Cloning Galinda

by Jan Smolders

  “Where do you live?” the doctor asked.

  “In Noredge. Near Canton.”

  “Maybe you should wait until tomorrow to visit. Your husband—your partner— he’ll be unresponsive for the next twenty-four hours.”

  Mary looked down to hide her tears. She handed Doctor Lima’s card to Frank. “I may lose it.”

  On the way home, she had trouble staying awake. The Valium. She never took pills of any kind. “Thank you so much, Frank,” she said, her voice low and her words slightly slurred. “What would I’ve done without you?”

  “Don’t mention it, Mary. It’ll be at least fifty minutes in the car. Rush hour on I-77. Try to get some rest. Joe’s in good hands and the kids will have a lot of concerns and questions for you when you get home.”

  ***

  A soon as Mary had dozed off Frank called Vince back. He felt badly about having cut off his successor so brusquely when he had seen Mary’s panicked expression through the glass door at the hospital.

  He was anxious to know why Vince had called him. To inquire about Joe? Unlikely. He assumed the two men didn’t know each other. But Vince had sounded quite excited about something. What was it? Had he run into a problem at Beta, and did he want Frank’s help?

  When Vince picked up he said he knew Joe and asked about his condition.

  Frank briefed him.

  Vince said, “Please tell his wife my thoughts are with her and her family, and with Joe of course. Now, Frank,” he went on, changing the subject, “you and I, we’ve known each other for a just short time but I trust you, and I must talk to somebody. You’re my victim if you don’t mind.” He laughed nervously. “I’m pissed off. Almost ready to throw in the towel. Mad as hell.”

  Frank had helped Vince during his first two weeks at Supren, as agreed.

  “Huh?”

  “With that damn Mike Doyle. Here I’m working my butt off to do a decent drilling job at Beta, things going so well, and an hour ago the idiot grabs me for the clean-up at the accident area in Carrollton. As if I’m the company maid. Looks almost like it’s all my fault, dammit. No chance to object. ‘Right now! Drop everything and get your ass over there! Supren’s name is at stake, get it?’ As if Beta doesn’t count. Couldn’t get a word in.” Vince paused and added, his tone calmer, “This is between you and me, okay? I thought we got along well those two weeks.”

  “Wow. How long will you be gone from the drill site?”

  Vince sighed. “Who knows? It may take months, from what I hear. We all know about those spills in Pennsylvania.”

  “Buzz off, you!”

  “Huh? Frank?”

  “Sorry, Vince. I’m in traffic. Some asshole gave me the finger. Back to Carrollton. Mike should call in specialists. If the job’s not done expertly Ohio may shut Supren down all over the state.”

  “Of course. Well, I know zilch about politics. Anyway, I asked him who would take responsibility for the Beta job. What about that poor orphan?”

  “Yeah! And good old Harriet will miss you.” Frank had heard stories from Mary about Harriet and her mid-morning cookies.

  Vince snickered but got serious again. “Mike shut me up. ‘You heard me and don’t you try to do my job. I’ll face the music for everything, Carrollton, Alpha, Beta, the entire alphabet, got it?’ So what could I say? Do you understand how this man’s brain functions?”

  “Mike will oversee Beta? Him? Mike Doyle?” Frank was more than surprised. He took a look at Mary, who leaned against the passenger door, curled up like a baby, knees pulled up.

  “Guess so. But I hear he hasn’t drilled a well for at least four years. Maybe he’ll call you back.”

  Frank chuckled. The thought had entered his mind, but he had discarded it. “I wouldn’t bet on that. He wanted his own man for Beta, remember?”

  “I do.”

  “He had one.”

  “Yeah. Me. Vince Davis. Doormat Davis. But Doyle, that idiot— no, I should stop using that word. Love my job.” He laughed but sounded concerned.

  “Any idea what happened in Carrollton? Joe’s tanker just jumped off the road? Just like that?” Frank thought about the concerns Mary had voiced about Joe’s health. Had he had a sudden, violent coughing spell?

  “When I asked him that question, and about witnesses, Doyle simply said, ‘Just stay out of it, young man. Okay? I’ll handle those kinds of matters. You understand personal issues may be involved.’”

  Personal issues. Frank looked at Mary, who was snoring lightly, and whispered, “You mean he’s kind of blaming Joe? Joe asleep at the wheel? Joe on something? No mechanical malfunction or anything?”

  “Sounded like he did. Not clear. Anyway, I dropped everything and rushed to Carrollton. The leaked stuff wasn’t contained yet but flowed very slowly, movement barely noticeable. Route 39 will be closed off for a long time, the center of town as well, county and state officials hinted. We’ll have to find out exactly what was leaked. How dangerous that stuff is. You know more or less what shit we’re pumping down the pipes and what comes back up. Looks like Joe Bertolo picked up most of his load in Zanesville. We’ll have to talk to the folks there.”

  “Good luck, man. You’ll be in the papers tomorrow. And not because you hit a triple.”

  “Are you kidding? I’m already on TV.”

  “Carry your shaver in your pocket,” Frank chortled. He wondered why Doyle was acting so strangely with Vince. It had to be nerves: Supren Headquarters had to be all over him. Noredge and surroundings, or the entire state of Ohio might at least disqualify the company for future permits.

  “TV. Yeah.” Vince’s dismissive tone made it clear he had bigger fish to fry.

  Frank heard Mary groan. She turned restlessly, shifting left and right in her seat. “Got to go now, Vince. Take care and stay in touch.” He clicked off.

  “Where are we?” Mary mumbled as she opened her eyes, hand on forehead.

  “Close. Less than five minutes. The boys will be happy to see you.”

  ***

  As she stepped out in her driveway, feeling drowsy, Mary said, “I can’t thank you enough, Frank. You want to come in for a cup of coffee or tea?” She reflexively looked for her key in her purse but then remembered that she had given it to Joanna.

  He shook his head. “You need to be with your kids and tell them the good news about their daddy. I should be heading home.”

  “Okay.” She actually wanted him to join her: he would be so much better than she right now at answering the kids’ questions and allaying their concerns. But she didn’t insist.

  Andy opened the front door before she could knock.

  Five minutes later, when she stood again on her threshold saying goodbye to Joanna, Mary spotted Frank’s car still in the driveway, a few feet behind Joanna’s vehicle.

  Jimmy pulled her shirt, “Mommy….”

  “Ssh, Jimmy!” She quietly closed the door when Joanna was half-way to her car.

  Chapter 14

  The evening was pure hell for Mary. Her first two calls to the hospital went unanswered. When she got through around nine, a male nurse with an incomprehensible name and heavy accent told her that surgery had finished only half an hour ago, and that Joe was being transferred into the intensive care unit. She checked on the kids one more time and went to bed.

  Tossing and turning as she longed for the morning and news about Joe, she kept checking her cell phone.

  As she lay half-awake, an army of sadistic torturers kept taking turns on her. Cruel lights and drum-piercing sounds emanated non-stop from Harriet’s yard; the short hand and even the long one on Mary’s clock irritatingly crawled; painful scenes featuring her suffering Joe evoked cutting bursts of self-recrimination at shorter and shorter intervals, their bile ever more caustic. Why hadn’t she forced Joe to quit that damn job? Spoken louder? Threatened to break up? It was
all her fault. She had gone along, for the money. That dirty money. Joe had to have lost control of his tanker. The poison he had been inhaling had caused dizziness or confusion, a headache, or maybe a brief black-out. Had he had a violent coughing spasm? Poor Joe, trying to make a decent living for himself and his family.

  It was a night of sighs.

  She had concluded that at seven she would call the hospital, no matter what. Then she made it six.

  At five she went to the living room and checked the TV news. WKSU first, NPR. Classical music. Fox. Leisure discussion. WEWS, NBC next. Infomercial. CNN. Political discussion, a rerun. She puffed and gave up. She dialed the hospital, Jake devotedly watching her. Did he feel what was going on?

  A cold-hearted machine greeted her. “If this is not an emergency we cannot connect you to the department you are requesting at this time. Please call back later.”

  Cruel. She flung her body onto the couch and curled up.

  Jimmy appeared, dazed, rubbing his eyes. “I thought Mrs. Harriet had come.”

  “Oh no, Jimmy. You’ve been dreaming.”

  “I heard her voice, Mommy.” The boy sounded upset that his mother didn’t believe him.

  “No you didn’t, baby. It was a lady reporter on TV.”

  “Baby?”

  She pulled him close to her and felt his warm little body soothe her. She needed him. He fell asleep.

  She didn’t.

  At six she carried Jimmy to his bed, called Akron and got through to Joe’s floor. She nervously waited. An eternity.

  The nurse advised Joe was resting in intensive care. The details would have to come from Doctor Toro, but right now he was preparing for surgery. An assistant would call Mary within two or three hours.

  Mary sighed, disappointed but relieved: Joe lived. Resting. She smiled. She had nobody to share the good news with at this hour.

  The Jenkinses had an unusually early breakfast that Friday morning. Between bites the boys threw short frowns at Mary, their eyes questioning. She put on her bravest face. She already had told them that Daddy might come home soon, but not how soon. She wondered how long she would be able to keep getting away with this tepid kind of appeaser.

  “You’re tired, Mommy,” Jimmy said. He turned to Andy and added, “Because she watched sports on TV very early.”

  “No, I didn’t. I tried to find news about Daddy’s accident.”

  “How did it happen, Mommy?”

  “Nobody knows yet, Andy. But we’ll find out.” She filled his cup with milk and turned away to hide the tears welling up in her eyes.

  At 7:45 Frank called. “How are you doing, Mary? Did you get some sleep?”

  “Doing okay. Joe’s resting, in intensive care. Dr. Toro will call in two hours.”

  “Good. Resting. Joanna told me Mike Doyle will speak on TV, on NBC, at eight.”

  “Oh. Thank you. NBC. Joanna? At work so early?”

  After a brief pause Frank said, “She was in the office at seven with Mike. She’s very concerned about you.”

  “How caring she is.”

  “Yes. We had a brief chat yesterday in your driveway.”

  And he gave her his number. If she didn’t have it yet. She suppressed her urge to comment and hastened to answer, “The boys love her.”

  “Of course they do. She’s very sweet, but, well, she was nervous on the phone. You haven’t heard from me, okay? You know Mike, control freak. She needs her job.”

  “Got it, Frank. Thanks.” As Mary clicked off she wondered why Mike Doyle still hadn’t offered her, Joe’s common-law wife, the courtesy of a call. Not that she looked forward to it; she feared she might spit out too much of her anger at him, but she asked herself how he felt. He had offered her Joanna’s help, but what did that signal? Empathy? Heartfelt support? Appeasement? Image maintenance? She saw herself sliding toward negativity and decided she would have to wait for WEWS, NBC to find out, maybe, who Doyle was. At eight o’clock.

  She brushed her teeth, took her nightgown off and splashed a load of cold water on her face. She slipped into her worn Nike shorts and tee-shirt, sat down on the couch and waited, nibbling aimlessly on an apple. Eight o’clock couldn’t come soon enough.

  News anchor Jack Jones started his morning program on WEWS by describing a traffic accident in Carrollton with significant potential impact on the town and possibly Ohio’s hydraulic fracturing industry. “That’s a mouthful. Jeff just calls the technology ‘fracking,’ as do some laymen,” he said. His fingers provided the quotation marks and his head pointed at the young assistant next to him, Jeff Simmons. “The vehicle involved was a tanker truck owned by the Supren Company. It transported waste water, flowback and produced water, from wells. Some call it ‘dirty water.’”

  Jeff’s slightly raised eyebrows seemed to signal he had trouble refraining from an eye roll.

  Jones offered his and NBC’s support to driver Joe Bertolo and family, and to the people of Carrollton, and informed his audience that Mr. Bertolo, a Supren employee, was in intensive care in Akron City Hospital. The cause of the accident was unclear.

  He went on, “The industry has become, as we all know, a kind of goose with golden eggs for Ohio, creating jobs and raising standards of living for our state. As a ‘good citizen’ of Ohio it has made major strides toward shielding the environment and the population from the negative side effects every industry or technology brings with it. It’s unfortunate that a traffic accident is already being used in some circles to cast aspersions on the capabilities and diligence of a company that brings great progress to Ohio.”

  “Cover-your-ass paragraph spoon-fed by Supren and their buddies,” Mary mumbled scornfully to herself. Annoyed, she dipped her toast too deep in her lukewarm black coffee and threw a look at her boys. They were outside, practicing very early distance kicks with gusto.

  Jeff took over, his tone matter-of-fact, his speed twice Mr. Jones’s. “In a minute we’ll have Mr. Michael Doyle on your screens via Skype. He’s based in Noredge and manages Supren’s sites in several counties. Supren owns the tanker truck involved in the accident with the dirty water. Seems it was on its way to an injection well—”

  “We’ll get the benefit of Mr. Doyle’s knowledge,” Jones cut in, “his information and views on the situation in Carrollton, as well as specifics about the accident itself and the chemical composition of the spilled water. But first, Jeff will provide to us a few figures that illustrate the role hydraulic fracturing plays in the economies of Ohio, the USA and the world.”

  Jeff was barely twenty seconds into his presentation when Mary stood up, turned up the volume and walked out, leaving the door ajar. She didn’t need this lecture. This blatantly partisan industry pitch. She knew by whom it was written: the graphics had told her right away she had seen and heard it before, more than once on YouTube, and once at a Sierra Club gathering she had “forgotten” to mention to Joe. She felt bad for Jeff, who apparently had been told to present it.

  She wanted to catch some fresh air, but the heat hit her as soon as she had taken a few steps. The boys didn’t even notice her. She told herself she would do all she could to keep them as carefree as they sounded now, kicking their ball. She went back inside and closed the door.

  The screen now showed Mike Doyle. The low-resolution picture didn’t serve him well and the sound transmission was uneven. Mr. Jones offered apologies.

  Doyle waved him off. “What counts is Joe Bertolo’s health, his full and speedy recovery. That’s number one. Number two, and just as important and urgent, is a complete clean-up of the spill, for which I offer my sincere apologies to the people of Carrollton. We must save their soil, their air, their health and well-being. Within two hours after hearing about the accident—I was participating in a meeting in Cleveland at that time—I had appointed a superbly qualified engineer to contain the spill, Vince Davis. He’s a godsend.
A local man, he’ll be in constant communication with the authorities of Carrollton, Carroll County and the state. He talks the language of the county. He will be totally transparent with all of you regarding possible dangers and the precautions you should take.”

  “Great, Mr. Doyle, but—”

  “I’m not finished yet, Jeff. At this moment we have cordoned off a major section of downtown, but as soon as we have clarity, know exactly what was spilled, we hope to significantly relax those inconvenient measures.”

  “Okay, but I have four questions for you.”

  “One at a time,” Jones cut in. “Mr. Doyle must have had little sleep.”

  Jeff closed his eyes for a split second. “Okay. Number one: what’s been spilled? Dirty water. Dirty water is what?”

  Doyle nodded. “Good. It’s a byproduct of our operation. Waste. Could be from the drilling or just from the operation of the wells, or both. It’s ‘dirty,’ in layman language. It’s unfortunately hard to treat adequately, so we inject it into a special well and it’ll sit there for…forever. We plug the well. You see, we take care at great expense to dispose—”

  “You said ‘dirty.’ So—”

  “Some say ‘dirty.’”

  “Right. But what is it?”

  “Well, we’re working to get that answer. The exact one for this case. But I can now tell you that—”

  “Just tell us whether the stuff is radioactive, whether it has carcinogens, how scared the folks in Carrollton should be.”

  Doyle smiled briefly. “I see you did your homework,” he complimented the younger man, a trace of condescension in his voice. “The answer is: it’s all possible. And we’ll find out soon. But I’m sure that in this region whatever we find of that nature, carcinogen or radioactive, will be present in extremely low concentrations. Not an immediate danger at all. To nobody. Not even remotely.”

  “And to the soil? The run-off?” Jeff Simmons acted like a dog that had gotten his teeth into a piece of cloth and kept yanking at it.

  Jack Jones looked uncomfortable.