Taming the Telomeres, a Thriller

by R. N. Shapiro

  He continues, but in a whisper. Andy leans in closer. "I was able to access the calendar on his computer and he was scheduled to meet with your brother on the day of the plane crash. Ron never got to the meeting."

  "Have you called him?" Andy inquires.

  "Yes, I’ve left a few messages. But he never called me back, even when I said it was about finding out what happened to Ron Michaels.”

  “That’s why we wanted to talk to you." Amanda says. "We know something’s wrong. We want to go to New York with you and meet with him."

  "I guess I could call this attorney…" Andy says, thinking it over.

  "Why wouldn't he call someone in our family and say something like, 'Hello there, I'm a patent attorney up in New York. I was supposed to meet with your relative and he didn't make it.’ We didn't hear a word from him. Isn't that a little strange?" Amanda says.

  "Yeah, it is. That's why we should go up there and meet this guy." David says.

  “Okay, okay. Let me do some of my own homework on this lawyer. Maybe we can work something out.” Andy says. “I looked into some of Ron’s research, picked up his personal effects from BBS, and talked to Michael Jacoby, the CEO. He clammed up like an oyster when I asked for details about what Ron did there. Said it was highly classified. Then I also met with one of Ron’s former professors from Georgetown, and that really opened my eyes.”

  “How so?” David asks.

  “He gave me a mini-lecture about chromosomes and telomeres. It’s all way over my head. Cancer researchers are studying how telomerase enzyme affects cell growth. Ron was exploring the frontiers of cell division. I believe BBS was also studying rapamycin and how it affects cells. BBS sent scientists, including Ron, to Easter Island to get it since that’s the only place in the world to find it.”

  “My dad went to Easter Island?”

  “Sure did.” Andy says.

  “Pletcher has to know why Ron’s research was so important. But if he was doing secret research for BBS, why would he be using his own attorney in New York? My findings also make me think Pletcher was meeting with shady Russian contacts too.” David offers.

  “Would my dad really do that? Try to make some secret deal? I’ll never believe it.”

  “I’m not saying that. All of this is just really weird.” David adds. “We need to meet with Pletcher.”

  @Part VII

  Chapter 96

  Orthopedics

  A nurse in a white uniform walks out and calls "Amanda Michaels?" Amanda gets up from the seat beside David, who is surfing on his laptop and listening to music.

  “See you after,” David says to her, never removing his ear buds.

  As Amanda walks down the hall past patient rooms the nurse says, "I've seen you on the news, and it's great to know you're doing so well."

  "Thanks."

  The nurse removes the chart from the wall holder, waves Amanda inside, and follows her in.

  "What's the nature of your visit with Dr. Bodsky today? Are you having orthopedic problems?" she asks.

  "No. I just want to talk to him about some of the treatment I had with him before."

  The nurse looks up from her pad. "So no new problem?"

  "Not really."

  "Alright then. Just have a seat."

  A minute or two later the door opens.

  "How is my famous patient doing? My God you've been through a lot."

  Amanda looks up sheepishly, and notices his accent. Maybe British? The problem is that she doesn't remember anything about him or his treatment.

  "Actually, I have some questions about what you treated me for. Can you tell me about that?"

  "Of course. You were suffering from what is known as a pars defect. Um, let me flip back through your treatment record here, and, yes, you were 12 at the time. It's not unusual for very active young teenagers or preteens to suffer some type of trauma or impact in the very low part of the spine. There's an area called the pars near the top of your buttocks. Problems with the pars interarticularis can also be called spondylolysis. Here’s one of your x-rays.” He holds the x-ray up toward the light looking at it. “Yeah, you had a noticeable space there.

  “Eventually, a vertebra can slip forward because the facets aren't holding it in place. The pars I’m referring to, it's a little gap between the vertebrae on both sides of your spine in your lower back.” Bodsky then points to the bony part of the spine near the bottom of a model sitting on a side table. “When this type of injury occurs, these bones become the problem area.”

  “What causes it?”

  “A significant impact, a fall, or just overuse. Gymnasts, weight lifters, and football linemen are especially prone to this kind of problem. Normally we prescribe nine to twelve months of no physical exercise in order to heal the pars-- eliminating all the stress on that area is what works best. But your pain went away much faster, and in three months I cleared you to go back to playing soccer."

  “Where are you from?” she asks him.

  “South Africa. And, my daughter plays for the M.A. J.V. soccer team.”

  "Have you ever had anyone get better that quickly?"

  "Not that I recall. Like I said, our normal recommendation is almost a year of no physical activity. I'm so sorry about the loss of your parents, but really happy about your recovery, it’s amazing."

  There is an awkward pause, and Amanda can tell the doctor wants to move on.

  "Is there anything I can do for you today?"

  “Was there any surgery, any other procedure you did on me before you finished treating me?”

  Bodsky looks through her chart again, and then looks on the left side of the page for consultation notes.

  “No other procedures, but my notes say you were continuing your regular blood transfusions with home health nursing. Oh, now I remember, you had vWD. That makes sense.”

  “What’s vWD stand for?”

  “Von Willebrand Disease. It’s a blood disorder that causes excessive bleeding. Yours was fairly minor, but it’s something we must watch, especially during a medical procedure or surgery.”

  “Do you have more details about the transfusions in there?”

  “Depends on whether I prescribed it or not,” the doctor says while he flips through some other pages. “It appears I didn’t, so I guess you or one of your parents mentioned it to me.”

  "Excessive bleeding, like, if I get cut it never stops? Do you need to be on medication?”

  “Oh, it’s not total hemophilia. If it was minor, your blood could coagulate, and eventually your body would seal a cut. It just may take considerably longer. There are higher, more serious types of the disease—Types 2 and 3, but you were Type 1.”

  “Okay.”

  “Anyway, great to see you. If you need anything else, feel free to call me or come back in. Kathleen out at reception has the copy of your chart you requested.”

  Amanda stops at reception and Kathleen hands her a folder full of papers. She walks through the double doors of the orthopedic clinic, and she and David get into his car.

  "Well, what did you find out?" David asks.

  "He says I had something called a pars defect. It's a gap in the bones at the bottom of my spine.”

  “I told you it was something like that. Any other scoop?”

  “He said it usually takes nine months to a year of no physical activity to heal. I recovered in three months and was back to soccer. He said it's the only case he can remember like that. Pretty cool, huh?"

  "Pretty cool, but I still have some questions about whether that's a coincidence or whether that means you're special for some reason."

  "What’re you talking about?"

  "I'm wondering whether you are like Wonder Woman, Super Girl, Cat Woman, or maybe all three mixed together," David says with a laugh.

  "You found me out. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to feel inferior. Think you can handle it?"

  "Very funny Wonder Woman."

  “Did you know I have a blo
od disease called vWD?” She asks him, becoming serious again.

  “No, what’s that?”

  “The doctor told me I was getting blood transfusions for it through home health nursing. He said it’s an excessive bleeding disease, but mine was like a minor case. Here’s what’s weird. I don’t hardly bleed at all. When I get a cut now my blood is like tar. I noticed it awhile ago and even told Dr. Lucent and my uncle about it. If anything, I’m like the opposite of vWD.”

  “Let’s look at the medical records and check online. I’ll pull into a café.”

  After he parks, they order some tea and sit down at a round table.

  David turns on his laptop and Amanda opens her medical file on the table and starts to read through it.

  “This website says vWD is a form of hemophilia affecting only 1% of the population. It’s genetic. ‘People with vWD have insufficient or low levels of von Willebrand factor, a blood protein that is necessary for normal blood clotting; thus, they are prone to bleeding…’”

  “Dr. Bodsky said he didn’t prescribe my blood transfusions, so the reports about them weren’t in his file. He just saw the vWD references in his notes,” Amanda says skimming through the various pages of the medical records. “Oh, wait, here’s a typed part. ‘Dad with her today, says Amanda has vWD, Type 1, well controlled.’”

  David is still reading the webpage. “It says, ‘Almost everybody has vWF, which helps form blood clots to stop bleeding. People with vWD, however, either don't have enough vWF or, if they do, it may not work properly.’ Yeah, three types. So you have the mildest, Type 1. That’s good.”

  “But I’m, like, the opposite.”

  David then begins reading through the medical records himself, and Amanda helps herself to the laptop.

  David finally sees for himself that there are no details about the home health nursing service that did the blood transfusions. No company name either.

  “We need to find out why you needed blood transfusions. Maybe your uncle knows.”

  “Uh, obviously for the vWD disease, right?”

  “I’m not so sure about that.”

  Chapter 97

  Matriculation

  "Thanks so much for agreeing to see me," Barbara Simon says to Headmaster Johnson as she takes a seat in his office.

  "No need to thank me. It's a pleasure to meet you again. How is Amanda doing?"

  "She's coming along well with the help of a full-time tutor, and seems more comfortable with her than coming back to school. We just found out she got accepted to the University of Virginia, which is exciting."

  "Fantastic. It’s a great college and many of our graduates go there. Does she plan to go?"

  “To tell you the truth, we don't know. I'd like to take her to visit. She visited with her mom, but of course has no recollection. And she’d have to graduate from high school for it to even be a consideration."

  "Well, yes. And, we’re willing to make accommodations. We've had students before who have had a medical crisis or suffered a disability during a school semester. I'm sure all of her teachers will work with her. She can arrange to take a series of exams, and she’ll need to continue completing her assignments."

  "So she’d be able to graduate, even if she does not physically return to classes?"

  "Correct, she just has to keep up through her tutoring and meet each teacher’s requirements."

  A few minutes later Headmaster Johnson ushers Barbara into the hallway, just as classes are changing. Within 30 minutes, the entire senior class knows Amanda is not returning for her final semester.

  Chapter 98

  Dorothys

  Aunt Barbara brought over a shoebox full of old family pictures, banana bread, and a homemade casserole for Amanda. It was nice of her, but Amanda was glad when she left. Back in her bedroom, with the music on, Amanda started randomly pulling out pictures and looking at them, like with the other scrapbooks, hoping for something.

  Suddenly she sees the picture. The four Dorothys. It wasn't just a dream or a random NDE after all. Somehow she knew it all along. There she is, sitting on a park bench, smiling broadly, with three other Dorothys. Dressed in blue and white, even with matching baskets for Toto, who appears to be missing.

  Wait, where was that park bench? Maybe they were dressed up for Halloween?

  Amanda jumps off the bed and trots down the hall where Brittney is reading on the couch. Amanda holds the picture out in front of her, then places it right on top of her open book when she doesn’t look at it right away.

  "Look. The four Dorothys. I knew it. I just knew it."

  "Wow, so it was something from your NDE. Maybe this is a memory breakthrough.”

  "Could be. I just know I keep remembering it. There were four Dorothys, and when I first came out of my coma I knew what The Wizard of Oz was." Amanda lifts the picture back up from Brittney’s book.

  Brittney places a finger between the pages she was reading and closes up the book, thinking.

  "Well, terrible things happened to Dorothy, but she found her way. Bad things happened to you, and you're trying to find your way, kinda like she was. So you have something in common."

  "It can't be that simple. There's another reason. I've gotta find the other girls and ask them some questions. Charlyne probably knows who they all are,” Amanda says, texting Charlyne and walking back toward the bedroom.

  Can u find them? Text them?

  They don’t go to MA. Gimme an hour.

  If u find them, lets meet asap. Cafe Loco.

  Why so urgent??

  Will xplain later.

  Ok, TTYL.

  Chapter 99

  Four Pairs

  From inside the bedroom, Amanda hears the front door shut. She walks down the hall to the foyer.

  On the floor sit four shoeboxes, each with the top off, revealing new black and yellow running shoes.

  “Why’d you get yourself four pairs of the same shoes?”

  “I didn’t. Two pairs are for you.” Britt says, smiling.

  “I didn’t say I was going to run,” Amanda says, walking by the shoes toward the great room. “Plus, you don’t know my shoe size.”

  “Yes I do. I checked your shoes. They should fit, but if not, we can take them back.”

  A moderate rain falls overnight, seriously dampening the thick pasture grass and, to a lesser degree, the surrounding woods. One thing Amanda has noticed about Brittney: she is steady with her routines. Every morning, like clockwork, she takes off, out of the house, through the pasture, and into the woods, returning maybe a half hour later. She has explained several times how pretty the running path is under the canopy of trees, and how it runs over a small stream, one that Amanda has never seen.

  As Britt prepares to leave, she doubles back into the kitchen area. Amanda is reading Shakespeare’s Hamlet for English Lit, taking notes and highlighting passages.

  “Come run with me. It’ll be good for you. You can wear the new shoes I got you. From all the rain last night, we may get muddled. Uh, mudded. Oh, you know what I mean.” Britt laughs at her own grammar.

  “I want to see the stream down there more than I want to run. Gimme a couple minutes.”

  Amanda gets up and changes into shorts and a comfortable top. A few minutes later she walks out of the bedroom and picks up a pair of shoes in the foyer. As she sits down on the front porch lacing up the shoes, Britt sits down beside her.

  “We’re going to have to go slow, you know, I’m obviously out of shape.” Amanda says.

  As they slowly jog beside each other across the pasture Amanda asks Britt something that’s been nagging her.

  “I haven’t heard you talk about your daughter since you started tutoring me. Don’t you think about her?”

  “I don’t like to talk about Sam. It hurts too much. Bobby’s got her, and I do check on her.” Britt replies. Amanda runs just behind Britt and can’t see her facial expression, which is just as well.

  “How long has it been since you’ve see
n her?”

  “Less than a year. He let me visit her one weekend, and it was amazing. I took her to the zoo.”

  “Can you ever get partial custody back?”

  “Yeah, but I need to be clean for a year, at least.” Britt says, a touch out of breath.

  “Seems like you’ve been doing great since you came here. I mean, that’s true, right?”

  “Yeah. It helps not being around them anymore.” Britt says.

  They run along a part of the trail with areas of mud from the rainfall the night before. Britt takes a step and mud splatters up and across Amanda’s shins and thighs.

  “Gee thanks!” Amanda says, between pants.

  As they trot through the wooded area Amanda speeds up a little bit when she sees a puddle and purposely smacks her running shoe down, spraying retaliation mud and water all over Brittney, including on her running shirt and her cheek.

  “Ha ha! Now you know what it feels like, mud queen.” Amanda shouts.

  From that point forward, whenever either of them spots a muddy area, they jockey for position to be the first to splatter the other. Eventually their clothes and legs are almost completely covered with mud.

  They reach the small wooden platform over the stream. Rivulets of water flow over stones long polished by the stream, which is no wider than 15 feet.

  “This is what I’ve been telling you about,” Britt says.

  “Let’s stop here. I need to rest,” Amanda says slowing, then stopping. Britt pulls her cell phone from the elastic sleeve she wears around her upper arm.

  “Let’s get a couple pictures of us covered in mud.” They snap a few, using the timer.

  “Didn’t you say you did some theater stuff at M.A. before the crash?” Britt asks her.

  “I know I did from seeing pictures, but I can’t tell you much about it. Did you do theater?”