A Fierce Radiance (45 page)

“That’s too goddamned—” Rutherford stopped himself from shouting. The poor man was only doing his duty. “Thank you.” He hung up. He turned to Claire. “You know some of these people at
the other companies, the bigger companies, don’t you, Claire? And in Washington?” He showed her the list on the pad.

She nodded.

“You can telephone them, can’t you, Claire?”

She nodded but couldn’t find the strength to move.

“I’ve got the phone numbers. It’s better coming from you. You’re his mother. You have priority over everyone else.”

Again she nodded.

“Come here, darling. I know you can do it.”

He helped her to the chair, got her settled. She might have been sleepwalking. He struggled to hold himself back, not to pressure her with the urgency he felt. If she broke down, then for certain Charlie would not be helped. He explained to her what to say. “Here’s the first number, sweetheart.”

And so she placed the calls. Although each call was different, each was the same. George Merck, John Smith, Vannevar Bush…she actually reached them, that was the first miracle, but they would not, could not, help her. Bush’s secretary was still trying to track down Jamie. Ask Chester Keefer, everyone said. Call Chester Keefer—he’s the one who controls distribution. If
he
says so…. Maybe, maybe, maybe…the guards are watching, armed guards, the permission must be official.

Gradually the problem dawned on Claire: by now, clinical trials had shown that penicillin cured pneumonia. In fact, penicillin was the best possible cure for pneumonia. This was proven scientific fact. And that was the terrible irony: if Charlie had contracted a more unusual disease, he might have had penicillin immediately. To see if it worked. Its use on an unusual disease fell under the category of scientific investigation, gaining knowledge applicable to military needs. Penicillin was made available for that. But for pneumonia, even Chester Keefer would be hard-pressed to release it. Not that they didn’t
want
to give their penicillin to Charlie.

“I’d like to help him,” said John Smith at Pfizer. “Truly, I would. But I can’t.”

Chester Keefer was unavailable, his secretary said. Twice Claire called, between other calls. Still unavailable. Maybe later. Maybe. Fifteen minutes later, she placed the call to Boston once more. The operator phoned her back when the call went through.

Finally, suddenly, she reached him. “Hold on, please,” his secretary said.

“Mrs. Shipley. I’m so sorry I missed your calls.”

Claire was almost struck dumb. She wished she had the strength to push and prod and order him, but she didn’t. She had barely the strength to stay polite. Barely the strength to explain her predicament. But she did explain it. She did ask. On hearing the answer she expected, she graciously thanked him and hung up the phone.

“What did he say?” her father asked her.

“He said, ‘Please, don’t ask me to play God.’”

“‘Don’t ask me to play God’? What sort of a goddamned thing is that for him to say?” Rutherford howled, losing his otherwise staunchly guarded control.

“I don’t know.” Claire would cry now for certain. She’d held back from crying, for better or worse, all through the telephone calls. But now, her father yelling at her, she too would lose control. “I don’t know.”

Seeing what he had done, Rutherford withheld what he was going to say next. He put his hand, ever so lightly, upon her shoulder. He tried, ever so haltingly, to console her. Not only her, but also himself.

Another idea came to Rutherford. An idea he wouldn’t have risked, except his grandson’s life was at stake, and this was the only idea he had left.

D
on’t ask me to play God.
Upstairs, Charlie didn’t have the energy to open his eyes or to speak, but he did hear his grandfather
shouting.
Don’t ask me to play God.
In the yearly Christmas pageant at school, someone always played an angel, and often a real baby played the infant Jesus, but no one ever played God. Maybe it wasn’t allowed. How would you play God, if someday it was allowed? Charlie tried to conjure an image in his mind, a white beard, and white hair, but that ended up looking like Santa Claus, and he didn’t think God looked like Santa Claus. He tried again. God. A tall man, he thought. But why? God could be medium-size. More common. Charlie’s father was medium-size, he remembered that; his father was just about the same height as his mother. And after all, God created man in His own image. But that could simply be a metaphor, a word he’d learned this year in school. Maybe God could look like anything He wanted to. Charlie imagined that all the beautiful creatures he’d ever seen in the world were actually God in a different form. He saw a scarlet tanager, brilliant red, flitting through green leaves. Then he himself was a scarlet tanager, taking flight, rising above the tree line, Central Park spread far beneath him as he flew toward heaven.

W
hat kind of human patient did you conduct an experiment on? Someone who’d run out of options. Someone like Charlie.

Jamie returned to town that afternoon and took a taxi directly to Grove Street. Vannevar Bush’s secretary had finally tracked Jamie down in Louisiana. He’d had a long trip back. When he arrived at the house, Rutherford took him aside, motioning him into the small room on the parlor floor that Claire used as a photo office.

“Look here, Stanton, you know very well that a while back I bought the Hanover company. They’ve—we’ve—got a new antibacterial drug. We’ve been looking for a place to conduct clinical trials. It’s one of the cousins. I’m sure you understand. So let’s just jump over all the rigmarole and get this job done.” Keep steady, Rutherford told himself. Hold on long enough to get through this. To save Charlie. If it wasn’t too late.

Jamie heard him out. In the office, one of the windows was open a few inches, and the long diaphanous curtains billowed on a breeze. The winter sun poured in. “I understand,” Jamie said. He’d heard the rumors. He knew the score, as the saying went. He also knew that only Dr. Keefer could release penicillin to civilians.

“Can you tell Claire? Can you explain to her? I don’t think I can.”

Jamie heard the break in the old man’s throat. “Of course.” Jamie thought this through. “I’d want to take Charlie to the Institute,” he said, thinking of the practical procedures they should follow. “That’s the best hospital for supervising an experiment. We’d have to keep records of everything.”

“That’s fine with me,” Rutherford said. “Whatever you think is best.” He felt himself at the mercy of this man, almost thirty years his junior and so much more knowledgeable than he was.

Claire came into the house, returning from taking Lucas for a walk. The dog bounded over to greet Jamie, jumping up to lick his chin. Jamie pushed him down but pressed the dog’s head against his leg, to capture his warmth and affection. Claire walked down the hall to join Jamie and her father.

“Jamie, I’m so glad you’re back.” Why were they standing in the photo office? she wondered. Did they need something? A photo of Charlie? She still hadn’t had time to fully reorganize the files after the ransacking; she couldn’t let a clean-up crew do that. She’d just piled everything up. The office was a mess.

Jamie thought she looked awful. Her hair was wild. She wasn’t even wearing lipstick. Letting go of Lucas, he reached to embrace her.

Rutherford felt a spasm of fear: would Claire finally realize that he himself had ordered the theft of her Hanover photographs? Would she finally, now, confront him? He stared at her. She was in no condition to be putting two and two together. Charlie was the beginning and end of her concerns.

“Claire,” Rutherford said, “Jamie needs to discuss something with you.”

Jamie pulled back from their embrace. “Yes, Claire. Yes, I do.” And so Jamie spelled out the situation to her. A new medicine. A human trial. “Charlie would be a good candidate,” Jamie said, putting on a strong, confident voice. His doctor’s voice. Not a father’s voice. Not a grandfather’s voice.

As he spelled it out, Claire struggled to take in what he said.
Candidate
was a good word, she thought.
Candidate
had a connotation that was both truthful and hopeful.
Candidate
didn’t suggest death as a possible outcome. Outside, the sun had set. What happened to the day?

“Let me ask you something, Doctor,” Rutherford said, summoning up a tone of objectivity. “What are his chances without it?”

Jamie knew how to be objective. Objectivity was a game, and he could play it. “Based on my experience of children this age, at this stage of the disease process, less than five percent.”

“It’s your decision, sweetheart,” her father said. He put his hand on her shoulder for the second time that day. Or maybe it was already the next day, and the next day’s sun had set. She couldn’t tell. His hand was trembling. She saw it tremble as he brought it toward her, and she felt it trembling upon her shoulder.

She had to say something. They waited for her to say something. It was her decision. Her choice. She remembered the afternoon when she’d gone to Charlie at the end of his nap and discovered that he’d turned himself over for the first time. He’d giggled impishly when he saw her. She remembered the moment he first pulled himself to standing, holding on to the edge of the bookcase. Less than 5 percent. Her decision. What were they talking about?

“I’m not a doctor,” she said.
Don’t make me play God.
The phrase came into her mind unbidden. She may have said it aloud, but she wasn’t sure. She felt a knife inside her that entered at her collarbone
and went through to the small of her back. She looked at Jamie. The man she loved. He waited. She trusted him to know the proper course. “Whatever you think is best,” she said to him.

“Yes,” he said.

J
amie carried Charlie to the backseat of Rutherford’s Lincoln-Zephyr. Rutherford drove. During the journey uptown in the big car, smoothly driven, Claire found herself thinking about Tony Pagliaro. His wish had been granted, and he’d been transferred to the war months ago. Years or decades ago, it felt like to her now. He’d assisted her for those fleeting weeks, and then he was gone. He, too, was sent to North Africa. He, too, put in the way of death. As of course they all were, at each moment of each day. She’d called the bakery and spoken to his mother. She’d asked his mother to phone her, if ever there was news.
News
somehow implied bad news, although Claire didn’t intend it that way. So far his mother hadn’t phoned, and Claire hoped with the cliché, no news was good news. She missed Tony. She wished he were here to take Charlie to the hospital. Charlie would be safely distracted during the ride with Tony. They’d discuss baseball—or at least Tony would talk about baseball; Charlie looked too weak to respond—and Charlie would assume that everything was going to be fine. If Charlie looked at his mother or grandfather or Uncle Jamie right now, he’d realize that everything probably wasn’t going to be fine.

Because the hospital was filled with naval patients, not appropriate company for a child, Nurse Brockett authorized Charlie to use the Rockefeller family quarters, which were empty at the moment. The family quarters were on the top floor and reached through a plain but highly polished wooden door. Once inside, Claire found herself in the equivalent of a private home, Persian carpets on the floors, tapestries and paintings on the walls, upholstered furniture. The rooms were aired out, dusted, prepared and ready for any emergency.

Dr. Lind was waiting for them. He did everything he could to get Charlie settled. He was like a teddy bear himself, the perfect doctor for a child, Claire thought. Claire felt grateful for the heart murmur that kept Dr. Lind out of the military. Had Charlie remained conscious, he would have enjoyed meeting Dr. Lind. Instead Charlie’s head swayed, as if he were in the deepest dream.

Then the men disappeared, and Claire was alone with her son.

C
laire didn’t know, could never have imagined it: the men were gathered downstairs in the lab. Tia’s lab, which Lind now used when he had time. Nick Catalano, too, had joined them, from the vaccine lab down the hall, where he assisted when he was in town and had the opportunity. His trip to the Pacific had been delayed due to lack of sufficient supplies of penicillin. They waited for the chief researcher from Hanover to arrive from New Jersey with the new medication, the penicillin cousin.

Jamie looked around. Everything was the same and yet miniature. He’d imagined the lab bigger while he was away. Almost ten months since his sister died. Here in the lab, her home in the truest sense, she was a palpable void. His acute awareness of her absence created her felt presence. Maybe because he’d never had a chance to mourn her, her absence from the lab hit him hard. But he didn’t have time to dwell on his feelings.

Hanover himself arrived, instead of the chief researcher. An assistant accompanied him, carrying a canvas bag. Youthful, pale, the assistant took the medication from the bag. The container was wrapped in a white towel.

“We’ll bring more in a few days,” Hanover said. “This was all we had today.”

Impassively Jamie watched the assistant place the beaker on the table and unwrap the towel to reveal a tightly sealed glass jar, quart size.

It was the color that told Jamie. The astonishing clarity. The pure, bright blue. In an instant, he was sitting outside on a bench with Tia, the sun warming their backs.
It’s the most beautiful blue
, she said.

He studied it for a long moment, trying to piece together the past months, piece together the truth of what was on the table before him. Rationalizations came into his mind: someone else could have found the same substance. No doubt it was everywhere. A waste product of mold. Mold was everywhere. Or so he tried to convince himself. He glanced at the man he already thought of as his father-in-law. Rutherford was watching him. Not with any particular emotion, just watching. Waiting.