Living Proof

by Kira Peikoff

  “It means she has to come over to my place and practice,” Trent half joked.

  “No wonder I haven’t see you much lately,” Jed teased.

  Perfect opening to reinforce my good-guy image, Trent thought. “Do you miss me?” he joked.

  “Of course,” Jed responded. “What’s Friday night without my brother?”

  “I guess I have been taking over your guy time,” Arianna admitted.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Trent replied, smiling sadly. I have my whole life to make up for it.

  * * *

  The group parted an hour later after a dinner that segued into peacefully irrelevant conversation about sports, pop culture, and movies. It was well before midnight, but Trent could tell that Arianna was exhausted, and he was glad to turn in early. They starting walking back to his apartment.

  But just as he indulged a sigh of relief, Arianna grabbed his forearm.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, assuming she had lost her balance.

  She looked intently into his eyes. “Did you have any idea before that Jed was snooping around my clinic?”

  “Not at all. He never mentioned anything to me—we didn’t realize the connection until tonight.”

  The air outside felt chilled, like the physical manifestation of dread.

  “So,” she said, “you must not know who his health source was, then?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “It had to have been someone with access to the DEP, since the person had my numbers. Could you find out?”

  He hesitated. “You want me to ask Jed?”

  “Do you think he would tell you?”

  “Doubtful. You know that keeping sources confidential is a cardinal rule of journalism. It’s the only way reporters are able to get access to inside people at all.”

  Arianna sighed. “I just wonder what else that person knows. But at the same time, it can’t be much, since the lab is still safe and the clinic is doing fine.”

  Trent put his arm around her shoulders. “Try not to worry about it.”

  “Did Jed say anything when we went to the bathroom? Megan was worried he might want to reopen his story, now that he knows you could get information from me.”

  “I’m not going to scoop you, Arianna. And if you thought I would, then I don’t think you would be here right now.”

  “True.”

  “We talked briefly about the clinic. I said that you’re just a really popular doctor.”

  “Thank you. I told Megan you wouldn’t give us away; it was ridiculous to even consider it.”

  Trent felt her shoulders loosen under the weight of his arm.

  “I guess I took enough of a chance telling you. But I trust only you.”

  He resisted his urge to stiffen. “How come?”

  “Because I know you love me.”

  “I do.” Overcome by a sudden fervor, he stopped short on the sidewalk. She turned to face him, and her skin looked pallid in the moonlight. He took her cheeks with both hands, wishing he could rub some color back into them. “I would never tell anyone,” he said. “I want to protect you however I possibly can.”

  “I wish you could.”

  He held her gaze for a moment—could she tell it was meaningful?—and then kissed her lightly. They continued to walk in silence. Her cane slapped the ground at regular intervals, a third footstep.

  Trent’s mind wandered to the lab in the church basement and its enormous potential just out of reach. While the public would no doubt see the lab as scandalous, Trent realized that its existence was actually their culture’s greatest sign of enlightenment.

  “Hey,” he said, “I’ve been meaning to ask you something about the lab. What does ‘sad face’ mean? That password you used at the door?”

  She chuckled. “I thought you would ask. It’s an acronym.”

  “For what?”

  “First I’ll tell you how we came up with it. At my clinic, I need to separate the donated embryos from the ones that come from actual patients. But since I don’t want the DEP inspectors to understand, I put the donated embryos in a separate cluster in the incubator, and label that area with a picture of a sad face. Whenever the inspectors ask why, I say that those embryos just aren’t looking viable for pregnancy, so I set them apart until they’re ready to be frozen. In reality, when those embryos are ready, I bring them to the lab. I started referring to them as the sad-face embryos, and the scientists got a kick out of it. Then one day, when we were complaining about bureaucracy, Patrick suggested that we coin an acronym for our group to go by, like an answer to the DEP. So Sam, always the snarky clever one, suggested we go by SADFACE. But of course, we all wanted to know what it would stand for. And then, totally straight-faced, he said, ‘Scientists and Doctors Fighting Absurd Christian Edicts.’”

  Trent laughed. “That’s great. Sam is witty as hell.”

  Arianna grinned. “Just like my dad was.”

  Trent found her hand. The next words escaped him naturally, though he had shied away from discussing her father at all.

  “He would have been so proud of you.”

  Arianna’s smile faded as she stared reticently at the sidewalk. Trent inferred that there were no words available to express the complexity of her emotions: her enduring grief over her father’s death; her love of his memory; and her gratitude toward Trent for understanding both.

  Her fingers, thin and bony, tightened around his, rendering the tacit message.

  Trent knew then what else she wanted to say:

  No words were necessary.

  FOURTEEN

  “You’re sure you don’t want to leave now, Sam?” Patrick asked, standing at the door of the lab. His briefcase hung over his shoulder, stuffed with his folded white coat. “It’s New Year’s Day! You could go home for a change … take a walk.…”

  Sam looked up from his microscope, focusing his strained eyes on Patrick. Contempt blistered his throat. He glared, pulling his face mask down around his neck. “A walk?”

  Patrick shrugged. “There’s more to the world than this basement. Like the sun and fresh air.” He smiled. “Ring a bell?”

  “No.”

  Patrick’s smile faltered. “All right. Then I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

  Sam grunted and turned back to the microscope. The door closed softly and he heard one, two, three bolts lock. Then silence, except for the buzzing of the overhead lights. Or perhaps it was a ringing in his ear, the kind he noticed only in total silence. He glanced at the rat cages; even those little beasts were still.

  He shifted his weight on the stool and heard a crack in his back—loud, like a pop. It felt good. Maybe he should stretch. His eyes were blurring, and the cells on the slide were becoming difficult to distinguish. He knew he needed to focus on an object far away for a minute to buy another few hours of visual clarity. So he stood up and rubbed his numb rear, leaning backwards against his hands, staring at the rat cages in the corner. They weren’t that far away, but in one room, nothing was. He glanced next to the cages at the five metal folding chairs stacked against the wall.

  Only a few hours ago, Arianna had been sitting on one of them.

  Hers was the first chair, the one touching the wall. After the group’s regular Sunday afternoon meeting, Sam had folded up the chairs, inadvertently noting hers. Only five members remained—himself; Patrick; the two doctors at the clinic, Gavin Ericson and his wife, Emily; and Arianna. But Sam was aware only of her. Even sitting, her movements had seemed stiff as she crossed and recrossed her legs.

  He thought of the way she had glanced at him during the meeting—with the hurt and confusion of an abandoned child. He looked away and barely spoke for the rest of the meeting. But how could she expect him to just nod and smile, after she had brought that man here? That dolt who had the gall to kiss her in front of him? Of course, during the meeting, Arianna was so quick to point out that he had caused them no harm, that he meant no harm, excuse after excuse. And the infuriating part wa
s that Patrick, Gavin, and Emily had nodded. Almost a week had passed, and they were in no greater danger that they could detect. Despite the premature loss of Ian, it seemed her carelessness was forgiven.

  Sam bristled when she spoke of him. Each time, her face glowed. It was not the fluorescent lights. She acquired the semblance of health when his name rolled off her tongue, restoring that joyous dimple in her chin, as if it boosted her to say that single syllable: Trent.

  But when she looked at Sam, sorrow. How could it have come to this? And how could he ever explain to her? The truth pained him like a physical ailment when he slept in his cot here at nights, his curved back sinking low to the ground in the darkness. Only then, without the mental distraction of his research, would his mind allow their glorious old times to replay. It was okay, he told himself, to bask in those not-so-distant memories, even if it hardened a flimsy hope; it was okay as long as it fueled him to continue his work. She would not care what fantasy he lived in, as long as he delivered results; that was all he meant to her now. So it did no harm to recall those times when he was the centerpiece of her world. Whatever suffering both of them might still endure, he had lived those times, and because of them—or perhaps in spite of them—he would continue to live.

  He returned his tired eyes to the microscope. The slides still looked blurry. Frustration welled within him. He did not have time for petty optic nonsense. With Ian gone for good and Patrick for the day, the lab felt full of pressure, as if it were miles below sea level instead of only ten feet underground. Every combination of growth factors he had tried so far had produced a swarm of incorrectly differentiated cells, including some that would surely lead to cancer if implanted in Arianna’s spinal cord. The resulting cells had to be pure oligodendrocytes if they were to have any real chance of saving her life. To be healthy, the body demanded perfection of its parts. But perfection was not yet the province of such nascent biotechnology. If only they had had the last twenty years to research, she might have been in no danger at all today, Sam thought. Her treatment might have been a routine outpatient surgery.

  He stared harder down the barrel of the microscope. The cells looked like indistinct clumps on the slide. He blinked several times, his eyelashes brushing the lens. But the cell outlines did not appear to sharpen. He could not deny that his poor sight was due to lack of sleep.

  With a sigh, he ripped off his mask and gloves, pulled off his lab coat, and left it all in a heap on the floor. He flicked off the lights and stumbled toward his cot. Just a few hours of sleep would do the trick, he thought, feeling his way forward. His hand hit an aluminum rod, and he felt along the nylon fabric to the pillow resting at one end. As he climbed onto the cot, it groaned under his weight and sank low. He could sense the concrete coolness of the ground below his back.

  On the night she had found him in his apartment, a year ago, he had been lying in darkness, coming out of an intoxicated stupor. The memory of those first few minutes was vague: a haze pinpricked by the sound of a doorbell he did not realize he had. He had picked himself up off the couch and staggered to the door, cursing the doorman for allowing an unannounced visitor to drop by. Damn tax collector, he had thought. But hadn’t he paid the bills? Or was that last month?

  He opened the door. The sight of a beautiful woman standing there made him shut it. Wrong apartment. The bell rang again—a sharp note, like a dog’s cry. Hesitating, he opened the door a second time.

  “Sam Lisio?” the woman said tentatively, a hopeful smile on her lips.

  And then she had shifted into focus: those long black waves covering her shoulders, the high cheekbones and the intelligent blue eyes, but now with tiny crow’s-feet at the corners, the only testament to the intervening sixteen years. He wondered later how he must have looked to her then, with his thinning white hair and sallow skin, and the scent of whiskey permeating the air between them.

  “Arianna Drake?” he ventured.

  “Sam, I can’t believe I found you!”

  “After all these years…,” he mumbled, fighting the mental fog of alcohol and memory lapse to recall the last time he had seen her. It must have been at one of her staged rallies at Columbia, right before the DEP swept in and arrested him. Oh, how quixotic they had been at that rally—he, a respected professor, and she, his admiring student—to believe that logic would prevail. Only three months later, he had stepped into his prison cell, fifty-four square feet of helplessness.

  “What are you doing here?” he blurted.

  Her proposition, and the reason for it, had shocked him out of his daze. The risks involved did not bother him; returning to jail was not much worse than the way he was living, in purposeless, endless solitude. And the thought of having his own lab with fresh embryos—it was like handing eyes back to an artist so he could paint his masterpiece. Of course, he would have to study his neurobiology texts again, to be sure he remembered all the procedures correctly, and he would have to examine the pathology of multiple sclerosis in particular. Years before, his peers around the country had been starting to develop theories about MS and embryonic stem cells that could help him get started, and he knew just which scientific journals to consult.

  “You’ll do it?” she had gasped. “You really want to do it?”

  “I want nothing more,” he had replied.

  * * *

  As he lay asleep on the cot, Sam’s lips moved to form the words in accordance with the memory. The image of her unbridled elation sprang to mind, on cue, as the familiar sequence progressed. How she had looked at him in tears, with so much gratitude, so much hope, as if he were the only person in her world worthy of a hero’s reception. Only one other woman had ever looked at him like that.

  Never did he think he would look back again. Shame and joy chafed within him, an inseparable pair, yet each dulled the other. A woman three decades his junior; a woman who had likened him to her own father; a woman whose life he had the power to save.

  He almost told her once, a few months back when they had shared a steak dinner at her apartment. Though their lives flowed from the same high-pressured well of uncertainty, together they found reason to smile; together they laughed. With her, time simply slipped away. Sam remembered thinking that life used to be like this, that it still could be. It saddened him to say good-bye to her even for a night—and so, on that night, he had hovered outside her apartment, daring himself to chase his heart back inside. And even then, he knew he was fooling himself. As long as she did not know, he could keep clinging to the hope that perhaps one day, after he managed to solve the biological lock on those cells, she would see him as the man he really was—a man full of brilliance and passion and life. And not just as the old hermit he had become, the emotional coward who fended off human closeness with irritability.

  A trilling noise startled him awake. His cell phone was ringing somewhere on the counter next to his microscope. He jumped out of the cot, swearing at the darkness. While the phone continued to jingle, he felt for the light switch on the wall, flicked it on, and then rushed to the counter. As the phone vibrated between his fingers, he fumbled to open it.

  “Hello?”

  “Sam, hi, it’s me.” Arianna. Sounding nervous.

  “Hi,” he said gruffly.

  “Am I bothering you?”

  “I was taking a nap.”

  “Right now? It’s seven P.M.”

  “So?”

  She paused. “Well, never mind, then.”

  His tone softened. “What’s up?”

  “I thought you might want to come over for dinner.”

  “Why?”

  “I know I’ve been seeing a lot of Trent lately, so you and I haven’t spent much time together. Let me make it up to you.”

  Despite the dreaded syllable, Sam plucked joy from her words: She had not forgotten him. But her voice sounded more subdued on the phone than he remembered.

  “Sam? Hello?”

  He cleared his throat, feeling aghast at himself. Given what she was f
acing, his jealousy was strikingly trivial.

  “I appreciate the offer, Arianna, but I should be getting back to work.” The crustiness in his tone was gone. “We can’t waste time.”

  * * *

  Dopp sat in his office, staring out at the dreariness of January. Skeletal treetops poked through fog in Central Park like hands reaching up for help. Charcoal clouds hung low in the sky, obscuring buildings.

  Why was the Lord leading him on a path to frustration?

  The current plan was not working. A week into the New Year, progress remained nonexistent. That manipulating abortionist had passed the monthly inspection, though her clinic’s embryo count was still inexplicably high. And Trent continued to waste time with her. With lawmakers still leaning toward the wrong priorities, the department might as well be a sinking ship, Dopp thought. And they had no other leads.

  He turned to his desk and once more scoured the transcripts that Trent placed there each morning. Banal conversation dulled the pages. How is your clinic? Trent would often ask. Fine. Busy. Short and pat. Never a hint that something was awry.

  Yet a drastic move could still be made. All week, Dopp had wondered if it was time; he had prayed, paced, squirmed, not slept. The move would be a gamble, an irreversible toss of the dice tied straight to his livelihood. He couldn’t imagine facing his wife in the meantime, not to mention his kids. But his options were as slim as ever: to wait and hope, or to act and hope? At least the latter would give him a sense of control, while God formulated his fate.

  The phone rang, filling the office with its sharp trill.

  “Dopp, Windra here.” The man’s voice sounded rushed.

  “Senator Windra! How nice to hear from you.” Dopp cringed as he spoke. The state’s top Republican, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Windra, called him directly only when there was trouble.

  “Listen,” Windra said, “I want to give you a heads-up about the budget. The buzz I’m hearing around here is that it’s still not looking too good for you.”

  Dopp swallowed. “Because of the Department of Embryo-Fetal Protection?”