Gary Braver - Elixir

But if it worked out, it could be one monster bonanza.

August came and, once again, Chris postponed their Caribbean trip. Things were just too crazy at the lab to get away, he told Wendy. Understandably, she was disappointed.

Then on August 5 Jenny called to say that Kelly had been readmitted to the hospital. She didn't explain why. In fact, she purposely talked down the matter, saying simply that everybody thought it was best. But Jenny's evasiveness bothered Wendy so much that she decided to go out there herself. Jenny protested that everything was fine, but she finally gave in since she was having a first-birthday party for Abigail the following week and Wendy could join them.

"It was so strange," Wendy said the night she returned from Kalamazoo. "Kelly had had another nervous breakdown, yet Jenny pretended she was at a retreat."

"Did you get to see her?" Chris asked as they drove back from the airport.

"Only after I insisted. Not only did she not want to take me to the hospital, she didn't even want to go into the conference room with me. And when she did, she chattered away about the pictures on the walls and how superior the food was to the usual hospital fare."

"Talk about denial!" Chris said. "How was Kelly?"

Wendy shook her head woefully. "Like a zombie. Maybe it's all the medication, but I couldn't believe how she looked. You remember what a big and strong kid she used to be. Well, she was all skin and bones and stooped over. She looked elderly. It was frightening. When I asked how she felt, she looked at me with dead eyes and said, 'Crazy.'

"Jenny heard her and blurted out something about what lovely doctors she had, when Kelly cut her off. 'I was in a coma for three days,' she said. 'I took forty tabs of her Lithium, but they found me and pumped it out.'

"What struck me, Chris, was that she sounded disappointed they had gotten to her in time. All I could think was how she was sixteen years old with so much life ahead of her and she wanted to die. It's so sad, at only sixteen," she said, thinking that Ricky had never made it to six.

"That must have shaken Jenny," Chris said.

"It was hard to tell. She sat there with a twisted grin on her face looking as if she was about to start laughing or screaming. Instead, she got up and left the ward. I made a move to stop her, but Kelly said, 'Don't bother. It's how she deals with stuff she can't handle.'

"A few minutes later when we were alone, Kelly asked how I felt about having another baby. I told her I was happy. She asked if we planned to have any more. I said no. She nodded, then said, 'Our baby's an only child too.' She meant her!"

"God, the poor kid," Chris said.

Wendy nodded. "When I left I hugged her goodbye and said 'Take care of yourself,' and she looked at me as if to ask why ."

"Sounds like she's going to be in there for a long time."

"I'm afraid so. I left the ward and found Jenny downstairs in the gift shop buying toys for Abigail and joking with the sales clerk. Then two days later, she had a big party for her. The place was full of parents and small kids, and they all put on hats and sang 'Happy Birthday' and ate a huge yellow Big Bird cake and ice cream. The way Jenny carried on you'd never know that her other daughter was in a psychiatric ward for trying to kill herself for the second time just days before. I felt like Alice in Wonderland."

After a few minutes of silence, Wendy said, "And remember that missing photo of Kelly? Well, it's sitting on Jenny's vanity table in her bedroom among some baby pictures of her. She had taken it."

"Where was Ted in all this?" Chris asked.

"He wasn't around much," Wendy said. "During the party he was at work, and at night he went out with friends. As for Kelly, he keeps his distance-she's Jenny's daughter."

"And you wonder why she tried to kill herself. He wants nothing to do with her and Jenny can't forgive her for growing up."

The month of August passed, and 7.2 million people had died.

Included among the dead were Jack Lescoulie, 75, former Today show host; Richard Egan, 65, actor; John Houston, 81, world-class movie director; Vincent Persichetti, 72, American composer and educator; Lee Marvin, 63, actor; Bayard Ruston, 85, political philosopher and civil rights activist; Pola Negri, silent film star; Jesse Unruh, 64, politically powerful California assemblyman; David Martin, 50, rock singer and bassist for Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs; Joseph E. Levine, 81, movie mogul; Jim Bishop, 79, author of bestsellers The Day Lincoln Was Shot and The Day Christ Died; and Rudolf Hess, 93, the last survivor of Hitler's inner circle.

Except for Hess who hanged himself in Spandau Prison, all the other deaths had all been listed as "natural causes."

Natural causes: A handy medical phrase which to Chris's mind meant that attending physicians didn't have a clue. Almost nobody over 75 was autopsied anymore, because most cases had revealed no clear cause-no specific disease. To satisfy the law, death certificates simply listed "natural causes" which translated as the loss of physiological function attributed to aging.

What those death certificates didn't say was that the cells of the victims had ceased to replicate and, thus, had deteriorated to the point that the vital organs failed.

The process was universal. They had gone to their ends, the rich, the famous, the powerful, unprotected-unprotected, as every other human being who ever lived.

Except Iwati.

September came and went, and once again Chris put off their trip. Maybe they'd go after the baby was born.

On September 18, Sam Bacon was permanently confined to his nursing home bed because he could no longer remember how to sit up.

On the tenth of October, Vince Lucas called Quentin to check on Elixir's progress. Quentin had nothing new to report because these things took time. But the lab team was giving its all to perfecting the serum and winning federal approval by early next year. Lucas seemed satisfied, then asked for the names of the head scientist and his wife. Quentin gladly told him.

During the month of November, 10 million people were born in the world. One of them was Baby Boy Bacon. They named him Adam.

Adam Samuel Bacon was born on November 4, 1987 at 8:10 A.M. at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston. He weighed seven pounds, nine ounces.

Because his head was so large, the doctors performed an episiotomy. Throughout the delivery, Chris held Wendy's hand, whispering words of encouragement and how he loved her. While the doctors stitched her up, the nurses brought Adam to her. She and Chris cried and laughed at the same time.

For several minutes, Chris curled his finger around the tiny pink miniature of his son's, thinking that just a few months ago that hand had been a flat webbed thing inside its uterine sac, but through some ingenious mechanism just the right cells at just the right time had died so that these fragile little fingers could take form. And, yet, as Betsy had insisted, beyond the embryo living cells were not part of the same mechanism. That beyond the womb, our cells weren't programmed to die-just age. No death clock ticked within this little bundle of life.

He closed his eyes to clear his mind of all that. He had become too bound up with seeing people in terms of their cells and DNA. Bound up with thoughts he should not consider.

When he opened his eyes again, he beheld his newborn son at Wendy's breast. It was the most beautiful moment in his life.

Later that evening, after Jenny had left and Wendy had gone to sleep, and all the hospital was quiet, Chris stood outside the nursery window and watched his son sleep, wondering what placental dreams went through his tender little brain. It crossed his mind that the last time he was in a hospital was eight years and three months ago when Ricky had died. He had held Wendy's and his son's hand then, too.