Living Proof by Kira Peikoff

Living Proof by Kira Peikoff

Author:Kira Peikoff
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates


THIRTEEN

Trent reached for Arianna’s hand across the kitchen table at his apartment. His right hand, which could easily palm a basketball or play a ten-key interval, dwarfed her left one. He closed his fingers over hers.

“How do you do anything with these little things?”

She chuckled. “It’s brains not brawn, baby.”

Baby. Embryo. Dopp.

And his lightness was shattered. Such inadvertent connections to his other reality had crept up often in the last several days. It was as if he lived with a chronic hacking cough that would abate—allowing him a few moments of bliss—but then return at the slightest trigger. The most mundane encounters would do: a gold cross necklace on a stranger; a headline about the stalled state budget; a glimpse of a classy brown watch.

“What?” Arianna said, noticing his slackened lips. “What did I say?”

“It’s just hard,” he said carefully. “To forget everything for a few minutes, but it’s worse to remember. How do you stay positive?”

“Stress decreases my immune function.” She smiled dryly.

“I’m sorry about Ian.”

“It’s not your fault. But Sam and Patrick are still giving me the cold shoulder.”

Trent shook his head. “Wouldn’t I have reported you by now?”

“You would think. When I brought them new embryos this afternoon, Sam literally turned his back on me and didn’t even say good-bye. And I thought he and I were close.”

“Weird,” Trent remarked, thinking of his own fallout from the night he had seen the lab. Thrilled as he was to find hope and clarity, he was increasingly nervous at work—but the steep cost was one he would continue to pay as long as her life hung in the balance. At times, it struck him as absurd that his office looked the same when so much about his purpose there had changed. The painting of the Crucifix still hung on the wall, now a reminder of a different kind. As he passed familiar faces in the hallway, he wondered: Would they ever understand the cruel irony of their work—the actual lives suffering from disease because of them? He had to banish thoughts of Arianna to summon a cordial smile for his colleagues.

There, he was still one of them, and no one needed to be more certain of it than Dopp. So when Dopp had demanded the transcript and audio file of his visit to her apartment, Trent handed it over like a competent employee. Only it was the cut-and-pasted version, less the incriminating parts about the lab. He had uploaded the audio file from the watch to his computer at home, and then spent two hours deleting and chopping their conversation into a logical, safe flow. With a professional musician’s software, he was able to match Arianna’s tone and pitch to any words he improvised on her behalf. What remained was the requisite talk of her worries about her worsening condition, coaxed out by Trent’s questions: “How do you feel?” and “What has your doctor been saying?”

Trent had placed this typed transcript on Dopp’s desk with a sigh, his best portrayal of disgruntlement.



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