I got there afore it opened. I was hoping to get inside afore anybody else came, any neighbors who knew us or busybodies from Blaine. But Carrie Campbell was already parked in her truck, the baby on her lap. We nodded to each other but didn’t speak. The Campbells are better off than us—Dave works in the mine up to Allington—but old Gacy Campbell been feuding with Dr. Harman for decades and Carrie was probably glad to have someplace else to take the baby. He didn’t look good, snuffling and whimpering.
When the doors opened, I went in first, afore Carrie was even out of the truck. It was going to take her a while. She was pregnant again.
“Yes?” said the woman behind the desk. Just a cheap metal desk, which steadied me some. The room was nothing special, just a few chairs, some pictures on the wall, a clothes basket of toys in the corner. What really surprised me was that the woman warn’t Chinese. Blue eyes, brown hair, middle-aged. She looked a bit like Granmama, but she had all her teeth. “Can I help you?”
“I want to see a doctor.”
“Certainly.” She smiled. Yeah, all her teeth. “What seems to be the problem, miss?”
“No problem.” From someplace in the back another woman came out, this one dressed like a nurse. She warn’t Chinese either.
“I don’t understand,” the woman behind the desk said. From her accent she warn’t from around here—like I didn’t already know that. “Are you sick?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Then how can I—”
Carrie waddled into the door, the baby balanced on her belly. Now my visit would be table-talk everywhere. All at once I just wanted to get it over with.
“I’m not sick,” I said, too loud. “I just want to see a doctor.” I took a deep breath. “My name is Ludmilla Connors.”
The nurse stopped walking toward Carrie. The woman behind the counter half stood up, then sat down again. She tried to pretend like she hadn’t done it, like she warn’t pleased. If Bobby were that bad a liar, he’d a been in jail even more than he was.
“Certainly,” the woman said. I didn’t see her do nothing, but a man came out from the back, and he was Chinese. So was the woman who followed him.
“I’m Ludmilla Connors,” I told him, and I clenched my ass together real hard to keep my legs steady. “And I want to volunteer for the experiment. But only if it pays what I heard. Only if.”
* * *
The woman behind the desk took me back to a room with a table and some chairs and a whole lot of filing cabinets, and she left me there with the Chinese people. I looked at their smooth faces with those slanted, mostly closed eyes, and I wished I hadn’t come. I guess these two were the reason everybody hereabouts called it the “Chinese clinic,” even if everybody else there looked like regular Americans.
“Hello, Ms. Connors,” the man said and he spoke English real good, even if it was hard to understand some words. “We are glad you are here. I am Dr. Dan Chung and this is my chief technician Jenny.”
“Uh huh.” He didn’t look like no “Dan,” and if she was “Jenny,” I was a fish.
“Your mother is Courtney Connors and your father was Robert Connors?”
“How’d you know that?”
“We have family trees for everyone on the mountain. It’s part of our work, you know. You said you want to aid us in this research?”
“I said I want to get paid.”
“Of course. You will be. You are nineteen.”
“Yeah.” It warn’t a question, and I didn’t like that they knew so much about me. “How much money?”
He told me. It warn’t as much as the rumors said, but it was enough. Unless they actually killed me, it was enough. And I didn’t think they’d do that. The government wouldn’t let them do that—not even this stinking government.
“Okay,” I said. “Start the experiment.”
Jenny smiled. I knew that kind of smile, like she was so much better than me. My fists clenched. Dr. Chung said, “Jenny, you may leave. Send in Mrs. Cully, please.”
I liked the surprised look on Jenny’s face, and then the angry look she tried to hide. Bitch.
Mrs. Cully didn’t act like Jenny. She brought in a tray with coffee and cookies: just regular store-bought Pepperidge Farm, not Chinese. Under the tray was a bunch of papers. Mrs. Cully sat down at the table with us.
“These are legal papers, Ms. Connors,” Dr. Chung said. “Before we begin, you must sign them. If you wish, you can take them home to read, or to a lawyer. Or you can sign them here, now. They give us permission to conduct the research, including the surgery. They say that you understand this procedure is experimental. They give the university, myself, and Dr. Liu all rights to information gained from your participation. They say that we do not guarantee any cure, or even any alleviation, of any medical disorder you may have. Do you want to ask questions?”
I did, but not just yet. Half of me was grateful that he didn’t ask if I can read, the way tourists and social workers sometimes do. I can, but I didn’t understand all the words on this page: indemnify, liability, patent rights. The other half of me resented that he was rushing me so.
I said something I warn’t intending: “If Ratface Rollins warn’t president, this clinic wouldn’t be here at all!”
“I agree,” Dr. Chung said. “But you Americans elected a Libertarian.”
“Us Americans? Aren’t you one?”
“No. I am a Chinese national, working in the United States on a visa arranged by my university.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I grabbed the pen and signed everything. “Let’s get it over with, then.”
Both Dr. Chung and Mrs. Cully looked startled. She said, “But … Ludmilla, didn’t you understand that this will take several visits, spread out over months?”
“Yeah, I know. And that you’re going to pay me over several months, too, but the first bit today.”
“Yes. After your interview.”
She had one of those little recording cubes that I only seen on TV. They can play back an interview like a movie, or they can send the words to a computer to get put on-screen. Maybe today would be just talking. That would be fine with me. I took a cookie.
“Initial interview with experimental subject Ludmilla Connors,” Dr. Chung said, and gave the date and time. “Ms. Connors, you are here of your own free will?”
“Yeah.”
“And you are a member of the Connors family, daughter of Courtney Ames Connors and the late Robert Connors?”
“Did you know my dad at the hospital? Were you one of his doctors?”
“No. But I am familiar with his symptoms and his early death. I am sorry.”
I warn’t sorry. Dad was a son-of-a-bitch even afore he got sick. Maybe knowing it was coming, that it was in his genes, made him that way, but a little girl don’t care about that. I only cared that he hit me and screamed at me—hit and screamed at everybody until the night he took after Dinah so bad that Bobby shot him. Now Bobby, just four months from finishing doing his time at Luther Luckett, was getting sick, too. I knew I had to tell this foreigner all that, but it was hard. My family don’t ask for help. “We don’t got much,” Granmama always said, “but we got our pride.”
That, and the Connors curse. Fatal Familial Insomnia.
It turned out that Dr. Chung already knew a lot of my story. He knew about Dad, and Bobby, and Mama, and Aunt Carol Ames. He even knew which of the kids got the gene—it’s a 50-50 chance—and which didn’t. The safe ones: Cody, Patty, Arianna, Timothy. The losers: Shawn, Bonnie Jean, and Lewis. And me.
So I talked and talked, and the little light on the recording cube glowed green to show it was on, and Mrs. Cully nodded and looked sympathetic so damn much that I started wishing for Jenny back. Dr. Chung at least sat quiet, with no expression on that strange ugly face.
“Are you showing any symptoms at all, Ms. Connors?”
“I have some trouble sleeping at night.”
“Describe it for me, in as much detail as
you can.”
I did. I knew I was young to start the troubles; Mama was forty-six and Bobby twenty-nine.
“And the others with the FFI gene? Your mother and Robert, Jr. and”—he looked at a paper “—Shawn Edmond and—”
“Look,” I said, and it came out harsher than I meant, “I know I got to tell you everything. But I’m not going to talk none about any of my kin, not what they are or aren’t doing. Especially not to a Chinaman.”
Silence.
Then Dr. Chung said quietly, “I think, Ms. Connors, that you must not know how offensive that term is. Like ‘spic’ or ‘nigger.’”
I didn’t know. I felt my face grow warm.
He said, “I think it’s like ‘hillbilly’ is to mountain people.”
My face got even warmer. “I … I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
But it warn’t. I’m not the kind to insult people, even Chinese people. I covered my embarrassment with bluster. “Can I ask some questions for a change?”
“Of course.”
“Is this Chi—did this clinic come to Blaine and start treating people for what ails them, just to get my family’s trust so you all can do these experiments on our brains?”
That was the scuttlebutt in town and I expected him to deny it, but instead he said, “Yes.”
Mrs. Cully frowned.
I said, “Why? Because there are only forty-one families in the whole world with our sickness? Then why build a whole clinic just to get at us? We’re just a handful of folk.”
He said gently, “You know a lot about fatal familial insomnia.”
“I’m not stupid!”
“I would never think that for even a moment.” He shifted in his chair and turned off the recorder. “Listen, Ms. Connors. It’s true that sufferers from FFI are a very small group. But the condition causes changes in the brain that involve neural pathways which everybody has. Memory is involved, and sleep regulation, and a portion of the brain called the thalamus that processes incoming sensory signals. Our research here is the best single chance to gain information beyond price about those pathways. And since we also hope to arrest FFI, we were able to get funding as a medical clinical trial. Your contribution to this science will be invaluable.”
“That’s not why I’m doing it.”
“Whatever your reasons, the data will be just as valuable.”
“And you know you got to do it to me fast. Afore the Libertarians lose power.”
Mrs. Cully looked surprised. Why was she still sitting with us? Then I realized: Dr. Chung warn’t supposed to be alone with a young woman. Well, fine by me. But at least he didn’t seem surprised that I sometimes watch the news.
“That’s true,” he said. “If Rafe Bannerman wins this presidential election, and it certainly looks as if he will, then all the deregulations of the present administration may be reversed.”
“So you got to cut into my skull afore then. And afore I get too sick.” I said it nasty, goading him. I don’t know why.
But he didn’t push back. “Yes, we must install the optogenetic cable as soon as possible. You are a very bright young woman, Ms. Connors.”
“Don’t try to butter me up none,” I said.
But after he took blood samples and all the rest of it, after we set up a whole series of appointments, after I answered ten million more questions, the Chinaman’s—no, Chinese man’s—words stayed in my head all the long trudge back up the mountain. Not as bright, those words, as the autumn leaves turning the woods to glory, but it was more praise than I’d gotten since I left school. That was something, anyway.
* * *
When I got back to the trailer, about noon, nobody wouldn’t speak to me. Carrie must of dropped by. Bobby’s wife, Dinah, sewed on her quilt for the women’s co-op: the Rail Fence pattern in blue and yellow, real pretty. Mama sat smoking and drinking Mountain Dew. Granmama was asleep in her chair by the stove, which barely heated the trailer. It was cold for October and Bobby didn’t dig no highway coal again. The kids were outside playing, Shawn warn’t around, and inside it was silent as the grave.
I hung my coat on a door hook. “That quilt’s coming nice, Dinah.”
Nothing.
“You need some help, Mama?”
Nothing.
“The hell with you all!” I said.
Mama finally spoke. At least today she was making sense. “You better not let Bobby hear where you been.”
“I’m doing it for you all!” I said, but they all went back to pretending I didn’t exist. I grabbed my coat and stomped back outside.
Not that I had any place to go. And it didn’t matter if I was inside or out; Mama’s words were the last ones anyone spoke to me for two mortal days. They hardly even looked at me, except for scared peeps from the littlest kids and a glare from Bonnie Jean, like nobody except a ten-year-old can glare. It was like I was dead.
But half the reason I was doing this was the hope—not strong, but there—that maybe I wouldn’t end up dead, after first raving and thrashing and trying to hurt people and seeing things that warn’t there. Like Dad, like Aunt Carol Ames, like Cousin Jess. And the other half of the reason was to put some decent food on the table for the kids that wouldn’t look at me or speak to me from fear that Bobby would switch them hard. I had hopes for Shawn, who hadn’t been home in a couple of days, out deer hunting with his buddies. Shawn and I always been close, and he was sweeter than Bobby even afore Bobby started showing our sickness. I hoped Shawn would be on my side. I needed somebody.
But that night in bed, with Patty on my other side as far away as she could get without actually becoming part of the wall, Bonnie Jean spooned into me. She smelled of apples and little kid. I hugged onto her like I warn’t never going to let go, and I stayed that way all through the long cold night.
* * *
“We have good news,” Dr. Chung said. “Your optogenetic vectors came out beautifully.”
“Yeah? What does that mean?” I didn’t really care, but my nerves were all standing on end and if I kept him talking, maybe it would distract me some. Or not.
We sat in his lab at the Chinese clinic, a squinchy little room all cluttered with computers and papers. No smoking bottles or bubbling tubes like in the movies, though. Maybe those were in another room. There was another Chinese doctor, too, Dr. Liu. Also Jenny, worse luck, but if she was the “chief technician” I guess she had to be around. I kept my back to her. She wore a pretty red shirt that I couldn’t never afford to buy for Patty or Bonnie Jean.
“What does that mean?” I said, realized I’d said it afore, and twisted my hands together.
“It means we have constructed the bio-organism to go into your brain, from a light-sensitive opsin, a promoter, and a harmless virus. The opsin will be expressed in only those cells that activate the promoter. When light of a specific wavelength hits those cells, they will activate or silence, and we can control that by—Ms. Connors, you can still change your mind.”
“What?” Jenny said, and Dr. Chung shot her a look that could wither skunkweed. I wouldn’t of thought he could look like that.
“My mind is changed,” I said. His talking warn’t distracting me, it was just making it all worse. “I don’t want to do it.”
“All right.”
“She signed the contracts!” Jenny said.
I whirled around on my chair to face her. “You shut up! Nobody warn’t talking to you!”
Jenny got up and stalked out. Dr. Liu made like he would say something, then didn’t. Over her shoulder Jenny said, “I’ll call Dr. Morton. Although too bad she didn’t decide that before the operating room was reserved at Johnson Memorial.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, and fled.
* * *
I got home, bone-weary from the walk plus my worst night yet, just as Jimmy Barton’s truck pulled up at the trailer. Jimmy got out, looking grim, then two more boys, carrying Shawn.
I rushed up. “What happened? Did you shoot hi
m?” Everybody knew that Jimmy was the most reckless hunter on the mountain.
“Naw. We never even got no hunting. He went crazy, is what. So we brought him back.”
“Crazy how?”
“You know how, Ludie,” Jimmy said, looking at me steady. “Like your family does.”
“But he’s only seventeen!”
Jimmy didn’t say nothing to that, and the other two started for the trailer with Shawn. He had a purpled jaw where somebody slugged him, and he was out cold on whatever downers they made him take. My gut twisted so hard I almost bent over. Shawn. Seventeen.
Dinah and Patty came rushing out, streaming kids behind them. Dinah was shrieking enough to wake the dead. I looked at Shawn and thought about how it must of been in the hunting camp, him going off the rails and “expressing” that gene all over the place: shouting from the panic, grabbing his rifle and waving it around, heart pounding like mad, hitting out at anyone who talked sense. Like Bobby had been a few months ago, afore he got even worse. Nobody in my family ever lasted more than seven months after the first panic attack.
Shawn.
I didn’t even wait to see if Mama was coming out of the trailer, if this was one of the days she could. I went back down the mountain, running as much as I could, gasping and panting, until I got to the Chinese clinic and the only hope I had for Shawn, for me, for all of us.
* * *
Dr. Morton turned out to be a woman. While they got the operating room ready at Johnson Memorial in Jackson, I sat with Dr. Chung in a room that was supposed to look cheerful and didn’t. Yellow walls, a view of the parking lot. A nurse had shaved off a square patch on my hair. I stared out at a red Chevy, trying not to think. Dr. Chung said gently, “It isn’t a complicated procedure, Ms. Connors. Really.”
“Drilling a hole into my skull isn’t complicated?”
“No. Humans have known how to do that part for thousands of years.”
News to me. I said, “I forgot a hat.”
“A hat?”
The Very Best of the Best Page 82
