“How about you call me Kat and I’ll call you Burton, since we’re neighbors?”
Ramsey snarled. “Fine, Kat, but you didn’t answer my question. You on to something so big it couldn’t wait a couple of days to continue?”
Kat didn’t move, and, in fact, she looked something like a deer caught in the headlights. “No, nothing . . . nothing particularly important. I was just . . . just impatient to get started on a new formula and didn’t want to waste the week-end.” She began to pace around the lab, running her hands through her hair, thinking about how to proceed. Finally, “But I have to talk to you. It’s imperative. Both for me and for you. We have to talk.”
“Talk!” Ramsey did a burlesque of a shocked double take. “Talk? You and me? Well, Doctor Kat, I think you are under some delusion.” He looked up at Williams from under hooded eyes. “I asked you a simple question about your work, and you gave me some bullshit about ‘being impatient’ to get to work. I don’t believe you for a minute. I think you think you’re on to something big and you’re afraid I might find out about it and steal your stuff.”
Ramsey got clumsily off his stool and rummaged in his desk drawer, looking for another bottle of Chivas. “Ha,” he whispered, more to himself than to Williams. “I’ve got something worth more than you ever dreamed about, and I don’t need your piddly little discovery, no matter what it is.”
Kat was desperate. “Dr. Ramsey, please listen to me. We have to talk as one scientist to ano—”
“Who’s the other one?”
“What?”
“The other scientist? You said we had to talk as one scientist to another. I’m one, who’s the other? All I see in here is a misplaced doctor trying to do research and screwing it up royally.”
Kat ignored his hostile tone and tried to reason with him. “Would you please listen to me? Somehow, some way, there is a chance that your . . . your work may have . . . have coincided with and caused a synergistic effect with mine. It’s extremely unlikely, but there is a chance that our separate experiments may be dually enhancing . . . synergistic.”
“I know what the word synergistic means, Doctor,” Ramsey growled, and then he smiled happily, still feeling the scotch. “You want to know what I’m working on, is that it?”
“Yes. Yes, very much. Please, it could mean so much to both of us.”
“Then why am I not down at your laboratory door, begging to know what you are working on?”
“Because the effects are showing up in the animals I borrowed from you. I have to know how much effect your experiment could be having on mine.”
“I’m not experimenting anymore. I’m through, done, finis. That’s why I’m sitting here drinking. I’m bored. I always drink when I’m bored. Which is probably the only reason I’m putting up with your presence.”
Ramsey smiled, a smile devoid of any semblance of humor or friendliness. “It seems that at some point during my consumption of alcohol, I’d mark it right about the third or fourth drink, I experience a sensation that can only be described as nearly sufferable. I wouldn’t call it genial, and certainly not friendly, but it’s a window of a great deal more tolerance than I ordinarily display. However, I must warn you, Dr. Williams, it’s a fairly small window, an envelope of very limited duration. It usually lasts only about a half an hour, an hour at the most. After that, no matter whether I keep on drinking or stop entirely, I revert to type. I can’t tell you how near the edge of the envelope I am, but I would urge you, as one contract researcher for BioTech to another, that being the only common ground I can find between us, to hasten your say and hasten your departure even more.”
Kaitlyn Williams was almost trembling in her desperation. She’d never met anyone like Ramsey before, and she didn’t have the slightest idea how to appeal to someone who seemed motivated by concerns Kat had never encountered. She was further encumbered by her inexperience in being the supplicant in a situation. In fact, she couldn’t recall the last time she’d been put in the position of having to ask something of another human being, colleague or not. “Oh, this is impossible! I don’t even know whether you’re drunk or not. How can I make you understand how important this is? Can’t you put aside your childish prejudice against me for five minutes?”
“Sounds to me, Doc, like this is only important to you.”
“To both of us. If you’ll only give me some indication of what you’re working on. I’m not asking for full details.”
Ramsey grinned foolishly. “Sounds like a little boy and a little girl. You show me yours, and I’ll show you mine.” He suddenly yawned and relaxed back against his workbench. “Clock’s running, Doc. I can almost feel the shade being drawn across the window, the envelope being sealed. The monster wants out.”
Kat raised both fists in the air in frustration. Her voice strangled in her effort to get the words out. “You cannot possibly understand the importance of this conversation! Just tell me plainly and simply what it will take to compel you to give me some indication, some scientific indication, of what you injected those test animals with.”
“You mean the ones you stole from my lab?”
“Yes, yes, yes. Whatever you say, man. Just give me a clue!”
Ramsey lifted his glass thoughtfully and sucked out an ice cube to chew on. He sat for a minute, considering. “Well, maybe it wouldn’t hurt to tell you this. As you know, I’m a biochemist, but my specialty has always been the blood. I injected those rats with something that had to do with blood.” He smiled broadly. “There! Now are you happy?”
“Oh, goddamn.“ Kat was almost ready to weep, but she refused to give this bastard the satisfaction. “How did you get to be a research scientist? You’re a madman, a lunatic!”
Ramsey whistled. “Boy, I don’t know a lot about these matters, but my guess is that’s a mighty poor way to ask me for something.”
“Then, what? What?”
Ramsey thought for a moment. Actually he was beginning to tire of the game—and of Kaitlyn Williams. What Williams didn’t seem to be able to grasp was that he, Ramsey, was finished with the actual research aspect of his project. All that was standing between him and a million dollars was some shady work with mirrors and smoke. Williams was making the mistake of thinking that he could possibly be interested in anything Williams had to say or to propose. He was already looking forward to the evening and night with Sheila, and he’d have been out of the laboratory and gone if this intruder had not thrust herself forward. But a thought came to him. Maybe there was a little more fun to be had from the game. “Maybe there is something you can offer, Williams. Maybe I’ll cooperate if you’ll do it.”
Kat was almost pathetic in her eagerness. “Name it!”
Ramsey opened another drawer and finally found a bottle with about two fingers of scotch left in it. He held the bottle up, frowning at the label. “Huh. J and B. Well, any port in a storm.” Before he said anything else, he took the time to mix himself another drink, and then held the almost-empty bottle up to Williams as if offering to share.
Kat was disgusted. “You’re not going to drink even more?”
Ramsey gave her a look, then poured the remaining drops of scotch into his glass. “Look here . . . you don’t seem to understand. This is my playground. If you don’t want to play, you don’t have to. You can always go home.”
Kat was despairing. She swallowed. This visit, this torture, was the worst experience she could remember. But she swallowed her pride. “You wanted something. What is it?”
Ramsey took a sip of scotch and mumbled as he stared into the glass. “I want to know how you blew it as a neurosurgeon. I want the whole story, with all the bells and whistles. Nobody around here seems to know. I want to be the one person who does.”
He took another drink of scotch and smiled at Kat. “Tell me of your shame, rich girl. Tell me of your downfall. I’m sure it must be juicy.”
Kat stared at him. A line of sweat had suddenly formed on her upper lip. She could feel herself go
ing white. “You’re not serious.”
Ramsey scowled, his face going hard, “I’m as serious as the bologna sandwiches I ate for three years in graduate school. Exclusively. That’s my price. Take it or leave it.”
Kat pursed her lips, thinking. Oh well, what the hell? she thought.
“And if I tell you my story, you will tell me what was in your formula?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Maybe.”
“Maybe?” she exclaimed.
He grinned maliciously. “‘Maybe’ is all you’re gonna get, girl. So either take it or leave it. I’m getting tired of all this palaver.”
CHAPTER 8
For a long couple of moments, Kat didn’t think she could bring herself to tell this doltish oaf anything personal about herself, especially about the gaping wound inside that could still sear and pain and throb and hurt her afresh when it stole into her mind unexpectedly.
But what was happening back in her lab was so important, so far beyond anything she could have imagined, that she couldn’t see how she could keep from paying any price that this obviously unbalanced maniac wanted her to pay in order to get the information she needed. Under the lens of her one-hundred-power Zeiss microscope, she had seen a miracle. It could be described in no other way. It made her earlier success seem insignificant and puny by comparison.
Anyway, what did it really matter what she told Ramsey? Probably half the people working at the BioTech laboratory already knew. In fact, Ramsey himself probably already knew and was just interested in having the devious pleasure of hearing the story from her own lips. The scientific and medical communities were relatively small ones, and juicy bits of gossip like her failure in the operating theater would spread from hospital to hospital with the speed of light, especially given the prominence of her family in that community. There were always those who took malicious delight in seeing the mighty pulled low.
“Clock is really spinning, Doc. I can feel myself beginning to fade away. The monster is on his way. I can feel him welling up within my chest. Strangely enough, he looks like Spencer Tracy.”
Kat gritted her teeth, thinking of it as one more sacrifice she had to make to obtain the secret. She told her story in a detached way, almost as if she was talking about a friend or colleague. “In my last year of neurosurgery residency, during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, I entered an exchange program at Walter Reed Hospital to gain experience dealing with traumatic spinal injuries. Unfortunately, there were plenty of them to be had because of the ongoing offensive in the Middle East.”
She paused and walked over to sit in front of the window and stared out, not noticing the sweat that had broken out on her face with the strain of remembering. “For nine weeks, I operated day and night, patching together spines that had been torn apart and shattered, trying to splice torn nerves to limbs that would never work again no matter how well I sutured them, trying to cure traumatic brain injuries and then having to face boys who were years younger than me and tell them that their lives as they knew them were over.”
She wiped unconsciously at the sweat dripping into her eyes. “They would never walk, run, or make love again. They would be forever prisoners in their beds or wheelchairs, wearing dignity-defeating diapers and catheters, depending on others for their care for the rest of their lives.” She sighed deeply. “Or even worse, not even recognizing their loved ones because the neurons in their brains didn’t connect to each other anymore.”
She continued to stare out the window, unable to meet Ramsey’s eyes. “After a couple hundred such operations, my repeated failures began to undermine my confidence in my ability to help anyone, not just the hopeless cases.” She glanced down at her hands, and then she clenched them into fists. “My hands began to shake, not much, just a little. But when you’re working in spaces defined by millimeters, with life on one side of the line and death on the other, even a little shakiness is too much. Finally, during a rather routine subdural hematoma evacuation, I knew I was more of a danger to the patient than a savior, so I asked my assistant to take over and I walked out of the operating room.”
Kat looked over at Ramsey with tortured eyes. “I never operated again. I finished my residency doing postoperative care only and never picked up a scalpel again.” She finished the story with her decision to leave the practice of medicine and enter the field of research, where she felt she could still serve without fear of doing harm to others. She thought she’d told her story elegantly and simply, not sparing herself the lash of failure but making it plain that, with all the talent she’d been given, had come a responsibility that she was too young and too callow to handle.
When she was finished, Ramsey stared at her for a second. Ramsey felt the stirrings of an unfamiliar feeling: shame. “What do you mean, your hands started shaking?”
“Exactly that,” Kat said with as much dignity as she could manage after feeling like she had just figuratively stripped herself naked in front of Ramsey. “My hands shook, and I lost my nerve.” She drew herself up. “I’ve seen it happen to others, but I never dreamed it would happen to me.”
Ramsey shuddered, suddenly sober. He had rarely seen such pain and suffering in another human being, and the fact that he had forced Williams to undergo telling her story and reliving the pain as a joke made him feel very small.
He got up and went to the door, looking at the floor. “Please leave. I’ve heard enough.”
Kat stared at him in amazement. She was continually dumbfounded by Burton Ramsey. She had to keep asking herself how such a hoodlum, bully, and social misfit could have achieved a Ph.D. and risen to a prominent position in such a demanding discipline. “You owe me the knowledge of what you injected those rats with, Burton. We had a deal, and even such a man as yourself must feel honor bound to live up to it.”
Ramsey now was the one unable to meet Williams’s eyes. He had no intention of giving her the secret of his research and he never had, but he had not expected to feel so bad about what he had made the doctor do. He needed time to think, and he needed to do it without Williams being present. “Okay, let me think about it. I’ll get back to you tomorrow with my decision.”
Kat started to speak, and then she just shook her head and walked out of the office, her back straight and her head held high.
Ramsey looked at his watch. It was a quarter ’til two, and if he was lucky, he just might catch Sheila at her office in the Methodist hospital before she started seeing patients after her lunch break. He knew he needed the lift that seeing her would give him. He quickly dialed the number and waited until she came on the phone. He loved her voice. It was always so warm and soft and controlled. It always made him feel like she was standing right next to him.
He said, “What time will you be heading home?”
“Well, if it’s any of your business, somewhere around half past six. Dr. Slack has asked me to see one of his patients at six, but that shouldn’t take long.” Then her voice took on a guarded tone. “Why?”
“Well, I’m bored here and about ready to split. I thought I’d pick up some groceries and fix us a fabulous dinner.”
There was a slight sound of dismay in her voice. She said, “Oh Burton, don’t cook. Dear God, please don’t cook.”
“Sheila, I’m offended. If a goddamn biochemist can’t cook, who can? I may have been a little overly ambitious in the past, but I’ve learned from that. I’m thinking of bouillabaisse. That’s just a fish soup. I make marvelous soups in this lab every day and then stick ’em in rats.”
She sounded desperate. “Burton, please don’t cook. Let’s go out. It’s not just your, uh, unusual dishes. It’s the mess you leave. The last time you cooked, I couldn’t bring myself to face the kitchen for three days. Promise me you won’t cook.”
“Goddamnit, Sheila, there you go again. Just because you’re the love of my life does not allow you to impugn my skills as a culinary artist. I’m the big dick around here and don’t you forget it.”
“I’ll agree you’re
a big dick, though I wish I could say the same for your penis.” She paused, and then she added suspiciously, “You’re not drunk, are you?”
“At this time of day? Don’t be ridiculous.”
“What have you been doing?”
“Well, that’s something I want to talk to you about, but not over the phone.” His voice got a little hoarse. “I need some TLC right about now and I need you.”
“I know you do, Burton.” She sighed. “Okay, come on over tonight and do your worst with my kitchen, and then, if we’re able to after eating what you cook, we’ll talk.”
“There is more truth in that than you know, my girl. Get home as soon as you can. Bouillabaisse is best served fresh from the stove.” He hung up the phone and mixed himself another drink, a very weak one, already starting to plan the dinner he was going to create.
* * *
Kat went back to her lab and into her office and closed the door. Kevin was recording some data at the computer, but Kat paid him no mind. She sat down heavily in her chair and stared into space, thinking. It was hard to imagine, she thought, but her whole future might well be in the hands of Burton Ramsey, an obvious drunk and a neurotic.
She could not quite come to understand how such a circumstance could have entered her well-ordered life. She did not associate with people like Burton Ramsey. They were not allowed to be a part of her life. And yet, this man was not only in her life, but he practically had control of it, and all without knowing—or caring.
That was what puzzled Kat—Ramsey didn’t seem at all interested in anything she, Kat, had to say. For all Ramsey knew, she could be offering him the next Nobel Prizes in both Medicine and Chemistry. But Ramsey didn’t even bother to listen. He had stated flatly that his work was done and that was that. Most scientists would have been at least a little curious about why Kat was so interested in their work. Maybe it was the alcohol. He must have been too drunk to realize how serious Kat was.
Dust to Dust Page 7
