An Elegant Theory

by Noah Milligan

  “I hadn’t really thought about it,” I said.

  “You will have forever changed the course of history, Coulter.”

  The geese, it appeared, had spotted the smoke across the lake. They convened on the edge of the highway, cars careening past, and squawked and fluttered their wings, almost as if pointing toward the fire. For some reason, they felt compelled to go there, and I silently encouraged them to brave the highway, step out in a uniform line, and be crushed by the oncoming traffic. I didn’t know why I had such a desire, but I did—I wanted nothing more than to watch the geese die.

  “Go,” I whispered, encouraging them on.

  “I’m sorry?” Dr. Brinkman asked.

  I didn’t say anything, remained staring out the window. Dr. Brinkman took another sip of his drink, smacking his lips in delight.

  “I suppose I should be happy with my student doing so well,” he continued. “Even though I did try to convince you to pursue a different avenue of research, I did, as your teacher, influence your findings, even if it was only in a small way. This doesn’t really console me, though.”

  One of the geese pattered out onto the road, took a few awkward steps, but then jumped back onto the shoulder when a large truck zoomed past.

  “Go,” I whispered again. “Come on.”

  “It is a flaw, I admit, my ego. I’ve struggled with it ever since I was your age, finishing up my own doctoral research. I was working on the team that would eventually lead to my Nobel. We were constructing a history of what exactly had occurred directly after the Big Bang, to thousandths of seconds after the birth of our universe. It was a very exciting time.”

  The smoke grew thicker, darker, like a thunderstorm about to release torrential rains, lightning, and thunder.

  “There was another doctoral student on the team, Carlos Alca. He was Peruvian, I think. Maybe Argentinian. I can’t remember. Anyway, he was brilliant. Much smarter than I was. So much so, I felt threatened by him.”

  The same goose that had trotted out onto the highway before ventured out again, this time moving quicker, with more abandon. It made it past the first lane without any trouble, only five more to go, but in the middle of the second, a sedan careened down the road, heading straight for it.

  “Please,” I whispered. “Please. Please. Please.”

  “We had the same committee chair on our dissertations. He was studying the idea of a single, unified energy directly after the Big Bang, where gravity, the weak, strong, and electromagnetic forces were all rolled up into the same substance. About the same time, a group of German scientists was studying the same thing. I was aware of it. He was aware of it. Everyone was aware of it.”

  The goose didn’t notice the car, waddled ahead without flinching, its fight-or-flight instinct inactivated.

  “As you well know, we had to turn in pages of our dissertation at regular intervals, and our chair liked us to drop off our work all at the same time. I timed it so that I would come in after Carlos, armed with two dissertations: my set of pages, and then another, the exact paper the German scientists had published a few weeks before, with Carlos’ name on the byline. I’m not proud of what I did, Coulter. I’m not.”

  The driver must have noticed the goose—he veered and hit the brakes, the car fishtailing, the tires squealing against the pavement. I stood on my tiptoes, my fingertips pressed against the window glass.

  “He got kicked out of school a few weeks later. Academic dishonesty. Plagiarism. No one cared he said he didn’t do it; there were his pages, with his name on it, another author’s words. Proof beyond a reasonable doubt. He went home, a truant, and I went on to win the Nobel. I’ve never been more ashamed of anything in my life.”

  Right before the car slammed into the goose, it jumped into the air, spread its wings out wide, and let slip a shrill honk. The bird exploded against the hood of the car, the windshield splattered with blood. The car kept moving, the street wet with slush.

  “Yes!” I yelled, raising my arms in triumph. “Yes! Yes! Yes!”

  “Jesus,” Dr. Brinkman said. “Oh my God.”

  The car kept sliding, it now moving sideways down the road, heading straight for a cement barricade.

  “Please,” Dr. Brinkman said.

  “Please!” I said.

  The driver flipped on the windshield wipers, but it just smeared the blood across the glass. I could make out his features, his face tinted red from the reflected blood. His expression was of pure panic, his eyes bulging, his mouth open in horror. He thought he was going to die. He did. I could tell by the sheer terror freezing him into place—he had the look of imminent death.

  When the car slammed into the barricade, I could see his body lurch from the impact. Afterward, he didn’t move, his shoulders and head slouched forward. “Oh my God,” Dr. Brinkman said. “We should do something.” Cars behind him slowed and stopped, and drivers exited their vehicles to see if they could help. The first one there knocked on the window once, twice, three times. After no response, he pulled the car door open. The driver didn’t move. But then, there was a rustle. His head bobbed. His shoulders bounced. The rescuer bent down, trying, it appeared, to get the man’s seatbelt off. Once they succeeded, the injured man emerged from his wrecked and bloodied car, and I couldn’t have been more disappointed—everything was still the same. He was alive, his ordeal now over, the fire still raging in the distance.

  It didn’t take long for the blood test results. Coulter waited in the lobby—the doctor hadn’t wanted him to go far. About an hour he waited. He tried to read Popular Science, some article about a scientist identifying evidence of dark matter, but he couldn’t concentrate. The words melded into one another, snaking their way across the page. Pictures taken by the COBE satellite mapping out background microwave radiation from the Big Bang blurred together like television static just before a storm was about to hit.

  The doctor called him back again. Coulter had to have help standing, wobbling for a few steps before a nurse grabbed a wheelchair. Instead of an examination room, they rolled him into the doctor’s office. Pictures of blond children smiled back at him, one girl and one boy, the latter missing his two front teeth.

  The doctor told him he’d have to go into surgery right away. If he didn’t, the infection would eat away his arm. It would get into his bloodstream and ride his arteries back to his heart where it would attack his cardiovascular system and kill him. It wouldn’t take long at all. A day or two, he said. If that. Maybe hours. I’m glad you came in. The doctor slapped him on the back. If you waited any longer, you’d be a dead man. He laughed. Ha! Ha Ha Ha.

  Coulter didn’t move or respond. His head still swam. He heard the doctor’s words. He understood them: surgery, necrotizing fasciitis, amputation, dead man. The gravity of it all made him feel nauseated, but the pain and the vertigo kept him from showing fear. His organs all felt strained to the point of tearing. He wanted to ask if he would die. Was there a possibility he wouldn’t wake up from this, to be put under, to slip away while unconscious, his last cognizant thought a trembling whimper of fear that no one beside himself could hear? But his tongue was too heavy to move.

  The ambulance arrived only a few minutes later. An orderly wheeled him outside. He had earbuds in, and Coulter could faintly hear music. It was a pop song, something current, something Coulter vaguely remembered hearing before. He tried to think of the artist’s name, the title of the track, but it wouldn’t come to him. The orderly popped his chewing gum to the beat of the song, bobbed his head as they walked down the hallway. What song was it? This would bother him for the rest of the day, he was sure of it. He’d heard the song on multiple occasions, ubiquitously, on the radio, in cabs, on campus, a summertime anthem. Girls sang it incessantly, under their breath while waiting in line at the school cafeteria, bits of apple flying out their mouth as they made it through the chorus. Undergraduates would tap the rhythm on their desks during quizzes. Why couldn’t he remember it? It was everywhere he went! Litera
lly! It was even playing in the ambulance. The two drivers sang along to the words. It was driving Coulter crazy. His arm itched, but he couldn’t scratch it. It was elevated and wrapped in gauze. The song blared through the speakers, taunting him. The singer was some young woman, perhaps a teenage star. Her voice sounded familiar. Sweet and melodic. Innocent and naïve. She sang of love and fairy tale endings. He hated the song. He hated the rhythm, the acoustic guitar, the simple bass beats, even the backup singers, singing OOooooOO AAA. The hospital wasn’t far—close enough for the short pop song not to end. Another orderly greeted him out front in order to get him wheeled to the operating room. He looked much like the orderly at the small, specialist hospital Coulter had just arrived from. An uncanny resemblance, actually, now that Coulter took a closer look. He had the same knotted, unkempt hair. The same two-day beard. The same glazed look in his eyes. The same mouth, chomping bubblegum. And the earbuds. He had in the same earbuds, and as Coulter climbed onto a gurney, he could hear the faint, melodic voice of that ubiquitous pop star.

  Was he going insane? Was the infection from his arm already coursing through his bloodstream, poisoning his brain? It had to be. Calm down. Shock was playing tricks on his mind. He’d just received bad news, his arm to be amputated. He wasn’t going insane. He was just in shock. But what if he was going crazy? What if he never returned to normal? These could be the last remaining, semi-lucid thoughts he might ever have. It finally sunk in. He might die. He might never see Sara or Isaac again, and it all came in an unexpected rush, like a large wave might, when you have your back to the water and you’re gazing up at the shore, that he had to see them. He had to. At least one more time.

  He grabbed the orderly by the shirt with his one good arm. “Is my family on their way?” he asked.

  The orderly pulled out one earbud. Coulter could hear the pop song through the speaker. “I’m sorry?”

  “My family. Did someone call my family?”

  “I’m sorry, sir. I wouldn’t know that.”

  The operating room smelled of zinc oxide. It was dim in there, which worried him at first—how would the doctor be able to see what he was doing?—but then he noticed the mobile lamp above the table, much like what he’d find above a dentist’s chair. Surgical tools were laid out upon a table next to the bed. There was an electrical saw, the disc-shaped blade the size of a compact disc and serrated to slice through bone.

  “Hi, Coulter,” the doctor said. “How are you doing?”

  “I need to speak with my wife,” Coulter said.

  “She will be contacted. I promise.”

  “I need to speak with her now.”

  “Unfortunately there isn’t enough time. You’ll be able to speak with her afterward.”

  Coulter didn’t believe him. He had the urge to hug his son, to tell him this might be the last time they’ll see each other, that what they had was special and more important than anything else in the world, but all he could do was nod and trust this stranger who was about to sever a part of him.

  The surgeon leaned over Coulter. He smelled like doctors often do: clean, like laundry fresh out of the dryer. He placed a mask over Coulter’s nose and mouth, the anesthesia.

  “I want you to count backwards from a hundred for me, Coulter. When you wake up, everything will be as it should.”

  Coulter nodded and began to count.

  100. 99. 98. 97. 96. 95. 94. 9—

  “Coulter?” Dr. Brinkman placed his hand on my shoulder. “Coulter? Answer me. Are you feeling unwell?” he asked. “Maybe we should call for help,” Dr. Brinkman said as he waved his hand in front of my face. We were in a ballroom, in the hotel I guessed, but I didn’t remember leaving our suite. It was a large place, filled with white table-clothed tables, chrysanthemum centerpieces, and sparkling chandeliers. A grand piano was pushed into the corner, and in the center of the room was a scuffed dance floor. There were only three of us in there: Dr. Brinkman, a very large stranger, and me.

  “Call for help?” I asked.

  My mouth was dry, the roof rough, the texture of exposed brick. My throat felt swollen, making it difficult to speak. I tried to clear my throat, but I choked, and coughed into my sleeve.

  “Thank goodness,” Dr. Brinkman said. “You gave us quite a scare.”

  “I did?”

  “Yes,” the stranger said. “I’ve never seen anything quite like it.”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “You froze,” the stranger said.

  “Froze?”

  “Yes. You simply stood there. You weren’t speaking. You weren’t moving. At first we thought you might be playing a joke on us, but then you stopped blinking. I even had to place my finger underneath your nostrils just to make sure you hadn’t stopped breathing.”

  “And who are you?” I asked.

  “Coulter,” Dr. Brinkman said, “I’d like you to meet one of my former students, Cal Thomas. He works here at CERN.”

  Dr. Thomas was an intimidating figure, easily above 6’4”, perhaps 235 or 250 pounds. He had the jaw of a linebacker and shoulders as thick as bowling balls. When he took my outstretched hand to introduce himself, his fingers wrapped completely around it so that his thumb and middle finger overlapped.

  “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you for a good long while,” he said, his voice not as deep as his build would indicate. “I’m a very big fan of your work.”

  “You’re huge,” I said.

  He chuckled. “Yes,” he said. “I get that a lot.” He released my hand. I could tell a good five-degree difference from when he’d clutched it and afterward. “Though I’ve never rendered someone speechless like that before. I thought you may have fallen asleep standing with your eyes open.”

  “I apologize,” I said. “I must be jet-lagged.”

  “It is a long flight,” he said. “I never can quite get used to it.”

  “Dr. Thomas here was about to take us over to the lab,” Dr. Brinkman said. “Give us the tour. Do you feel up to it?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’d love to.”

  “Are you sure? We can postpone if you need to lie down or grab a bite to eat or something.”

  “How long was I out?” I asked.

  “Three, maybe four minutes.”

  “And I didn’t respond at all?”

  “I even pinched you,” Dr. Brinkman said. “Nothing.”

  “Strange,” I said.

  “But you seem better now,” Dr. Thomas said as he slapped me on the shoulder, nearly causing me to lose my balance. “Sorry,” he said. “Sometimes I don’t know my own strength.”

  Dr. Brinkman and I followed Dr. Thomas out of the ballroom to a side street where a taxi waited for us. Before we got in the cab, however, Dr. Brinkman placed a hand on my elbow. “Are you sure you’re feeling all right?” he asked. “Is the medication maybe getting to you?”

  I no longer felt the effects of the medication, not like I had before, anyways. Gone was the sense of euphoria. Instead, I felt groggy, like I’d taken too much Benadryl. My muscles weighed more than normal; my eyes sunk into my head. My brain reacted as if it were underwater. If I lay my head down, I was certain I would fall asleep and never wake up.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe.”

  When he awoke, he could still feel his arm there. It hurt. It itched. It ached. It was unbearable because he could do nothing to stop it. Phantom limb syndrome. He’d read about it before the infection, an article about soldiers returning from war zones, amputees scratching thin air. Sometimes the pain would become so intense that it would be debilitating. Soldiers would scream from the pain. It would be sharp and blinding, like they were reliving the cause of the amputation over and over and over again. They wouldn’t be able to walk or ask for help. They would be rendered incapacitated. That’s how he felt. He lay on his back in a dark hospital room. He hurt so badly he couldn’t move at all. Machines beeped in the corner. IV bags full of painkillers were stationed next to his bed. His arm pri
cked full of needles. At first, he didn’t recognize where he was at, and he became afraid. The drugs, however, kept him from crying out. He was confused and couldn’t organize his thoughts. Then it slowly came back to him. The flesh-eating bacteria. The doctor. The surgery.

  He pressed the button to call the nurse. A few minutes later she arrived. She was short and squatty and smelled of hand sanitizer. “You’re awake,” she said. “How’re you feeling?”

  “Water,” he said. “Please.”

  She filled a paper cup and raised the straw to his lips. “Is Sara here?” he asked.

  “Who?”

  “My wife.”

  She looked confused. “I don’t believe so,” she said. She picked up his chart. “It says here no immediate family was to be notified.”

  “There’s some mistake.”

  “I am so sorry, sir,” she said. “I’m sure she is worried sick. I will give her a call right away.” She asked for the number, and he gave it to her. “I will be right back.”

  Alone again, he wondered what Sara must have been going through. She’d be at home at this hour, cuddled up in bed, her feet tucked underneath her. In her lap would be a book, some journalistic exposé over the 2007–2008 financial crisis, adjudicating the fraudulent packing of mortgage-backed securities in the court of public opinion, but she wouldn’t be reading it. Her eyes would scan the same sentence over and over, the words forming in her consciousness, but understanding eluding her, formulating some plan of action if he didn’t show up by morning, by midnight, within the hour. She’d be oscillating between genuine concern and outright rage. If something bad had happened, she’d be sure someone would have contacted her. No, she would instead think he had simply gone to the doctor, then headed to the lab right afterward, not even taking the time to let her know that everything was okay. Because of this, she would be devising some sort of revenge: Visine in his morning coffee, a hammer to his laptop, the accidental deletion of his dissertation. That was her way—always planning, always conniving.