Death Spiral (14 page)

“Okay. I've got it,” I say, flip-flopping back to the clinical trial. “We're going to learn more about RNA 120.”

Fourteen

“Remind me again why we're here,” Jesse says thirty minutes later when we're walking down the hall to Dr. Monroe's office.

I stop in front of the computer lab where a lone student, armed with a supersized caffeinated beverage, hunches over a keyboard. “Because when I talked to her the other day, she said there was probably an underlying illness. Maybe she'll know what idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis is and if there's any way it could be connected to the treatment.”

I'm too anxious to wait for his response. I continue down the hall until I get to Dr. Monroe's office, where I find a poster tacked to her door that wasn't there yesterday. I skim the poster while I wait for her to answer:
The
American Society for Human Genetics
annual meeting next week at the Convention Center. I knock a second time.

“Screw it, she's not here,” I say when still nobody answers. “Let's go.”

It's impossible to compete with the “why” and “how” and “who” questions firing in my brain, so I don't say anything as we retrace our steps back through the genetics department. We've just passed the big lecture hall next to the stairs when the sound of Dr. Monroe's voice penetrates my mental disarray.

I stop walking and glance down the hall where I see her camouflaged in a forest of corduroy, tweed, and khaki.

“My tenure review meeting is in two weeks,” I hear her tell the group.

“With these budget cuts anyone's lucky to get tenure anymore,” one of the tweeds sighs.

“Adjunct professors are cheaper,” a corduroy says.

The other tweed agrees. “They don't want to pay for tenure-track positions. All the classes in chemistry are being taught by TAs.”

The lone blue jacket pitches in. “At the regents meeting last night they talked about the possibility of twenty positions being cut. Even tenured professors.”

“You'll be fine, Kayla,” the first tweed says, turning to Dr. Monroe, whose face has gone pale. “You have a good publishing record. RNA 120 speaks for itself. They can't completely gut the department, can they?”

“I don't know,” Dr. Monroe answers. She is dressed in a tan skirt and brown blazer. “I'm not sure about the NIH grant. And Bickwell's lab is publishing a paper about their own antisense treatment. I just found out. An adjunct could cover my classes, and without money, who knows what will happen to my research.” She looks up when she says this. Even though she totally sees me, she goes back to talking.

The group stands around contemplating their situation until one of the tweeds looks at her watch and says she has a class to go teach. The departure of one tweed causes a chain reaction, and soon the group breaks apart. Dr. Monroe lingers for a minute, as if unable to face whatever task comes next, then starts slowly down the hall in our direction. She stops when she reaches Jesse and me.

“Hi, Faith,” she says in a voice that's polite, but not exactly welcoming. “If you're here to see me, I really don't have time.”

“Please, this is important.” I trail along next to her as she continues to her office. “You were right. There was an underlying illness. I just found out my mom had something called idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. Have you heard of anyone else using your drug getting that disease?”

Dr. Monroe whirls around, fire flaming in her eyes. “I've told you, there is no indication that this treatment has side effects. Now if you don't mind.” She opens the door to her lab and is about to shut it, but I stick out my hand.

“The medical examiner was covering it up,” I blurt. “He knew she had the disease. Her toxicology report said there was no morphine in her blood. Someone was paying him to lie.”

Dr. Monroe stares at me like I'm Swine Flu. “That's ridiculous. Why would you say such a thing?”

I glance at Jesse, who's too busy peering over Dr. Monroe's shoulder into her lab where the sequencing machine sits directly in his line of site to notice my plea for help. “I…heard him talking on the phone.”

“Was your friend with you, too?” she says. There's accusation in her voice. “Did he hear the same thing?”

“No, but—”

“Well then don't you think it's possible that you heard wrong?”

The space behind my eyes starts to throb, but desperation eliminates any fear I might otherwise feel. I pull the autopsy folder from my bag and offer up my proof. “What about this?”

Dr. Monroe takes the folder and opens it without speaking. The air vent inside her lab makes a loud clanking sound, blowing dry, dusty air into the hall. I take off my jacket, but even in a t-shirt, my pits sweat. A class lets out as she looks through the pages. Students fill the halls with their backpacks, laptops, and post-lecture banter. Jesse tosses a comfortable “What's up” nod of his head at a guy while I stand there like a statue, my stomach swishing, as I wait for her to finish reading.

Dr. Monroe finally looks up. Her mouth is slack. Her fingers clamp around the folder. “Where did you get this?”

I twist my hands into a knot. I hadn't planned on showing her the file, and now that I have, I realize it would be crazy to tell her that the medical examiner, who I just said was being bribed to lie, gave it to me. I can't exactly tell her I stole it either.

“The medical examiner gave it to her,” Jesse answers for me, apparently not caring how ridiculous the explanation sounds.

Dr. Monroe looks at Jesse with raised eyebrows. “Was that before or after Faith overheard him being bribed?”

“Before,” he says, popping a mint into his mouth.

“Okay, look, Faith,” she says, holding up her hands and the folder in surrender. “I don't know what game you're playing, and I'm sure you're under a great deal of stress, but there was a mistake on your mother's death certificate. A bureaucratic mess up. These things happen. I'm the wrong person to help you with whatever else you need. I'm sorry.”

She hands me back the folder, but my feet won't move. There's something else. I reach into the envelope and take out the matchbox with the microscope slide. “Is this what I think it is?”

She opens the box and pulls out the slide. She studies it for a second, then puts it away with a nod. “It's a sample from your mother's autopsy. Cell tissue from her lungs. It's referenced in the report.” She reaches out to give the sample back to me.

I stand there frozen, arms locked at my sides. Those cells aren't Mom
.
Mom was the music she sang, the words she spoke, the way she ran her fingers through my hair. She was the artist, the addict, the naturalist, and a hundred other contradictions and truths. But still, these cells, this sliver of her being, isn't that her, too? Isn't that what Mrs. Lopez taught us? That a bunch of molecules arranged in such a way form the code that builds us? What am I going to do with those molecules on that piece of glass? I can't just throw them in the trash. Discard her like everyone else has done.

“Keep it,” I say. “You're a scientist. You'll know what to do with it. And you might as well keep this, too.” I write my number on the folder and hand it back to her. “If you come up with anything else about the disease and your treatment, call me.”

I turn and walk away before Dr. Monroe can protest. Any hope I had of finding an answer dies like a bird with a broken wing.

Jesse's bird, however, is alive and well and fluttering just fine. The second her door clicks shut he offers up his latest theory. “Maybe she's the one paying off the medical examiner. She knew her drug caused the disease and figured nobody would find out. And once Dr. Carlisle did, she wanted to cover it up.”

We reach the elevator. Jesse punches the button, but I'm already opening the door to the stairwell. I have too much energy raging inside me to stand still. “Oh come on, that's ridiculous,” I say, bounding down the steps two a time. “Your conspiracies can only go so far. A university professor buying off a medical examiner?”

We reach ground floor and cross the lobby. Jesse pushes through the front door and follows the path away from the building. “No way, man,” he says, stopping beside the pigeon-shit statue. “There was this one scientist in Korea who said he'd cloned all these sheep and shit when he hadn't. And then there was the professor in Boston who got busted for faking data, and the guy at one of the Ivy Leagues who got canned for making up crap about some sleep study. These ass wipes will do anything to get their grants and tenure.”

The emotions churning inside me swirl into a cyclone. I need a target to piss down on. I hit landfall with Jesse. “Oh, is that so? Well, how about this? Have you ever considered the possibility that you might just have the tiniest stick up your own ass about higher education, you know, with Doc and all? Maybe just a twig?”

Jesse points a finger at me, armed to poke me with another feature about ass wipes, but he stops himself and his hand flops to his side. “Maybe,” he admits. “Man, I just want to keep it real.”

“Real?” I ask as the clouds let loose and it starts to snow.

“Yeah, real. Like with Doc. Everything's about success. Get good grades to go to a good college to get a good job to get a good house to get a good life. When does it end? I mean what's the point? When do you get to live?” He pops a piece of gum into his mouth and works it in his jaw before continuing. “My mom was into all that, too. Big house. Expensive cars. Fancy schools. Pedigree. Career. All that bullshit. But it was too much. She cracked. It's the same with those professors. They're so scared of failing, they're willing to lie and manipulate their own research. Dr. Monroe, come on, what are her priorities? You heard them. They're cutting all these positions. You think the university gods are going to grant her tenure if they know her drug is killing people?”

I must look skeptical because he grabs my arm as if I'll decide he's crazy and make a break for it.

“Before Tia I had this girlfriend, Dawn. She couldn't do anything that wasn't for her college resume. She'd volunteer for the save the seals group or help the indigenous people of East Buttfuck, whatever. She didn't give a shit about who or what she was saving as long as it filled the volunteer experience on her college app. People are brainwashed, Faith. I'm telling you, the whole culture is brainwashed. That's why I like you.”

I raise my eyebrows. “Because I'm brainwashed?”

“No, because you're not like everyone else. You're real.”

I want to believe Jesse about the whole “real” thing. He sounds sincere. Acts sincere. Does that mean he is sincere? When push comes to shove which Jesse shows up, the one who lives by Doc's rules and can't stand up for himself, or the one who follows his dreams and carves his own path, a path where real is truly what matters?

I don't know what to say or what to believe, so I keep my mouth shut and start walking. Jesse walks next to me without talking. We pass a guy swaddled in blankets, his life possessions in a shopping cart next to him. I meet the guy's eye as we pass, the wounded, crazed look of someone messed up by life, war, drugs, who knows what. Staring into the guy's eyes, I shudder thinking how easy it would've been for Mom to end up in the same place, discarded and thrown to the streets. A junkie-addict-alcoholic-aren't-they-all-the-same homeless person that people go out of their way to avoid. I reach into my pocket and hand the guy a few bucks.

“God bless you, sister,” he whispers, his eyes coming to life for a brief moment before the madness returns.

We keep walking until we reach a park with a pond surrounded by willows with arching branches that skim the water. A kid in a crocheted hat stands at the edge of the pond and throws in a penny, scaring away a bunch of ducks. We join the kid and Jesse reaches into his pocket and finds a penny. He tosses it into the water and watches it sink with all the other one-cent dreams.

“If I tell you something promise you won't laugh?” He digs into his pocket for more change, as if throwing in more money will increase the odds of the wish coming true.

“Depends on how funny it is.”

“I want to go out west next year when I graduate,” he says, tossing in a quarter. “Find some cabin to live in, or work on a ranch. Spend a few years taking pictures and shoveling horseshit for a living. And I mean the kind that comes out of a horse's ass, not the kind they feed you in college.”

“Then do it.”

“I don't know,” he says. “It's complicated.” He doesn't explain why it's complicated, though I have a pretty good idea what he means.

We stand side-by-side, listening to the chatter of two jays as they battle over a breadcrumb an old woman has tossed to them. The birds flap their wings and squawk at each other until one declares himself winner.

“What about you?” Jesse asks as the woman tosses a crumb to the loser.

“What
about
me?” I say, though I know exactly what he's getting at.

“What are you going to do with your life?”

I pull a pair of mittens from my pocket and take my time putting them on before answering. “I really like biology. I'm thinking about college…but…I don't know. It's kind of up in the air.”

“Screw college,” Jesse says with a convincing grin. “There's great biology in the west. Come with me and be my assistant.”

I have no idea which Jesse is talking, so I make a joke. “Great. Just what I always wanted. To be a shit-shoveler's assistant.”

Jesse opens his mouth and catches a snowflake on his tongue. I do the same. We stand there, enjoying snowflakes melting on our tongues until Jesse gets a sly look on his face. Before I have a chance to react, he scoops up a pile of snow and hurls it in my direction.

“Oh, is that right?” I pack a mean snowball and cock my arm. “Take this!” I holler, launching it at his chest.

“That's the best you got?” He pegs my right shoulder with a fastball. I dodge another attack and start to run. Jesse chases me around the pond. My feet slide around on the slippery ground. I can hardly stay upright I'm laughing so hard. Jesse's laughing too, howling like a wild thing, all the while lobbing snowballs at my back. We circle the pond until neither of us can move, and we're doubled over in laughter, trying to catch our breath.