Elixir (32 page)

“How could I not after hearing what the Congressman said?”

“Glad we got your interest.” He has another gulp. “I think the potential here is...limitless. Let’s make it happen.”

“I’m going to cut to the chase.” He inches forward on his seat. “Mr. Goya filled me in on the overview of your...discovery, and though I’m dying to hear more, I quite frankly can’t...believe this really exists.”

Sean snickers. “Understandable I guess.”

He strokes the whiskers on his gray beard. “In most cases I would dismiss something like this. However, after the Congressman told me about your...history, I can’t say I wasn’t open to hearing your explanation at least.”

“There’s nothing to even explain at this point. It’s done. I have a formula. I can write it down for you now.”

“You have it finalized?”

“Yeah. It’s all there.”

“Don’t get me wrong, a formula would be terrific. I can’t even speculate what that would look like. However, with the timeframe you were discussing with Mr. Goya to get it to market, we need proof. Actual case-study proof.”

“It’s been used before. And worked.”

“A real occurrence with a real patient?”

Sean points at the deck through the glass. “Right there.”

Brow wrinkled, the CDC director gets off his seat and gazes at the pretty girl in the bikini lounging in the sun. “Her?”

“Her.”

“When?”

“Oh, let’s see. A little over a week ago.”

“She had Ebola?”

“Ebola.”

“Ebola?”

“Ebola.”

“And now it’s gone?”

“And now it’s gone.”

About fifteen seconds pass, the man’s face split among confusion and excitement. “Where did this all occur?”

“Switzerland.”

“Is she still being treated by you? What’s she doing here?”

“She’s my girlfriend. I’m just showing her UC Santa Barbara. She’s gonna transfer there next semester and live here with me. It was tough to convince her parents to let her move to the States for school...but I guess they owed me a favor.”

“It’s completely gone from just a vaccine? All shreds of...Ebola? I don’t mean to be rude...but I can’t bring myself to trust that. It’s impossible.”

“You can ask her doctor in Zurich. He saw it work right in front of him. He’s been calling me up once a day to pick my brain about it.”

“I think I just may,” he says, demeanor rigid and contemplative.

“I’ll give you his info,” Sean says, hopping off his stool. He scoops a black Sharpie marker from the floor he’s been labeling boxes with, tears a cardboard flap off one, and starts scribbling on it. He says what he’s writing, “Dr. Obrecht. Zurich. Luffen Clinic—”

“Hans Obrecht?”

His hand stops moving. “You know him?”

“Of him. Yes, of course. My office has his number. He’s the top infectious disease researcher in Europe. Arguably the world.”

“I heard the same thing about him.” He flings the cardboard strip and marker on the floor, no need for them anymore.

“And he calls you up every day to pick your brain?”

“Getting kind of annoying really. Nice guy though Hans.”

The CDC director takes a few seconds to absorb this. “Tell me more about this medication. How does it specifically work?”

“I’ll map the whole thing out for you. But in brief, it alters the way the disease replicates its genetic material.”

“Would it prevent infection or can it only be applied to a patient already sick?”

“Both. I’m a real-life case study for prevention. I took a dose. I needed to make myself immune to go near my girlfriend. When she had it.”

“Did you experience any side effects?”

“I was a little drowsy. That was it.”

He takes some time to process this. “The Congressman informed me it wouldn’t just fight Ebola, but other viruses as well. Is that accurate?”

“It should. The underlying way they all build and spread is the same, as I’m sure you know.”

“What else can you envision it helping with?”

Hands on his hips, Sean stares into the corner, his head rocking side to side. “Let’s see. Malaria. Bird flu. SARS. Typhoid fever. HIV. Even cancer. Those are just the big ones. Others too.”

The man rubs his temples. “Can I trouble you for a glass of water?”

“No prob.” Sean digs his arm in a pried-open case of Arrowhead bottles by the fireplace, clutches one, and tosses it to him.

He catches it with clumsy hands, bottom banging into his chest, his cardigan twisting to the side. He adjusts his sweater, then unscrews the drink and chugs half. He lets out a long exhale, overwhelmed by everything he’s hearing. Silence for a while. “Who’s aware of all this other than you?”

“My girlfriend obviously. Her family. Obrecht and some of the people on his staff. Goya. My aunt, my old teacher, his wife. They just know how it interacts with the body. I didn’t give them the mixture.”

“You haven’t provided the mixture to anyone?”

“Technically, a few others.”

“Who’s a few others?”

“Have you heard of a company called Colzyne?”

“I run the CDC. Yes I’ve heard of Colzyne.”

“Well, them.”

The man laughs. “You’re telling me you gave a medical blueprint to Colzyne Systems? They probably have their best executives planning out the logistics as we speak.”

“Not probably. Definitely.”

“How do you expect a government-sponsored operation to compete with a private firm on that level? They specialize in drug production and advertising. The infrastructure is already in place. Not to mention the funding.”

“I did give them a version.” He pauses. “But it won’t work. I’m gonna give you one that does.”

“Why won’t theirs work?”

“Some of the portions of ingredients are off. They won’t even get theirs to clinical trials. I’m assuming once they find out you have the real mixture they’ll just quit. And even if they don’t, it’ll be next to impossible for them to figure out the problem in theirs. I intentionally made it extremely misleading. And believe me, if I want to make something complicated...I can.” He points at the side of his head. “The real formula is here and nowhere else.”

“Why’d you share one that’s useless? I don’t understand the point.”

“They’re not the type of people who should be in charge of something this powerful.”

“Why would you assume that?”

“Let’s just say they weren’t diplomatic in reaching out to me when they heard I was in possession of this information.”

“I see.” The CDC director is quiet for a while. “How on earth did you come up with it anyway?”

“I just thought of it.”

“My God. How?”

Sean chuckles. “I’m good at stuff like that. I always was.”

The man looks around the hollow room for a while, then through the window at the girl, then back at Sean. “I’m obviously going to have my top people vet this. Inside and out. Before we move forward we’ll need to go through all the different government units that would be involved, work out manufacturing, distribution, everything. Not to mention interfacing with the FDA. It will at least be a few months before we can make this official and announce it to the public. The fact that this creation even exists. And that’s if of course it is what you say it is after we test it. Thoroughly.”

He swirls the water inside his bottle for a bit. His expression turns serious, almost grave, and he says, “Now, let’s say it all does go smoothly, and we do decide to mass-produce the drug. I must warn you, your entire life is going to change. You being responsible for something of this magnitude, with this level of international impact.” He leans forward a couple inches and asks, “Are you ready for that?”

Running a hand through his hair, Sean is quiet for a few seconds. “When I was living in Italy this old man and me got to talking one night by the Pantheon. He told me something I didn’t give much thought to at the time. But then a couple days ago, when I was back in the States, I followed up on it for the hell of it. Anyway, he said to check out an experiment with Manx Shearwaters, a type of bird. You ever hear of them?”

“Yes, I’m aware of the species. We studied them in a biology class when I was an undergrad about a thousand years ago.”

“So there was a group of these birds who lived on an island by Britain. The researchers took half of them to Boston. The other half they brought to Venice, Italy. They wanted to see how they would react after being moved out of their natural home.” A slight grin emerges on his face. “Within two weeks both halves made it back. To their starting location on the island by Britain. Exact place. All the way from Boston and Venice separately. They covered about two hundred fifty miles per day.”

“That’s impressive.”

“You want to hear the most impressive part? That species doesn’t fly over land. So it was impossible for them to navigate by memory, you know, looking at points of reference and backtracking. They were traveling over water the whole time. Blue, unchanging water.” Staring out the window, he sweeps his hand across his body, even with the line of the Pacific Ocean in the background. “And they still made it home.”

“I can’t fathom how that’s even possible.”

“Neither can I. That’s what makes the story so interesting to me. They just had this ability put in them since they were born...to do something like that.” Sean folds his arms. “So you want to know if I care about my life changing when this all goes public? A few years ago, yeah, I would’ve. But now...no. Not at all.” He glimpses Natasha, then turns back to the CDC director. “I think if we have something inside of us that’s...put there by nature for a reason. We shouldn’t repress it. We should listen to what it’s saying and not care too much about the consequences.”

Six months later Sean is washing his face in a steamy shower at his place in Santa Barbara. He grips a shampoo bottle, squeezes some in his palm, and rubs it through his hair. He rinses and flips the water off. Pulling back the curtain, he steps onto the shaggy blue mat, a small scar on his left ankle from his accident in the Explorer.

He unhooks a towel from the door, dries himself off, and ties it around his waist. Squaring to the sink, he turns on the faucet and wipes some fog from the mirror, revealing his reflection. He opens a cabinet, grabs a razor and shaving cream, then squirts some in his palm. He rubs it in small circles over his stubbled face. With downward strokes he trims off his beard. Jutting out his jaw, he makes sure he didn’t miss any spots, then dabs some aftershave on his fingers and pats his skin with it. He puts everything back and heads toward the door.

Feet still a bit moist, he saunters into the connected bedroom, some furniture inside now, a bureau with a Peace Lily plant on top, two night tables with lamps, a full-length mirror, and a bed with a striped comforter. Hanging on the wall above the headboard is the abstract graffiti painting he did of the Hotel Vanessa rooftop, Natasha’s Christmas gift.

She has a big duffel bag open on the mattress and is packing it with clothes, a dress and high heels for her, a suit and loafers for him. Noticing him, she says, “If we leave in the next twenty minutes I think we should be okay.” She tucks a red necktie in the corner of the bag, then kisses his stubble-free cheek.

“I can make it by then,” he says, sliding out a dresser compartment, snagging pairs of socks and underwear. As he slips into them she lunges over and closes the drawer, something he always forgets to do. He strolls into the walk-in closet and collects a T-shirt, jeans, and that leather jacket of his, some scuffs on it from his adventure last winter.

As he changes, his eye catches the Hotel Vanessa painting across the room. Being in an abstract style, the piece doesn’t represent the exact appearance of the rooftop the day he saw it, but the shapes and colors he used in it capture the essence of it. For the pool itself he has a figure eight in black graffiti, diving board a tan zigzag, surrounding wall little green squares, sky two shades of blue stripes, and sun a red circle.

Fixating on the images, he reflects on that moment, the slice of space and time he shared up there with Natasha. He remembers he couldn’t get a read on her, wasn’t sure what she was feeling. It made him tense. But now months later, the moment stands for something different. Above all it represents their first date of many, the beginning of their relationship, the start of something that’s been so much already and has the potential to be so much more. In the years to come the association with anxiety will fade to nothing in comparison.

He finds the same is true for all the other events in his life. Perceptions of them tend to change as he does, nothing engraved. Though the universe only allows one instance of our individual experiences, their memories are preserved through our minds alone, and our minds are always morphing as we take on the next set of circumstances nature throws at us. He feels there are no certainties about the moments of our histories. Except one. They’re ours.

His motorcycle whips down Southern California’s Pacific Coast Highway a while later, Natasha on the backseat in her pink coat with the big black buttons, duffel bag strapped on the bike behind her, towering mountain ridges to their left, endless blue of the Pacific Ocean to their right. The wind hits them head-on, wrapping their skin in a refreshing cool among the warm sun hanging over the water.

He bought a new Triumph bike when he moved back to America, black just like his old one but larger, more space for two. She’s used to riding on it by now, her body leaning in a natural way with it as he bends into turns, her golden locks blowing behind her under her helmet, the white one with the pink racing stripes he got for her in Rome.

An hour or so later he cruises into Pasadena, passing by some familiar sights from his days living there. Angling his head back, he comments on some of them to her above the purr of the engine, a baseball field he used to play on, the Dapper Devil Burrito Shack, his old house. She smiles, enjoying learning about little nuggets from his past.

In a bit he veers into a parking lot behind an auditorium on the SoCal Tech campus, motor still humming even as he slows. News vans for the national networks, NBC, ABC, CBS, all the major cable channels, and a handful of local providers flood the asphalt. A few dozen people circulate with press badges on, a bunch more standing behind a fence along the perimeter.