The Immortalist (23 page)

“It was Africa that did this to you? That business with Étienne?”

“Yeah.” Cricket saw her reflection in the mirror above the fireplace. Her eyes were like burned-out coals.

Hank set down his teacup. “You need time, Cricket. Give yourself a chance to grieve.”

“Grieve?” The very word seemed to mock her. “I'm not
grieving
over Étienne. I don't deserve to grieve over him.” As she spoke, she dug her nails into the mantel. “I killed him.”

“That's not possible.”

“Don't fucking patronize me. Yes, I killed him. I—me—the indomitable Sandra Rensselaer-Wright, daughter of the legendary scientist Edwin Grant Rensselaer. I killed him.”

“From what I heard, ebola killed him.”

Cricket turned toward Hank with a blistering stare. “And who the fuck gave him ebola?”

As if he hadn't heard her, Hank poured her tea back into the teapot, opened the bottle of sherry, and let it flow gurgling into her cup. He extended the cup to her. “Sit.”

She could have slapped him. He seemed deaf to her feelings, too stupid to know the weight of the cross she carried.

But her knees were shaking. She hobbled back to the love seat and sat down, keeping distance between them. Taking the cup out of his hand, she drank. As the warmth of the sherry spread into her stomach, her anger seemed to ebb.

“It was June of last year,” she said in a monotone—astonished to hear herself speaking, as if the drink had switched on an automatic recording inside her. “Étienne and I were going from village to village in the Congo on a project funded by WHO. There was an outbreak of something called Chi-Chi fever, which I was trying to prove was a human form of Newcastle disease, a chicken virus.

“Guerrilla wars are always breaking out over there. We heard the militias were setting up roadblocks, and Étienne was all for turning back. But not me. I'd heard a rumor of a family in the mountains that had Chi-Chi—a grandfather, a daughter, and a granddaughter. If it was true, it would have been the first proven case of human-to-­human transmission. I had to check it out. And that was my first mistake.”

“Why was that a mistake?” Hank poured another cup of sherry. “It sounds like the Cricket I know.”

“Yes, it was.” Cricket reached for the teacup but paused with her hand just above it. “We never made it. The militia caught us. But once they saw we were doctors, they didn't harm us. They begged for help. Their leader said his village had come down with a ‘very, very bad sickness.' Nosebleeds and black stools—it sounded like an outbreak of Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, a tick-borne disease not uncommon in that area. I agreed to do what I could.”

Cricket picked up the cup, knocked her head back, and swallowed half of it in a gulp. “That was my second mistake. There was precious little I could have accomplished. But I was sure I could figure out something once I got there. I never hesitated.”

“Again, I don't see the mistake. Doesn't your Hippocratic oath oblige you to help?”

Cricket shook her head. “Maybe I had a right to gamble with my own life. But not with someone else's. Tien didn't want to go. ‘I'll be fine,' I said, ‘Go back to Kisangani.' But I should've known Tien would never abandon me. He was a romantic—a lot like you, Hank.”

“Is that what I am? A romantic?”

“Chivalrous as hell.”

“You say that like it's a bad thing.”

“In Africa, the very worst. What we found in the village wasn't Crimean-Congo, but ebola. It was an unusually virulent strain. Of two hundred people in the village, a third were dead, a third were dying, and the rest were wandering about in shock.

“There's no cure for ebola. You can give transfusions, IV fluids, and oxygen. With that, maybe one patient in ten will survive. But we didn't have enough medical supplies even for that. All we could do was separate the living from the dead. Ebola will burn itself out if you deprive it of new victims. So we moved the sick to a chapel on a hillside far from the river. The healthy were ordered to camp in a bean field a quarter mile away. And then we set fire to the village.

“The concept was simple. The execution was hard. Homes had to be destroyed. Loved ones separated. It was medicine accompanied by tears and screams and pleas for pity. Nothing worse—except ebola itself.”

Cricket emptied her teacup to the dregs, her eyes contemplatively closed. She set the cup back down, but without letting go of it. “I was making a last check of the village. In one of the huts, I found a young woman hiding, clutching her six-month-old son. The mother was dying, the baby still in the pink of health. ‘Let me save the baby,' I said. ‘If you love him, give him to me.' But the mother just hugged him closer.

“There wasn't time to argue. Already, the smoke of the burning huts was in the air. And then I made my third mistake—the worst of all. I tore the baby from his mother's arms. The woman lunged from her bed. She yanked at my face mask. She kicked and scratched and tore my blouse. I had the baby, I couldn't fight back. All I could do was shout for help.

“Tien heard me and came running. He pushed between us, trying to hold the mother back. She went at him, spitting, slapping, punching, and . . .” Cricket fell silent. She hung her head as she fixed her gaze on a picture in her mind.

“And what?”

“Biting!”
Cricket's voice, hoarse and tremulous, was punctuated by the crash of her teacup against the brick fireplace. “The bite of ebola . . . She'd nipped him on the neck, just below the earlobe. He showed it to me the next morning. A little horseshoe-shaped mark. The bleeding stopped in five minutes. But that was all it took.

“By dinnertime the next day, Tien complained of a backache; then weariness; then chills. By nine p.m., even four blankets couldn't keep him warm. By midnight, he was vomiting blood.

“His only hope was to get to a hospital. So, while everyone else slept, I put Tien in the back of the Wrangler and took off for Kisangani. I was abandoning the village and the people who needed me there. But . . . it was Tien.

“Kisangani was four hours away. I got there around dawn. Too late. They gave him oxygen, platelets, interferon alpha. They replaced his leaking blood with transfusions. None of it helped.

“His legs and arms were like sausages. His skin was stretched to splitting. His breathing was fitful, the way it comes just before the end. ‘Forgive me,' I pleaded. I knew he couldn't answer. But his silence was unbearable, like an accusation.

“Then . . .” Cricket spread her fingers and pressed them against the cocktail table, as if trying to push it away. She looked into the distance. “Through the plastic of his isolation tent I saw him cry tears of blood. Maybe not real tears at all—maybe it was just fluids that got pushed out of the corners of his eyes in his last moment of struggle. But when I saw it, I screamed. I screamed again and went on screaming until the orderlies dragged me to a small, locked room to quiet me with injections. The injections stopped the screaming, but not the memory.”

Cricket lifted her hands to her face and sobbed. “I went crazy after that. I shaved my head. I tried to quit my job twice. I even mailed my medical diploma back to Harvard, saying I wasn't worthy of it. Last week I was supposed to give a speech on AIDS prevention in Mozambique. When I looked out into the audience, I was back in that village again. ‘Ebola! Ebola!' I screamed. ‘Left side for the living, right side for the dead! Burn everything! Save the children!' You would have thought I was insane. I
was
insane. A fucking embarrassment to CDC. And here I am, right off the first plane back to the States.”

Cricket got up and went to the fireplace. She looked at the floor for a long time, nudging the shards of the broken teacup with her toes. “So there you have it. My career's gone up in smoke. You have the last laugh, Hank. I used to look down on you because you didn't have fire in your belly. Family was all that mattered to you. Friends. That outrageously expensive boat of yours. Well, you still have all of that. I have nothing. I had to lose it all to see what it was worth.”

“I have problems, too, Cricket.”

“Yeah, I know.” Cricket sighed. “I'm one of them, aren't I? Taking Emmy from you.”

“Well, since you brought it up—”

“Try to understand. She's the only thing I have left. My other fuckups are beyond redemption. But with Emmy—there could still be a chance. She's young. She needs a mother. I want to try to be that for her. Loving her could give me a reason to go on living. I'm just afraid that I might fail. I've failed at everything else.”

“Love isn't about success or failure. It's just love.”

“Well, I'm nervous as hell about it.”

“Then trust Emmy. Let her help.”

“Emmy? Trust her? She hates me.”

“No. She thinks you abandoned her because she's not good enough. You cast a pretty formidable shadow, Cricket. Emmy really wants you in her life. She just needs to know that you want
her
.”

“And what about you? Will you ever forgive me for taking her?”

Hank stared at her a long while but said nothing. Then he got up and disappeared into his study. Cricket heard a series of thuds as he rummaged through the closet. When he came back, he was carrying a Brazilian rosewood guitar, a Martin she had bought him for his thirtieth birthday. She was surprised that he still had it.

Hank sat on the couch and quickly tuned the instrument. “Sit.” He pointed to the floor between his knees.

“Really?” She pushed the coffee table away and scooted in front of him. With her head tipped back, her ears were inches from the sound hole of the guitar.

He began to play. She listened, eyes closed, barely breathing. It was the saraband from the B minor violin sonata of Bach, her favorite. The slow, sad harmonies seemed to flow over her like a waterfall. Hank was speaking to her—not just in the music, but in the act of playing it. The sitting together, the homage to happiness long past.
See, I am with you,
he was saying.
I know how cruel life can be. But . . . there is beauty in it, too.

With a final arpeggio the music stopped. Hank set the guitar aside and bent forward to touch his lips to the part of her hair. He had kissed her like that so many times. It was as though all the years of separation had never been. Turning toward him, she rose onto her knees and pressed her lips against his. He wrapped his arms around her. Feelings she scarcely remembered came flooding back.
Why?
she asked herself.
Why did I ever let you go?

And then the doorbell rang.

For a moment, neither of them moved. Then Hank kissed Cricket one last time and got up for the door.

At the threshold stood a tall, thin, poorly shaven man with short, black hair and thick, round glasses—Wig Waggoner.

“It's pretty late, Wig,” said Hank sternly. “Are you lost?”

“No, I'm sure this is the right address. I came straight from the lab. Dr. Rensselaer-Wright is here?”

Hank sighed. “Yes, come on in. Would you like a drink?”

“Maybe some crackers. Do you have any crackers?”

Hank fetched a box of Triscuits from the kitchen cupboard and shook it. “This do?”

Waggoner nodded. Ripping open the top, he started in, eating two crackers at a time. “I ran a rapid PCR test on that blood from Yolanda Carlson,” he mumbled, as crumbs rained from his mouth. “I had to synthesize my own primers for most of those viruses. You'll be happy to know that she tested completely negative for acute cold-­virus infection. My lab had nothing whatever to do with her illness.”

Cricket got up from the floor. “Any positives?”

“Yeah. Human herpesvirus, type 1.”

“Herpes?” Cricket winced with disbelief.

“Yeah. Off-the-charts positive. As far as I know, nobody at Acadia Springs works with herpesvirus, so that lets us all off the hook. She probably caught it in the time-honored way—you know, unprotected sex and stuff.”

“Was anything else positive?”

“Nope. Not even ebola. Good God, ebola!” Wig chuckled as he stuffed another cracker into his mouth. “So, uh, I guess we're done, then. Case closed. You can go back where you came from and leave us to get on with our work.”

Cricket stepped close, her chest almost touching his. “Wig, are you aware that Yolanda Carlson is dead?”

A quavering hand pushed his glasses against his nose. “Dead?”

“Yes. Quite dead. From herpes—is that what you want us to believe?”

Wig glanced at Hank. “Are you sure? Dead?”

“I just performed her autopsy, Wig,” said Cricket. “She had massive organ damage. Liver and spleen practically disintegrated. Do you think herpes can do that?”

“I'm no expert.”

“Well, I am. And I think you'd better recheck your PCR reactions. You screwed up big-time on this.”

“I did check them. I ran positive and negative controls—”

“Your results are simply wrong, Wig. Incompatible with the clinical and pathologic findings. Go back and try harder.”

Waggoner backed away, mumbling to himself. “Maybe the annealing temperatures. Too high? Too low? I'm pretty sure there are no palindrome sequences that could self-prime. . . . The magnesium concentration . . . I could check the magnesium stocks . . . or maybe substitute
Pyrococcus
for
Taq
polymerase.”

“Good night, Wig,” said Cricket.

As he pushed the door shut, Hank called after him, “Why don't you just take that box of Triscuits with you? You look famished.”

WEDNESDAY

Two Days to Lottery Day

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