Робин Кук: Mutation

“What would you have him say?” Marsha asked as he lowered VJ into her lap. They had nicknamed him that to help distinguish him from his father, Victor Sr.

“I don’t know,” said Victor, bringing the car to a stop at the front door. “Maybe say he wanted to grow up and become a doctor like his old man.”

“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” said Marsha, opening the passenger-side door.

Victor jumped out to help her. It was a beautiful, crystal-clear October day, filled with bright sunshine. Behind the house the trees had turned a brilliant profusion of fall colors; scarlet maples, orange oaks and yellow birches all competed with their beauty. As they came up the walk the front door opened and Janice Fay, their live-in nanny, ran down the front steps.

“Let me see him,” she begged, stopping short in front of Marsha. Her hand went to her mouth in admiration.

“What do you think?” Victor asked.

“He’s angelic!” Janice said. “He’s gorgeous, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen such blue eyes.” She held out her arms. “Let me hold him.” Gently she took the child from Marsha and rocked him back and forth. “I certainly didn’t expect blond hair.”

“We didn’t either,” Marsha said. “We thought we’d surprise you like he surprised us. But it comes from my side of the family.”

“Oh sure,” kidded Victor. “There were a lot of blonds with Genghis Khan.”

“Where’s David?” asked Marsha.

“Back in the house,” said Janice without taking her eyes from VJ’s face.

“David!” Marsha called.

The little boy appeared at the doorway, holding one of his previously discarded teddy bears. He was a slight child of five with dark, curly hair.

“Come out here and see your new brother.”

Dutifully David walked out to the cooing group.

Janice bent down and showed the newborn to his brother. David looked at the infant and wrinkled his nose. “He smells bad.”

Victor chuckled, but Marsha kissed him, saying that when VJ was a little older he’d smell nice like David.

Marsha took VJ back from the nanny and started into the house. Janice sighed. It was such a happy day. She loved newborn babies. She felt David take her hand. She looked down at the boy. He had his head tilted up toward hers.

“I wish the baby hadn’t come,” he said.

“Shush now,” said Janice gently, hugging David to her side. “That’s not a nice way to act. He’s just a tiny baby and you are a big boy.”

Hand in hand, they entered the house just as Marsha and Victor were disappearing into the newly decorated baby’s room at the top of the stairs. Janice took David into the kitchen where she had started dinner preparation. He climbed up onto one of the kitchen chairs, placing the teddy bear on the one just opposite. Janice went back to the sink.

“Do you love me more or the baby?”

Janice quickly put down the vegetables she was rinsing and picked David up in her arms. She leaned her forehead on his and said: “I love you more than anybody in the whole world.” Then she hugged him forcefully. David hugged her back.

Neither realized that they only had a few more years to live.

Long, lacy shadows from the leafless maple trees lining the driveway inched across the broad cobblestone courtyard that separated the sprawling white colonial mansion from the barn. A wind had sprung up as the dusk approached, moving the shadows in undulating patterns and making them look like giant spiderwebs. Despite the fact it was almost officially spring, winter still gripped the land in North Andover, Massachusetts.

Marsha stood at the sink in the large country kitchen, staring out at the garden and the fading light. A movement by the driveway caught her eye, and she turned to see VJ peddling home on his bicycle.

For a second, she felt her breath catch in her throat. Since David’s death nearly five years ago, she never took her family for granted. She would never forget the terrible day the doctor told her that the boy’s jaundice was due to cancer. His face, yellow and wizened from the disease, was etched on her heart. She could still feel his small body clinging to her just before he died. She had been certain he had been trying to tell her something, but all she’d heard was his uneasy gasps as he tried to hold on to life.

Nothing had really been the same since then. And things got even worse just a year later. Marsha’s extreme concern for VJ stemmed partly from the loss of David, and partly from the terrible circumstances surrounding Janice’s death only a year after his. Both had contracted an extremely rare form of liver cancer, and despite assurances that the two cancers were in no way contagious, Marsha couldn’t shake the fear that lightning, having struck twice, might flash a third time.

Janice’s death was all the more memorable because it had been so gruesome.

It had been in the fall, just after VJ’s birthday. Leaves were falling from the trees, an autumn chill was in the air. Even before she got sick, Janice had been behaving strangely for some time, only willing to eat food that she prepared herself and which came from unopened containers. She’d become fiercely religious, embracing a particularly fanatic strain of born-again Christianity. Marsha and Victor might not have put up with her had she not become practically one of the family in the many years she’d worked for them.

During David’s final, critical months, she’d been a godsend. But soon after David’s passing, Janice started carrying her Bible everywhere, pressing it to her chest as if it might shield her from unspeakable ills. She’d only put it aside to do her chores, and then reluctantly. On top of that, she’d become sullen and withdrawn, and would lock herself in her room at night.

What was worse was the attitude that she’d developed toward VJ. Suddenly she’d refused to have anything to do with the boy, who was five at the time. Even though VJ was an exceptionally independent child, there were still times when Janice’s cooperation was needed, but she refused to help. Marsha had had several talks with her, but to no avail. Janice persisted in shunning him. When pressed, she’d rave about the devil in their midst and other religious nonsense.

Marsha was at her wits’ end when Janice got sick. Victor had been the first to notice how yellow her eyes had become. He brought it to Marsha’s attention. With horror, Marsha realized Janice’s eyes had the same jaundiced cast that David’s had had. Victor rushed Janice to Boston so that her condition could be evaluated. Even with her yellow eyes, the diagnosis had come as a tremendous shock: she had liver cancer of the same particularly virulent type that David had died of.

Having two cases of such a rare form of liver cancer in the same household within a year prompted extensive epidemiological investigations. But the results had all been negative. There was no environmental hazard present. The computers determined that the two cases were simply rare chance occurrences.

At least the diagnosis of liver cancer helped explain Janice’s bizarre behavior. The doctors felt she might have already suffered brain metastasis. Once she was diagnosed, her downhill course proved swift and merciless. She’d rapidly lost weight despite therapy, became skin and bones within two weeks. But it had been the last day before she’d gone to the hospital to die that had been most traumatic.

Victor had just arrived home and was in the bathroom off the family room. Marsha was in the kitchen preparing dinner, when the house had reverberated with a blood-chilling scream.

Victor shot out of the bathroom. “What in God’s name was that?” he yelled.