The Proteus Cure

by Wilson, F. Paul

  Paul stood up with closed fists and a wide stance, as if readying for a punch.

  “And?”

  “I thought you didn’t want to know.”

  He stood silent. Finally he spoke.

  “I didn’t. And I could have got by with only Rose knowing the truth. But now it’s all down in black and white. You know. So I’ve got to know too.”

  “You’re sure?”

  He nodded.

  The results she’d printed out had shocked and baffled her. Still did. But one thing was certain.

  “The results are negative for paternity.”

  Another frozen pause, then …

  “Negative … that means I’m not …” his Adam’s apple bobbed “… not Coog’s father?”

  God, she hated this.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  In a flash Paul whirled and slammed his fist against the Jag.

  “Whore!”

  Sheila stepped back, shocked by his ferocity. Shocked too by the dent he’d made in the front fender.

  As the car alarm began to beep and whistle and wail, Paul looked at her. Her throat tightened at the infinite hurt in his eyes.

  “Sorry,” he said over the racket. “But I guess that’s what I get for marrying a …”

  He balled his fists again, but this time he closed his eyes and stood statue still. He seemed to be counting.

  “A whore?” Sheila said. “I’m not so sure.”

  He opened his eyes and looked at her.

  “You have a better term? We’d been married one year—one year!—when she conceived Coog. What do you call a woman who cuckolds her husband during their first year together?”

  “You don’t have all the facts.”

  “Which are?”

  She’d have to shout to be heard above this racket, and she didn’t want to do that.

  “Let’s go to my office. I have all the data there. Some of it you might need to see to believe.”

  Some of it she still didn’t believe. Or want to.

  BILL

  Bill sat in the dimly lit room and peered at the ten-inch black-and-white screen that showed Sheila Takamura at her keyboard. The tape was less than an hour old.

  He’d had about half the offices—his own excluded, of course—wired for visual monitoring, usually from an overhead light fixture. He couldn’t be too careful. When he’d installed the surveillance in Sheila’s office he figured he may as well expand it to other offices to keep an eye on everyone. Never know who she’d talk to. All the feeds ended in this tiny basement room under the Admin building where every imaginable electronic device lined the walls. Only he and Shen had the key.

  Bill had been leery at first about allowing Shen access, but the man was loyal to a fault and never asked the obvious question as to why “Jiù-zhù-zhe” deemed all this espionage necessary.

  Except his dear “Jiù-zhù-zhe” didn’t know a thing about it.

  Both he and Shen knew why Sheila needed extra watching, and exactly what to look out for. Since Shen and Abra had no direct contact except at the annual holiday party, it was safe to let Shen assume that Abra had ordered this.

  Even through the high-angle, low-resolution lens Sheila stirred Bill. If he had something like this set up in her bedroom he could—

  He gave himself a mental slap. Cool it. She made him feel like a horny high school kid. He had to get over this. And he’d tried. He’d sworn he’d never act on these feelings, but seeing her every day, hearing her voice, her intelligence, her devotion to her calling, to Tethys … it wasn’t easy.

  But I can dream, can’t I?

  Her closeness to Abra, getting to know her through Abra’s stories about her, only made it worse. Especially compared to the incessant strife with Elise these days.

  He kept pressing the button but couldn’t get the spyware to work. Shen usually operated the system for him but Bill wanted to do this alone, needed to see what she was up to without Shen’s prying eyes. He pressed another key and lines of type cascaded the length of the monitor.

  She read her mail, then visited Amazon to order a gift certificate, then updated chart files.

  Good girl, Sheila. Keeping your nose clean.

  Bill had seen her leave twenty minutes ago and she wasn’t expected back for the rest of the day.

  You need to get a life, Sheila, he thought. Better learn to put some distance between yourself and this place or Tethys will eat you alive.

  Bill turned off the tape and hit the rewind button. But as he turned to go, movement on the screen caught his eye. She was back. Odd. He hit record.

  Curious, he leaned closer to watch. Bill saw a familiar-looking man enter behind her.

  What was this?

  SHEILA

  “I don’t understand why you’re being coy,” Paul said as he shut the door behind him. “Why not just come out and tell me?”

  Good question, Sheila thought.

  “Maybe because I feel I’ll need hard copy to back me up.” She moved behind her desk and removed the file with the printouts from a side drawer. “And maybe because I feel it might be a good idea to have you seated when you hear this.”

  Paul’s expression slackened as he eased himself into a chair.

  “What is it? What’s going on?”

  She dropped into her own chair and spread the reports on her desktop.

  “Coogan’s DNA came back.”

  “I know that. I’m not his father, so you said. You had to drag me in here to—?”

  “Just listen. I knew about the KB26 treatment Coogan received of course. You also told me Coogan had a marrow transplant before he came to Tethys. Once I heard that, I wasn’t too worried about the fact your blood didn’t match.”

  “Why?”

  “The marrow transplant he had pre-Tethys was what we call an allogeneic transplant. Meaning his marrow was donated from someone else.”

  “A stranger.”

  She nodded. “Hematopoietic or blood-forming are immature cells that can mature into blood cells. These stem cells are found in the bone marrow and some other places. That’s what he received. In Coogan’s bone marrow transplant, the doctors killed off all his marrow with chemo or radiation. Those donated cells were then injected into his veins. The marrow, or stem cells, migrated into the long bones of his body. The donor's blood type and genetic material became Coogan’s blood type and genetic material.”

  “His blood and DNA changed?”

  “Only the DNA in his blood and maybe the type. I don’t know what he had before. Anyway, I wasn’t surprised that his blood wasn’t compatible with yours. That alone didn’t mean much, so I took a swab from Coogan’s cheek and extracted the DNA.”

  Paul leaned back and sighed. “And?”

  God, here it comes. “I’m sorry, Paul but not only are you not his father, but Rose is not his mother.”

  Paul bounded out of the chair. “But that can’t be!”

  “There’s no way around it, Paul.”

  He paced before her desk.

  “But how?”

  “She didn’t have in vitro fertilization, did she?”

  “Hell, no. We did it the old-fashioned way.” Then he stopped and pressed his hands against his temples. “Oh, God! Switched at birth! I’ve heard of it but never dreamed—”

  Just what Sheila had been thinking.

  “It’s rare, Paul, but it happens.”

  He resumed his pacing, waving his arms as he moved.

  “But that means … that means that somewhere out there is a thirteen-year-old boy who could be my son!”

  “That’s true. And if you were harder on your ex than she deserved—if she hadn’t been cheating before Coog—then that boy most likely is your son.”

  He stopped his pacing and sighed. “Yeah, well, maybe so. No question that she cheated later on, but maybe not back then. Maybe only after Coog.” He shook his head. “Switched at birth … I still can’t believe it. Neither Rose nor I ever left the hospital, and when she wa
s discharged, we took him with us. I saw the way the nursery kept tabs on the babies, checking Coog’s wristband against Rose’s every time they brought him in for feeding.”

  “Maybe between the delivery room and the nursery …?”

  He shook his head. “I was in the delivery room. I saw them clean him up, watched as they footprinted him.”

  “Do you still have the prints? Maybe we could do a comparison?”

  He shook his head. “No, Rose took his baby book.” His desperation filled the room.

  “Paul,” Sheila said softly. “The footprints wouldn’t matter anyway. The DNA says it all.”

  “No. You don’t get it. I feel it in my gut, damn it. There’s got to be another explanation.”

  Sheila shrugged. She wished there were.

  BILL

  Bill’s knees felt rubbery. This couldn’t be happening. Jesus God—

  Paul Rosko. That goddamned volunteer. First coffee with Sheila, now this.

  He rewound the tape to the beginning. He needed to hear something again.

  “I knew about the KB26 treatment Coogan received of course.”

  No-no-no-no-no!

  Coogan? Was that what she’d called him? That was the name of his son—the one run down in the parking lot.

  Before rushing upstairs to his own office, Bill reset the system. He didn’t dare miss one thing that went on in Sheila’s office.

  At his desk he dried his sweaty palms on his pants legs and entered “Rosko, Coogan” into the search box. He prayed he had the spelling right. And if so, he prayed harder for a null result from the search.

  Apparently God was not listening, because a second later a file popped onto the screen: Coogan Paul Rosko.

  The most recent entry involved his accident. He knew about that.

  He felt relieved until he scanned through all the other entries. The dates were from six years ago …

  No, don’t let this be true.

  But it was.

  No!” He pounded his fist on his desktop. “Damn it to hell!”

  His secretary stuck her head through the doorway.

  “Doctor Gilchrist? Is anything wrong?”

  “Nothing, Marge.” He waved her off. “Everything’s fine.”

  Like hell.

  When she was gone he leaned back in his leather chair and glared at the screen.

  The files confirmed it: Coogan Rosko had had leukemia. Tethys had cured him with the KB26 protocol.

  KB26 … the precursor to VG723.

  Bill rubbed his eyes. Could it get any worse? Could it get any goddamn worse?

  And how the hell was he going to tell Abra?

  PAUL

  Paul had been sweating all day. Thirty degrees out, but his shirt clung to him. His hands were shaking. He looked at Coog, lying on the couch, watching TV. Days ago he had viewed the handsome light-brown-haired boy with the cleft chin and widow’s peak—no one in the family had one of those—and thought that Coog couldn’t possibly be his. And now that the evidence proved it, Paul found himself doing a one-eighty and insisting he was his son.

  Without a doubt, Sheila said, Coog was someone else’s kid. Wasn’t that what he’d expected? It wasn’t what he hoped, that’s for sure. He had hoped she’d come back and say the DNA matched, that it was just a fluke Coog looked different. No such luck.

  The boy with piercing blue eyes and the perfect movie-star teeth. Both he and Rose had needed braces, but not Coog. Pre-orthodontia, Paul had had a huge gap between his front teeth, à la David Letterman. Coog had that gap when he was six. But then it went away. Weird. The dentist was surprised but said you never knew with teeth.

  Lucky kid, Paul thought. Good looking kid. Too good looking for Rose and him.

  So why now … now that he knew that Coogan was not his child, not even Rose’s child, did he have this compulsion to push the other way?

  Because he had to know if a child he had fathered was out there in the world.

  “Hey, Dad, you okay? You don’t look so hot. Well, actually you do look hot. You’re all sweaty. What’s up with that? Sick?”

  Paul forced a smile. Even if Coog didn’t look like a Rosko, this definitely was the baby he had seen delivered. He knew it. Paul had been with him since the minute he was born. The test was wrong. Had to be.

  Otherwise, he’d know a gap-tooth, dark-haired kid was wandering around out there, or maybe a blond boy with a bad temper and maybe Rose’s predisposition for depression.

  But as he answered Coog he prayed to any god who would listen: Please let him really be mine.

  “It … it just knocked me for a loop, seeing you in the hospital again.”

  “Me too. I always thought if I died, it would be the leukemia, but when I saw that Hummer heading for me, I thought I was a goner.”

  “Me too, kid. Me too.”

  He hugged the boy he prayed was his son.

  BILL

  “I’ve got more bad news,” Bill said.

  He paced Abra’s family room, too wired to sit, too queasy to drink. Bad enough to have Abra’s eyes bore into him, but these damn lizards and spiders seemed to be watching him too. He looked at Abra.

  She wrung her gnarled hands. “What now? Tell me.”

  “We’ve got the father of a KB-twenty-six patient sniffing around.”

  Abra looked up at him. “Is that all? We knew that might happen. We even have a contingency plan in place, remember?”

  “Some plan. We just shrug and say, ‘Sorry we can’t explain it. And what does it matter in the long run? Your child is alive and cancer free, isn’t he?’ ”

  “You seemed to like it when we cooked it up.”

  “I know, I know. I just never …” He didn’t know how to tell her.

  “Never what?”

  “I never imagined that the father would consult the very doctor who is investigating a pair of seven-twenty-three catastrophes.”

  Abra’s hand shot to her mouth. “Dear God! Not Sheila!”

  “Yes. Sheila. That kid that got hit by the Hummer—”

  “The son of that volunteer she likes,” Abra said.

  “She ‘likes’ him?”

  Bill took a deep breath. Had to get over his obsession with Sheila.

  Abra nodded.

  “Well, that’s not all,” he said. “The two of them are going to put everything together.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I do. It’s not a matter of if—it’s a matter of when.”

  Abra closed her eyes. “How can this be? It’s almost as if fate is turning against us. We’ve perfected the technique, we’re building the genome base at VecGen. Proteus is a reality. And now this.” She opened her eyes. “Remember what I said about this being a sign that the time to tell the world has come?”

  “It’s not the time to tell anyone! We’re not ready yet!”

  Would she ever get it? The world would never be ready, would never accept what Proteus offered, never accept the price of curing so many diseases. People were stubborn and afraid. Stupid. She thought the public would embrace Proteus with joy. Sure. With the same joy the Palestinians accepted the Israelis.

  He and Mama knew the only way to get Proteus into the population was without their knowing. He’d humored Abra with the promise of going public, because she needed the dream of recognition, of gratitude from the masses. But not Bill. And certainly not Mama. It wasn’t about the glory, but about the cure. Over Bill’s dead body would the public ever be aware of what was really going on.

  “Well not everyone,” Abra said. “But it’s time to tell Sheila.”

  He so wished he could be candid with his sister about the true plan. But that wasn’t an option. At least Bill now had an excuse for not telling Sheila.

  “It’s no longer just Sheila, it’s this Rosko guy. If we tell her, she tells him, he files a suit, and God knows what follows!”

  He saw Abra’s startled expression and realized he was shouting. He had to stop her talk of going public or
telling anyone, even her beloved Sheila. If anyone knew, it would demolish his and Mama’s plan.

  She stared up at him. “Then what are we going to do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  And he didn’t. At all costs he wanted to protect Sheila. For himself and for Abra.

  For now he’d wait. And watch. Watch very carefully.

  FOUR

  PAUL

  Paul wondered if he’d ever sleep again.

  He glanced at the glowing numerals on the computer monitor: 5:15. He’d dozed off after the Letterman monologue but found himself wide awake half an hour later. After that he’d done endless tossing and turning. At 4:30 he finally conceded that sleep was not on his agenda and set to work on his novel.

  He’d smiled as soon as the Word document opened.

  There you are, Grisbe. Good to have you back.

  Grisbe was still stuck there on page 220, his life hanging in the balance until Paul could find a way to help him.

  Paul cracked his knuckles and set to work. His fingers danced across the keys but then stopped. He read the two poorly written paragraphs.

  Ugh.

  He deleted them and wrote a new one. Still no good.

  Delete city.

  He hit save—not that he he’d changed anything—and shut down the computer. His mind was not on Grisbe now, but on Coogan.

  Should he try to contact Rose and—if she gave a damn—begin the search for their real son? The thought of his real child out there in the world with strangers … maybe being abused … it made him ill. Switched at birth …

  He banged on the keyboard and got up. He wished he’d never opened this damn paternity Pandora’s box.

  So get over it, he told himself, and move on. Pretend you never ran the test. But if there’s another kid out there—no, just get over it.

  He remembered a time almost a decade and a half ago when he figured he was set. He’d written off his dream of a teaching career, but he had a wife he loved, a wonderful son, a house, and a steady job. No, he wasn’t teaching, but he had just about everything a man could ask for.