Gary Braver - Elixir

As they continued into Logan, Chris asked, "What if Ricky could have been saved?"

Instantly Wendy's voice turned to gravel. "He wasn't!"

"No, but if he had been, you'd feel a lot different, right?"

"But he wasn't. And I don't want to talk about this anymore." Her voice began to crack.

They rode in prickly silence. Chris had opened that dreadful black box again. He hadn't wanted to, but he couldn't stop himself. He had to know. And as he drove into the airport with his wife trying to recompose herself, he thought of how he had multiplied the lifespan of a goddamn mouse but he couldn't save his own son by a day.

Mickey. The other mouse, and Ricky's favorite companion.

Mickey had been with him the day he died, along with Chris and Wendy who had sat on either side of his bed in Boston 's Children's Hospital, each holding a hand. It was how he had left them. For two years they had tried everything including bone marrow transplants from Chris and a battery of experimental drugs. It was what kept Chris working on Veratox-hoping for a successful synthesis, hoping for a breakthrough that would win FDA approval and save his son before cancer cells claimed him.

It was what kept Chris going on tabulone. But time ran out. Ricky had died at the actuarial prime of life-the age when the fewest people in the nation die. The age when the statistical likelihood of living another day is higher than at any other time of human life: five years, eight months. Eaten by cannibals-minute and immortal.

When it was clear that no hope was left but life in a state of suspended decay, they asked that the respirator be removed so Ricky could pass away on his own. It took less than two hours. At his death, he had as much hair as he had at birth. But unlike his birth hair, this was wispy and dead looking, and his scalp was scaly, his face emaciated, his eyes sunken and slitted open and frozen in a blank stare. The cancer had ravished his little system, reducing him to a shriveled, bird-faced old man. They didn't know if at the end he was aware of their presence, but Wendy kept whispering in his ear that the angels would take care of him in heaven.

Three years later, the pain still throbbed, but they had grown hard around it. They both went through a period of anger-at the universe, at death for having claimed their baby. At God. Wendy, who had been brought up Roman Catholic, could not forgive Him on this one. After two miscarriages and Ricky's death, He had killed her will to ever have another child.

Chris pulled onto the United ramp thinking about Ricky and Wendy and Methuselah.

Thinking about the bedroom with the cowboy wallpaper and the Pee Wee League trophy Ricky had won and the preschool class pictures on his bureau, Ricky's cherubic face beaming at the camera. How Wendy could not get herself to enter his room for weeks. How in a fit she tore the place apart, packed what she couldn't part with, gave clothes to Goodwill, and stripped the walls of every reminder of the son who would never grow up.

Thinking about his father in a Connecticut nursing home withered by arthritis and Alzheimer's disease. Thinking how that cruel predisposition might be etched in his own genes.

Thinking about Methuselah full of life-eating, drinking, running his wheels and mazes like Mighty Mouse, a perpetual motion machine.

Thinking how he had the keys to the kingdom.

"When are you going to tell them?" Wendy asked. "I mean, it's been six years you've been skulking around the lab."

"I'm not sure I am."

"Why not?"

"It scares the hell out of me."

Six years of ingenious fraud was enough to get him fired, prosecuted, and blackballed in the industry. But what filled him with fear was not being caught, but the thought that once the genie was out of the lamp there was no getting him back in.

And behind that fear was Quentin Cross. Although Quentin would replace Ross Darby next year, Chris did not trust him. He took foolish risks and cut corners with FDA regulations. It was his idea to test Veratox on human subjects in Mexico, circumventing U.S. protocol. Quentin hadn't actually violated the law, just ethical practice. And that worried Chris. He couldn't predict what Quentin would do with tabulone.

The other problem was protocols for human testing. Even if it worked on higher species, the average rhesus monkey lived twenty-five years. Chris would be an old man by the time he had viable results for the next step. Not only did he lack the resources-financial and otherwise-he didn't have the time. Nice irony, he thought: Not enough time to see if you could live forever!

Worse still, he was now on his own. His sole assistant, a trusted and talented microbiologist, had retired from Darby Pharms a few months ago following a mild heart attack. He had said he wanted to make up for lost time while he still had some left.

They entered the United arrival area where Jenny was waiting for them with her luggage and baby daughter. Taxis and cars were moving helter-skelter. As Chris pulled up to the curb, he wondered what his only confidant at Darby was doing in his retirement. He had always been a nostalgic kind of guy, so he was probably back in Canton, Ohio, whooping it up with his old girlfriend.

Jesus, he missed Dexter Quinn!

"Oh, look, it's Auntie Wendy and Uncle Chris," Jenny chortled to the baby bundled in her arms.

It was their first time meeting Abigail, now four months old. As usual, Jenny was in high spirits despite air turbulence that had kept the baby fussing all the way from Kalamazoo. Jenny was just what Wendy needed to jump start her spirits. With Chris working around the clock, she had become bored and lonely. What she couldn't predict was how it would feel to have a baby in the house again.

Traffic was light, so they made it back to Carleton in half an hour. Chris and Wendy lived in an eight-room central-entrance colonial with a wide front lawn that was now covered with snow. The interior was decorated for Christmas, and while Jenny carried on about how festive the place looked, Chris brought her luggage up to the guest room. When Jenny was out of earshot he announced that he was going back to the lab.

"Back to the lab! They just arrived," Wendy said. "I thought we were going to have nice relaxing evening." A fire was going in the living room hearth beside the tree, and she had bought some good wine, cheeses, and pâtés.

"Honey, I'm sorry, but something critical's come up. I've got to get back."

Chris had two different colored eyes-one brown, the other green-that, someone once said, gave him the appearance of two different faces superimposed. At the moment, they appeared to be pulling apart by the distraction in them. It was a look Chris had gotten too often, and one that Wendy had come to resent.

"Can't it wait? You haven't seen her for a year. Besides, it's my birthday in case you forgot."

He had. "Oh, hell, I'm sorry. It completely slipped my mind, really."

But Wendy didn't care about that. Nor did she care how critical things were at the lab. At times she wished the place would blow up for how it had consumed him. And for what? Some foolish delusions about changing the course of human biology. She took his arm. "Chris, I don't want you to go." Her voice was beginning to tremble. She had envisioned a nice warm reunion around the fire. The three of them and the baby. "Please."

Chris slipped his gloves back on. "Honey, I can't. I'm sorry, but I have to. Quentin's been riding my ass to get a good yield."

"That's not why."

But Wendy stopped because Jenny had wandered into the living room with the baby in her arms. Instantly Jenny sensed the tension because she chortled something about how pretty the room was, then began straightening out sofa pillows and lining up the Christmas knick-knacks on a table. That was Jenny: She had an abnormal craving for neatness-emotional and otherwise. At all costs she would avoid conflicts, even if it meant forcing down hurt and anger with smiles and endless bubbles of chatter. There was a flip side to her obsession, however: You almost never knew when something troubled her.