated them too harshly.

Images of the thalidomide babies flashed through her head … no, she had not treated them too harshly at all.

She rolled away from her desk and wheeled herself to the family room. Exactly on time, the doorbell rang. She pressed a button on her remote and the double doors swung inward.

A young woman in her early twenties, with lifeless brown hair, battle-fatigued eyes, and a ragged coat, walked in with a little boy. Even before the child took off his Scooby Doo ski hat and exposed his bald head, Abra knew. The pale face, and the wide, haunted eyes were testament to what he’d gone through, and why they had come.

Leukemia.

Tethys used to treat children, used to cure Leukemia, but no more.

This meeting could lead only to heartache, but she saw no way out of it now. They walked over to Abra and the child stared at her.

“Stop it, Ben. “ The mother nudged him, then looked at Abra. “I’m sorry. We didn’t know you were …”

“In a wheelchair? We all have our troubles. Please sit.”

The mother and son huddled on the huge couch. Ben, fascinated by all the cages, kept trying to get up. The woman restrained him, grabbed his hand.

“Go ahead,” Abra said. “Look at all the creatures while I talk to your mother. They can’t get out or hurt you.”

He smiled and ran to the terraria.

It must be like a zoo to him, Abra thought, glad for the distraction. She knew what his mother would ask and dreaded the answer she’d have to give.

“I’m Emma Smallwood. That’s Ben.”

“Abra. I’m Abra. How can I help you?”

Tears filled the woman’s eyes. “He’s dying,” she said softly.

Emma pulled a strand of hair with her hand and brushed it on her lips. A nervous habit. Abra had seen so much death. It was never easy. And losing children … nothing worse.

“Leukemia?”

Abra gripped her wheelchair as the boy ran his hands along the glass of the cages, filled with wonder at her lizards and spiders.

“They say there’s nothing anyone can do. But I heard about your program, your success with hopeless cases. I was hoping we could try it.”

Little Ben was suffering. Wasn’t that the point of Proteus, to end this kind of pain? Prevent anyone from going through what she had?

Abra began to shake her head.

“No!” The woman twisted her hair frantically. “Please don’t say no. I don’t have any money and my doctor said my insurance is tapped out, but I’ll do anything. Please. I could work here, be your housekeeper. Anything. Please.”

The strand of hair poised by her lips, waiting for an answer.

“It’s not that. We’d give it to you if it would help but we can’t use it on children. Only adults.”

Abra hated that restriction but it was the caveat of Proteus. Never used on children during the trials. But weren’t they the ones they most wanted to help?

“Why not? I don’t care about side effects. It doesn’t matter. I just don’t want to lose my boy.” Tears rolled down her cheeks.

Abra glanced over at the boy, smiling as he gingerly touched the glass. He was intrigued by her tortoise and thankfully not paying attention to their conversation.

“We can’t. It won’t work on children.” The lie made her grip her chair. “I’m sorry. It just wouldn’t be effective.”

It pained Abra to look into the woman’s eyes and sentence her son to death. VG723 could cure Ben, give him a long, healthy life, create a bloodline of healthy people. But she couldn’t say that.

Giving it to children would lead inevitably to questions … unanswerable questions that would lead to investigations. And then Proteus would be finished.

No, this child would have to die.

“I’m sorry. We cannot help you. But why don’t you take him to Disney World? We’ll pay for it.”

“Disney World! Goddamn Disney World? That’s it?” The woman stood, tugging incessantly at her hair, brushing it against her cheek. “What good will that do?”

“It will make Ben happy. I’ll get you a private flight, the best hotel, admission to the parks, a driver … everything you need. Stay as long as you like.” Abra looked down, breaking the eye contact. “It’s all I can do. I’m sorry.”

Damn Mickey Mouse! She was throwing the boy to the white-cell wolves, yet what else could she do?

“I don’t want to go Disney World!” the mother shouted.

“I do,” Ben whispered in the shadow of his mother’s scream. “It’s all right, Mom. I know I’m going to die. But I really would like to go. I can tell the kids in Heaven all about it.”

Silence from the adults.

Abra opened her mouth, tempted to say the hell with it. Save the child. Make the mother sign a confidentiality agreement. No one would have to know.

She wiped her eyes with her twisted hands.

No! She couldn’t risk it. Couldn’t. Not for just one boy. Someday Proteus would save millions of children, but not this boy. Not now

What must he think about her, this tiny broken woman offering him a trip in exchange for his life? She couldn’t bring herself to look at Emma.

Abra knew Ben would probably come home wearing a Mickey Mouse T-shirt in a coffin.

“Please, Mama,” he said. “Please can we go?” His dull eyes showed a spark. “Please?”

The mother gave a weary nod. “Yes, Ben. We’ll go. We’ll go today. Right away. And you’ll have more fun than you ever had in your whole life.”

Emma seemed to have aged since she came in. Tethys had been her last hope, and now that hope was gone.

Abra showed them out and left a message for Billy to make the arrangements.

“God bless that little boy—and forgive me for what I had to do.”

But what about her? Would God bless her for Proteus, or damn her?

Abra wondered if hell could be any worse than this afternoon.

Bill and the kids walked out of the movie, talking about their favorite parts. April was running around Robbie, singing the theme song. Just seeing her with such lung capacity thrilled Bill. His little miracle.

Whenever he saw her it affirmed the choices he’d made. Sure, he’d love to come home every day, share dinner with them, watch TV, ask them about school. On weekends go camping with them or to ball games. But if he’d done all that, April would be a different child. A very sick child.

If he could have told Elise, then she wouldn’t nag him so. Then she’d understand.

But he’d never tell her. Because then she’d be like all others. Asking, “Why is her blood different from ours? Where did that nose come from?” or about other superficial traits. Who cared?

At the end of the day, if the kid you gave birth to or fathered was healthy and happy with no physical suffering, who wouldn’t opt for that?

These thoughts prompted him to turn on his cell phone and check his voicemail. He stiffened when he heard Abra’s message. He called her right away.

“Abra, what is it? I didn’t understand your message. Please stop crying, just tell me.”

Bill handed the kids a handful of quarters and told them to play some games. He felt like someone had sucker punched him in the gut as Abra told him about the little boy.

Why did
he
always have to be the strong one? Just once, why couldn’t she be the heavy? The one to do the dirty work? Because she couldn’t. Wasn’t in her. Saying no tore her apart. That was why she was pushing for public disclosure, to help more people.