COSMOS magazine

Friday, May 30

Over the past few days, Paul had asked himself more than once why he'd invited Shannon and her son out to dinner. He didn't ordinarily socialize much. Too busy. Besides, after being a skinny, bookish kid, he still had not gotten used to the idea that women found him attractive, despite Lauren's on again-off again infatuation. It seldom occurred to him to ask women out, unless they first pursued him, as she had. Anyway, he certainly wasn't sexually interested in Jill. But there was something very engaging and poignant about that poor child. Jill herself—well, she seemed intelligent and pleasant enough to talk to.

El Gallo was packed, and the hostess had to seat them in a booth at the back of the dining room, near the kitchen.

"Why don't you sit by your mum, Alex, and I'll perch over here where I can have this whole bench all to myself."

"Okay!" Alex bounced into the seat, and Jill offered a grateful smile.

"What do you recommend?"

"Sherbet!" said Alex.

"After the main course," Jill said.

"Yeah, yeah." The boy pointed to an entry on the menu. "The tamales are awesome."

"In that case, I'll try them," said Paul.

For the next half hour or so they ate more than they talked, and the talk was rather stilted. Once the kid had finished his meal, his eyes began to droop, and he leaned against his mother. "Sorry, I'm going to have to get him home pretty soon. He tires so easily these days." Jill looked fairly exhausted herself, arm protectively around her son. "A couple of weeks back he'd be going full speed ahead until at least 9:30. Since we've started the chemotherapy he's gone by 8:00."

Alex opened his eyes. "I have to take a pill every day," he said. "Dr. Collins said since I hate shots so much, he'd give me pills instead."

"How long've you been taking the pills, matey?"

Alex glanced at his mother, who said, "This is the fifth day; now he won't take any more pills for 23 days. Then the morning cycle starts again. Five days of pills, twenty-three days off."

"I'm sleepy, Mom." It was close to a whine. "Can we go home pretty soon?"

"Sorry, Paul." Jill's smile was strained.

"Hey, no need to apologize. I'm about ready for some fresh air anyhow. Alex, you feel up to eating that sherbet before we go home?"

"Sherbet? Yeah, I want lime flavour." The boy jerked his cropped head up and smiled, but his eyes still drooped.

On the way home he slept, stretched out on the back seat. For several blocks they rode without speaking; for the life of him, Paul couldn't decide if it was companionable or anxious silence. I wish there were something I could do to help them, he thought. Mice we repair immediately, humans take a little longer.

"I really am sorry about tonight," Jill said. "I don't blame you for being disappointed."

"Nah. I had no particular expectations."

"Of course not," she said flatly.

Now he'd offended her. What he had said? "You know. I've been here for months, but somehow I've never got around to trying Mexican food. I had no idea what to expect. Jill, I wasn't disappointed. Really, the food was quite good."

The sudden stiffness in her expression eased, and she glanced at him watchfully. "I meant disappointed about being dragged off home early."

"Ah. No, not at all." He touched her shoulder lightly, wanting to reassure her. "It was hard to carry on a conversation in the restaurant anyway. Bit noisy." Had she flinched at his touch? Oh hell, in for a penny, in for a pound. "Has Les talked to you about the cancer research my colleague Drew Chang was doing? Before some crazed animal blew a hole in the lab."

"I read about that, it's terrible. Was Drew hurt?"

"Thank heavens, no. One poor bugger got blown to pieces, though, and the place is a shambles. It's set Drew's work back."

"What sort of research was he doing?"

"He's working on tumorigenesis at the molecular level."

"A treatment?" She was abruptly eager.

"Hopefully. It's a matter of stopping the things as soon as they begin. See, cancers start from a single cell. It has to accumulate just the right random mutations in half a dozen or more nuclear genes. You know, the codes in the cell's nucleus. They control the cell's growth and reproduction."

She was listening. "DNA, yeah."

"Right. One cell starts growing out of control and eventually sends growth-stimulating signals to nearby healthy cells. That can lead to building a sort of rogue blood supply to the—"

He broke off. I'm talking too much, he thought. He often got carried away talking about topics that fascinated him and nobody else. But Jill was still gazing keenly.

"You're saying a tumour starts by accident?"

She was interested, then. "Yes. And it only goes malignant if growth-suppressing genes get damaged at the same time. We should be able to put a stop to all this madness by sneaking growth suppressant genes into the tumour cells." His lips twisted.

"Except?"

"Nobody's been able to smuggle the repair genes inside the cell's nucleus where they're needed. Until now, if Drew's luck holds."

"My God." She was staring at him. "Dr. Chang's inserting genes right inside the... the DNA of damaged cells?"

"Exactly." He sent her a respectful glance; she was quick. "He's been transfecting the sick cells with a very specific retrovirus. It carries the repair code to targeted sites. Then the cells' own maintenance programs insert them and switch the gene on. That's why we're so excited, see, this could open up a whole new effective treatment for Parkinson's disease, just for starters. And some bloody lunatic decides to—" He cut himself short, hesitated. "Actually, I've noticed something extra. My animals seem to be getting smarter." He paused again. It was hard to get this out, it sounded so far-fetched, so hubristic. "It's possible we could use the treatment to boost intelligence in humans, to increase the IQ of the mentally retarded, and … well, to turn ordinary people into geniuses."

"Wow! And this actually works?"

Paul shrugged, not wishing to make exaggerated claims. "Well, on fruit flies and mice, but then they're not terribly bright to start with."

She brushed that aside. "No, but you're talking about cures. Alex—"

He felt wretched. "Unfortunately we're still at least a couple of years away from human testing."

"That might be too late..." Her voice wavered, and he saw her turn suddenly wet eyes toward the back seat.

Monday, June 2

Fern perched on the chair edge, twisting her hands together in her lap. Seeing how nervous she looked, Wayne made a conscious effort to keep his own hands loose and relaxed. The Serenity Holistic Health Clinic now had an oriental carpet on the floor and three classy wooden chairs with leather seats. The brown recliner was nowhere in sight. Dr. Pritchett must be doing brisk business. Maybe he was tapping his own genius within.

"Now, Mr. and Mrs. Elliot," Pritchett said, smiling like a game show host, "I'd like to establish some very simple rules before we begin. First, I'd like each of us to agree not to interrupt each other. Everyone gets a chance to talk. Okay?"

Fern nodded; Wayne shrugged.

"Good. Rule two, we'll do our best to communicate with each other. Part of trying to communicate means being respectful of each other as human beings, even if we may not like some of the things the other person says."

Fern nodded again, but Wayne was finding Dr. Pritchett irritating. What were they, little kids or something?

"Wayne?" Dr. Pritchett and Fern were both looking at him expectantly.

"Yeah. Sure. I'll try to communicate." Wayne kept his eyes fixed on a fly that had landed on his boot, grooming itself with its front legs.

"Good. Fern, since Wayne and I have already gotten to know each other a little, why don't you start out by telling me what you hope to gain from our session."

"I want to save my marriage, Dr. Pritchett."

"Are there any specific aspects of your marriage you'd like to see different than they are now?"

"Well, Wayne hurt his back, and he's been getting disability, so he doesn't have to go to work. We thought it would be nice for him to be able to stay home and work in the garden, and he was going to add a room onto our mobile home, make it more like a real house."

Out of the corner of his eye, Wayne could see her glance over at him. He kept looking at his boot, even though the fly had departed.

Fern sighed, continued in a determined tone. "But then he started getting, like, cabin fever. So I was glad when he started going to the library. It was, you know, something for him to do to pass the time?"

Pass the time hell! It had been exciting, discovering the Internet. He wasn't an outgoing man, liked to keep to himself most of the time. When he did have to deal with others, it stayed on a hot-weather-we've-been-having level. So it was amazing to discover so many people out there on the net who shared his interests. Damned if he'd talk about that here. The Internet forums were his work, his mission.

Fern's voice went on and on. "Then Wayne started having these terrible dreams. He'd wake up screaming like the devil was after him. And last Thursday, he didn't come home from his appointment with you. If he even had an appointment with you."

Dr. Pritchett shot Wayne a brief, intense look, composed his face and nodded. "How did you feel when your husband didn't come home?"

"Well, I was scared! Like, afraid he'd been in an accident. But then I figured he would've called me, or the police would have, you know, if Wayne was hurt real bad or something. But nobody called me. Finally, the next day I got ahold of the police and reported the car missing." She paused, looked nervously at Wayne.

"Go on, Fern. You tell your side of things first. Then Wayne will have a chance to talk."

"Well, I didn't hear anything from the police that whole day. Then on Friday afternoon they called and said they'd found the car in San Antonio. And not half an hour after that, Wayne walks in the door and tells me he's been in Houston the whole time."

Dr. Pritchett said, "Uh huh," and then just waited. The silence stretched on. Wayne sneaked a look and saw that Dr. Pritchett was watching Fern, not smiling, not frowning.

Fern took a deep breath and for a moment squeezed her eyes tight shut. "See, Dr. Pritchett, Wayne stopped being interested in, in, you know... being intimate... about when he got interested in going to the library. I thought it was just because of his back hurting. But now, I don't know. I can put two and two together, and I'm pretty sure he's seeing another woman."

Wayne wanted to shout her accusation down, but God knows what he'd been doing, that was the terrible thing. He shivered. They were both looking at him now, like they wanted him to say something.

"She doesn't believe me, but it's God's truth. I don't know what I was doing in San Antonio. One minute I was sitting here in your office and then... next thing I know, I'm in this park in San Antonio without any idea how I got there or where the car is. I figured I must've left the car in Houston."

"Wayne! You promised you'd—"

"Hold on a moment, Fern." Dr. Pritchett held up a hand. "Part of communicating is listening. Wayne, are there any other times that you've suffered memory loss?"

"Well, I wouldn't really call it memory loss. I just couldn't say exactly what I'd been doing is all." Wayne cracked his knuckles. "Hasn't really happened since I was a little kid. Well, once or twice after my first wife died."

"I believe you, Wayne." The doctor reached toward Wayne as if to touch him, seemed to think better of it, turned to Fern. "Sometimes when people go through a very stressful situation—it could be some sort of disaster, or abuse suffered as a child, or a war—whatever the event is, it's something so horrible the person has to use extraordinary means to deal with it."

This guy's fulla shit, thought Wayne, disgusted. I didn't go through anything like that. Maybe when Melody died, but not before that. And I was forgetting things way before Melody died. But he kept his mouth shut. The doctor was backing up his story, that's what mattered right now.

"You'd hope that once the hurricane passed, or the child abuse stopped, or the war was over, then the person could go back to being the way they were before. But sometimes it doesn't work that way. Sometimes the horrible event just keeps happening over and over in the person's mind. We call it Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. One of the symptoms people sometimes have is just plain forgetting the bad things."

Fern's expression was pleading. "Can you fix it?"

I'm not a fucking wrecked car, thought Wayne. I've a good mind to just get up and walk out. But he kept sitting there.

"There are things we can do to help. If that's what Wayne wants."

In an instant of freezing clarity, he realized he faced a choice. He had his land, and the disability payments were enough to live on. Barely. If he lived a very simple life. But he didn't want to be alone. He thought of the way it had been after Melody died. Crawling into bed at night, he never knew whether he'd wake up the next morning or a week later. Fern had helped him get his life back together. He didn't want to lose her. She was looking at him now, so concerned, like she really cared.

"Yes," he told them both, the words choking in his throat, "that's what I want. I'd like to figure out what's wrong with me so I can live a normal life, be a good husband." Long as I don't have to talk about certain things.

"Good." Dr. Pritchett smiled reassuringly. "I'll want to do a session or two with each of you alone."

"I can come in any time before or after work, depending if I'm on morning or afternoon shift." Fern smiled at Dr. Pritchett and tugged her skirt down over her knees.

"That'll be fine, Fern. Now I'd like you to take some material to read that I think will help..."

Wayne tuned out their conversation and looked around the room to see what else was new since last time. A picture hung on the wall, splotches of paint like somebody puked up their breakfast. Pritchett had a little light shining on it, looked like a bird perched up on top of the picture frame. If he squinted his eyes just right, the picture looked sort of like when you lay under the trees and looked up through the leaves at the sun.

"Will that be all right with you, Wayne?"

He jerked his attention back.

"Nathan wanted to know if you could come in next Tuesday at eleven." Fern was looking at him impatiently.

"Yeah." He nodded. So it's Nathan now, is it? "Yeah, next week is fine."

"Eleven in the morning," Fern said.

"I'll make appointment cards." Dr. Pritchett walked over to his desk.

"Thank you, Nathan." Fern followed Nathan, leaving Wayne to stare up at the painting again. He could almost hear the birds singing and the wind skittering through the leaves.

"But... I'm not sure we'll be able to afford this." Fern's voice seemed to come from a long time ago. Wayne forced himself to focus on her, homed in on her orange and brown blouse.

"Don't worry about it." Nathan put a reassuring hand on Fern's arm. "I'm willing to work with you on the fees. You can pay them out over time."

Wayne walked out holding hands with his wife for the first time in months. Sitting in the passenger seat, watching her adjust the rearview mirror, a horrible vision flashed across his mind: standing in his daddy's old workshop, putting together bombs. He had a chilling, nauseating thought.

Maybe that was the thing hiding in the nightmares.