Part 19 (1/2)
”He thinks this is a Helixia project, that we rent outside s.p.a.ce for overflow.”
”How much am I paying him?”
”Three hundred a week. Plus gas. I am very careful with company money, especially since the company is you.”
”Much appreciated.” Shane took a breath and pushed a hand through his hair. ”So, when should I tell Caleb to bring the baby here?”
”Three months? Maybe four. It depends on our mouse.”
”Four months feels like a long time.”
”A minute can feel like a long time.”
Shane nodded and stretched his back. He supposed that was as true as anything.
Isolating the protein took a week.
They had developed a rhythm. Shane arrived after work with food from Thai Orchard. Healy, his headphones on, accepted it with a nod and remained bent over his solutions. Once, Shane glanced at his iPod and was surprised to see club music. It seemed to him that the relentless beats would be aggravating to someone patiently stripping molecules from strands of DNA. It seemed to require more of an ambient kind of deal. But though he maintained his Facebook account on a laptop at all times and stopped to text every few minutes, Healy kept up. Neither he nor Prajuk wore lab coats, Shane noticed. Other than their latex gloves, there was no sense of reverence; this was just work for them. Though to Shane it was a miracle.
One night over noodles, Healy showed him the process. He opened a flask. Inside was a liquid that looked to Shane like apple juice.
”It's media,” Healy explained.
”What's media?”
”Just dead bacterial cells and sterile water. We place it in this shaker. Throw it in a plasmid. Spin it down in the centrifuge.” He switched on the shaker.
”Like a margarita,” Shane smiled.
”I wish. Over the next couple of days, when the culture grows turbid, we'll break the cells open, and wash out the purified protein.” He gestured toward a collection of pink petri dishes. ”Transect it onto an E. coli cell, where it will multiply.”
”E. coli?” Shane asked, casting a worried glance at the petri dishes on the bench.
”Here's the secret of it all, bro. Everything bad has a good, and everything good has a bad. The gene that makes people dwarfs also makes them immune to mumps. You have to look at both sides. E. coli takes over your body and kills you horribly. But it also permits itself to be transferred peacefully into any organism as a carrier. Disabled E. coli is one of the bacteria we use most.”
Shane shook his head in awe. For fifteen years he had been selling the products of pharmaceutical chemical labs, never appreciating the artistry of biotechnology.
”Got to p.i.s.s.” Healy stood up from the bench. ”Don't let it eat your face while I'm gone.”
During these weeks, Shane lived in a euphoric state. In the mornings, he looked out of their window at the bay sky and let himself feel part of the energy Caleb summoned in Boulder. He had spent his whole life watching his brother's back, a shadow of sweat spreading across his dark green T-s.h.i.+rt. In middle school he would step into new cla.s.srooms and wonder if Caleb had sat at this desk. He ran the high school track imagining Caleb's feet falling in the same lanes. Now, after all of this time, he felt finally connected with Caleb, through the simple act of breathing air. He wondered if it had always been this easy.
The sublimity of the lab was always with him. Like an adulterer, Shane invented after-hours meetings to explain his late arrivals home to Janelle. His heart battled itself: when he stayed there to work, he suffered an avalanche of guilt for not having seen Nicholas before he fell asleep. What kind of father was he? But on the nights he did go straight home, he felt a separation anxiety from the lab which he could not quite bear. During his drive back to the city he would experience wild swings of exuberance and depression, a simultaneous sense of oncoming glory and approaching catastrophe.
In mid-January, Shane opened his front door to find Janelle sitting at their dining room table, waiting for him with a serious look. He sat down wondering if he carried a scent of the lab.
”I'm quitting,” she told him.
Shane exhaled slowly, nodding.
As he listened to her, Shane attempted to fight off huge waves of terror. This was no time to give up her salary and benefits. He might be caught and fired by Helixia any day. He reminded himself that this was the woman he had pursued even while she was fully committed to an all-consuming job, had slowly won over during stolen camping weekends, and waited for on Sunday nights after her endless dinners with her parents just to catch a quick drink, for whom he had videotaped a tree she adored from her last apartment window, and projected it onto their wall. Now she wanted to stay in their home, to take care of their son. This, of course, should have been all that he wanted.
”Okay,” he said, watching her face. ”Whatever you need.”
She was crying. ”Okay.”
”So, we're down to one paycheck,” he reminded her. ”And only my insurance.”
”Don't f.u.c.k up at work.” She kissed his cheek.
He knew he had to tell her. The burden of his secret now fell upon her too. This was the moment, before she executed her decision, while there was still time.
During a brief interior struggle, he realized how telling her now could come off as some kind of emotional blackmail, to guilt her into not quitting. She might resent him, and the whole project, for interceding now. So he let it pa.s.s. This weekend, he promised himself. But the weekend pa.s.sed as well.
The whir of the centrifuge was proof of their progression. He watched Healy graft their protein-for now it belonged to all of them, he felt-onto the E. coli viruses on the pink petri dishes, and Prajuk transfer this work into a small millimeter Eppendorf tube and place it into the freezer. Each run produced a thimble full of clear liquid, which might mean six months of life for Lily.
If it worked. Which they would only know when their genetically modified mouse arrived.
On a Tuesday toward the end of the month, Healy burst in fiddling frustratedly with his phone. ”They can make these things do anything you want, but they can't make headphones that don't get tangled?”
He tossed it into his backpack and washed up in the stainless steel sink. Then he took a Clif bar from his pocket and walked over to have a look at the centrifuge.
”How long's it been doing that?”
Shane raised his eyebrows. He was alone in the room while Prajuk had gone out for food. ”Doing what?”
”Making that”-he waved the protein bar in the air- ”sound.”
”I don't know.” He listened. The whir did seem a little labored. ”Is it bad?”
Healy grunted and moved over to the machine. He pressed its power b.u.t.ton off and gingerly lifted its top.
”Oh f.u.c.k.”
Shane stood up and peered over his shoulder.
Healy narrowed his eyes, lifting out something small and jagged. ”Gla.s.s.”
”Did a vial break?”
Ignoring him, Healy carefully examined the inside bin with his fingertips. ”This thing,” he whistled, ”is f.u.c.ked heinously.”
Prajuk returned carrying three styrofoam containers of fried rice. His lips compressed and released like a young boy's fist as he examined the centrifuge.