A Fierce Radiance

by Lauren Belfer

  What kind of human patient did you conduct an experiment on? Someone who’d run out of options. Someone like Charlie.

  Jamie returned to town that afternoon and took a taxi directly to Grove Street. Vannevar Bush’s secretary had finally tracked Jamie down in Louisiana. He’d had a long trip back. When he arrived at the house, Rutherford took him aside, motioning him into the small room on the parlor floor that Claire used as a photo office.

  “Look here, Stanton, you know very well that a while back I bought the Hanover company. They’ve—we’ve—got a new antibacterial drug. We’ve been looking for a place to conduct clinical trials. It’s one of the cousins. I’m sure you understand. So let’s just jump over all the rigmarole and get this job done.” Keep steady, Rutherford told himself. Hold on long enough to get through this. To save Charlie. If it wasn’t too late.

  Jamie heard him out. In the office, one of the windows was open a few inches, and the long diaphanous curtains billowed on a breeze. The winter sun poured in. “I understand,” Jamie said. He’d heard the rumors. He knew the score, as the saying went. He also knew that only Dr. Keefer could release penicillin to civilians.

  “Can you tell Claire? Can you explain to her? I don’t think I can.”

  Jamie heard the break in the old man’s throat. “Of course.” Jamie thought this through. “I’d want to take Charlie to the Institute,” he said, thinking of the practical procedures they should follow. “That’s the best hospital for supervising an experiment. We’d have to keep records of everything.”

  “That’s fine with me,” Rutherford said. “Whatever you think is best.” He felt himself at the mercy of this man, almost thirty years his junior and so much more knowledgeable than he was.

  Claire came into the house, returning from taking Lucas for a walk. The dog bounded over to greet Jamie, jumping up to lick his chin. Jamie pushed him down but pressed the dog’s head against his leg, to capture his warmth and affection. Claire walked down the hall to join Jamie and her father.

  “Jamie, I’m so glad you’re back.” Why were they standing in the photo office? she wondered. Did they need something? A photo of Charlie? She still hadn’t had time to fully reorganize the files after the ransacking; she couldn’t let a clean-up crew do that. She’d just piled everything up. The office was a mess.

  Jamie thought she looked awful. Her hair was wild. She wasn’t even wearing lipstick. Letting go of Lucas, he reached to embrace her.

  Rutherford felt a spasm of fear: would Claire finally realize that he himself had ordered the theft of her Hanover photographs? Would she finally, now, confront him? He stared at her. She was in no condition to be putting two and two together. Charlie was the beginning and end of her concerns.

  “Claire,” Rutherford said, “Jamie needs to discuss something with you.”

  Jamie pulled back from their embrace. “Yes, Claire. Yes, I do.” And so Jamie spelled out the situation to her. A new medicine. A human trial. “Charlie would be a good candidate,” Jamie said, putting on a strong, confident voice. His doctor’s voice. Not a father’s voice. Not a grandfather’s voice.

  As he spelled it out, Claire struggled to take in what he said. Candidate was a good word, she thought. Candidate had a connotation that was both truthful and hopeful. Candidate didn’t suggest death as a possible outcome. Outside, the sun had set. What happened to the day?

  “Let me ask you something, Doctor,” Rutherford said, summoning up a tone of objectivity. “What are his chances without it?”

  Jamie knew how to be objective. Objectivity was a game, and he could play it. “Based on my experience of children this age, at this stage of the disease process, less than five percent.”

  “It’s your decision, sweetheart,” her father said. He put his hand on her shoulder for the second time that day. Or maybe it was already the next day, and the next day’s sun had set. She couldn’t tell. His hand was trembling. She saw it tremble as he brought it toward her, and she felt it trembling upon her shoulder.

  She had to say something. They waited for her to say something. It was her decision. Her choice. She remembered the afternoon when she’d gone to Charlie at the end of his nap and discovered that he’d turned himself over for the first time. He’d giggled impishly when he saw her. She remembered the moment he first pulled himself to standing, holding on to the edge of the bookcase. Less than 5 percent. Her decision. What were they talking about?

  “I’m not a doctor,” she said. Don’t make me play God. The phrase came into her mind unbidden. She may have said it aloud, but she wasn’t sure. She felt a knife inside her that entered at her collarbone and went through to the small of her back. She looked at Jamie. The man she loved. He waited. She trusted him to know the proper course. “Whatever you think is best,” she said to him.

  “Yes,” he said.

  Jamie carried Charlie to the backseat of Rutherford’s Lincoln-Zephyr. Rutherford drove. During the journey uptown in the big car, smoothly driven, Claire found herself thinking about Tony Pagliaro. His wish had been granted, and he’d been transferred to the war months ago. Years or decades ago, it felt like to her now. He’d assisted her for those fleeting weeks, and then he was gone. He, too, was sent to North Africa. He, too, put in the way of death. As of course they all were, at each moment of each day. She’d called the bakery and spoken to his mother. She’d asked his mother to phone her, if ever there was news. News somehow implied bad news, although Claire didn’t intend it that way. So far his mother hadn’t phoned, and Claire hoped with the cliché, no news was good news. She missed Tony. She wished he were here to take Charlie to the hospital. Charlie would be safely distracted during the ride with Tony. They’d discuss baseball—or at least Tony would talk about baseball; Charlie looked too weak to respond—and Charlie would assume that everything was going to be fine. If Charlie looked at his mother or grandfather or Uncle Jamie right now, he’d realize that everything probably wasn’t going to be fine.

  Because the hospital was filled with naval patients, not appropriate company for a child, Nurse Brockett authorized Charlie to use the Rockefeller family quarters, which were empty at the moment. The family quarters were on the top floor and reached through a plain but highly polished wooden door. Once inside, Claire found herself in the equivalent of a private home, Persian carpets on the floors, tapestries and paintings on the walls, upholstered furniture. The rooms were aired out, dusted, prepared and ready for any emergency.

  Dr. Lind was waiting for them. He did everything he could to get Charlie settled. He was like a teddy bear himself, the perfect doctor for a child, Claire thought. Claire felt grateful for the heart murmur that kept Dr. Lind out of the military. Had Charlie remained conscious, he would have enjoyed meeting Dr. Lind. Instead Charlie’s head swayed, as if he were in the deepest dream.

  Then the men disappeared, and Claire was alone with her son.

  Claire didn’t know, could never have imagined it: the men were gathered downstairs in the lab. Tia’s lab, which Lind now used when he had time. Nick Catalano, too, had joined them, from the vaccine lab down the hall, where he assisted when he was in town and had the opportunity. His trip to the Pacific had been delayed due to lack of sufficient supplies of penicillin. They waited for the chief researcher from Hanover to arrive from New Jersey with the new medication, the penicillin cousin.

  Jamie looked around. Everything was the same and yet miniature. He’d imagined the lab bigger while he was away. Almost ten months since his sister died. Here in the lab, her home in the truest sense, she was a palpable void. His acute awareness of her absence created her felt presence. Maybe because he’d never had a chance to mourn her, her absence from the lab hit him hard. But he didn’t have time to dwell on his feelings.

  Hanover himself arrived, instead of the chief researcher. An assistant accompanied him, carrying a canvas bag. Youthful, pale, the assistant took the medication from the bag. The container was wrapped in a white towel.

  “We’ll bring more i
n a few days,” Hanover said. “This was all we had today.”

  Impassively Jamie watched the assistant place the beaker on the table and unwrap the towel to reveal a tightly sealed glass jar, quart size.

  It was the color that told Jamie. The astonishing clarity. The pure, bright blue. In an instant, he was sitting outside on a bench with Tia, the sun warming their backs. It’s the most beautiful blue, she said.

  He studied it for a long moment, trying to piece together the past months, piece together the truth of what was on the table before him. Rationalizations came into his mind: someone else could have found the same substance. No doubt it was everywhere. A waste product of mold. Mold was everywhere. Or so he tried to convince himself. He glanced at the man he already thought of as his father-in-law. Rutherford was watching him. Not with any particular emotion, just watching. Waiting.

  Charlie was upstairs. Jamie couldn’t pursue this now.

  The dose. He had to put the question of the proper dose foremost in his mind. “How far along are you on human testing?”

  Hanover looked confused. He glanced at Rutherford. The confusion between them told Jamie what he needed to know even before the assistant piped up to explain:

  “Well, we, uh, we have the protocols almost in place for human testing. But no human being has yet received the medication.”

  “What’s the dosage you’ve been using for mice?”

  This the assistant could answer. He stepped forward, took notebooks out of the briefcase, presented Jamie with the test results.

  Jamie had no choice, he knew. Since the medicine had never been given to a human being before, they didn’t know whether humans might be allergic to it. It could cause anaphylactic shock. In the hope of saving Charlie, Jamie wouldn’t kill him by mistake. Jamie would test the medicine on himself first. He did the math in his head. The average albino mouse weighed about 28 grams, or one ounce. He weighed 185 pounds, give or take (more likely a little less since his months in North Africa). With 16 ounces to the pound, he weighed approximately 2,960 ounces. He had to grin: he was nearly 3,000 times the weight of a mouse. With some quick reckoning, he worked out the dose.

  “All right. Dr. Lind, find a syringe, would you. I’m going to give myself a shot of this stuff. Just to make sure it doesn’t kill me.”

  “You can’t do that,” Lind said.

  “I won’t risk the patient having an allergic reaction.”

  “Give me the shot,” Lind said. “I’m the one who should have the shot.”

  There was the doubt again, distracting him: which of Tia’s colleagues had betrayed her? Jamie saw precisely how the plan must have progressed: Rutherford employed a spy here, a situation common enough and no surprise. Tia trusted her colleagues. Most likely her killer was someone close. Was it Jake Lind? Was it Nick? Could it have been David Hoskins, her closest colleague? Nowadays Hoskins went from one commercial lab to the next, using his penicillin expertise to assist with mass production. He’d cycled through the Hanover company, too.

  When Tia’s killer had the substance and her notes, he took them to Rutherford and in exchange Rutherford gave him—what? This was the point that held Jamie up. Most likely money. Jamie couldn’t imagine himself killing for money. Another scenario went through his mind: could the medication have been stolen right after she died? You didn’t need to kill her to steal the medication. So maybe she wasn’t murdered. But in that case, why was she walking along the cliff?

  “Since I can’t serve in the military,” Lind was saying, “let me do this.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Jake. The heart murmur could skew the results. You know that.”

  Lind stared at the floor. Jamie turned to Nick. Nick said nothing. Offered nothing. Did this make him more, or less, likely to be Tia’s killer? Or did it simply mean that Nick agreed with Jamie’s decision and saw the necessity of it?

  Hanover and the assistant were also silent.

  “I’ll take the shot,” Rutherford said.

  Jamie watched Rutherford take off his jacket, roll up his sleeve. “I’m closer to seventy than to sixty. My last will and testament are in order. I’m ready to go. Let’s get on with it.”

  Was this justice? Jamie wondered. Rutherford would redeem what he’d done by sacrificing himself? Rutherford would take responsibility now, at last? Jamie was tempted to do as Rutherford suggested.

  But he refused. First, do no harm. The physician’s code. He’d harm himself before he’d harm another.

  “I appreciate the offer, but no. Dr. Lind, the syringe?” Jamie took refuge now in formalities. “And kindly write everything down, if you would.”

  “I’m telling you once more: you shouldn’t do this,” Lind said, even as he found a syringe.

  “I’ve noted your opinion.”

  “You should have a full physical before you do this. At least let me do the pulse and blood pressure, take your temperature.”

  Lind was right about the vital signs. Jamie paused for these necessities. Then he opened the blue vial. Filled the syringe. Suddenly, unexpectedly, like a knife in his stomach, he felt fear. He’d given injections to untold numbers of mice and rabbits and guinea pigs and dogs and human beings, but he’d never administered a shot to himself. Well, the technique couldn’t be all that different. In fact the technique was the same. The important part was not to think about the fact that it could kill him. He had to jab the needle in properly. He couldn’t allow one of his colleagues to give the injection, because if the medication did kill him, he didn’t want his colleague to be responsible.

  What would he miss most, if he died in the next thirty seconds? Claire, of course. But he couldn’t live with himself, couldn’t ever look Claire in the eye, if he went upstairs and gave this shot to Charlie and the boy went into anaphylactic shock and died. Now Jamie knew what it meant, that old clichéd phrase about giving your life for someone you loved.

  He took a deep breath and jabbed the needle into the muscle of his upper arm. Steadily and slowly he pushed down on the plunger until the beautiful, clear blue liquid had disappeared. He removed the needle, gave the syringe to Lind, took the ball of alcohol-soaked cotton wool that Lind had prepared, and pressed it against the injection site.

  A sensation of stinging spread in a widening circle around the injection site. He gripped the edge of the table. He focused on his breathing. Slow, deep breaths.

  “The stinging is fairly bad,” Jamie said. “Write that down, Lind.”

  The younger man stared at him without moving.

  “Come on now,” Jamie said, “don’t give out on me. Write it down.”

  Lind made the note.

  Jamie began counting to himself, to try to get a grip on the stinging. One, two, three, four…

  When he reached eighteen, the stinging flowed away. The medication was being absorbed and dispersed. “Write down that the stinging stopped after approximately twenty seconds. Let’s repeat the pulse and blood pressure.”

  Lind did so. “Slightly elevated.”

  “From sheer terror,” Jamie said, forcing himself to laugh to set the others at ease. They looked terrible. Much worse than he looked, he was certain. They appeared shocked and were immobile. “You’d better take my temperature, too, in case there’s rigor.”

  His temperature remained normal.

  Jamie rolled down his sleeve, replaced his cuff link. “Well,” he said jauntily, for the benefit of those around him, any one of whom could have murdered his sister. “The medication didn’t kill me. Good to know.”

  For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. The echoes from the King James Bible of her childhood reverberated in Claire’s mind.

  Hour after hour, day after day, Claire sat beside Charlie’s bed, watching him. She barely noticed the turn outside the windows from darkness to light to darkness. She had stepped outside time. Sometimes Jamie was with her, sometimes not. She lost track of his explanations and stopped listening to the
m, simply trusting that he would be back when he could. The war couldn’t wait for a child to survive or to die. She pushed away the meals placed in front of her, drank sweet tea with milk when her father handed her a cup, registering only that the tea was hot and flush with sugar. She hadn’t tasted so much sugar for a year or more. She didn’t even stop to wonder where it came from as she greedily swallowed it.

  Charlie seemed to dream through the shots given by Dr. Lind every four hours. Through the blood tests. Through the fever, fluctuating between 105 and 106. Through the anguish and confusion around him when the medicine didn’t work. Through the raising of the dose by 25 percent and then by another 25 percent. Claire pushed back his hair and placed a warm, damp cloth upon his forehead to cool him, because Dr. Lind said a warm cloth was better for cooling a fever than a cold cloth.

  Claire felt disconnected from herself, watching herself watch her son. He looked more frail each day, as if he were turning into vapor before her eyes.

  On the fifth night, she reached for a fresh cloth and abruptly, without explanation, she no longer felt disconnected. Instead, she was utterly within herself, and within this moment. She understood that Charlie would die. She was about to weep. But she wouldn’t weep beside him. She wouldn’t let him hear her crying. She pushed herself up from the chair. Her legs ached. She had the legs of an old woman.