Robin Cook - Acceptable Risk

“I did learn some things,” Kim said. She told Edward about going to the statehouse prior to driving to Salem and that there was no follow-up petition concerning the mysterious evidence. She then told him about the Northfields deed with Elizabeth’s signature, and how it had angered Thomas Putnam.

“That might be the most significant piece of information you’ve learned so far,” Edward said. “From the little reading I’ve done, I don’t think Thomas Putnam was the right person to irritate.”

“I had the same thought,” Kim said. “His daughter, Ann, was one of the first of the girls to be afflicted, and she accused many people of witchcraft. The problem is, I can’t relate a feud with Thomas Putnam with the conclusive evidence.”

“Maybe these Putnam people were malicious enough to plant something,” Edward suggested.

“That’s a thought,” Kim said. “But it doesn’t answer what it could have been. Also, if something were planted, does it make sense that it was conclusive? I still think it had to be something Elizabeth made herself.”

“Maybe so,” Edward said. “But the only hint you have is Ronald’s petition stating it was seized from his property. I don’t think it could have been anything indubitably associated with witchcraft.”

“Speaking of Ronald,” Kim said. “I learned something about him that’s reawakened my suspicions. He remarried only ten weeks after Elizabeth’s death. That’s an awfully short grieving period, to say the least. It makes me think he and Rebecca might have been having an affair.”

“Perhaps,” Edward said without enthusiasm. “I still think that we have no idea how difficult life was back then. Ronald had four children to raise and a burgeoning business to run. He probably didn’t have a lot of choice. I’d bet a long grieving period was a luxury he could not afford.”

Kim nodded, but she wasn’t sure she agreed. At the same time she wondered how much her suspicious attitude toward Ronald was influenced by her father’s behavior.

Eleanor appeared just as abruptly as she had earlier and again enlisted Edward in a private yet animated discussion. When she left, Kim excused herself.

“I’d better be on my way,” she said.

“I’ll walk you out to your car,” Edward offered.

While descending the stairs and walking across the quadrangle, Kim detected a gradual change in Edward’s demeanor. As he’d done in the past, he became noticeably more nervous. From previous experience Kim guessed he was about to say something. She didn’t try to encourage him. She’d learned it didn’t help.

Finally when they reached her car he spoke: “I’ve been thinking a lot about your offer to come to live with you in the cottage,” he said while toying with a pebble with his toe. He paused. Kim waited impatiently, unsure what he would say. Then he blurted: “If you’re still thinking positively about it, I’d like to come.”

“Of course I’m thinking positively,” Kim said with relief. She reached up and gave him a hug. He returned the gesture.

“We can go up on the weekend and talk about furniture,” Edward said. “I don’t know if there is anything from my apartment you’d want to use.”

“It’ll be fun,” Kim said.

With some awkwardness they separated, and Kim climbed into her car. She opened the passenger-side window and Edward leaned in.

“I’m sorry I’m so preoccupied about this alkaloid,” he said.

“I understand,” Kim said. “I can see how excited you are. I’m impressed with your dedication.”

After they said their goodbyes, Kim drove toward Beacon Hill feeling a lot happier than she had just a half hour earlier.

Friday, July 29, 1994

Edward’s excitement escalated as the week progressed. The database on the new alkaloid grew at an exponential rate. Neither he nor Eleanor slept more than four or five hours each night. Both were living in the lab for all practical purposes and working harder than they had in their lives.

Edward insisted on doing everything himself, which meant he even reproduced Eleanor’s work in order to be one hundred percent certain of no mistakes. In like manner he had Eleanor check his results.

As busy as Edward was with the alkaloid, he had no time for anything else. Despite Eleanor’s advice to the contrary and despite mounting rumblings from the undergraduate students, he’d given no lectures. Nor had he devoted any time to his bevy of graduate students, many of whose research projects were now stalled without his continual leadership and advice.

Edward was unconcerned. Like an artist in a fit of creation, he was mesmerized by the new drug and oblivious to his surroundings. To his continued delight the structure of the drug was emerging atom by atom from the mists of time in which it had been secreted.

By early Wednesday morning, in a superb feat of qualitative organic chemistry, Edward completely characterized the four-ringed structural core of the compound. By Wednesday afternoon all of the side chains were defined both in terms of their makeup and point of attachment to the core. Edward jokingly described the molecule as an apple with protruding worms.

It was the side chains that particularly fascinated Edward. There were five of them. One was tetracyclic like the core and resembled LSD. Another had two rings and resembled a drug called scopolamine. The last three resembled the brain's major neurotransmitters: norepinephrine, dopamine, and serotonin.

By the wee hours of Thursday morning, Edward and Eleanor were rewarded by the image of the entire molecular structure appearing on a computer screen in virtual three-dimensional space. The achievement had been the product of new structural software, supercomputer capability, and hours of heated argument between Edward and Eleanor as each played devil’s advocate with the other.

Hypnotized by the image, Edward and Eleanor silently watched as the supercomputer slowly rotated the molecule. It was in dazzling color, with the electron clouds represented by varying shades of cobalt blue. The carbon atoms were red, the oxygen green, and the nitrogen yellow.

After flexing his fingers as if he were a virtuoso about to play a Beethoven sonata on a Steinway grand piano, Edward sat down at his terminal, which was on-line with the supercomputer. Calling upon all his knowledge, experience, and intuitive chemical sense, he began to work the keyboard. On the screen the image trembled and jerked while maintaining its slow rotation. Edward was operating on the molecule, chipping away at the two side chains he instinctively knew were responsible for the hallucinogenic effect: the LSD side chain and the scopolamine side chain.

To his delight, he was able to remove all but a tiny two-carbon stump of the LSD side chain without significantly affecting either the three-dimensional structure of the compound or its distribution of electrical charges. He knew altering either of these properties would dramatically affect the drug’s bioactivity.

With the scopolamine side chain it was a different story. Edward was able to amputate the side chain partially, leaving a sizable portion intact. When he tried to remove more, the molecule folded on itself and drastically changed its three-dimensional shape.

After Edward had removed as much of the scopolamine side chain as he dared, he downloaded the molecular data to his own lab computer. The image now wasn’t as spectacular, but was in some respects more interesting. What Edward and Eleanor were looking at now was a hypothetical new designer drug that had been formed by computer manipulation of a natural compound.

Edward’s goal with the computer manipulations was to eliminate the drug’s hallucinogenic and antiparasympathetic side effects. The latter referred to the dry mouth, the pupillary dilation, and partial amnesia both he and Stanton had experienced.