The Proteus Cure

by Wilson, F. Paul

  She backed away. “I don’t get it. It looks like they’re out of business.”

  “That it does. But if so, why keep paying rent on office space you’re not using? It doesn’t add up.”

  A lot of things didn’t add up. Especially Kaplan mentioning Coog’s changed DNA on that test.

  “Take me back to Tethys, will you? I’ve got a few things I need to look into before I start seeing patients.”

  •

  “Ellen?” Sheila said as she knocked on the doorframe of the laboratory director’s office.

  Ellen looked up from her desk. Her short stature and rotund figure made her look like an overweight child sitting at an adult table.

  “Oh.” No smile. “Sheila.”

  The room temperature seemed to drop ten degrees.

  Sheila stepped in without waiting to be asked.

  “You know that incident report I filed?”

  “How can I forget?”

  Ellen wouldn’t have Coog’s original sample—it was long gone—but …

  “Do you still have the follow-up sample?”

  “I know we do. It’s passed its five-day mark but I’m holding onto it.”

  Thank God.

  Ellen looked down at her desk. “I … I retested it myself.”

  “And?”

  “Still Paul Rosko’s son.”

  “Could I have a look at it?”

  Ellen looked up again. “Why?”

  “I just want to look it over. Okay?”

  Ellen’s expression turned puzzled. She looked as if she was going to make a comment, but shrugged instead.

  “Check with Amisha out there.”

  Sheila tracked down Amisha, a lithe Indian woman wearing a white lab coat over a red-and-yellow sari. She readily found the sample.

  “Here it is,” she said as she placed the tube in Sheila’s hand.

  Sheila turned it over to check the label. Her blood froze. She’d labeled the tube herself.

  But this wasn’t her handwriting.

  As the shock wore off she strained to understand … why would somebody relabel Coogan’s sample? Unless …

  No. Unthinkable. But she had to know.

  “Amisha? Dr. Bascomb mentioned a missing sample last week.”

  “But I found it,” she said in melodic tones.

  Could someone have switched Coogan’s sample?

  Yes, they could have.

  But where could they find a sample that would show him as the child of Paul and Rose?

  From Coogan. Before the therapy. Someone saved some of his old tissue because they knew …

  Coogan’s DNA—just like his eyes and hair and face—had changed after his KB26 treatment.

  And someone wanted to keep that a secret.

  But who would have had a sample of Coogan’s before KB?

  Kaplan? He’d mentioned it this morning. He’d suspected it or why would he have asked? But he couldn’t have made the switch. He’d only been provided control numbers, no patient IDs. Anyway an outsider couldn’t just waltz in here and start fiddling with the samples.

  One of the techs?

  No motive.

  Bill. She’d thought it odd that he’d known about Coogan’s DNA probe. Could he …?

  “Has Doctor Gilchrist visited the lab lately?”

  Amisha shook her head. “Not on my shift.”

  She had to get out of here. But first … just to be extra sure, she popped her head back through Ellen’s doorway.

  “Had any visits from Bill Gilchrist recently?”

  Ellen shook her head. “Not personally, but someone on the late shift mentioned he’d been down here nosing around.”

  The back of her neck crawled. “When?”

  “Last week.” Her tone turned frosty. “Anything else?"

  Speechless, Sheila turned and walked away, trying not to stagger.

  Bill … somehow, some way, Bill had been involved all along.

  She had to get back to her office … lock herself in so she could be alone and think. The one thing she wanted to do—get another sample from Coog and bring it to an outside lab for processing—was out of the question. Because she couldn’t do it without telling Paul. Who knew what he’d do? If she told him that she suspected someone of falsifying Coog’s results … he was already a ticking timebomb.

  No, she had to find another way. One that didn’t involve Paul.

  SHEILA

  Out of habit, the first thing Sheila did when she reached her office was check her voicemail. She found a message from Bill.

  “Sheila? Bill. Meet late afternoon? Call me.”

  How could she sit across from him without his sensing something wrong? It was all circumstantial, yes, but the pieces fit together too well. And what if he asked how her investigation was going? What’s new with Tanesha? No, she’d have to make up an excuse and hope she didn’t sound phony.

  With a shaking finger she punched in his extension. Marge picked up and told her he was out.

  Thank you, God.

  She left her regrets. Tied up. Sorry. She’d take a raincheck.

  Marge said it would have to be next week then, as Bill was leaving for Switzerland on business.

  Sheila was shaking when she hung up. Switzerland. Good. Having him away would make her feel a lot safer. She didn’t trust him anymore.

  She needed evidence. All she had at this point was speculation.

  She headed for the clinic where Tanesha Green would be waiting … but wasn’t. So Sheila waited. Half an hour late. Then an hour. With any other patient, she wouldn’t have worried. But Tanesha was not only a sick patient with an undiagnosed problem, she was evidence.

  Sweating now, Sheila dialed the woman’s phone number. This wasn’t like Tanesha. She was concerned, wanted answers, and wanted them now. No way she’d skip out on a biopsy.

  “Hello?” said a woman’s voice.

  “Tanesha, this is Doctor Takamura. I just spoke to—”

  “This ain’t Tanesha. This her sister.” Mean Aunt T, no doubt.

  “Oh, sorry. You sound alike. Can I speak—?”

  “Tanesha’s dead.”

  A wave of shock slammed through Sheila.

  “Wh-what? How?”

  “Heart attack.”

  “When?”

  “Last night. She dialed nine-one-one but by time they got here she was just about gone. They kept her going till they got her to the ’mergency room, but then she was done for. After twenty minutes, she was gone. They couldn’t bring her back.”

  Sheila sat stunned. How could this be?

  “You said you was her doctor?” the sister said.

  “What? Yes.”

  “Then how come you didn’t see this comin’?”

  Good question. Tanesha had been overweight, but her blood pressure had been good and her cholesterol only borderline high. She’d never had a single cardiac-related complaint. But then, angina in women is often silent.

  “She never gave me any reason to suspect a heart problem. She came to me about her skin and hair.”

  “That what killed Tanesha—all her stressin’ ’bout her skin. Her wires was pulled as tight as tight can be. They finally broke.”

  Sheila felt dazed. She’d known it had to be something serious to make Tanesha miss her biopsies, but never dreamed it would be—

  “Where was she taken?”

  “What?”

  “The funeral home. I want to ask them about the autopsy. Where—?”

  “She gone to Landy’s but ain’t gonna be no one filletin’ my sister open like a fish. I seen that on TV and it ain’t gonna happen.”

  “But don’t you want to know what—?”

  “What killed her? Don’t need her all cut open to know that. Heard it from the doctor hisself. Her heart.”

  “But if we can get biopsies of her skin and hair—”

  “What for? She way past carin’ now.”

  “But we can find out—”

  “Too late. You doc
tors shoulda already found out. Maybe she still be alive now if you had. You ain’t cuttin’ on my sister. She suffered enough.”

  And then a click as the connection was broken.

  Sheila had failed little Jamal Green. Broken her promise. Now he’d have to go live with mean Aunt T.

  Numb, Sheila missed the first time she tried to replace her receiver on its cradle. The second attempt made it.

  She called the ER in the Penner Clinic in Boston. It took a few minutes but she finally located the doctor who had worked on Tanesha. He was a resident and working round the clock so she wasn’t surprised to find him there. After some explaining, he opened up.

  “She was a grossly obese, thirty-nine-year-old African American. She had abnormal cardiograms and her blood showed an acute myocardial infarction. She went into cardiac arrest and we couldn’t revive her.”

  “But her skin and hair? Didn’t you find the way she looked odd?”

  She heard him sigh. “Listen this is the ER. She was having a heart attack and she died. It was clear what caused it. Her appearance was extraneous.”

  “But I’ve been working with her on some medical problems—”

  “Heart related?”

  “No. Cosmetic. But I was hoping to get some tissue samples—”

  “Then I’m sorry. Can’t help you. We offered the family an autopsy but they refused. Sorry we can’t aid you in making Ms. Green your guinea pig but—”

  She hung up. He didn’t understand. How could he?

  What was happening? She hit a wall every way she turned. First Kelly Slade’s broken neck, now this. If Tanesha had died in some sort of accident, she’d be running to the police. But how to prove foul play on someone who appeared to die of natural causes? How to prove anything at all?

  Goosebumps stood up on her arms and she rubbed them hard, but they didn’t go away. This sick scared feeling never seemed to go away.

  Both her VG723 cases had died. Directly or indirectly people who posed a threat to the VG723 therapy had been eliminated. And she was the last threat left. A chill went up her spine. And how long would she be left, now that everyone involved—

  Wait. Hal Silberman! He’d agreed there was a link. Yes! She’d go see him. He’d know what to do.

  She started walking toward the lab and remembered the rain. Great. The tunnels again. She wanted to call Paul and tell him about Tanesha but didn’t want to risk being overheard here.

  Sheila took a quick look over her shoulder. All clear. She shuffled down the stairs to the tunnels.

  PAUL

  “Paul?”

  “Sheila, hi.”

  “Listen, I need you.”

  “What going on? Where are you?” He heard the sound of a radio and windshield wipers.

  “I’m driving. Tanesha’s dead.”

  “Jesus. How? Don’t tell me it was another car accident.”

  “No. She had a heart attack but it seems awfully coincidental.”

  “Yeah it does. Aren’t you supposed to be at work?”

  “I got Liz Keene to cover. I traded her some hours tomorrow. I went to talk to Hal Silberman, the dermatopathologist, remember him?”

  “Yeah. What did he say?”

  “He hasn’t been to work all week. He has some kind of stomach bug.”

  “You think Bill did something?”

  “No, I’m sure he’s just sick, but I need to talk to him. I’m going to his house.”

  “I’m going with you. Kelly’s dead, Tanesha’s dead. Who do you think is next on the list? No way I’m letting you go there alone.” He heard a horn blare. “What was that?”

  “I-I almost hit someone. Okay. Meet me there. I’ll wait for you before I go in. Here’s the address.”

  He hated leaving Coogan alone but there wasn’t time to take him anywhere. It was still light. He’d be fine. Paul got the address from Sheila, handed Coog the cordless phone and a can of Coke, and ran out the door into the freezing rain.

  SHEILA

  As soon as she and Paul got close to Hal’s front door, Sheila knew something was wrong. It was daytime but the sky was dark from the rain. All Hal’s lights were off. She rang the doorbell several times but no one answered.

  “Can you get us in?”

  “There might be an alarm.”

  “I don’t care. We may need the police or an ambulance anyway.”

  He leaned to the door and grabbed the handle. She guessed it was to check out what kind of lock he had. He smiled and turned the knob. “Huh. Not locked. Didn’t anticipate that.”

  The minute they walked in, foul odors assailed them. Blood, urine, and feces. But not the smell of death, thank God. At least not old death. She followed the stench to a bathroom. Hal lay in a pool of bodily fluids. She touched his face. Burning up.

  “Hal, can you hear me?” She tried a few more times. “He’s alive, but barely. Call 9-1-1,” she said to Paul.

  Whatever was wrong with him appeared to be natural. No wounds so far as she could see. Not appendicitis with all this bloody diarrhea. Campylobacter? Salmonella? E-Coli? Hard to say.

  He must have suffered the last few days. Poor guy. If this was food poisoning, whatever did this to him was already long out of his system. Most likely he’d never know what caused it. If he lived.

  She wet a towel and placed it on his forehead. If he died, then they would be at a standstill with their investigation. Anything Hal was going to tell her about KB26 and VG723 would be sealed up forever within him.

  Sheila wet another towel and wiped Hal’s face and hands.

  Paul gagged in the other room. The smell bothered her too but Hal was a friend. She couldn’t just walk in the other room and leave him. Anyway, her own clothes were covered now too. She probably smelled as bad as he did.

  “Sheila?”

  Paul stood in the doorway, a paper towel over his nose. “You all right?”

  She nodded. “But he’s not. Could be botulism or any of a number of things. The lab will figure it out. I just hope we got here in time. What are you holding?”

  “I thought you might want to change your clothes after they take him so I went into his room. I was going to get you a shirt, maybe some sweat pants if I could find them. I know I shouldn’t be going through his things—”

  “But you don’t have any clothes. That looks like a file.”

  He held it out to her. “It’s a copy of Tanesha’s file. It was on his bed, open. He must have been reading it.”

  “I gave him a copy to look through.”

  “Look at this though.” She reached for it but he pulled back. “Don’t touch it. Just look.”

  If she were him, she’d be leery of her contaminated hands too.

  Sheila leaned up as much as she could from her seated-on-the-floor-with-a-dying-man-on-her-lap position.

  Written in blue ink were the words, “Changing the world. One person at a time.” It was underlined over and over again.

  “It’s Tethys Medical Center’s slogan.” Sheila didn’t see the significance. That phrase was printed on every piece of stationary at work, on her pay stub, on the marble and brass plaque at the main gate.

  “Think about it, Sheila. It’s what they’re doing. Changing people. Not just curing. Changing. The world. One person at a time.”

  Sirens and then the doorbell interrupted them. Then squeaky wet boots on the tile floor of the bathroom. Paramedics lifted Hal off Sheila.

  She shifted into doctor mode, assisting the paramedics. But she couldn’t stop seeing the words in her mind, underlined hard in what must be Hal’s writing. He was trying to tell her something. But goddammit she didn’t understand. She needed him to wake up and explain. None of the other VG723 survivors had complained about transformations, so what did it mean? If the others looked the same on the outside, then how were they being changed?

  TEN

  SHEILA

  Paul called Sheila the next morning to invite her over for dinner and a movie. Coog would be over at a friend’s
house watching a Lord of the Rings marathon, he said. By the dusky sound of his voice, Sheila knew they wouldn’t be watching any movie. They’d be lucky if they got to eat dinner.

  A sex date.

  God, she needed something like that. She felt so jumpy and uneasy. She needed a break, a blast of physical and emotional release, someone to cling to. Every trip to the store was white knuckled, every time the phone rang, she jumped.

  Sheila smiled as she stood at the nurses’ station, just thinking about making love again made her feel so alive.

  It had been ages. After Dek there had been that one guy, that one time. From that support group for widowed people. Horrible. He wasn’t even cute. He went at it too fast. One minute dinner, the next she was in this stranger’s bed, having sex and telling herself it was important to move on with her life. Right after he filled his condom, she ran out of his apartment crying. What a mess. She shuddered thinking about it.

  She was on the brink of having an orgasm just thinking about touching Paul. Maybe it was her age or the span between encounters. Maybe it was just that Paul was such a man’s man. She was zoning out, thinking about what to wear, how she’d stop at the mall, Victoria’s Secret—

  “Don’t forget you’re on tonight,” said a female voice.

  She looked and saw Liz Keene, a fellow doctor.

  “Me? Where?”

  She smiled. “Here. You’re covering for me tonight, remember?”

  Mother of God, she’d forgotten. Liz’s little girl, Sammy, was scheduled for a tonsillectomy in Boston this afternoon and she wanted to be home with her tonight. Sheila couldn’t very well back out now.

  “Oh, yeah. Right.” Despite her sinking heart she forced a smile. “Glad you reminded me. Good luck to Sammy.”

  Gotta get coverage, she thought.

  She started calling, but it was too short notice—everyone had plans.

  It seemed as if fate were keeping Paul and her apart. She’d have to call and put it off for yet another night.

  Wait. Who said it had to be night?

  Not quite believing she was doing this, she picked up the phone to call Paul. She’d tell him dinner was off but how about a late lunch—say, about two?