Resonance

by A. J. Scudiere

  They had run a long way before Brandon finally stopped. He pointed to a section of the stream. There was absolutely nothing out of the ordinary to the human eye. Even the trained human eye. “I caught them all here.”

  Becky slowly walked to the stream edge then kept going right in, her shoes were already caked in mud and silt and of absolutely no concern to her. “So would you say about a third of them were that way? Maybe a tenth?”

  Brandon shook his head, “No, I’m telling you they all are.”

  Slowly she squatted down, getting a good focus through the running water. There were frogs here, lots of them, but with the movement and the refraction, those back legs were hard to distinguish. Hell, they’d been hard to spot at first in the lexans. Shit! She had run to the site with no tuppers!

  Becky swore at herself a little more, then went back to peering through the water. But it wasn’t helping. She needed to see these guys up close. Looking back at Brandon she asked the sixty-four-thousand-dollar-question, “Do you think you could catch one bare handed?”

  Small deep breaths came from just behind her, Melanie had caught up to them. “You . . . . don’t . . . . . . have . . . . . to.”

  Becky turned to find her baby sister, leaned over, huffing for oxygen, but in Melanie’s outstretched hand was a tall stack of tuppers, with all the lids shoved down in the top one.

  Becky shrieked. “You are a genius!”

  “I . . . . know.” Job done, Melanie sat back to watch Brandon get frogs and Becky try.

  Becky held each new catch aloft, the fifth came up with normal legs, prompting a question. “Brandon, how many normal frogs did you throw back?”

  “Two.”

  “Just two?”

  He nodded.

  The sun was setting by the time Melanie arrived from her return trip to get the wheel barrow. As Becky had ordered, each of the frogs from the other site bore a scrap of masking tape across the lid. And all the lids bore a single digit - the number of legs on the contained frog. There were so many 6’s that Becky had to look again. Each time she thought the numbers must be off. But they weren’t. She stacked the five four-legged frogs from this site in one spot, thinking they would be as useful as all the sixes. Why hadn’t they changed, too? And how did their numbers get to be only one out of ten?

  Becky was frantically writing on the scratch pad she had brought along in case any question popped into her mind. She was beginning to think that today the fifty sheets the pad claimed to have weren’t going to be enough.

  She just couldn’t detect anything out of the ordinary. It was your standard East Tennessee summer day by all measurable counts. So what was up with the frogs?

  Eventually she had to give up. She had no barometer, no litmus paper, and no Geiger counter, so there wasn’t much more she could measure, even if she wanted to. The Geiger counter gave her pause. What if there was some sort of radiation leak? If the government had buried some sort of waste here? Wasn’t it possible? There were always news stories about plutonium being flown in and out of the labs. Could it have gotten here? And had she exposed her brother and sister to it, for . . . she checked her watch . . . four hours? God, her lack of protocol had been horrible.

  2

  Jillian closed the door behind her. No longer ‘Miss Jillian’ in his mind. My God, she was a little chameleon. In the airport she had looked like a kid, ponytail and all. And less than fifteen minutes after they had arrived she knocked on his hotel door, business professional from head to toe. In a deep teal suit that looked like it had been cut just for her and brought out her eyes. He hadn’t realized there was so much green in them.

  She had, of course, immediately told him to quit staring, that yes, she did in fact own several suits and he needed to get it together. Jordan had never had a woman beat him at getting ready before. And certainly not look so good doing it.

  She had thrown her lab coat over her arm then peeled off her jacket just like he had in the stifling Florida humidity. He had sweated buckets just on the drive over. She had looked cool, “I’m from the south, remember?” All he could do was swear to slap anyone from LA who ever bitched about the ‘humidity’ again. And ask God’s forgiveness for all the times he had done it himself.

  He pulled his jacket back on to cover his sweat stains as they entered the hospital flashing their CDCP credentials. Jillian clearly actually owned some of the adult faculties he was pretending to. Everyone spoke to Jillian, wanted her opinion first. She was smart, confident, and on top of it. A million miles from the woman who would pour over paperwork, pulled her hair back in a barrette, and had that weird flat sense of humor. It almost pissed him off.

  It also lent a lot of credence to his new hypothesis that he wasn’t the brilliant theorist. And if that were the case, why was he here? He’d made his own diagnosis. But Jillian had given the same one, and they had all asked her first.

  She followed him out of the little girl’s room to confer in the hallway. “What did you think?”

  He shrugged out of his lab coat. “Same as you.”

  “It makes sense, doesn’t it? West Nile with anaphylactic shock caused by the spider bite.”

  “So we’re here for another two days at least.”

  “Why?” She looked perplexed and he had the feeling he was about to be shown up again. It didn’t sit well.

  “Because you can’t tell West Nile from Yellow Fever or Dengue Fever without a viral analysis or waiting out the symptoms.” By his count, two days was the least amount of time they might need to see the distinction. He waited for her to tell him all about the new reasons he was wrong.

  But she didn’t. “What’s the difference?”

  “You don’t know?” He was shocked.

  She shook her head, her expression suddenly clearly belonging to the girl who had inhabited the other side of the desk from him. It just pissed him off. “I hate you, you know. You walk in there, all confidence and knowing all the answers then only confess out here that you don’t.”

  Her head tilted, and she smiled, “No one wants to believe that it isn’t an exact science. And that family has had doctors telling them that they have no idea what it was and that they called in the experts. That’s us, Starsky.”

  He sunk into one of the doctor’s lounge chairs. It was unfamiliar, but so much like every other hospital’s lounges. “The way I’m feeling I think we should go by Bonnie and Clyde.”

  She laughed, lightening the load on his shoulders. “Nah, Bonnie and Clyde actually knew what they were doing.”

  “Yes, Mom I’m home.” Jillian had the phone wedged between her shoulder and ear while she folded her clothes.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Like crap, Mom. I just walked in the door twenty minutes ago.” And, well trained girl that she was, she was already putting her clothing away. And calling her Mother.

  “So now you’ve been with this job, like, a week? And you haven’t had a day off, what are these people doing to you?” Jillian heard the slight intake of breath and she knew what was coming. “I just don’t see why you couldn’t have gone into private practice. . . why you didn’t-”

  “Mom.” The sigh behind her own voice was deeper and well worn. “I never deluded you about wanting a private practice. I never intended to come back to Signal Mountain and check ears and throats for a living. I don’t have the touch for that. Nor the desire.”

  Nor was her mother getting the everyday prestige from having her little girl go off to Emory for medicine and come back to help serve the community. But her mother’s high hopes had been just that. And they belonged entirely to her mother. So, as far as Jillian was concerned, her mother could figure out what to do with them.

  “So you enjoy traveling all over the place with no days off?”

  “Mom, I have days off.” Then, just to be a little facetious she added, “You know, saving the world doesn’t happen on a nine to five schedule.”

  That managed to shut her up for all of the three seco
nds it took her to shift gears. “So are you meeting any nice doctors?”

  Her shoulders ached. Slowly rolling the one that wasn’t cramped up under the phone, she gave the same answer she had been giving for two years, since the end of her last major relationship. “No, mom, they’re all assholes.”

  There it was, the expected intake of breath, but she spoke again before her mother could criticize her language. “But I did meet a really nice janitor, and he wants to take me out on Thursday- Oh Mom! That’s the other line! Maybe it’s him. I’ll call you next week! I love you!”

  She barely waited for the resulting “I love you, too.” Before hanging up the phone and tossing it on the dresser. God hang her for using her mother’s prejudices against her, but . . . she just couldn’t put up with it any more.

  The bed beckoned. She was tired of being good, tired of putting her clothes away, tired of explaining her life choices to her family. In Chattanooga, smart girls married men with money. Even in this day and age. She knew three girls who attended one semester of freshmen year, just to say they did it, before they went off and married their much older boyfriends. Jillian had wanted her own career, and her own life, and apparently you couldn’t have both.

  She flopped back onto the comforter - tomorrow she had to go into the office and they had to write a report on the spider bite, and then there were four glorious days off until Monday again.

  She had been in the apartment for all of two and a half weeks, and since starting her job she estimated that she had been here maybe twenty-four hours total, including sleep time. Shaking her head, Jillian decided to pass out.

  After half an hour of staring at the ceiling while her thoughts ran rampant with her, she finally accomplished her goal.

  “This is silly, Rebecca.”

  Ooooh, Dr. Warden had downshifted to ‘patronizing’. As her boss, his only real function seemed to be the monitoring of anything he deemed to be under his control - which included employees, discoveries, and even paperclips. Becky just knew she wouldn’t last three minutes without actually hitting him.

  Taking one deep solid breath, she nodded. “All right. I understand. My resignation will be on your desk in fifteen minutes.”

  “Rebecca, where would you go? You can’t just resign.”

  She faked a startled look. “My parents live down the street. And I’m sitting on a huge discovery that will pay off in a little while. I’ll be fine, but thank you for worrying about me.”

  Turning, she began to walk out of the office. His voice caught up to her quickly. “That’s my paper. Those frogs are university property.”

  But she was done. She squared up to face him, as he towered over her tall frame, making her feel small, but she knew she was in the right. “No, it’s not your paper.”

  He started to talk but she held up her hand. “Just because three of those frogs are sitting in my office, doesn’t make them university property. I would point out that my purse also sits in my office. Most of those frogs are still at my home. Sitting under a lamp I bought. They were caught in Tuppers that I purchased with my own money, I have a receipt.” She grinned, then continued, even as she talked this was getting better. “They were caught by my siblings, on land owned by my parents, and since you haven’t anted up a penny for them yet, I’d say you would be pretty hard pressed to prove that I don’t own-”

  He interrupted, as she knew he would. “In your contract with the university it says that all related discoveries-”

  She laughed; God, her day was getting better. She had come for a reward for her brother and sister, and when he’d childishly refused, she’d upped the stakes. And now she was going to walk out with a paper. “Doctor Warden, your contract might stipulate that, but mine doesn’t. I crossed those lines out, on the advice of my brother. Harvard Law, ninety-eight.”

  Warden paled, and it was all she could do not to dance a little jig right there in the second floor J hall of the Reynolds building. She forced a smile and continued. “You can sign reward checks for my brother and sister, and my paper will have your name on it. Or I’ll go draft my resignation, effective immediately, and you can explain to the higher-ups why this doesn’t say ‘University of Tennessee’ all over it.”

  He didn’t say anything. Just turned and went back to his office.

  Becky tried to keep her voice light. “I’ll be back for those checks in an hour.”

  “But-” He didn’t finish and she just smiled.

  It was down the corridor, around a corner and through another lab that her office sat. Definitively out of the way. She went in and started writing up the findings, but after starting with the date, time, and location she realized that she couldn’t do anything. Not anything. Not until Warden put it in writing that the paper belonged to her and anyone else who she chose to have on it.

  If she used university equipment or wrote up anything, the frogs and the paper could legally become property of the UT Biodiversity office. And, since finding new and unusual species and behavior was what the Biodiversity team did, she would be hard pressed to prove it was a personal project. So, for the moment at least, her hands were tied.

  The ranas stared at her from their Tuppers lined up on her shelf. Three of them. All in a row, all looking right at her, their little throats bobbing as though with their breathing. One big, one little, one medium. There was nothing extraordinary about any of the three, other than the obvious extra legs.

  Becky was suddenly extremely grateful to Aaron. That he had chosen law school and in his own arrogant way had decided that no man was complete without some knowledge of the law. He said she’d be grateful when she was in her first car accident or bought her first house. Neither of those things had happened yet. But she sent up a silent thank you as she sat there.

  She was also grateful for her own error, remembering how frustrated she had been, making an extra trip to the restaurant supply store for the lexans she had forgotten to bring home with her. It was all lining up. If she jumped ship she wouldn’t regret it. And if she got fired. . . well, she really still wouldn’t.

  She filled her time reading emails, and doodling, and finally gathered the lexans into her arms. The water sloshed as she walked, the frogs trying to stay motionless out of fear, but constantly having to squirm to correct their balance.

  Warden looked up as she entered. “You’re leaving?”

  “Yes.”

  “I have your checks.” But he didn’t hand them over.

  If she was fired, it would be worth it just to spend this minute watching the prick squirm.

  “Do you have your resignation?” He eyed her, and leaned forward but didn’t ask again.

  “No. Not if I get my checks now and tomorrow morning I have it in writing that the paper is mine and mine alone.” She took the checks and balanced the frogs in one arm while reaching into her pocket to pull out a sticky note. “Here’s my home phone number so you can call me and tell me when it’s ready.” Already knowing he wouldn’t take it, she stuck it on the nearest bookshelf.

  Against the ropes, he nodded, swallowed a bit, then reached out. “Mind if I take a look?”

  Just before his mealy hand closed on one of the Tuppers she turned away. “Yes, I do. These are still my frogs.”

  It was two city blocks to the parking garage then up two floors, and all the way to the back. And this was privileged parking. She was only allowed here as an employee. Students had to park even further away. Her jacket was cloying and constricting, but she wouldn’t set down the frogs. They were her future right now. And something was very wrong with them.

  Her folks’ home was a ways out in the county, it was the only way they could have all that land. It just wasn’t as far out as it had been when she was small. Several of the neighbors had parceled large properties and housing developments now stood where nearby farms and fields had been.

  She followed the local school bus the last few turns to her home and met Melanie and Brandon as they leapt down to the gravel roadsi
de. “No one believes we caught six-legged frogs!” The wail was that of a plaintive seven-year-old who was about an inch from a seriously good pout.

  But that telling everyone part made her nervous. Becky scooped up her little sister and asked Brandon to grab the Tuppers out of the front seat. “Let’s not tell people just yet. They’ll believe you when they see your picture in the paper, even if it doesn’t happen for a while.”

  Melanie consented, and after a slow evening her father showed up and her mother took advantage of adult company, pouring them three glasses of wine from the box in the fridge, if it could be called ‘pouring’. But it wasn’t bad, and partway through nursing her drink and contemplating how she had destroyed her future and was now the proud owner of forty-three frogs she couldn’t investigate any further than a good once-over, Brandon called up from the basement.

  “Becky, your frogs are all staring at me! They’re weird!”

  Her mother yelled back, but didn’t move an iota. “Of course they are, they’ve got six legs for chrissakes!”

  “Becky, can we rotate them?!” Melanie wanted to torment the frogs, and Becky wished she hadn’t started those early biology lessons with her little sister. The girl was too bright - it would be great if she forgot something just once in a while.

  “No!”

  “But it’s fun!”

  In a low voice she spoke only to the table. “Can’t argue that.” The frogs had a lot of built in responses. When put on their back they would flip upright and get ready to jump. If you rotated the ground beneath them, they would turn to stay oriented to the original direction. And it was all reflex. The frogs would do this in the lab even if they were decapitated. Of course that response only lasted a few seconds before the dead frogs would jello-out and lose all muscle tone.

  But it was enough to make the squeamish lab students jump and scream, and the more sturdy-hearted spend good lab time just rotating the dissection trays watching the beheaded frogs reorient one way then the other. In a few live frogs the responses could entertain a couple of elementary school kids for hours. For the frogs’ sakes, Becky regretted showing it to her little siblings.