Robin Cook - Death Benefit

“All right,” George said with sudden resolve. “I’m coming with you. Maybe I can help speed things up.” He grabbed her hand and started to pull her toward the Black building entrance.

Pia resisted. “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure,” George said. In his mind’s eye what he could see mostly was them climbing into bed, holding each other tightly.

Pia shrugged. “It might be quicker with two people. All right, let’s do it.”

Without another word, Pia and George ducked into the Black building. The security man knew Pia well and didn’t bat an eye. Pia used her key to open the main door, a key Spaulding had not asked for. The logbook was back where she expected it would be, in Spaulding’s desk. Inside the biosafety unit she used Rothman’s spare key from his office to open the storage locker. They worked quickly and efficiently.

George wouldn’t have wanted a physician to check his blood pressure at any point during the visit, but Pia seemed icy cool and focused.

Pia had George read out to her how many of each sample were recorded in the logbook while she counted the actual samples. As Pia suspected, there were three samples missing from the storage freezer, at least according to the book. There were supposed to be thirty samples of the zero-gravity salmonella typhi, divided evenly between what was called alpha S. typhi and beta S. typhi. One of the missing samples was from the beta salmonella strain and the other two were the alpha strain, which was the strain that had infected Rothman and Yamamoto. Out in the main part of the unit near the hoods, Pia found a small collection of six labeled petri dishes in the incubator. Each was labeled with either an alpha or a beta.

After Pia and George had left the biosafety unit and removed their protective clothing, Pia found two of the same type of stoppered containers used in the storage facility without labels sitting next to Spaulding’s sink.

After replacing the logbook and the spare key, Pia said to George, “Okay, we’re done.”

George’s heart rate calmed down once they had exited the lab without incident.

“What does all this mean, Pia?” George asked as they rode down in the elevator.

“I don’t know,” Pia admitted. “It might not mean anything, but information is information. What I’d like to do is go over the discrepancies with Spaulding if I can figure out how.”

“Good luck with that,” George said.

Pia and George fought their way through the weather back to the dorm. Though he was exhausted, George felt strangely exhilarated. He and Pia had actually worked together. George knew he’d been useful and was acutely sensitive to Pia’s gestures, like the way she had put her hand on the small of his back to encourage him to precede her through the outer dorm door. She was obviously pleased with what they had accomplished. They stopped in the lobby and pushed the elevator button. Both cars were on upper floors.

Pia stared at the elevator’s slow-moving floor indicator. George cleared his throat to speak, but Pia didn’t want to hear what he had to say. She just wanted to get to her bed and try to sleep.

“Pia, you must know how I feel about you. I’ve tried to tell you a hundred times. More than that. Pia, would you look at me?”

Pia reluctantly turned to George. He had that earnest look.

“You know I worry about you because of my feelings for you. I love you, you must know that. I think about you constantly.”

On hearing the words, something in Pia’s brain fizzed into life. A laboratory animal learns to stop engaging in a certain behavior, like touching a red button, if it gets a painful shock every time, even if previously it got a reward, like a piece of food. In Pia’s mind, there was a connection between protestations of affection and pain. She had learned that the people who said those words would cause her pain, and should be avoided, like an electric shock.

Pia pressed the elevator button again, as it appeared that the car was stuck on the eighth floor. She said nothing.

“Our relationship can’t be totally one-sided.”

“What do you mean, ‘relationship’ . . . ? Look, George, this isn’t the time or the place for this.”

“When is the time, Pia? I’ve wanted to tell you I love you for years.”

The elevator finally arrived, the doors opened, and a cluster of students noisily piled out. A party had started in someone’s room and now was moving to a bar up on Broadway.

George pulled Pia aside as the door closed. She rolled her eyes.

“George, come on. Not now.”

“I’m sorry, but I have to say it. I know you don’t want to hear this, but I don’t understand you.”

“That makes two of us.”

“But we need each other, don’t you think? I know I need you.”

“I don’t know what that means-to ‘need’ someone. Someone needing me, I don’t want that responsibility.”

The second elevator arrived with a straggling student who hurried to catch up with his friends. Pia got in the car and held the door for George.

“Get in, George, Jesus.”

Pia punched the eleventh floor for her room and seven for his. Message delivered. George reluctantly got in. Pia’s mind was already full of competing problems-Rothman, the Sisters, Africa, the rest of her life-and now here was another one. She wondered what it was like to think about someone constantly as George said he did of her. It was an alien concept. She glanced at George, who was looking at the floor. She had no idea what he was thinking or feeling. The elevator stopped on seven and Pia reached out and pressed the hold button. George hesitated for a moment, than stepped out.

“Good night, George,” Pia said.

George just nodded as the doors closed. To Pia he looked pathetic.

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER NEW YORK CITY MARCH 24, 2011, 11:15 P.M.

George knew something about loss. His own father, Morgan Wilson, died when George was three, and no matter how hard he tried, George couldn’t really remember anything specific about him other than a vague sense of contentment. He did have a few vague memories, but they’d been pieced together from photographs shown to him by his mother, Jean. There was one silent home movie of a time Jean and Morgan took George to see his grandparents, Sally and Preston, in Arizona. George had watched the film over and over and his father always looked impossibly young and endearing. In the short film Morgan is holding George on his lap and alternately kisses him on the cheek and hugs him. Morgan’s absence had caused George a degree of melancholy similar to the melancholy he was feeling at that moment.

George got up from his bed where he’d flopped after Pia’s rebuff. He needed to get out of his room if only for a short interval. There was always the vending machine room on the first floor. He needed to see people, normal people, and there were usually students getting sodas or bags of chips.

As George headed toward the elevators, he tried to concentrate on how much he was loved by his family. He’d always had that to fall back on whenever he felt lonely. He knew that Pia did not have an equivalent situation, which made her behavior even more confusing. Why did she so consistently reject the love that he wanted to share with her and finally had the courage to voice? It just didn’t make sense.

George slapped the down button. Almost as if the car had been sitting there waiting for him, the elevator doors opened. Inside was Will McKinley, perhaps the only person in the world who could have made George feel even lonelier.

“George!” Will said. “What a coincidence. You heading down for a snack? Hop in!” Will took George’s arm and pulled him in. The ground-floor button had already been pressed. George lacked the strength to resist.