Lethal Discoveries

by Erica Pensini

  Chapter 100

  When Sandeep left Avery said, “So we have another piece in the puzzle”

  “One, not all of them”, I replied

  Avery gave me a wondering look

  “I have a friend journalist in NY”

  Avery nodded, “Yes, you told me about what she found”

  “Yes, right. So you recall that she was telling me about this doctor in NY…and about the dead patients”

  Avery nodded again.

  “We’ll have to find out if Woods is with him, and if he is still alive. You know, if they found a cure…”, Avery started

  “I don’t need their cure”, I cut her off

  “What were you saying about the trip in Italy?”, she asked

  “Well, that’s different”, I said defensively

  “Sure it is. I want to know how you think to travel in your conditions, and what you want to achieve”, she said with an edge in her voice

  “I want to go there to find a cure for myself, possibly, and maybe help whoever else needs it – I want to have Mori help me make amend for the mess I’ve made”, I said

  “So why not see if someone else has the cure?”

  “This someone else you’re talking about is someone I don’t want help from”

  “But the others who might have eaten your polymer perhaps want to live, regardless of where the cure comes from”, Avery objected, and I saw she had point there

  I stopped to ponder. I was being selfish again, after all did I really care about others? Or was I just telling myself I did?

  “Yes, you’re right. Please do try to find out what they’ve come up with. But I will not use Woods cure, if he found one. I will still go to Italy and have Mori help, if he can help”

  “Your childish black or white approach to reality is childish, do your realize this?”, Avery replied stiffly

  I shrugged, and as I did I felt self-conscious. That too – shrugging it off – was juvenile.

  My cell rang, Avery looked at it, and I looked at it.

  “Do you want to answer?”, Avery said at last, passing it over to me

  Jack. His name flashed on the screen.

  “Hello…”, I said

  “I’ve spoken to Mori”, Jack told me, with an exited pitch in his voice

  “Yes”, I said

  “Are you still ok with going?”, he asked, sensing my uncertainty

  “Yes, oh yes. We were just talking about this with Avery”

  “The detective is there?”

  “Yes, and I spoke to Sandeep too”

  “And?”

  “And maybe the doctor who tested the MagnaSize on Amy is still alive, looking for a cure for himself”

  “What?”

  “The doctor who tested the MagnaSize on Amy has been poisoned with the same stuff, but apparently he is still alive and maybe he found a cure for himself”

  “And you could you use that cure…”, Jack whispered

  “I could but I won’t”, I replied firmly

  “But…”

  “What did Mori say?”, I asked, cutting off his sentence

  “That we can go as soon as we wish. I found a flight and spoke with a nurse who could assist us during the trip. I was just waiting for you to confirm before proceeding with the flight purchase”

  “Sure…”

  “Ok then, we can leave in a week if you feel ready”

  “I feel ready”, I said

  When I hang up Avery looked at me, shaking her head.

  “Let me see what I can find out before you fly out”, she said, and left before I could add anything.

  Chapter 101

  It was Avery who drove us to the airport one week later. I had become thin – a bunch of bones – and I was too weak to walk. Jack pulled me out of the car and held me in his arms all the way from the parking to the upper floor, where we finally got a hold of a wheelchair.

  “I’ll walk with you guys to the check-in”, Avery said

  I felt she was wondering if and how I would make it to our destination

  “We’ll be all right”, I said smiling, although I wasn’t sure myself what would happen.

  But for some reason I was calm, happy, and almost euphoric. It was that distinctive type of euphoria that takes me when I am overly weak but not in pain, and I feel as if my body is freely floating in time and space.

  “We should stroll around to use up some time”, I said, “we’ve got plenty on our hands”

  The nurse Jack had hired looked at me with a surprised expression.

  “We should try to save some energy for the trip”, she said

  “We?”, I replied giggling, “Well, I am cozily sat on a wheelchair while you guys push me around, so unless you feel tired I’d like to see the duty free”

  Everyone else was tense and instead of answering me Jack asked, almost talking to himself, “So where should we check-in?”

  The summer was coming to an end, and the tourists about to return to their daily routine looked somewhat relieved to take a break from hotels, travels, but at the same time they were somewhat melancholic that the trip they had dreamed of was about to end.

  From my privileged position on the wheelchair I could devote my undivided attention to the observation of the crowd of holiday migrants, without having to carry my luggage, walk or find my way around.

  When we reached the check-in Avery bent and hugged me. It was a rushed hug, embarrassed and almost stolen, from which Avery released herself a second after touching me. That clumsy emotional hug was so unexpected, and I was touched.

  “Hey”, I said

  “Good luck, ok? I suppose it’s good that you go, since that damn Woods and that other doctor are nowhere to be found, nor is their cure, if they have one at all”, Avery told me, ending her sentence with an angry pitch in her tone

  “Thank you, Mariam”, I said, meaning it

  “We’ll call you when we get there”, Jack said

  “Please do”

  When Avery walked away I followed her with my eyes for as long as I could, till she got lost in the crowd

  Seeing me stretch and crane my frail neck Jack said, “We must look forward now”

  I must have given him a lost soul type of stare, because he said, “Come on, we’ll be back”

  “Oh yes, and when…”, I started, but the voice of the woman at the check-in interrupted my sentence in mid-air.

  “Can I help the next person in line?”, she called out

  It was only then that I felt, for one brief moment, a sense of fear.

  Chapter 102

  I have vague memories of the rest of the trip. All is know is that I was falling in and out of sleep, and that I felt heavy headed and slightly nauseous whenever I was awake. I tried to keep my interactions with the outside minimal, to move as little as possible, to think as little as possible till I fell asleep again. I have a distinct recollection of a dream I had though. Strange how some details cling onto our memory and never fade.

  I remember I was in a house, a very large one, with an antique flair to it. The house was Jack’s and mine, and yet it could have been in many ways one of those museum houses, where objects are arranged so that the visitor lives into the momentary delusion that the last owner never left, and that either one has leaped back into the past or that – for some metaphysical reason – the arms of the house’s clock have stopped ticking for few centuries. Although the house was mine I didn’t fully know it, and as I moved into the different rooms I was caught into a suspended feeling of discovery. Two rooms especially fascinated me, but in those two particular rooms I was not allowed to enter. I had hastily peeked into one of them standing at the door, and I had seen a light hanging from the ceiling, a huge light with metal circles intertwined, in between which an old electric bulb shed a dim circle of light around. Seeing my intention of getting into the room, Jack had said, “No Iris, you cannot come in here”. I had obediently backed up, although I couldn’t understand his rationale for n
ot letting me in there. I had left with the acute wish to see further, but without daring to ask any questions. I believe this dream continued – in and out – throughout the intermittent islands of sleep against which my shipwrecked body sloshed during the flight to the land of my ancestors. At a point I recall wondering if this would be my last flight, and I thought about the coincidence that I would end my life trying to reach the place where my family had originated. A sign? But then I fell asleep again, and tried – over and again – to enter those rooms, each time stopping at Jack’s words. “No Iris, you cannot come in here”.

  Then we landed and I woke up to a warm September day in Milan, where Mori was waiting for us at the airport.

  Chapter 103

  I will not forget Mori’s face when he saw me. Happiness and consternation fought each other, altering his expression as his feelings swayed from one to the other.

  He stood in front of the wheelchair looking at me in silence, and finally he said, “Iris”.

  Just that, but with a deep sense of compassion that I did not expect from someone who barely knew me.

  I smiled, guessing at my devastated appearance and yet not sure about how much I had changed. It was then that I realized I had not looked at myself in the mirror since I had gone to the hospital.

  “The trip was fine”, I said, speaking with my same old voice.

  Deep down I’m still who I’ve always been, I told myself, trying to hush the effect that Mori’s shock reverberated on me.

  “Ah well, if I didn’t know what you have been going through I would wonder what they have been subjecting you to during the flight”, he said, laughing at last

  And I laughed too. “Ah, yes, these airlines are brutal, trust me”, I teased, playing along

  Mori laughed even harder, although what I said wasn’t particularly funny. And so we found each other merrily giggling for no reason, with the nurse and Jack staring at us with stunned faces.

  Then the mirth died off, and Mori cleared his voice, shaking off the last bits of laugher

  “We should go to the hospital I suppose. I have an ambulance waiting for us outside”, he said

  “And oh, you can stay at stay at my place if you want”, he added, addressing Jack

  “Thank you, but I have a hotel room booked…”, Jack answered

  I knew he was torn between the fear of offending Mori by refusing his invitation, and his need of having his own private space

  “Sure, I know you do, but in case your stay gets long…”, Mori began, and did not end his sentence

  Jack didn’t answer, and after a pause Mori asked, “Shall we go then?”

  I let Mori and Jack chat along, while I silently rejoiced at the aroma of coffee. I loved it, although it was not as smooth and intense as the when we had been out in the summer streets of Milan. That smell triggered something in me, it instilled within me the strong will to go out again in those streets, even if only for a day, but soon, today, now, no matter the consequences.

  “I wish I could stay away from the hospital, just for a while…”, I said, almost talking to myself

  “We’ll get you to walk outside on your own two feet, trust me”, Mori said

  “But for now…”, he continued, and began pushing the wheelchair, “for now we’ll have to stay inside for a while longer”

  I looked around, and embraced the place swarming with Italian voices and with people dressed in the distinctly European fashion.

  “I don’t want to be cured, I just want to be part of life for a day. That’s all”, I said, before I could stop myself from spilling out the confession

  “We’ve come all the way here cure you, Iris”, Jack said

  But have we?, I thought to myself.

  “Ok, let’s see if I can engage you with some science”, Mori said

  “Puaf, science…”, I replied, even though it was true that – in spite of everything – science still intrigued me.

  I was curious to learn the biological and chemical mechanisms that were putting me in this state. How often could you study a phenomenon so closely as when you are affected by it the way I was?

  “Why do you think you are unable to walk now?”, Mori asked, knowing that I was simulating my reaction

  “Because I am too weak?”, I said, miming irony

  “Yes, but why?”, he kept asking

  “Because the polymer has convinced my cells to commit suicide?”, I replied on the same mocking note

  “How have you come up with this answer?”, he asked, stopping short and walking in front of me to see my face

  “I was just joking, I made it up…”, I began

  “Just that?”

  “Well, when we were looking at the cells it looked like they had become so numerous and yet they didn’t move…it seemed like they had multiplied like crazy and then died off, as if their biological and reproductive cycle had been accelerated, but then…”, I started and stopped, unable to continue

  “But then, after having lived so intensely, the cells become unable to continue the life cycle. In other words the polymer acts as a delayed bomb, it does not affect the first, the second, or the third generation of cells, but beyond that it pulls the trigger and the cells become sterile, so to speak”, Mori concluded

  “And you know what causes this?”, Jack asked

  “And do you know how to reverse this problem?”, he continued with a tense eagerness in his voice, before getting an answer to the first question

  “I do have suppositions about what causes this, as for knowing how to reverse this…I am not quite there yet”, he started and paused

  “But I will get there, I will”, he said, mainly talking to himself now, pushing the wheelchair further, and at a faster pace.

  Eight months later

  The air is warm again after one of Milan’s soggiest winters. Not that I really know how the winter was, but I was told so. The air in the hospital I lived in was climatized at a constant temperature of 25 °C, and the rooms were white and grey, mint clean, and perfectly illuminated by neon lights. Like the ones at FoodTech labs.

  But now I am sitting at a table in a bar, in a street already swarming with cars and people at this early hour of the day.

  “How’s your cappuccino?”, Mori asks

  “Wonderful Mauro”, I say, now that I call him by name

  He smiles

  “I’ll be missing you tomorrow”, I tell him

  “I will too”, he tells me, and stretches out his hand, laying it on mine

  Tomorrow I will fly back to California, where Jack is waiting for me. He has been flying back and forth from the States to Europe, while I was slipping in and out of sleep in my hospital bed. He has been taking care of my apartment, making sure it would be there as I left it upon my return, although I’ll pack my stuff and move on as soon as I’ll get back. But I need to see the place one more time before I can move on. I wonder how it will feel like…

  John told me that John Wheeler moved back to his old house with a new woman, the one I saw in the car back then, and with Wooster. So she really was his lover, I hadn’t been wrong about this. I am happy things went this way, after all they didn’t look like a great match, John and his ex-wife. But then, who am I to judge?

  I’ve kept speaking with Avery, even after the trials where I was called as a witness, and to which, given my condition, I testified through a conference call rather than in person.

  Mark Gill is in jail now, but his brother is still happily a big shot at Foodtech labs – or maybe not happily – but around nonetheless. Foodtech labs has gone through some trouble, but after all they found a way out.

  HealthyFood Inc. has been also been under investigation. As far as I know someone there has been accused of negligence and got a fine – big but maybe not so big considered what was involved.

  In addition to Jonathan Woods, other 21 people have died. Traces of the polymer were found in their bodies, but the medical reports recited, “Although adverse effect
s due to the intake of the chemical known as MagnaSize cannot be discounted, it is not possible to attribute the death of the patient to this substance with absolute certainty”. I don’t know if Dr. Alfred Bloomberg ever used my polymer in his tests. His trial is still not over, but in the meanwhile he is still kicking around and, from what I hear, the institute is being very supportive with him.

  Sandeep was charged with minor allegations. The judge assigned him to a penitentiary in California, from where he was supposed to leave after 3 months. Just about now. Something went wrong though. Nobody knows what really happened, but Avery thinks he was bullied. From my side I think he lost his way in life – just like me. Whatever the reason, he took his life. Let’s respect the dead, no more speculations, please and thank you.

  We never really knew what happened to Mike after he disappeared. He sent me a letter stamped from a postal office in Nebraska, which Jack found and read to me over the phone. “Iris, I was trying to find the truth. I couldn’t. I am well and I wish you good luck. M.”. That’s all the letter said. I never understood what Mike really meant with that, except that he never intended to betray us. I wonder where he is and how he is making out in life. Something tells me he has become a nomadic homeless, but then who knows…one day we will meet again, maybe, and then he will tell me his story, and I will tell him mine. I like to think so, I hate losses.

  Once upon a time I believed there was a logic in this world, a sort of justice that straightened out things at last. But is there? Just look at this story, does any part of it make sense to you? It all started as a game, but then the game became a crime. I thought I deserved punishment for my doings – perhaps I meant no harm, but it is the outcome that counts. I left a mess splattered on the floor, and walked away alive.

  It is true though that my life will never be the same again. I desired death, and now I desire the man who saved me. I’ve fallen in love with Mauro, could you guess? I never had the guts to admit it till now, and again, only to these pages.

  “What are you writing?”, he asks me now, seeing me scribble these on my diary as I sip the cappuccino.

  I smile

  “Nothing…well, something. Maybe one day I’ll show you”, I say

  I’ll leave tomorrow, the idea pains me but I must. I love Jack too. How is this possible? I don’t know, but then would you imagine that any of what happened is possible?

  I am not sure what I’ll do when I get back to California. Jack’s opinion is that we should move to the east coast and start a new life. The past lives within us though. Is a new start truly possible?