by Mark Alpert
* * *
When he got to Dyckman Street he saw the soldiers up close, under the blinding searchlights. They wore the typical camouflage uniforms, dappled with splotches of beige and green, but there were no patches on their shoulders to identify which units they belonged to. Joe guessed they were trying to hide the true purpose of their operation from the public, which was exactly what you’d expect them to do if they were searching for a top-secret satellite. He let out a sigh of relief, glad that he hadn’t imagined the whole thing.
Now that he was here, though, he faced the problem of finding the right person to talk to. The soldiers blocking the western end of the street were clearly from the lower ranks, privates and corporals who probably didn’t know why they’d been sent to New York. Joe needed to talk to their commanders, the colonels and generals. He supposed he’d have to work his way up the chain of command, asking one of the enlisted men to put him in touch with their superiors. But before he could do that, he needed to get past the police officers who stood between the soldiers and the crowd on the street.
The onlookers were the kind of people who stayed awake past 2:00 A.M.—drunks and thugs and insomniacs and teenagers. Joe angled around the crowd and eyed the cops, trying to figure out who was in charge. After a few seconds he focused on a middle-aged, heavyset police captain wearing a white shirt and a blue tie. The man had flabby cheeks and wispy gray hair and looked like a cheerful, levelheaded character. Joe tried to make himself look presentable, brushing the dirt off his pants and his Yankees jacket. Then he approached the police captain, who was leaning against his cruiser and chatting with two other officers. The nameplate under the captain’s badge said MOORE.
“Excuse me, sir?” Joe stopped several feet in front of him, keeping a deferential distance. “Can I talk to you for a second?”
Captain Moore turned to him and grinned. “Well, well. What’s on your mind?”
The man sounded amused. He was probably bored as hell and grateful for a distraction. Joe just hoped the guy would take him seriously. “Sir, I have some information that might be useful. To the military, I mean.” He pointed at the line of soldiers. “Could you take me to one of their commanders?”
“Really? Useful information?” Still grinning, Moore hooked his thumbs into the waistband of his pants. “Are you a spy or something?”
Joe frowned. “No, I’m a concerned citizen. I know why the soldiers are here and I think I can help them.”
“Well, that’s very kind of you. But I’m sure the army can do just fine on its own.”
“No, wait, you don’t understand. Something dangerous is happening.” Joe raised his voice, trying to get his point across. He looked over his shoulder at Inwood Hill Park, then turned back to the police captain. “A satellite crashed into the park and now it’s out of control. It’s extending tentacles and injecting people with poison, some kind of neurotoxin. So you can’t just stand there. You need to do something about it.”
Moore stopped grinning. He glanced at the other officers, and they moved toward Joe. The captain moved forward too. “All right, calm down. I’m gonna ask you to step back now. Because this area is for police officers only.”
Joe shook his head. This was going even worse than he’d expected. The captain wasn’t listening at all. “I know where the satellite crashed. I can show the soldiers exactly where. All you have to do is take me to their commander and—”
“Hey!” Someone behind Joe grabbed his shoulder and pulled him away from the captain. “I know you!”
The voice was familiar, but not in a good way. Joe’s stomach clenched. He turned his head and saw Officer Patton, the big redheaded cop who patrolled Inwood Hill Park.
Patton scowled and tightened his grip on Joe’s shoulder. Then he turned to Captain Moore. “This is one of the crazies who sleep on the hill. I’ve told him a hundred times he can’t sleep there, but he never listens.”
Joe was desperate. He focused on Moore and gave him a pleading look. “I’m not crazy! Just ask the soldiers! They’re looking for the satellite!”
The captain wrinkled his nose. Then he stepped backward and waved them off. “Shit, get this guy out of here. The smell is making me sick.”
Keeping his grip on Joe’s shoulder, Patton used his other hand to remove his nightstick from his belt. “You heard the man. Better move quick, or I’ll send you to my buddies at Rikers.”
He pointed the nightstick at Joe and gave him a poke. Officer Patton had done this many times before, whenever he rousted Joe from the park, but this time the end of the nightstick prodded Joe’s cracked ribs. A bolt of pain shot through his chest. Without thinking, he spun around, grabbed the nightstick and wrenched it out of Patton’s grip. Then, continuing the same fluid motion, he jabbed the stick in the officer’s belly.
It happened so fast that Joe felt like someone else had done it. He stood there, astonished, while Patton stumbled backward and landed on his ass. Then he watched all the other cops draw their guns from their holsters.
“Drop the stick, asshole!”
The warning came from the officer closest to him, a young guy with darting eyes, so frightened he couldn’t hold his gun steady. In an instant Joe saw a way to disarm him. All he had to do was leap forward, swing the nightstick around, and hit the kid in the knees. The other cops wouldn’t fire for fear of shooting their fellow officer, and that would give Joe enough time to grab the kid’s gun. It was so simple and straightforward that Joe almost did it automatically. He had to yell at himself to come to his senses. Jesus, don’t make it worse! You’re in enough trouble already!
Joe dropped the nightstick and raised his hands in surrender. “Don’t shoot! I didn’t mean to—”
Before he could finish, one of the cops tackled him from behind. Joe’s head hit the pavement and everything went black.
TEN
Dorothy stood at the back of a crowded elevator at Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Eleven people were crammed into the tight space this morning, most of them patients and their family members heading for their first appointments of the day. The elevator rose slowly, stopping at every floor, so Dorothy had plenty of time to scrutinize her fellow passengers. She could tell right away which ones were the cancer patients. She could also tell how serious each patient’s illness was.
Standing to her right, for example, was a white-haired gentleman in a pin-striped suit. He looked like a wealthy businessman, but his face was pale and nervous. Dorothy guessed he was scheduled for a biopsy, and sure enough he got off the elevator at the third floor, where the endoscopic biopsies were done. To her left was a tall, young woman wearing a pink turban to hide her baldness. She got off at the fifth floor and hobbled toward the chemotherapy room. And in front of Dorothy was a skeletal man in a wheelchair who wheezed and trembled. At the sixth floor a nurse’s aide pushed the wheelchair off the elevator and steered it toward the palliative care suite, which was where patients went when there was nothing left to do but ease their pain. As the elevator doors closed, Dorothy composed a brief prayer for the man: Lord, let it be quick. Let him climb up to Heaven with as little suffering as possible.
Her own destination was the Radiology Department on the twelfth floor. She was going to have another PET scan to see how far her cancer had metastasized. Although it was somewhat pointless—she already knew from the last scan that the tumors had spread from her pancreas to her liver—her doctor had ordered the test anyway. He was a kind man, an inveterate optimist, and he was determined to do all he could for her. But there were no effective treatments for her cancer. She had two or three months left, at most.
At the seventh floor another chemo patient stepped off the elevator, and at the ninth floor a couple of doctors got on. Although the pain in Dorothy’s abdomen was steadily worsening, she stood there without complaint, watching the hopeful and the hopeless come and go. Then the doors finally opened on the twelfth floor, and she saw the sign saying RADIOLOGY on the opposite wall and the waiting room full of
anxious patients. But she didn’t step out of the elevator. She stayed absolutely motionless as the doors closed.
The elevator continued upward till it reached the sixteenth floor, and then it slowly descended. Dorothy remained at the back of the car, watching everything but doing nothing. She didn’t know what she was waiting for. She was a little puzzled by her indecision, but she wasn’t alarmed. She just needed some time to think and pray. She’d felt uneasy ever since her visit to Inwood Hill Park yesterday, more irritable and less interested in keeping up appearances. She saw no need to get another PET scan now just to make her doctor happy. There were a million better ways to spend her time, and sooner or later she’d figure out what she wanted to do. Until then she was perfectly willing to keep riding up and down.
After five minutes she was back at the lobby. Everyone else left the elevator, but Dorothy stayed where she was, and a new load of passengers crowded around her. Then the elevator stopped at the fifth floor again, but this time she noticed a sign that said LABORATORIES and an arrow pointing to the right. She stepped out of the elevator, using her canvas shoulder bag to nudge the other passengers aside.
She turned right and started walking down a long corridor. The cancer center occupied the entire block between 67th and 68th streets, and the corridor connected the main hospital building on the east side of the block with the neighboring buildings on the west side. Dorothy had never gone this way before, but it looked a lot like the rest of the hospital. The color scheme was soothing, mostly beige and white. The walls were decorated with quaint pictures of birds. She passed a room full of vending machines—Coke, candy, chips, ice cream—then turned a corner and found herself in a sleek corridor with more offices and no patient rooms. The doors on both sides of the corridor were made of blond wood, and each had a small identifying sign: IMMUNOLOGY, DEVELOPMENTAL BIOLOGY, MOLECULAR BIOLOGY.
Dorothy shook her head as she read the signs on the doors, wondering what went on in the laboratories behind them. She’d taken a biology course when she was a freshman in college, but that was forty years ago. Everything she’d learned had probably been proven wrong since then. She finally came to the end of the corridor, and the sign on the last door said CELL BIOLOGY. She wasn’t sure how cell biology differed from molecular biology or developmental biology, but for some reason she felt a powerful surge of curiosity. She needed to see what was inside that lab. It seemed much more worthwhile than getting another PET scan. The scan might tell her how much time she had left, but she didn’t really care about the when of her death—she cared about the why. She wanted to know more about the thing that was killing her.
She opened the door and stepped inside. It was a big windowless room divided into four sections by long Formica-topped workbenches. Several microscopes and computers sat on the workbenches, and on the shelves above them was an assortment of vials and flasks. There were also a few sinks and a couple of big freezers and lots of high-tech equipment that Dorothy couldn’t even begin to fathom. The lab looked clean and well-organized but not very busy. She poked her head into two of the sections and saw no one working in them. She guessed that the scientists preferred to do their experiments late at night, so they probably didn’t start work until later in the morning.
The third section was empty too, but when Dorothy looked into the fourth she saw someone sitting in front of a computer at the far end of the workbench. It was a young African American woman, in her late twenties or early thirties, dressed in a white lab coat. On her computer screen was a picture of a colorful clump that looked a bit like a ball of yarn. The woman stared at the thing with the utmost concentration, as if trying to unravel it. Dorothy felt a sudden rush of pride—she was delighted that the first scientist she saw was black. The woman was so focused on her clump that she didn’t notice Dorothy at first, but after a few seconds she turned her head and jumped a bit in her chair.
“Oh, my,” she muttered, catching her breath. “You gave me a scare. Can I help you?”
Dorothy stepped toward her. The young woman’s hair was a mess but her face was quite pretty: full lips, chiseled cheekbones, gorgeously arched eyebrows. In Dorothy’s younger days the sight of such a pretty face would’ve been enough to make her jealous, since her own face was so homely and her figure was nothing to brag about. But now, thank the Lord, she was free of the sin of envy. Now she could truly appreciate this beautiful creature God had made. But she didn’t want to scare the poor girl any more than she already had, so instead of talking about God and beauty Dorothy pointed at a nearby chair.
“I’m sorry, can I sit down for a minute?” She dropped her canvas shoulder bag on the floor. “This hospital is so big, you can get lost in it. I’ve been riding up and down the elevator and walking down the hallways.”
The woman’s eyes widened with concern. “Of course, sit down! Are you feeling ill? Should I call for an aide?”
“No, no, I’m fine. I just need to get off my feet.” Dorothy slumped into the chair and let out a sigh. “Ah, that’s better. I’m truly, truly sorry for interrupting your work. Are you a scientist, dear?”
“Uh, yes, I’m a postdoc, a medical researcher. Dr. Naomi Sanford.” Her tone was polite but wary. “So do you have an appointment at the hospital?”
“I certainly do. I’m supposed to get another scan today. But to be honest with you, Naomi, I don’t really feel like going. That’s why I’ve been wandering around so much, I guess. I’ve been putting off the inevitable.”
“Yes, I understand.” She nodded, but her expression was more impatient than sympathetic. She clearly wanted to get back to her work. “But I’m sure your doctor has a good reason for ordering the scan. It’s going to help him treat you.”
“Not in my case, I’m afraid. You see, I have pancreatic cancer and it already metastasized. So what’s the use of another scan?”
Naomi bit her lip. She was a medical researcher, so she probably knew the mortality rate for that type of cancer. “I’m so sorry.” She looked at Dorothy more intently, similar to the way she’d stared at the clump on her computer screen. “You know, Sloan Kettering has a counseling center that offers services to all patients. Can I call the center for you?”
Dorothy shook her head. She didn’t need counseling, at least not from the hospital’s psychologists. Instead, she stared at Naomi’s workbench. Next to her computer was a flask of bright red liquid, the same color as cherry Kool-Aid, and beside the flask was an odd-looking tray made of clear plastic. The plastic was indented with six cups, like a muffin tray, but each cup was more than three inches wide and only an inch deep. And in each shallow cup was a thin coating of the bright red liquid. Dorothy felt a strange fluttering in her stomach as she stared at the thing. This is important, she thought. You have to ask about this.
She pointed at it. “Is this medicine, dear?” She looked at Naomi and smiled. “Are you working on a cure for cancer?”
The young woman smiled back at her, but it was a sad, tired smile. “No, it’s not medicine. We’re still a long way from a cure, unfortunately. But we are working hard.” She tapped the tray. “This is called a cell culture plate. It has six wells, and in each one we’re growing colonies of stem cells. That liquid is the growth medium, and the colonies are attached to the bottom of the well.”
“Stem cells? I think I’ve heard of them before, but I can’t remember what they are.”
“They’re tiny miracles. That’s the best way to describe them.” Naomi leaned back in her chair. “The inside of a human embryo is full of stem cells. They have the ability to turn into any kind of body tissue—skin, muscle, nerves, bone. They’re the key to human development, how a microscopic embryo becomes a baby.” She pointed at Dorothy, then at herself. “And adults have stem cells too, especially in the bone marrow. They’re constantly producing new blood cells, because we need a whole lot of them.”
Naomi gestured with great vivacity, waving and pointing as she spoke, and her face got even prettier. She obviously enjoyed talk
ing about her work. And Dorothy grew more and more impressed. She wanted to keep the conversation going for as long as possible. “Can stem cells cure cancer? Is that why you’re growing them?”
“Well, stem cells are already used in some cancer treatments. For leukemia patients we inject stem cells into their bone marrow to replace the ones killed by radiation and chemotherapy.” She tapped the cell culture plate again. “But the real goal is figuring out how stem cells work. Stem cells and cancer cells are very similar. They’re both like the Superman of cells—adaptable and fast-multiplying and hard to kill. But even Superman has a weakness, right? If we can learn what makes the cells so tough, then maybe we can also discover their vulnerabilities.”
Dorothy muttered, “Amazing!” but she was reacting more to Naomi herself than to the research she’d just described. The young woman was so passionate about her work, so fiercely dedicated. And the fact that she was African American made her all the more precious. For Dorothy, who’d struggled for decades to get the Episcopal church to pay more attention to racial equality, the existence of someone like Naomi was a sign from God. It was proof that a black woman could do anything. It was such a joyous sight that Dorothy started to cry.
She reached into her shoulder bag and found a Kleenex. “Forgive me, dear. What you’re saying is so wonderful, I’m overcome.” She dabbed her cheeks, wiping away the tears. “Your work is a blessing. It’s going to help so many people.”
Naomi furrowed her brow. She looked a little uncomfortable, thrown off balance by Dorothy’s reaction. “I … I don’t want to give you the wrong idea. This research is just beginning. It might take years to learn something useful from the experiments.”
Now Dorothy was crying too hard to speak. The power of her feelings surprised her. She realized there was another reason for her emotional turmoil, and it had nothing to do with race or religion. It was more personal and painful. Dorothy had always wanted a daughter. When she looked at Naomi she saw the child she’d dreamed about for so many years. She could’ve had a daughter just like this one, a golden girl to love and cherish. All of it would’ve been possible if only she’d made wiser choices.
