The Normals

by David Gilbert

  She's suddenly sensitive to her art. "It's how you look," she says, guiding him to the door and the next station, where, she adds rather cryptically, joy awaits.

  Joy comes in the form of a two-hundred-pound black woman. Better yet, sea-glass brown, her skin battered smooth and frosty when dry. She sits on a stool in the middle of the room, not so much inhabiting the space but wearing it like an antebellum hoopskirt.

  "Okay, Mr. Schine, have a seat and roll up—are, you left- or right-handed?"

  "Right, but I throw lefty and play guitar lefty, though I don't play guitar much."

  "So, right?"

  "Mostly, I'd say. And pool. I don't know why, but I play pool lefty."

  Her droopy eyes droop further. "Your left sleeve, up to the shoulder."

  The chair Billy plops into resembles a clinical Barcalounger. It's menacingly comfortable, as if TV might be watched intravenously. The slightest squirm unleashes vinyl farts the color of teal.

  Joy snaps on surgical gloves. Fingers are wiggled expectantly like the order of the day might be criminal. "So, I'm the phlebotomist for your study, meaning I'll be drawing your blood over the next two weeks. Twice a day. Twenty times next Saturday. That's your PK day, 'PK' for pharmacokinetics, which is the main point of this study. That'll give us the internal life of the drug, a half-hour-by-half-hour analysis for ten hours. It's a long day for the both of us, so feel sorry for me as well. I'll never take too much blood, only a little more than a thimbleful, not enough to have any effect on you. But instead of needle-sticking you all those times and leaving your arm looking like a pincushion, what I'm going to do is insert this cannula"—she picks up a small needle-nosed tube from the instrument tray—"so when we need blood, all we have to do is connect a test tube. What that means is you'll have a medical device in your arm and you should treat it with respect and leave it alone. Don't play with it, don't pull at it, don't pick at it. No joke. Best pretend it isn't even there. You can shower, you can do whatever you normally do. The cannula will be changed every four days, and if there's ever any discomfort, let me know. We can always go to the needle. Clear?"

  Billy nods. How old is she? Twenty-five? Thirty-five? Forty-five? Her age seems hidden under a layer of timeless weight. Billy likes her instantly and for no good reason. She seems nice. Sweet. Maybe it's the warm and fuzzy undertones of a large black woman, a nurse, possibly racist in nature, or nurture, at least stereotypical (the Aunt Jemima factor) and totally undeniable. You jerk. Who do you think she is, Butterfly McQueen? Hattie McDaniel? Because guaranteed if she were a large white woman, she'd simply be fat.

  Joy ties a rubber cord around his biceps. "Pump your hand."

  "So how'd you get the name 'Joy'?"

  "How'd you get your name?"

  "My parents."

  "Imagine that."

  "Is it a family name?"

  "My mother died in labor so my father tried putting on a happy face."

  "Jesus, I'm sorry."

  "It was a long time ago." Joy rips open an antiseptic swab and wipes clean the peachy underside of his arm. "You've got good ropes. A five on the phlebometer."

  "What's that?"

  "Thickness and definition of the vein."

  "Oh."

  "These are bodybuilder veins."

  "Inside weakling arms. Must be my inner Charles Atlas."

  "Aren't we quick."

  "Huh?"

  "Clever."

  "You make it sound like a diagnosis."

  "Either way, it makes my job easier."

  "Cleverness?"

  "No, your veins. Nothing worse than chicken veins." Joy leans over Billy; her cleavage is viselike. "Okay, here we go," she says, holding the cannula by the neck like a viscious species of worm. The needle pushes against the skin and the skin bends and briefly withstands before the needle breaks the surface and slips in. Two strips of medical tape secure the parasite to his arm.

  Joy reaches for a test tube. "You're a watcher," she says.

  "Excuse me?"

  "Most people turn away." She marries the test tube to the cannula, and blood begins to flow, its rich red hue flummoxing even the best colorist.

  "But you're a watcher."

  "Yeah, I don't mind."

  "Some people faint." Joy unknots the rubber cord. "And the ex-junkies drool."

  "Am I drooling?"

  "Are you an ex-junkie?"

  "No."

  "Then you're just salivating."

  "I sort of find it relaxing," Billy says, like a vitrine filling with his blood, he imagines, filling and filling and Billy slowly fading as his fluid self drains into glass until every last drop of what lies beneath skin is exposed.

  Joy detaches the test tube, shakes it, labels it, racks it with the seven other samples. "You're all set," she says.

  Billy asks, "Which one belongs to the woman?"

  "Why?"

  "I want to see Snow White."

  In station three Dr. Paul Honeysack wears the prerequisite white lab coat and sits behind a desk. He's in his gaunt thirties, overworked, underpaid, on the threshold of the cynical forties where age will be added to the growing list of disappointments. By the looks of him, Billy figures his twenties were without much humor (only podiatry would've made him laugh). His cheeks are pictographed with acne scars that tell the story of brutal teen years underscored with shy obsessive eyes that remind Billy of a boy who never had a doubt of what he wanted to do in his life. Even as friends played in the dirt, little Paul Honeysack probably dreamed of today—and here it is, you schlub. "You're the last one?" he asks.

  Billy nods.

  The doctor thumbs through a file. "William A. Schine, date of birth 7/11/72, Cincinnati, Ohio, screened and approved, New York, 8/14/99." His eyes alternate between the papers on his desk and the man in front of him; he could be sketching a portrait in vital statistics. "What year Harvard?"

  "Ninety-three."

  "So I'm older."

  "Harvard?"

  "No, Cornell, then Emory, but I had a lot of friends at Harvard."

  "Oh."

  "Almost went."

  "Oh."

  "Are you an artist, writer, filmmaker, actor?" he says as if saying blah-blah-blah.

  "None of the above."

  "We don't get many Ivy Leaguers here unless they're the creative type."

  "So I hear."

  "Are you working on a Ph.D.?"

  "No."

  "You a reporter?" he asks warily.

  "Nope, I'm nothing."

  Honeysack rechecks his paperwork as if somewhere in the documentation, in the height and weight, is the verbal and math of an SAT score, the verification of his intelligence. The goddamn SAT. Reach back and remember that fateful day when Billy received the notice from the ETS. His first piece of official mail—Mr. William A. Schine in the cellophane rearview mirror—he hesitated before discovering his crass cognitive worth. Where would he fall in the world? He used a kitchen knife as a letter opener (the envelope begged for such respect) and sensed he was slicing through skin. Inside was a sixteen hundred combined. You asshole. No studying, no preparation. You fucking asshole. He simply enjoyed the process: the desk with the ripple grain of wood, the number-two pencils forming a river raft, the eraser barge, the clock moon, the calculator as your only friend—it was like Huck and Jim floating toward Princeton, New Jersey. Then there was the drama of broken seals and multiple-choice ovals, the strange pleasure in shading the answers and creating a design and transforming a blank sheet into a mental punch card. His public school was glad for the statistical bump, though his teachers considered themselves the butt of an inside joke (their beloved wunderkind, Vanessa Freen, totaled a measly twelve sixty) and his classmates treated him like the lucky winner of the standardized lottery. Of course his parents cooed nonstop about what their combined DNA scored. "You're proof of the properness of our choice," his father told him, as if hydrogen had bonded with oxygen and produced a brilliant life-giving sea. Fucking asshole, who do
you think you are?

  Honeysack steeples his fingers down to business. "I'm the doctor-in-residence for your study, the acting physician, a liaison between the nurses and the researchers. I'm a disinterested participant. A neutral party." He smiles like Switzerland. "I have no relationship whatsoever with this particular study, no conflict of interest, so feel free to tell me anything about your day-to-day status. How you're feeling. How you're holding up. Tell me about any adverse events you might be having, big and small, because nothing's too small for us. Think of me as your friend here. Even if you have issues with the politics of the place, the people, the food, let me know and maybe I can help." He quietly claps his fingers. "Okay?"

  "Okay."

  "How's your health been recently? Any colds, any illness whatsoever?"

  "No."

  "Have you taken any drugs in the last month? Over-the-counter? Prescription? Um, other, less legal substances?"

  "No."

  "Drinking heavily?"

  "No."

  "Allergies?"

  "No."

  "Would you say, right now, at this particular moment, you're feeling fine."

  Billy considers this. "Sure," he says.

  "Nervous?"

  "A bit."

  "Of course. That's perfectly natural. Anxious or nervous?"

  "More nervous than anxious, I'd say."

  "Okay, okay." Dr. Honeysack ruffles some papers. "Now Mr. Schine—'Schine,' is that a Jewish name by any chance?"

  Billy startles, as if thrown into another unfamiliar time. "My father's Jewish."

  "Eastern European?" asks Honeysack.

  "German," Billy says.

  "Me too. German, that is, not Jewish. 'Honigsack' before we came over."

  Billy wonders what the proper response should be, what with the history involved, and decides on a what-do-you-know shrug.

  "But that was ages ago," Honeysack says, then he tongues the corner of his mouth as if investigating a hidden canker. "I ask that question because if you were Romanian or Lithuanian and a Jew, we might be concerned. Genetically speaking, there'd be a much higher risk of developing agranulocytosis.

  '' "Is that serious?"

  "It can kill you."

  "I'm pretty sure German," Billy says, remembering how his father would get teary over The Sound of Music, perhaps fancying himself a Baron Von Trapp type, or possibly a Christopher Plummer type. "Maybe Austrian," he says.

  "That's fine, too." Dr. Honeysack hands him a ten-page document. "Now let's go over your informed consent. It's very important that you understand everything in this form. Now you've signed a primary consent form, but this is the conclusive form. As you know from the packet we sent you, you'll be testing Allevatrox, an experiment atypical antipsychotic for the treatment of schizophrenia, a severe mental disorder." He glances up from his copy of the form. "Of course you know what schizophrenia is. Sorry. Some of our volunteers are, well, less knowledgeable. Anyway. We'll go over the purpose, the protocol, the research procedure, the risks, the payment to volunteers, the confidentiality, the right to question, the subject's rights, the IRB contact, and the voluntary participation clause for Phase I research." Dr. Honeysack takes a deep, well-deserved breath.

  "First, the purpose—"

  "Can I just sign now?" Billy asks.

  "You've read everything, understood everything?"

  Billy lies. "Yeah."

  "And you have no questions?"

  "Just where do I sign?"

  "Well, just to be sure, I'd like to go over some of the possible adverse events that you might experience during the study, just so you know what to expect from an atypical antipsychotic. Since this is what we call a load-up bioavailability study and not a long-range treatment program, a lot of these AEs simply won't happen. You'd need the added element of time. Over time, maybe, but in this short period, not likely. That said, there is a chance of having dystonic reactions, which means sudden muscle tightening, normally in the neck and or jaw area. These are more disconcerting than dangerous. Nothing to worry about. There's also a chance of something called an oculogyric crisis where your eyes involuntarily look toward a certain direction, often upwards. The glories, we call it. This generally happens when you're tired or in front of the television or not really engaged in the world, your eyes just sort of roll upwards. Another potential reaction is akinesia, and it's the most common of the extra-pyramidal symptoms. It's characterized by a decrease in spontaneous movement, meaning less flamboyant limb movement and facial expression. You'd get a wooden appearance, a shuffle instead of a trot. Akinesia can also have psychological repercussions such as lack of motivation and spontaneity, a diminished range of affect. On the other side of the extrapyramidal spectrum is akathisia. With akathisia you'd experience motor restlessness, fidgeting, purposeless movements, like obsessive leg crossing or skin rubbing. As you might expect, psychologically it might make you nervous and jittery. Okay, now we come to the bane of neuroleptics, and hopefully something Allevatrox has done away with, and that's tardive dyskinesia. This is the most worrisome adverse event because it can be, potentially, irreversible. Once again, you really need the added element of time for the symptoms to develop. It manifests itself by way of extreme facial behavior, like tongue thrusting, mouth chewing, lip smacking, eye blinking. A disturbed facial appearance. It can also effect your fingers, give them a constant wiggle and snap. It can impinge on your respiratory muscles and cause grunting and odd breathing patterns. It can turn into something called truncal dyskinesia, causing your torso to move in sharp thrusting motions which, to the passerby, can be unsettling." Dr. Honeysack stretches his shoulders in what Billy first assumes is an example but in fact is just a yawn. "That's about it," the doctor tells him.

  "That's all," Billy says.

  "Sounds worse than it is."

  "Sounds just about right. Where do I sign?"

  "Last page, above 'human research volunteer.'"

  Billy gives his celebrity autograph, large and loopy and entirely illegible. Honeysack hands him the countersigned duplicate; his signature could be razor wire over a Dunkin' Donuts. "Keep this copy for your records," he tells Billy.

  Your records almost makes Billy laugh.

  Business completed, Honeysack leans back as if reclining into Billy's wavelength. "Do you have any questions before you leave, anything at all?"

  Billy thinks for a moment then asks, "What do you do here besides this?" hoping he might ingratiate himself with this man, that afterward Honeysack will say to himself, Billy Schine, nice guy, a perfect normal.

  "Like my real job? I'm a researcher here, but every year we're put on a random study as medical supervisor. It's our version of jury duty."

  "So, what are you working on?"

  "What am I working on?" Honeysack hums a sigh then smiles. Billy can see the ten-year-old in that smile, before the onslaught of zits and school, before precociousness went stale. "You're not a spy, are you?" he jokes. "No, I don't think so. I'm working on, um, this fairly radical preservation technique in trauma care. The basic concept is to take a severely injured person, say a car-wreck victim, and slip them into a state of cryobiostasis by flushing the aorta with a saline solution we've developed. We chill this solution to forty degrees, in effect putting the heart rate on the edge of no pulse. This keeps the trauma patient viable for a couple of hours so that the ER can determine the best course of action visa-vis the injuries. It's not as crazy as it might sound. It's as crazy as freezing sperm. It's a temporary measure, a few hours of life-saving stasis. The doctor I'm working with, he's a genius in the field. He developed the technique. So far it's worked beautifully, at least on dogs."

  "Dogs?"

  "Yes, and pigs." Enthusiasm lights Honeysack's face, except for the acne scars; they stay in shadow, a rawboned chiaroscuro.

  "How about using humans?" Billy asks.

  "Well, they're trickier," Honeysack says. "Not so much physiologically but legally. After eight years we're ready to move up to the
next phase but we're still shooting sows in the stomach and miraculously saving their lives. All we need is our Anne Miller."

  "The leggy entertainer?"

  "No, the first American who received penicillin."

  "I had another Ann Miller in mind."

  "My Anne Miller developed severe strep after a miscarriage."

  "My Ann Miller was a dancer, singer, actress, a triple threat." Billy remembers her from On the Town. It was—or is—one of his parents' favorite musicals. It always seemed to play on a Sunday on a channel without sports, and his mother and father would transform the living room couch into a pew, the television into an altar, and they'd sit and gaze upon the famous montage—the sailors on shore leave—and grow giddy with every vista, every landmark, every street and avenue and storefront from 1949, the stained glass of the old days, the old stomping grounds, the old haunts of Times Square, like a life flashing before their exiled-in-Cincinnati eyes. His mother was crazy about Gene Kelly while his father wondered whatever happened to Jules Munshin anyway?

  "Must be different Ann Millers," Billy says.

  "Must be." Dr. Honeysack gets up for good-bye. Billy mirrors him and starts for the door when Honeysack calls him back. "Oh, who should we contact in case of an emergency?" he asks. "I forgot about that. It's on page five, name, address, phone number, a next-of-kin kind of thing."

  Billy thinks about his parents, his mother in Whispering Pines, his father by her side filling her head with memories of how things once were, stroking her left hand and lifting her ring finger into the sunlight, that small diamond breaking shards of light onto plain white walls. The phone would beckon like a telegram. Your son, William Schine, he's in the hospital. Billy imagined himself on his back, waiting for his father, waiting and waiting, half of him moaning don't come, the other half screaming please.

  Billy writes down Ragnar.

  The fourth and final station is a bathroom where a urine sample is required. Billy arrives to find the door closed. A nurse, unhappy in her chore, waits outside with what can only be described as a urine cart with six cups of pee. Billy grins an awkward hello.

  "We still have somebody in there," she says.

  "Oh."