Michael Palmer - A Heartbeat Away

Angie wondered how she could control him if she helped him up.

“Where did you put Sylvia’s notes?” she asked.

“No … notes.… She … had … nothing.”

The man’s expression softened. It was as if he had gotten a read on her and knew she did not have it in her to kill.

Another inch.

Angie knelt on one knee and stared into his eyes, trying to match his fierce, defiant expression with one of her own.

“Tell me again,” she demanded. “Where are the papers?”

At that instant, Chen Su appeared by Angie’s side. Dark blood trailed from the corner of her mouth. Without hesitating, she cried out and began stamping on her assailant’s hands again and again with surprising force.

“Wait!” Angie cried.

But it was too late.

The man’s right hand dropped to his side. One final blow, and his left hand went as well.

The killer made the six-story fall without uttering a sound.

An awful thud from below punctuated the silence.

Would it be worth it? Griff asked himself.

Not surprisingly, he began thinking about his sister, Louisa, and the promise he made to himself after her death. He knew from the moment the meningitis claimed her that he would dedicate his life to hunting cures for deadly microbes. He would become the Orion of the CDC or NIH, or whatever lab would have him—a one-man crusader against death. At the time, he never considered animal testing taboo. How many primates or sheep or cats or canines or purebred white rats would equal his sister’s life? But then, Louisa’s dog—a spirited mixed breed named Moonshine—forever altered his thinking.

At Louisa’s funeral, Moonshine, probably more golden retriever than anything else, sat vigil on the stairs outside the church. With the unexpectedness of her mistress’s death, no preparations had been made for the three-year-old’s care. But Griff knew the animal was happy, well trained, and his sister’s greatest love.

“My future husband will simply have to share me,” Louisa would joke whenever questions arose regarding her devotion to Moonshine.

After the funeral, there was no question Griff would take the dog as his own.

From almost the moment Moonshine and Griff returned home, she was different. Her appetite diminished, then soon all but vanished. She drank only minimally, became lethargic, and never wanted to play for long. Eventually, when her weight loss became obvious and alarming, Griff took her to a respected, highly recommended veterinarian. The vet’s diagnosis of depressive disorder both shocked and saddened him. At the time, Griff had no idea canine depression was a real condition. But even more distressing, it hurt him to realize that Moonshine missed Louisa as much as he did, and that there seemed to be absolutely nothing he could do about it.

“What can I do to help?” he had asked the specialist on a return visit.

“The danger of death is very real,” the doctor explained. “You’ve got to find a way to make life fun for her again.”

And so Griff tried. He bought her toys. He took her to the dog park near his house every night. He hand-prepared gourmet food and even tried antidepressants prescribed by the vet. But nothing he did slowed Moonshine’s dramatic deterioration. More and more he feared for the dog’s life. That was when he called Andrea Bargnani—Louisa’s best friend, who had moved away a year or so before.

“I don’t know what I can do,” Andrea, a teacher, had said. “I saw Moonshine almost every day when I was living here, but since I moved, I’ve only seen her every couple of months.”

“You were Louisa’s closest friend. Maybe if you just came by for a day or so. Andrea, Moonshine’s going to die from this. I’m certain of it.”

When the teacher showed up at the house, the dog reacted almost immediately. She picked her head up and barked—once, and then again. It was the first bark that Griff had heard since the funeral, and the joy in the sound was apparent. Within minutes, the Shiner, as Louisa called her, was up on all fours, her tail flicking wildly. She nuzzled against Andrea’s legs and tried to climb into her arms, as though she could not get close enough. Griff had no doubt at all that Louisa was somehow alive in the animal.

Andrea felt the same thing. Even though, at the time, she was living in a small apartment, she gladly agreed to take the dog.

And so, Andrea Bargnani adopted Moonshine. Were it not for the holiday cards that reached Griff every year after that, regardless of where in the world he was working, he might have lost contact with the two of them. But reach him they did. For the first two years, the picture on the front of the card showed only the woman and the dog. Soon after that, a man named Jack debuted in the photo—a tall, broad-shouldered man with kind eyes and a wonderful smile. Not long after that came a card with a baby boy. Then one with a girl. But the Shiner remained the star of every mailing, her coal-black eyes sparkling for the camera, her rich, tawny coat glowing, and her mouth open in what had to be a smile.

Griff began what became a tradition. Every year, on the anniversary of Louisa’s death, he would sit with those cards and two glasses of red wine. One glass he would drink. The other he would cast into the sky of wherever he happened to be. With the ritual came the renewal of his vow to respect the connection between man and vertebrates.

Griff looked over lamentably at Melvin. Is it time to break that vow?

“I’ve spent my entire career believing I could battle any virus without killing animals in the process,” Griff said.

“Do you think sacrificing primates will help us identify that missing piece?”

Griff hesitated before he answered.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“If it were guaranteed to make a difference?”

Griff cringed at the question and looked away.

“Given the situation, how could I not?” he asked. “It’s tantamount to murder either way. But I’d feel too great a responsibility not to do everything possible to save those people.”

“But at this point there are no guarantees.”

“That’s the problem. So we have to choose where to put our faith. Computers, or innocent animals.”

“I wish I could help with the decision,” Forbush said. “It would be easy if we had unlimited time. As it is, setting up another Hell’s Kitchen animal facility, even a partial one, will take at least three or four days.”

Griff’s insides were knotted. He still desperately wanted to rub at his eyes, and to have his thoughts focus. He stared at his gloved hands, his teeth clenched.

“Do you want me to get the chimpanzee order going?” Forbush asked.

“No,” Griff said with sudden, renewed determination. “I still believe my computer program is the fastest and most accurate way forward.”

“I believe you’re right.”

“So we work,” Griff said, “and we keep at it until we figure out why Orion’s not doing the job I’ve programmed it to do.”

Residents on the sixth floor of the Riverside Nursing Home eased open their doors and shuffled out into the dimly lit hallway. Their collective chatter began as a murmur, but soon escalated into loud, rapid-fire exchanges. More room doors opened in response to the heightening racket. More elderly men and women milled into the corridor. Some carried canes. Some made their way with walkers.

Angie, emotionally and physically spent, sank onto the freight elevator’s unsteady wood floor. Her head was beginning to throb—a pounding bass drum behind her eyes, monitoring each heartbeat. Chen Su braced herself against the car wall opposite her. The older woman’s expression was unrevealing. Her eyes seemed vacant. Angie wondered how far the terrible events of just minutes ago had already slipped from her consciousness.