The 100 Year Miracle (8 page)

Rachel went to the next tank and then the next, taking out flasks and inspecting them. Dead. All dead. Every one of them. She’d only been asleep for a few hours, and already they were gone.

She felt hot tears welling up behind her eyes, threatening to trickle out. She took a wet, ragged breath and ordered herself to calm down. She was overtired. She was in pain. She was frightened. She wasn’t thinking clearly. Maybe what the
Artemia lucis
needed were currents, tides. She didn’t have a way in these tanks to simulate currents and tides. Something like that would be a complicated build. Researchers might take a year to get conditions for a study right, run the tests, and write up the data. She only had a few days. The timeline was unheard of in her field.

God, her back hurt.

Rachel made herself be still. She imagined being back at the university lab. Hers was a sterile narrow room just wide enough for two black counters running down each side with cabinets above and stools below. The dingy white walls were decorated with safety procedures for fire and earthquake, along with biological and chemical accidents and bomb threats, which were mostly a problem in the primate lab. One small instruction sheet explained what to do in case of a mental breakdown. Sadly, the instructions presumed it was a lab mate who was cracking. There were no self-treatment guidelines. She breathed in and out, and her heart rate calmed.

The adrenaline was draining out of her system faster than she’d anticipated. She stayed still. What would I do, she asked herself, if I were back in the lab under these conditions? Hurt. Failing. She would, she reasoned, deal with each problem in order, one at a time. She was in pain. That was the first thing. She was in pain, and she had an opportunity.

There was one box under the tables that was still sealed with packing tape. Moving as best she could, Rachel sliced it open and unpacked the contents. She pulled out an extra-fine mesh and separated the arthropods from the waste, algae, and other debris in one of the flasks. Then she deposited the dead
Artemia lucis
onto a digital scale accurate to one 1/1,000th of a gram.

Nothing in any of the original sources mentioned dosage. And without knowing what compound created the analgesic effect, she couldn’t make meaningful measurements. She continued to scoop until the digital readout said one hundred milligrams. Assuming only a tiny fraction of the
Artemia lucis
was the compound, Rachel considered this to be a very conservative amount.

She took them off the scale and transferred them to a mortar, picked up the pestle, and started to grind. By the time she’d gotten the mixture down to a smooth, homogenous paste, she was sweating. It was harder than she thought it would be. In her backpack, she had half a bottle of orange juice. She took it out, opened it, and set it next to the mortar and pestle. Then, with a plastic spoon, she scraped up the paste, careful to get every last bit. The glob was smaller than a raisin, not much to hang her life on. There was no alternative plan. She had no other brilliant ideas, no discoveries, no chemical breakthroughs humming in the back of her mind. Either this would work or she would die. That was really all there was to it.

The pain was increasing her heart and respiratory rates. There was little time for sentiment. Rachel put the dose in her mouth and swallowed.

God, it was nasty. Fishy in the worst possible way. Rachel’s mouth turned down at the corners, and she stuck out her tongue. “Oh, Jesus. Gah.” She reached for the bottle of juice and chugged.

When that was gone, an unpleasant film of fishiness still coated her tongue. She was tempted to go brush it, but with such a small amount, she feared removing some of the dose. In her first aid kit, she found a few cough drops and popped one in her mouth. It helped, but the memory lingered.

She picked up her pen and documented everything she’d just done. Then she looked at her watch.

“Shit.”

Hooper was going to be furious. She had to hurry.

Rachel stripped off her clothes, including the muddy socks, which she tossed in the bathroom trash on the way to the shower. She soaped the most critical parts in record time. In the cold cabin, she’d gotten used to speed dressing, and it wasn’t until she stood in front of the mirror combing her wet hair back into a ponytail that she noticed the knot on the side of her head. She must have hit it when she fell. It had swollen up half an inch from her temple and was already bruising. It could have been worse, but it was bad enough, and it was noticeable.

With gentle fingers, Rachel touched the center of the knot. No pain. She leaned closer to the mirror and concentrated. She touched it again—harder this time, hard enough to hurt a wound like that. She felt the pressure. She felt her fingers against her head but no pain. That was then she noticed she’d showered, dressed, and combed her hair. She’d done those things like—like a normal person.

No pain.

No pain at all.

Rachel bent forward. Just did it—without taking a breath, without stiffening her muscles, without preparing herself, without anything.

No pain.

She stood up. She was almost afraid to think it, to think anything at all, lest that be the thing that burst the spell. But she couldn’t stop herself. Rachel spun around. She spun around with her arms out. She spun like a little girl would spin. Rachel spun and spun, and then she laughed. She laughed until tears streamed down her face.

For the first time since she was six years old, Rachel was not in pain.

11.

Tilda had dropped off Harry at the Episcopal church. It was small with a newer addition on the back, painted white with a peaked gray roof and a bell tower perched like an afterthought on top. The sign out front with the moveable white letters that announced service times did, in fact, say
VISITORS WELCOME
, but Tilda was true to her word. She did not go in. Instead, she drove the quarter mile to the gentrified stretch of downtown, which had been far more down-on-its-heels when she’d lived there.

Now all the buildings had been painted the same shade of white, and all the plants were green and some even in bloom despite it being early December. A public employee was up on a ladder starting to hang large red ribbons from each light post. And there was a four-foot bronze rooster that had been yoked with a real evergreen wreath in front of a fancy garden shop. Tilda imagined the flower boxes would soon all be replaced by potted poinsettias. There was probably a schedule for it by which all the shopkeepers had to abide. It was as if her downtown had been taken over by a particularly strict condo board.

On top of it all, none of the stores carried anything practical anymore. You couldn’t buy a jar of off-brand peanut butter or a book of stamps or get someone to clean your teeth. All of those things had been moved to the uglier utilitarian buildings that had gone up in the 1960s across town. Here your options were fair-trade coffee for four dollars a cup, a designer sweater for two hundred, or a plate of pasta with “basil foam” for thirty-five.

There was still the head-in diagonal parking that she remembered, but she was lucky to find a space, something that hadn’t been an issue before. The hardware store she liked was gone. Probably run off by the pet accessories store that had taken its place. It seemed to Tilda that any creature lacking thumbs and speech did not need an accessory of any sort, and people thinking they did were ruining everything good and worthwhile.

In retrospect, this might have been overstating things a bit. But Tilda had used up her goodwill on thinking happy thoughts for Juno and accepting Harry’s strawberry jam and sudden enthusiasm for the Eucharist, so she went right ahead and blamed the gentrification in general and rhinestone cat collars in particular for any of the changes that didn’t suit her, which was most of them.

If Tilda were telling the truth, which she wasn’t ready to do just then, she would admit that the changes made her feel as if she no longer belonged. This was not her home anymore. She was not a senator anymore. She was not employed anymore. It was as if her entire life had orphaned her, and she was left to stand alone holding a suitcase in the hopes someone might take her in. But Tilda was not thinking about any of that. In fact, she was actively and purposefully not thinking any such thing.

Tilda jaywalked at a jog, letting her open coat flap, with one of the two books she’d packed under her arm. The coffee shop was bright and full of people and noises. The baristas behind the counter wore mismatched, flowered aprons over their jeans. They had tattoos and easy smiles, and they brought peppermint tea and warm cherry pie to Tilda’s table, which was the sort of thing Tilda liked in a person. She begrudgingly forgave the place for being new.

Like the aprons, none of the furniture matched, and the art on the walls was done by island residents. The unframed oil paintings had low three-figure price stickers next to them. The work was unpracticed and would be hideous in someone’s home, but it was right for foamy coffee drinks.

Tilda was lucky to get a seat. The Miracle tourists had found the place, and she was surrounded by swirling red, yellow, and blue Gor-Tex. Galoshes squeaked on the linoleum floor, and she was poked more than once by an umbrella wielded by someone also carrying an overfull latte and holding the hand of a toddler. Fortunately, the pie was excellent.

It had been her plan to start her new book, but the shuffle of faces and bits of conversation going in and out of hearing range were distracting. She found herself sipping her tea with an FDR biography open but facedown next to her plate, which was naked but for some crust crumbs and a few bright red smears of cherry filling. She was thinking of nothing in particular, which was a rare pleasure that was interrupted.

The door opened for what seemed the fiftieth time since she’d come in, and Mr. Not-the-Feinsteins stepped over the threshold and stopped. He looked startled and unsure of how to proceed. The line leading up to the counter snaked all the way to the door, and by entering, he was already at the end of it and facing a twenty-person wait. Probably, Tilda thought, they would be out of cherry pie by the time he ordered.

Mr. Not-the-Feinsteins stepped to the side, and she thought he would turn and leave, having decided the cost-benefit analysis for his double espresso did not total in the bakery’s favor. But instead he walked right past the line of customers and up to the counter, a wake of disapproving glares accumulating behind him. Tilda added hers on principle. Some people.

She watched as he smiled and chatted with one of the baristas, a brunette who might have been twenty-six and wore a head scarf around her hair like Rosie the Riveter, her bangs nothing but a curl in the center of her forehead. Mr. Not-the-Feinsteins was younger than Tilda but had at least ten years on the barista, who did not send him to the back of the line. He leaned forward, his arms folded over the glass pastry case, and cocked his hip.

Tilda made all sorts of judgments based on this. The barista disappeared into the back, and he stayed where he was, passing the time eyeing the hand pies, brownies, and croissants, both plain and with almond paste. When Rosie returned, she had two large brown paper bags like those from a grocery store. Both were filled with a rainbow of long baguettes, everything from the darkest rye brown to pale golden. She came around the counter and handed them to him, and he turned to leave without ever taking out his wallet.

Tilda was staring at him as he turned to go, and he caught her staring. She averted her eyes, but when she looked back, he was still standing there, holding an indecent amount of bread and watching her. To her irritation, he did not look away but instead came right toward her. Her shimmery soap bubble of solitude was about to be burst.

“I think we’re neighbors,” he said when he’d done a sliding zigzag through the crowd, looking a lot like a waiter used to navigating dining rooms. He set down one of the bags on her table and held out his hand. “I’m Tip.”

“Of course you are,” she said.

She could smell the bread. It was probably still warm, and it was hard not to touch the bag to see.

“Pardon?” he asked.

“Nothing. How do you know we’re neighbors?”

He smiled, and it showed off expensive orthodontia. “Serious detective work. My front-of-house manager told me. That and I saw you show up yesterday with suitcases.”

“Who’s your—was it a front-of-house manager?”

“No one you know. She heard it from the bartender at Jake’s, who’s been around forever. Word on the street is that you used to be an islander. Welcome back.”

“Thank you, but my stay isn’t permanent,” Tilda said.

Tip was making himself at home. He’d sat the other sack down and moved them both to the far side of the table, leaning them against the wall, before sinking into her empty chair.

“I’m glad Harry has someone staying with him,” he said.

“You and Harry are friendly?”

Tip pressed his lips together and crinkled his chin. “Friendly might be pushing it. His dog dug up three hundred dollars’ worth of brand-new plantings, and there was disagreement about their replacement.”

“How do you know it was Shooby?” Tilda asked.

“That’s how my disagreement with Harry started,” Tip said. “I’d rather have a nicer conversation with you.”

She repressed the urge to roll her eyes. Tilda had spent the past decade around men who flirted with any woman sitting across from them. They flirted in the hopes of sex, yes. But they also flirted to deflect meaningful negotiations. They flirted as a form of dismissal. They flirted to win votes, to curry favor, to assure themselves of their charms, and they flirted because they’d been at this popularity contest for so long that it came like breathing. Tilda didn’t know how she’d ever be able to see any man flirt again and not wonder what highway project he was looking to save.

“Tell you what,” Tip said, glossing right over her inner monologue. “Why don’t you come to my restaurant tonight? It’s just three doors down. You’ll be my guest.”

Tilda shook her head and opened her mouth to deflect the invitation.