Lethal Discoveries

by Erica Pensini

  “I tell you, the pudding looked very strange under the microscope”, Brad reiterated

  “This is incredible”, said Mike shaking his head, almost talking to himself, “So what is the structure of your polymer?”.

  “I started off with a standard azo compound, polymerized it with hydrocarbon and organofluorine compounds to get longer chains and then cross-linked them at 40degC. I wasn’t sure what I was doing and what I would get, I didn’t expect this at all”.

  “Ehm…”, Mike hummed, “we should run some nuclear magnetic resonance tests on the samples”.

  “But we can’t do nuclear magnetic resonance here”, I said.

  “They have it at the research center for cancer. Remember we were there some time ago?”, Brad reminded me.

  Brad and I had been there a couple years earlier to use their electron transmission microscope, but there hadn’t been much collaboration going on with their research center after that.

  “I have a friend working there. I’ll give him a call a see what he can do for us”, Mike told us. Then, looking at his watch, “I’ll try to catch him later, he’s probably gone for lunch now”.

  That reminded me of the social lunch. It had slipped my mind completely, what we were seeing was much too intriguing for me to care about something else now.

  “I suppose we are due for lunch…”, I snorted.

  Brad shrugged, “I suppose so”.

  “Enjoy”, said Mike ironically, “and come see me after lunch”.

  Chapter 11

  Brad and I were standing in a corner talking on our pizza slices when Mc Murrich approached us.

  “How are you guys doing here?”, she asked, “You seem to be having a pretty intense conversation”.

  Brad and I looked at each other.

  “Well, one of the polymers we synthesized the other day seems to work well”, I began, “Very well in fact. The volume of the pudding increased by about ten times”.

  Mc Murrich arched her brows.

  “Ten times?”, she asked, looking vaguely skeptical.

  “Yes”, Brad confirmed, “we were surprised too, but that’s what we got. We can’t understand what happened though”.

  Mc Murrich was intrigued, I could tell she was even if she never conveyed too many emotions.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about this earlier?”, she asked frowning.

  Then she smiled her professional smile, “You should have, this is great news”.

  “So you are trying to understand what happened?” she asked after a pause, and then, without waiting for an answer, “Come see me in the next days and tell me what you find”.

  We finished the pizza and went straight to Mike’s office. His friend at the cancer research center offered to see us that same afternoon.

  “Sandeep is a great guy, you are in good hands with him”, Mike told us, “I hope you’ll find your answers. This case is fascinating”.

  Mike’s face had brightened as he spoke, but it abruptly turned gruff like it had been when we knocked on his door in the morning.

  “I need to work on the review now, I am swamped with this nonsense”, he complained shaking his head.

  Brad and I thanked him and promised to come back with whichever new discoveries we would have.

  Chapter 12

  I had picked Brad up in the morning, so we went to the cross cancer institute using my old Buick. There was no AC in my car, and we drove through the summer heat with the windows down and the breeze blowing on our faces. I felt as if I was taking a holiday, driving out on a Monday in the middle of the day. I loved the feeling, it seemed to me as if I had the freedom to drive back home anytime, and that I had chosen to go and analyze the samples for leisure.

  But when I entered the cross cancer institute the cheerfulness froze on me like cold sweat after a bad dream. It wasn’t the appearance of the place as much as what I knew happened in there. In the elevator there was a woman on a wheelchair, so thin she looked like she could break anytime. I tried to focus on the numbers lighting up as we moved from one floor to the next. When we reached the fifth floor I had to squeeze past the wheelchair to get out, and I felt guilty without knowing why.

  When I stepped out I stood staring at the signs directing to the different rooms, without really reading them.

  “This way”, I heard Brad saying, and I followed him to Sandeep’s lab.

  When the guy came to open the door for us I slipped back in my role, and became aware of the polymer samples I was carrying.

  Sandeep was a trim guy with courteous manners and a mild Indian accent. I could see why Mike liked him. He didn’t speak more than necessary and seemed to dose every gest, limiting all he did to what was strictly functional to his purposes.

  The machine we needed was in a separate room, divided from the main lab by a glass door. I had never seen a nuclear magnetic resonance device this size before. To place the sample in the chamber Sandeep climbed on a stair, while Brad and I looked at him from below, fascinated.

  “The analysis will take a while to run”, he told us after starting the machine, “if you have time to come back tomorrow afternoon we can discuss the results then”.

  I was disappointed to leave, I would have preferred to sit there, one, two, three hours, whatever it took to know what had happened to the pudding and then go home happily owning my piece of information. When I told Brad he laughed, and said that he had a better idea.

  “Do you have more polymer?”, he asked me.

  I said I had plenty.

  “Well, since this worked so well on the pudding we should see what it does to other foods”, he proposed, “Pull up at the next grocery shop, there’s one few blocks from here. Let’s get a bunch of food types and see what it does to them, just for fun”.

  I hadn’t thought about it, and the idea thrilled me. To us this was a game and we wanted to score on at least another three items. We picked yoghurt, ice-cream and tomato sauce. Tomato sauce was my idea. Brad was skeptical about it.

  “You’re asking too much”, he told me, “tomato sauce has to be heated and at that point your polymers will change completely. People will buy a liter of sauce and will end up with nothing after they warm it up for their meal”.

  I insisted that it was worth trying and we bet a pasta dish, seasoned with tomato sauce.

  Our mood had turned light and happy after leaving the cancer institute behind, and after setting up all our samples with the polymer we left earlier than usual. There was nothing else we could do other than give the polymer time and hope it would do some more magic.

  Chapter 13

  After dropping Brad off I didn’t drive home directly. I stopped by the grocery shop to get myself some food at the deli counter and drove to the lake. I had my dinner looking at the reflections in the water, with the moon and the sun simultaneously suspended in the brightness of the sky. I wanted to stay there until the sunset, but it was still early. I wished I had Wooster with me, time would have passed by easily throwing rocks in the lake for him to fetch. I hadn’t thought about bathing when I got there and I didn’t have a bathing suit with me. A bath seemed to be perfect though. I took off my shoes and felt the water with my toes. I had a look around and there was nobody in sight, so I stripped off all I was wearing and plunged in the lake. The water was warm and silky around my naked body, and I swam slowly for a while, then let myself float on my back, eyes closed. When I turned on my belly and opened my eyes I saw a figure sitting on the shore, close to where I had left my clothing. I panicked and calculated the distance between where I was and the opposite side of the lake, but then I thought I couldn’t reach home without first getting a hold of my clothing and my car. When I looked more closely I realized the figure I was seeing was a kid. I wondered what she was doing there all alone, since there weren’t any houses nearby, not that I knew of at least.

  I checked my watch and noticed that the time was past 8, and I thought the kid should have been home alr
eady. I lingered in the water, hoping she would leave soon. But after 15 minutes she was still there and I was getting tired, so I swam back, uncomfortably looking at the little girl staring at me as I moved closer to the shore.

  When I was close enough to touch the bottom with my feet I stopped, not knowing what to do. The girl kept observing me, and finally smiled and told me that her name was Mirth. I told her mine before adding that my clothing were right beside her. She looked at them and nodded. It was all very strange, but suddenly it began to feel as if it wasn’t at all, and I climbed out the lake, naked as I was, and started dressing.

  “What are you doing all alone here?”, I asked once I finished putting on my clothing.

  She told me that she did so whenever her mother was doing a night shift, which happened at least twice a week. “It’s not all that wasn’t safe to go around like this”, I said, and she shrugged and pointed out that I was swimming alone in the lake, naked. I laughed at this. The kid must have been nine or ten but she was sharp in a calm way that made her seem older than her age. I asked if she wanted a ride back home and she shook her head no, saying that her dog would pass by in a while, and they’d go home together.

  “But when will your dog come?”, I asked.

  “Before it gets dark”, she replied.

  I wasn’t too sure about the story and I didn’t want to leave the kid behind, although it was probably true that she had done this many times. She seemed too chill to be lying.

  “Well, if you don’t mind I’ll stay here for a while longer to wait for the sunset”, I told her.

  We sat there in silence, watching the air burn with the multi-colored passion of the dying day. Then the red ball of the sun sank in the lake and the sky went dark, and the dog was still not there.

  “I really don’t think you should walk home alone, it will be very easy for me to drop you off at home”, I told Mirth.

  She shook her head no as she had done earlier, and so I sat there, not knowing what to do. But after a while I heard a noise coming from the trees around the lake. Mirth stood up and spread her arms, yelling “Billy!”, and then a dog appeared, trotting happily toward the kid. After greeting Mirth Billy sniffed my feet, and gave me a wag when I touched its head.

  “Will you ride us home?”, the kid asked.

  Chapter 14

  We got on the car and Mirth guided me to the road that led to her house. She told me that there was a shortcut in the woods, from which her place could be reached by foot in only fifteen minutes, while getting there by car required taking a number of detours up the hills.

  “Does your mother know you walk out to the lake every night?”, I asked while we drove along a narrow street that seemed to lead nowhere.

  It seemed strange to me that a kid her age was left alone at home like that. Mirth began to tell me that she had a baby-sitter coming over before and that they would always walk to the like after dinner, around this time. Billy had learned that they walked back home once it got dark, so he would walk to the lake, then wander around the woods for a while and join them when it was time to leave. Then she stopped talking and looked out the window, narrowing her eyes. I briefly turned around to see her expression, before shifting my attention back to the road. The asphalt ended and after about a kilometer of unpaved road we found Mirth’s house. I stopped the car.

  “Your babysitter is gone now”, I stated, feeling that something had happened to her.

  Mirth nodded. “Mom is a cop. Amy didn’t show up one day and then mom found her floating in the lake”.

  This must have been on the local newspaper but I never took the time to read it, so I was completely unaware of the fact. The idea that a dead girl had been floating in the lake where I used to swim gave me the shivers. I imagined Mirth in the house alone with the ghost of her dead baby-sitter, and leaving her there seemed terribly wrong.

  Mirth sensed my thoughts. “Someone is coming over in a short while, so don’t worry. I must go now, if the new nanny sees me out here in the car with you she’ll ask questions and I’ll get in trouble”, she said, opening the door and then letting the dog out.

  I watched her walk to the door, with Billy trotting beside her. She turned around and waved, thanking me for the ride, then disappeared inside the house without waiting for my answer.

  Chapter 15

  I drove home haunted by a pungent sense of discomfort. It was certainly a coincidence, but I couldn’t help noticing that stories of drowned people seemed to follow me in the last days. This week-end it had been about Jack’s girlfriend, and tonight it was Mirth’s babysitter. I wondered why she had drowned. Had she felt suddenly sick? Had she committed suicide?

  When I got home I sat in the car for a moment, not wanting to go inside. I was tempted to go see Jack and tell him about the kid, omitting the story of her drowned nanny. But then I thought I couldn’t talk to Jack about Mirth without mentioning what happened to her babysitter, so I renounced altogether the idea of going to see him.

  The steps squeaked beneath me and when I opened the door the house welcomed me with a sheath of darkness. I reached for the switch and turned the lights on the emptiness of the rooms. There are nights when being alone is a burden, and this was one of them.

  The freshness of the lake had evaporated off my body during the drive, leaving me hot and thirsty. I headed to the kitchen and drank large gulps of water directly from the tap. Then I removed my clothing, the shirt clung onto my head, I stripped it off anxiously and threw it on the floor. My heart was beating quickly, I could feel it pulsing in the veins of my neck.

  The shower slowly washed away the tension. I let the water sooth me inhaling the lavender smell of the soap. I stood there until I emptied the hot water tank and the shower went cold.

  When I went to sit on the porch with a lemonade my mind was devoid of thoughts. I was still there, sipping my drink and letting the night drench me with the sound of the cicadas, when the phone rang. When I picked it up I heard Jack’s voice on the other end.

  “It’s strange, because I wanted to call you but I couldn’t. It feels good to hear your voice”, I said, and was surprised at my own words.

  “Why couldn’t you phone me?”, Jack asked.

  I told him about the swim in the lake, and Mirth and her drowned nanny.

  “I had read about the drowned girl, it was on the local news. She had felt sick on the lake, it seems like it’s something she was taking. They thought it was drugs at first but then it seemed unlikely. I don’t know what they concluded though. It’s very strange how the case stopped being discussed abruptly. It was ‘the local police is still investigating’ one day and no news at all the next”.

  “So you knew…”, I said.

  “Yes, and that is what decided me to go see Greg and fix the boat”, Jack told me.

  There was a silence on the line, and I waited for him to go on. “I thought it was time to face the past”, he added. There was another silence, then Jack asked me how I was doing with my polymers.

  “We’ll see how they work on other types of food tomorrow. This compound could be a real breakthrough for the food industry”, I said.

  “I thought someone like you wouldn’t care about the food industry”, Jack replied.

  “I don’t”, I said, “but the fact that other people do keeps my business going”.

  Jack laughed. “So how do you guys test that the new compounds are safe before releasing them?”, he asked, then added “Sorry for the biologist’s question…”.

  I hadn’t thought about this before. After all I was only combining polymers that were considered non-toxic, so why would I end up with something that was harmful? Who tested what we produced in our labs? I thought I would ask Alice the next day. She was the one working with bacteria all the time. Her job was to verify if compounds that prolonged the shelf-life of the products worked, all she did was make sure bacteria weren’t there, but perhaps she could have some ideas on how to run some toxicity te
sts using my polymers.

  “I didn’t want to bother your conscience, I was just saying…”, Jack told me when he felt the anxiousness in my voice.

  “Why don’t you come over?”, I asked.

  But he had to wake up at five the next morning to start the bakery. I hang up wishing him good night and went back on the porch. Jack’s question kept rolling in my mind, and I felt the tension gradually ramp up till my heartbeat became so fast it hurt. It wasn’t only what Jack had said, it was a combination of events and feelings I could hardly define.

  I took my book and went to bed, trying to focus on my reading. The story drew me in, detaching me from myself a bit at a time. I calmed down, and fell asleep half an hour later.

  Chapter 16

  “Do we ever test the safety of the new compounds we come up with in our lab?”, I asked Brad as we were driving to FoodTech labs the next day.

  He shrugged. “Someone probably does, but I don’t know how this part works”.

  “But who do you think would know?”, I insisted.

  “The boss, I suppose. Why does this worry you all of a sudden?”.

  I told him a friend had brought up the question and it made me wonder. The conversation stalled, and we drove in silence for a while.

  Then Brad said, “I am curious to know what happened to our other samples. If the polymer worked with the sauce we’ll have to try and heat it up. If you win lunch is on me. And if you don’t…”.

  “It’s on me”, I interrupted, and we both laughed.

  We got to Foodtech labs. We scanned the passes at the entrance of the building, we scanned them in the elevator to make it start, and we scanned them to open the door to the labs. Safety first, as always. We donned out lab coats and went straight to our samples. The sauce was just as it had been the night before.

  “I suppose lunch is on me”, I said shrugging, “but wow, look at the yoghurt!”.

  The ice-cream had doubled in volume, but what happened to the yoghurt was the most stunning part. It looked like a mousse now, and its volume was at least ten times greater than it had been the day before.

  “It’s soon to draw conclusions, but it seems like the polymer works only on products that contain milk”, Brad said, almost talking to himself.