The Burning Road

by Ann Benson

  Quietly, Karle moved himself next to her and lay down. And though her body stiffened a bit, she did not push him away when he pressed his belly up against her back, sidling against her with an uncanny fit. He wrapped his arms around the front of her and gave her his warmth, and after a while he could feel her relax and drift into sleep. He lay awake, breathing slowly through her smoke-scented hair, and listened to his own heart as it pounded madly against her back.

  6

  When Janie came into the research unit in the morning, the Monkey Man handed her a printed page, accompanied by a glare that clearly said, Explain.

  She gave him the most innocent look she could conjure, then scanned silently through the words, trying to hide her excitement, as if the subject matter of the page were a complete mystery to her. As her eyes moved down the page her feigned surprise turned genuine. “Oh, my God, Chet—they granted my request for a system-wide search.”

  “So I read,” he said. “I didn’t even know you’d applied for it.” His face was the very image of disapproval. “I thought we discussed this yesterday.”

  “We did. But I didn’t think we’d actually come to any conclusion. And I figured it couldn’t hurt to go ahead with the application anyway, just in case. We don’t actually have to use it, if we don’t want to. But if we do, then—”

  “I guess you don’t have as much experience in this sort of thing as I thought you did,” he said disdainfully. “They keep track of this stuff, you know. So if you apply for a search, and they give it to you, and then you don’t use it, there’ll be this cute little notation on our request history file. It’ll say ‘squandered the time of search request approval personnel with unused request,’ or something like that. Jesus, Janie, you don’t put those people through a request approval process and then say ‘never mind.’ ”

  She wondered who “those people” might be but didn’t ask, because in the long run it was unimportant. “Well, there is still a chance that—”

  “That what? Money would drift down from the aerie? I distinctly recall telling you that the likelihood of that happening was slim.”

  He had. She couldn’t deny it. She could only hope to deflect his anger. “I’m on the trail of some grant money,” she said. “Obviously I don’t know if I’ll get it. But I still think you should take this upstairs. What’s the worst that could happen?”

  “Whatever it is, it’ll happen to me, not you. They might just fire my stupid ass for bringing it to them in the first place.”

  And such a hairy stupid ass it probably is, although I hope never to find out. “They’re not going to fire you. And they might actually say yes.”

  “Look, Janie, what they’re going to tell me upstairs about this Prives kid is no. It’s too risky. If we bring him in, and he doesn’t respond in the same way the others do, it’ll lower our success rate. And that just means the patent on whatever drug or protocol comes out of this will be worth less when we try to license it out. I don’t have to tell you what that means for everyone around here.”

  Shrinking endowment, budget cutbacks, potential layoffs, institutional agita. Doctors and technicians who would be giving serious thought to working on assembly lines, herself perhaps among them. She sighed aloud. “No, you don’t.”

  But what if they were successful? The payoff might be enormous. Janie gave Chet a little smile of challenge and said, “Have you given any thought to what would happen if the protocol actually worked for this particular kid? Who knows how many others there are out there like him.”

  “You’re talking about a very rare kind of trauma. Very rare. How many more could there be?”

  “I don’t know. But I will know after I make the search.”

  “You’re not going to make that search.”

  “B-but”—she stammered—“you just said we shouldn’t make it look like we were squandering a search permit.”

  “Use the permit,” he said, “but go in and bring out something really horseshit. Find out how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Then don’t do anything like this again without asking me first.”

  She allowed a few tense seconds to pass. “You don’t know what I’ll find if I do that search, Chet. You can’t possibly know.”

  “Maybe not, but I don’t particularly care right now. I have a good solid study going and it doesn’t need an infusion of hopeless cases to fuck it up. And what I do know is that I’m going to end up looking like a fool because the people upstairs will think I sanctioned this. I don’t want them thinking I would go for something like this—it’s a tremendous long shot.”

  “So was Xeroxing,” she said, “once upon a time. But maybe I should be going elsewhere for support. Then think of all the explaining you’ll have to do upstairs if I come up with something that works and you passed on it.”

  Scowling, Chet said, “If it didn’t have to be your ID, I’d do this myself and be done with it. Now go in there and find out how many of the popes have been Catholic. Then give me a nice, neat report on it. And don’t go snooping around on your own anymore. You’ll make us all look bad.”

  Janie managed, against all odds, to close the door to her cubicle office without ripping it off the hinges in anger and disgust. She spent the next few minutes muttering curses under her breath, gender-based epithets that could not be said aloud in the workplace without resulting in well-founded charges of harassment. All of her considerable vitriol was aimed at Chet Malin, and when it had finally dissipated enough for her to go about her business, she indulged in a few moments of compulsive desk-neatening to clear her head of the leftover fuzz that such institutional encounters always seemed to create.

  Asshole, she thought. He must have done something for someone to get this job.

  And then she thought, There but for the grace of God go I. She tossed his negativity out of her consciousness. It landed at her feet with a compliant thud.

  “Fuck you, Chet,” she said aloud. “Here I go. Catch me if you can.”

  She nimbled up her fingers with a few quick flexes, then entered Big Dattie, but as the doors to information opened before her she heard Tom Macalester’s stern but affectionate warning inside her head.

  No more digging.

  “What are you, my guardian angel?” she whispered. She could almost see him grinning from the head of some huge pin, and tried to push the image out of her mind.

  Big Dattie’s own warning came up, then the yellow screen, and finally she was allowed to enter her search criteria. Dozens of pages came up. She scrolled through the list and saw the name Abraham Prives, as she’d expected, and also the name of the boy from Boston. But the information was still too vague, so she asked Big Dattie to report only those cases where the injury had been described as shattering or splintering.

  She expected it to take a few seconds for the data to run through the filters, because when Big Dattie found very few or no hits for a request, it assumed an error and rechecked itself automatically, resulting in a slight delay. But the results were almost instant, and Janie found herself staring in slight surprise at a list of thirty-odd names.

  She backtracked and expanded the age a year in each direction. The computer gave her back a list of over a hundred names.

  Sort the results, she told the machine. Find the correlations. List by date of injury.

  “Well, well, well …” she whispered as she read through the final product. “Look what we have here.”

  When Janie called Tom Macalester to ask for a meeting, he said, “It’s too nice for offices today. Let’s meet in the square. I have something I need to talk to you about too.”

  “You first,” Janie said when they met an hour later.

  “I thought it was ladies first.”

  “You’re misinformed. It’s ‘ladies get to decide.’ ”

  “Okay. You may not like this, but hear me out before you start shrieking.”

  “I shriek?”

  “Sometimes. This might be one of those occasions. I’ve been giving B
ruce’s immigration problems some consideration,” Tom said, “and I feel like I’m hitting a wall. I think it’s the wall everyone hits in situations like this, so it’s not totally alarming, and I think in the long run everything will work out. But I’m not very adept at immigration, and I don’t have any good ideas about how to scale this wall. I don’t know if you ought to be standing by your man with me as an advocate.”

  He wouldn’t look her in the eye. She wondered why. Was he lying, or hiding something from her that he thought she might not want to hear? Maybe masking some private thoughts about her situation that she wouldn’t appreciate? Tom was usually so direct. Janie found his behavior almost unnerving.

  Whatever it was that was bothering him, she’d always trusted him and saw no reason not to trust him now. “I have great faith in you,” she said quietly.

  Back came the eye contact. It always seemed so intense to her.

  “I know,” he said. “I appreciate that. And normally I’m flattered, it’s just—well, Bruce isn’t, I mean, you’re really my client, and—I have to be honest—immigration law really isn’t my thing. I’ve gotten specialized in medical law and bioethics to the point where I guess I really don’t feel the same level of confidence working in other areas. I think you might do better with someone who knows a little more about it than I do.”

  He was right—she did want to shriek. But he was so reasonable and thoughtful in what he’d said and so obviously troubled by what he viewed as his failure that Janie almost felt sorry for him. She could see self-disappointment reflected in his posture and his carriage. For the first time, she noticed a few worry lines in his forehead.

  Janie took hold of her longtime friend’s hand and gave it a light squeeze as they headed toward a group of benches. She patted it, then let go. “You’re my lawyer, Tom. And I have every confidence that you’ll consult whomever you need to consult. I really don’t want to deal with anyone else, especially now when so much seems to be—askew.” She looked at him and smiled. “And I guess I’ve grown accustomed to your face, or something like that.”

  He gave her a funny little grin, then shook his head and sighed. “Ever the cliché queen.”

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay. I forgive you. But I’m serious about this. Immigration is beyond my field of expertise, at least at this level. And all of a sudden I’ve got some other time obligations that really aren’t negotiable, and I feel like I’m taking on too much.”

  Janie gave him a curious look. “Such as?”

  “I’ve been approached for some consulting work by a bioethics think tank. For some reason they seem to feel they need a lawyer in their midst. I think there are some biopatent issues that they need advice on.”

  “Tom, this is great—”

  He smiled broadly. “I know. It’s the kind of law I really love, where I feel completely at home. But it will take some time, at least until I settle into the rhythm of it. So my point is that I shouldn’t be taking your money if I can’t give you your money’s worth.”

  “Now, there’s an old-fashioned attitude.”

  “Hey, they don’t call me Tom-osaurus Rex for nothing.” He pointed toward a vendor’s cart. “Want a hot dog?”

  “Ugh. No thanks. Do you have any idea what’s in those things?”

  “Yeah. All sorts of shit. Literally.”

  “And you still eat them?”

  “With relish, yuk, yuk.”

  “Jesus, Tom, and you ride me for using clichés. Your jokes get lamer every year.”

  “Along with the rest of me, my dear.”

  “Yeah, it’s one long downward slide, this life. Listen, I appreciate your candor, both about your situation and mine. But I don’t want to change lawyers now. If you have to, get someone else to do the actual work, and I’ll pay the bill, but I don’t want to have to talk to anyone else directly. You’re the only lawyer I’ve ever been able to stomach. So be my buffer. That’s what I want.”

  “Okay.”

  He smiled, but Janie thought it was tinged with sadness.

  “If you’re sure,” he added.

  “I am.”

  The smile drifted away and a brief expression of uncertainty came over Tom’s face; for a moment Janie was inclined to ask him if something else was bothering him. But just as quickly he seemed to shake it off and the familiar man she’d known since their late childhood returned.

  “So,” he said, “I’m done pissing and moaning about my fears of professional inadequacy. What is it you wanted to piss and moan about?”

  “Nothing, actually. There’s something rather exciting I need to show you.”

  He smiled, then glanced around almost furtively and leaned closer. “Here? I mean, I’m thrilled, but it’s public.…”

  Janie couldn’t help but chuckle. “Give it a rest, will you? The other day you said something about having a unique specialty. Would working on a unique problem have the same kind of effect, even if it wasn’t necessarily my specialty?”

  “It would depend on the problem, but yes, it might. Have you got something?”

  “I think so. It’s possible that I may have stumbled onto a new syndrome.” She handed him the list of names. “These kids are all suffering from the same supposedly ‘very rare’ problem of splintered bones. I discovered it on a trip into Big Dattie—and don’t worry, I had a permit.”

  “Well, that’s good, at least.”

  “I didn’t dig illegally. I’m trying not to do that anymore—on my lawyer’s advice.”

  “I’m absolutely positive that your lawyer appreciates that.”

  “Except it might cut into his income.”

  “He’ll live.”

  “With or without me, I’m sure. Anyway, I found this pattern. Not just broken bones, shattered bones. The similarity of the shattering problem is just too coincidental to be overlooked. I sorted them by date—take a look at this.” She handed him a chart showing the pattern of incidents. “There’s a very sudden increase in frequency.”

  The chart showed a dramatic spike. “And in all of the cases I’ve read so far, one really striking similarity is that the injuries alone couldn’t account for the severity of the problem.”

  “So what are you saying?”

  “That there has to be some inherent weakness there. Something that causes a vulnerability to sudden, unexplained breakage. Maybe genetic. But it could also be disease-based. And I don’t see any indication from these kids’ records that anyone else is looking into it. So—that would make it unique, right?”

  “I suppose. You’d need to hook up with someone who specializes in this type of skeletal problem.”

  “How hard do you think that’s going to be? I’ll just yank someone off an oil rig.”

  She expected him to laugh, but instead Tom frowned. “Janie, I think you’re reaching on this one. I don’t think it’s a bad idea to look into this … pattern, though I want to be sure you keep me very well informed of what you’re doing—but using it as a means of getting relicensed, I don’t know. It’s a stretch.”

  Her face turned pensive. Then determined. “Maybe it is. But goddamn it, I have to stretch. What I’m doing for work means absolutely nothing to me. And whether it leads to my getting relicensed, here’s a chance to do some good for a lot of other people. That’s why I got into medicine in the first place. I seem to have forgotten it somewhere along the line. I don’t want to walk away from this.”

  Caroline Porter Rosow sat in a chair at her kitchen table with her leg extended and her foot raised up to rest on a plastic drape that covered Janie’s lap. She turned her foot slightly so Janie could get a better look at the stub of the partially removed little toe, still tender almost a year later. Janie, wearing bioimpermeable gloves, moved what was left of the toe from side to side with her own fingers.

  As she examined the appendage, she chatted, partly to distract Caroline from the discomfort of her probings and partly because there was news to convey. After their troubling experienc
e abroad, they were far more than friends, and there were few if any secrets between them. “Well, it looks like I’m going to have sex again in my life.”

  “You didn’t buy one of those—things, did you?”

  “No, smartass. The travel agent says there are plenty of visas available for Iceland. Bruce and I are going to meet there—next month.”

  “Janie, this is great.…”

  “I know. I’m excited. But Bruce was a little disappointed when he heard it was going to be Iceland.”

  “Well, their chief attraction is volcanoes … so don’t forget to pack an umbrella. A really big one, and fireproof. This wouldn’t happen to be the same travel agent that set up the London trip, would it?”

  Janie wiggled another of Caroline’s toes, a bit more forcefully than she’d moved the others, then the stub again. “The very one.”

  “Uh-oh …”

  “Nothing can possibly happen there. It’s rock, remember? I won’t be able to dig anything up.” She manipulated the entire front of Caroline’s foot. “That doesn’t hurt, does it?”

  “Just a little bit.” She winced slightly and shifted in her chair, as if changing the position of her backside would make any difference in her foot. “God, it’s about time you two got together. How long has it been now?”

  “Four months. Since Mexico. And I don’t have to tell you that Iceland could only be an improvement.” Now Janie moved the toe up and down. “Does this hurt more than it did last week?”

  “No.” Then she winced. “I lied. Yes. But it hurts mainly when it rains. And when you move it. Not ordinarily, though.”

  “Did it hurt when it rained before you were sick?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Ah. Well, that might explain it, then. The miraculous phenomenon of phantom pain.” She separated the remains of the little toe from the one next to it and looked at the flesh between the two. “It’s a little red in here. That doesn’t make me happy. How do your shoes feel?”

  “As nasty as ever. They all still hurt.”