Human Remains

by Melissa Yi

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  My first instinct was to slam the laptop shut, but that would have been counter-productive, so I said, "Um."

  Joan snorted. Clearly, she'd read the site names too. "He liked white women."

  He liked all sorts of women, but I could see her point. So far, the white women were winning the browser battle. And in real life, how often do you see a black guy and a white, usually blonde, woman? Pretty often. Maybe as often as a black man and black woman.

  Asian men end up with white women too. Sometimes they start off with an Asian woman, under familial pressure, and then they dump her and "trade up."

  No one talks about this, but when non-white guys go for white women, it's like they're upgrading. Meanwhile, if white guys pick a woman from any other race, they're fetishizing us. "Jungle fever."

  "Yellow fever." Like you can't be lucid and like a woman from another culture.

  Although, to be fair, a lot of the guys are fetishizing us. They don't see us as people, just another type to bang and brag about.

  I don't think Tucker sees me that way, but it is weird how much he relishes other languages and cultures. Who else tries to learn Arabic and Urdu from random patients? I never asked if he dated a straight up white, Canadian, "my family's been here forever" girl, partly because it would make me crazy to find out.

  In any case, I didn't feel great commenting on Lawrence's sexual proclivities. I changed the subject. "Lots of people like white women, but he chose to marry you."

  The corners of her mouth turned down. "You are so innocent, Doctor Hope. Uganda is not like Canada. We are not—the men are not—" She stopped to select her words. "We recognize all sorts of marriages. Christian, Hindu, Islamic, or a customary marriage."

  "What's that?"

  "It is performed under African customary law and includes polygamous marriages. You may have heard of President Uhuru Kenyatta's law in Kenya."

  Of course I hadn't.

  Her breath escaped in a sigh. "He removed the clause that a man had to consult his first wife before marrying another wife. A man can also marry as many women as he wishes."

  "Well, that's nuts," I said. "Who would want that?"

  She burst into laughter. "Ah, Doctor Hope. You are so refreshing."

  It made me sound like a soft drink ad. I shook my head. "No, seriously."

  "Seriously, Doctor Hope, I admit that many women were not in favour of this law, but some Ugandan men spoke of moving to Kenya after it was passed. So you see the cultural differences between my country and yours."

  "Yes," I said. I try to appreciate other cultures, but I couldn't see any advantage for women when guys could spread it around everywhere. Putting emotion aside, how many kids would he have? What about disease? "Does it make a difference if you were married in a church?"

  "Yes, we had a white wedding."

  I sat up a little straighter. Did she mean white as in a white dress, or white as in that's how white people do it? Either way, Western customs were taking over the world. Traditionally, white is the colour of mourning in China, but I had a cousin get married in a white cheongsam, or traditional Chinese garment, before she switched to a red one for the reception, and most didn't bother with a cheongsam at all.

  "Lawrence was progressive in many ways," she said. "That was one of the things I loved about him."

  Huh. I'd never related to the Christian cannon—among other things, I didn't respond to the idea of God sending his son down to be tortured, even if he did get resurrected—but if the alternative was a world where guys could gather wives like Pokémon, I'd go for the church.

  "Are you saying … " I had to phrase it carefully. "Was he allowed to have sexual relations with other women?"

  "The church discourages it," she said.

  The church. But what about her, Immaculate Joan? Didn't it matter what she said?

  She gave me a sad smile. "I wanted to keep my husband, Doctor Hope."

  In the Western World, if we want to keep our men, we may offer more blow jobs than we really feel like, but we don't give them carte blanche.

  Then I thought of Ryan and Tucker. I would rather rip my heart out of my own thorax than give either of them up. I was in no position to lecture anyone about monogamy.

  So. "Do you know if he was having sex with other women, or just watching porn?" I know some people think there's no "just" about porn, but come on. Would you rather your husband stared at the computer screen, or got jiggy with other real, live human beings?

  Joan shook her head. "We didn't talk about it. We used to talk about it, many times. I would cry, I would beg him, I would bring him to church. Nothing would change. I thought Canada might be a new start for us."

  I made a sad face and nodded before I glanced at the computer. "Did you ever read his e-mail or his texts?"

  She shook her head. "I don't have his passwords. He only gave me the one to unlock his laptop. After I got pregnant, he said I could check my e-mail on it instead of walking to the library."

  What a saint. Even the fact that he didn't wipe his browser cache after looking at porn—blah. "Can you figure out his password?"

  After about ten minutes of dreaming up different combinations, the conclusion was, no. She settled back into bed with a sigh.

  "Listen. Let me see what's not password-protected, okay? And maybe I can copy some of his files on my USB."

  "All right." She sighed and started pressing on her breasts, grimacing, while I clicked. Her baby needed her. But first, I pointed out the most obvious thing I'd found, a graphic that had been saved under his non-protected Pictures folder. "He made up an ad for Craigslist."

  "What's Craigslist?"

  "It's like classified ads, online."

  Her face contorted. "You think he was meeting women?"

  "Not with this ad. Craigslist is for everything. People buy and sell furniture on it." They hook up on Craigslist, too, but not through this graphic.

  "He was always looking. The women he worked with, they were all single, none of them Christian. They wouldn't come to my church."

  I could not imagine Dr. Hay taking up with anyone. Ducky would probably run away screaming. I thought of Summer, with her conspicuous breasts, and her blushing, and the way that everyone had a crush on her, including the security guard. I shook the thought away and pointed at the screen. "Joan, he wasn't trying to date anyone with this. Look!" I blew up craigslist04.jpg to 120 percent size.

  RESEARCH SUBJECTS NEEDED

  Are you 19 to 35 years old? Are you female?

  We are currently looking for volunteers for a research study.

  If you are interested, please call or e-mail for more information. All queries are strictly confidential.

  Compensation provided.

  Joan's forehead crinkled. "What is this?"

  I hadn't known that gathering research subjects on Craigslist was a thing. But when I used my phone to comb through the Craigslist volunteer section, I found quite a few ads, some of them associated with a university and/or hospitals, as well as companies promising weight loss or help with gambling addiction. The legit-sounding ones had posters of happy people and prominent contact information.

  Lawrence's was a homemade blue text box.

  Here was the first concrete proof that Dr. Lawrence Acayo was going rogue in recruiting research volunteers.

  He didn't have funding. He didn't have a grant. He did have a position at a lab, which gave him enough legitimacy to recruit your average impoverished student into a study. He knew more than most human beings about pathologic viruses, he'd researched Zisa, and he'd monitored hemorrhagic disease outbreaks in Uganda.

  What exactly had Dr. Lawrence Acayo set in motion before he died?

  Chapter 32

  I tried to sneak into the lab, since I was late, but Summer
pounced on me as soon as I beeped my way through the door. "You delivered a baby last night?"

  "Two babies," Mitch reminded her, cutting toward me from Chris's back corner.

  The lab smelled a bit antiseptic. I wanted to sit down at my bench, but not with Summer and Mitch converging on me. Mitch seemed to have eaten onions, even though it was only 9:08 a.m.

  I glanced at the closed door to Tom's office. I needed to get some safety modules done, pronto, in case anyone checked the time stamp. At least Chris was absent, so I only had to deal with two Scoobies at once.

  I squeezed past Dr. Wen to get to the computer next to the window, which was already on. I almost hit him with my backpack, and he frowned. I made an apologetic face at him before I turned to answer the Scoobies, who'd paused in the aisle on the other side of Dr. Wen. "Yes, two babies, although only one made it. Joan did all the hard work." I swiped my card over the computer's card reader and typed my password. I still had to re-type it before the computer accepted it.

  My fingers shook slightly. I hadn't slept last night. I'd laid beside Ryan with my eyes closed, my mind leaping with all the things I could have done better with Might I and II. I should have made sure the door was unlocked. She must have rigged it up so that it locked when I shut the door, but I should have checked. I should have gotten Joan to sit down on the toilet after Might II was born. Then the cord might have reached, and I could have resuscitated Might II on the ground instead of on my thigh. I could've started the 3:1 compression to breath ratio right away. And Ryan could have gotten in sooner, and and and …

  The biggest thing was, why hadn't Joan told me she'd been carrying twins? But blaming her seemed like a dick move.

  I shoved my backpack in the shelf under the counter, ignoring the lunch I should put in the fridge. I'd eat it in a few hours anyway.

  "You delivered babies at her dinner party? I mean, who does that?" said Summer.

  Dr. Wen raised his eyebrows and sidled away from me. "Maybe it's more common in Uganda." That was Mitch.

  "Home births are getting pretty standard," I said, trying to keep it cool. The stupid lab safety module didn't want to load, no matter how many times I clicked on it. I restarted the computer.

  "Yes, but with proper training and equipment. You didn't bring anything for a home birth to a dinner party, did you?" said Summer.

  Although I liked Summer, her tone raised my hackles. It sounded kind of TMZ/Perez Hilton to me, with an extra side dish of What will these savages do next? amazement. "Maybe I should have. Maternal stress increases the chances of premature labour by as much as 25 to 60 percent. I looked it up last night."

  Summer flushed and let her hair cover her face, but Mitch didn't care. He scratched his arm and squinted at the snow on the rooftops outside, clearly visualizing the scene. "That's wild. What was it like? I've never seen a baby getting born. And this was like, in their living room or something?"

  Samir clucked his tongue. He was obviously listening all the way from the fume hood at the back of the room. Hell, maybe Chris and Tom were tucked in there, too. Windows was taking forever to load on my computer.

  "Bedroom. That's where I'd do it," said Summer, recovering. "You'd probably hire someone to massage your feet while you were

  in labour."

  "That's a great idea. Know anyone?"

  "I'd do it for free."

  "I bet you would, you pervert."

  "Hey, I'm offering you a free massage!"

  While they entertained each other, I logged into the lab safety module. Eventually, Mitch wandered to the back of the lab with Samir, but not before he threw over his shoulder, "We want the whole story at lunch."

  "Yeah! And we'll take you to Petra's tonight." Summer grinned at me from behind Dr. Wen's disapproving countenance.

  "Uh, I've got a lot of work to do—"

  "This is more important," Mitch called from halfway across the room. I'd managed to escape them. For now.

  I buckled down on lab safety, watching the videos on 2x speed, clicking the quiz answers as fast as I could. Then, when I could hear Summer's feet tapping across the floor toward me, I cut out of the lab and into the central bathroom. There's one set of bathrooms, in the hallway between the two labs, with one regular stall and one handicapped stall, both of them barely illuminated by a flickering fluorescent light.

  I took some deep breaths and avoided watching myself in the mirror as I washed my hands. It's best not to check yourself out when you're sleep-deprived and chock-full of trauma. Even though they say sex makes you glow, Ryan and I had been too shell-shocked to hook up last night.

  The door pushed inward while I was drying my hands on a scrap of paper towel and dropping it into the recycling bin.

  I stiffened, but it wasn't Summer reflected in the mirror.

  I spun around to face Dahiyyah. Our eyes met with a shock of recognition. Of what, I couldn't say exactly, but she looked as wrung-out as I felt while the door drifted closed behind her.

  We didn't speak. We gazed at each other for a long moment, listening to a tap drip behind us. The lights quivered like a poor man's dance club, making it even harder to read her expression.

  I finally nodded my head in a silent hello, which broke the spell. She licked her lips. "You delivered Lawrence's babies."

  "Yes, Joan gave birth last night." The rumour mill clearly extended its reach to Dr. Hay's lab. I'd never mentioned my part in the delivery and resuscitation, but everyone already knew.

  "One of them died?"

  I closed my eyes and nodded, silently apologizing to Might II. She shuddered. "That's two."

  I had a dreadful feeling I knew what she was talking about. The faucet plink, plink, plinked its drops into the sink. Almost like tears.

  "Jamais deux sans trois," said Dahiyyah, glancing over her shoulder, even though no one else approached the bathroom door.

  I cleared my throat. We have that expression in English, too: never two without three. "That's a superstition. You're a scientist."

  She hiccupped a small laugh. "Am I?"

  "Of course you are. You're going to grad school next year, right?"

  She pressed the back of her hand to her mouth, but I could still make out her words behind it. "You need references for that."

  "Dr. Hay—" I stopped right there. Dr. Hay was her supervisor. The head of the lab. If she wouldn't give Dahiyyah a sterling reference, this R.A. would never get into grad school. She might not even be able to get a job in industry. She was stuck.

  Dahiyyah hunched her shoulders. She couldn't meet my eyes anymore.

  No. Hell, no. I started brainstorming for her. My voice bounced off the bathroom walls. "You need another reference. That's all. Someone who'll write a good letter." Actually, she'd need at least three of them, but we'd start with one.

  She closed her eyes. "Dr. Acayo said he would. If I worked hard enough for him, he would write me the best letter. And he had contacts at Stanford, and in Miami, and around the world … "

  "Ah." His death would have been a personal and professional shock. The only good news was that it dropped her down on my suspect list. "Yes, that would have been fantastic. I'm sorry to hear that. I suppose … " I paused. It sounded heartless, but I should point out another option. "There is one more person in your lab who went to Stanford, who might give you a reference."

  Her pupils seemed to dilate, although it was hard to tell in the bathroom's erratic light. "I would never ask him. I don't speak to him."

  "Oh." But Stephen Weaver had mentioned her making almond cookies. She didn't have to chat with him over her cuisine, but a full stomach could predispose him to writing a strong reference letter for her. "Why not?"

  Her arms tightened in an X over her chest, her hands balled in her armpits. If she'd been Catholic, she would've crossed herself. "He's—" Her thyroid cartilage bobbed in her throat. Her eyes were wide and agonized. "The last time I saw him, Dr. Acayo told me to be careful of him."

  "On Sunday?" She started to nod, a
nd I couldn't believe it. Harold hadn't mentioned her specifically on the video feed, but everyone always seemed to overlook Ducky. "You saw him when he left on Sunday?" I didn't even realize I was reaching for her arm until she snatched it away. "No! I mean, I was working, but I didn't do anything to him! I was researching plasmids for him. He said it was important, that he'd write me a reference letter, but he kept fooling around on his phone and on his computer and eating all the cookies I'd made for the lab meeting on Monday. I was the one doing all the work, so when he said he was feeling sick and wanted to go home, I told him to just go, I'd finish up here!"

  It was the most exasperated I'd ever heard her. I liked her for it. On my thoracic surgery rotation, the senior resident once told me to stop being so meek. Then he was surprised when I started speaking my mind, but he seemed to appreciate it. Apparently I, too, preferred more mouthy women.

  But I needed to know more who, what, when, where, why. "When did Dr. Acayo leave the lab?"

  Her lower lip stuck out. "Around six o'clock. He said he had to have supper. You'd think eating most of my cookies would've been good enough. I had to buy Oreos for the lab meeting the next day, and Dr. Weaver told me I was lazy, always taking short cuts … " Her lips trembled.

  Honestly, I didn't know how they could be so nasty to her. It reminded me of a Moth podcast where a group of American soldiers had befriended a dog while they set up a base in the Middle East. When they got transferred elsewhere, they packed up camp and started driving away. The dog ran after them. He ran and ran. They'd slow down enough to let him catch up, and then they'd take off, laughing. They did that until he exhausted himself and couldn't run anymore. In the desert. With no water.

  My voice hardened. "I know that's B.S. Don't listen to them."

  She rearranged her head scarf, drawing it more tightly around her face. "They make fun of me. They take my equipment without asking. Even Lawrence did it. I couldn't find my round-bottomed flask or condenser all last week. Dr. Hay told me I didn't need it, but I like to keep things in order. They know it drives me crazy." Her voice rose on the last word, and she did sound off-kilter. "You should see my bench. I always keep my pipettes in the drawer. I don't like them out where other people will see them and think they can borrow them. Why do I come in this morning and find them spread all over my bench?"