The RERT I’d been watching sank to the ground, draping his arms across his knees. I could now read the name on his air tank. Scotty Hemmings. He bent his head and clutched his facepiece in his gloved hands.
I guessed Scotty was wondering the same thing.
50
We took ourselves home.
Soliano offered to send us by chopper but we needed measurable time and distance in getting from here to there and so we rented a car. There was a tense moment when the clerk placed the keys on the counter. Who would pick them up? I told Walter, “Go ahead.” Seemed to me he’d proved his abilities ten times over. But he declined. On the “minuscule chance,” as he put it, that he’d have an “untoward event” on the drive home, he declined. He preferred to wait for the all-clear from his doctor, at which point he would resume his place behind the wheel.
And so I picked up the keys.
We crossed the desert and when we came to the Sierra and began the climb to the plateau on which our hometown sits, each degree drop in temperature put more shielding between home and the pools of Death Valley.
We fell, hopefully, into the routine. It was good to be back in our own laboratory with its view of trees and mountains. It was good to drink the snowmelt water of the Sierra. It was good, even, to bury ourselves in the newest work, a straightforward and largely mindless case of sabotage at a plastics fabrication plant. I had just identified the crystal under the scope as amphibole when Walter came through the door. He came balancing the day’s mail on top of a pink donut box. We’ve compromised. Donuts on Fridays. TGIF.
I wanted to get at that mail before he sorted it.
As he set the donut box on the counter in our mini-kitchen, I rescued the unstable stack of mail under the guise of helping out. Walter started the coffee. I took the mail to my workbench and put my eyes on the particulars.
“Looking for something?” Walter yelled over the grinding of beans.
Just when I think I’ve put one over on him I am reminded that he’s still sharper than anybody I know. I called back, “Yeah, the rebate for that iPod I bought.”
No rebate, just bills and catalogs and the latest issue of the Journal of Forensic Sciences. And, near the bottom, the thick envelope I’d been expecting. I hid it in my drawer. Wait until the coffee’s ready so I can broach the subject when his mouth’s full of donut.
Meanwhile, my attention caught on a large manila envelope with my name printed on a label and no return address.
“Glazed or crumb?” he asked.
“Crumb.” I opened the flap and pulled out a sheaf of papers. A blue post-it was stuck on top, and the handwritten note read: To Cassie, From Hap. Cassie, not Buttercup. The formality of that greeting put me on alert. In fact, getting mail from Hap put me on alert. Last I’d heard, he was in the hospital. I wondered what he wanted from me now.
I pulled off the post-it and looked at the top sheet of paper. It was a printed form, the boxes filled in with the same neat cursive as on the post-it. My eyes skipped to the signature box at the bottom: Brendan F Miller, Licensed Health Physicist. The formal title chilled me.
My eyes jumped to the block letters printed at the top. NRC Form 5. Occupational Dose Record For a Monitoring Period. My mouth went dry. What the…? Name (last, first, middle initial): Oldfield, Cassie E. Monitoring Period: 8-14 to 8-19. I rushed, a little wild, from box to box — Radionuclides, Intake, Doses. For crying out loud I had an entry in every box. I skimmed the numerals because I didn’t really know if those numbers were high or low or ALARA, and so I skipped to the comments box. The individual was exposed in the course of an emergency response to an incident. She has received above the recommended maximum yearly radiation dose. Long-term effects are not calculable. Recommend the individual limit future exposures. Hap had added a postscript, at kindergarten leveclass="underline" Recommend you take care out there.
Walter set a donut on a napkin on my bench, sequestering it so as not to crap up the open dishes of soil with the crumbs. “What’s this?”
I handed him the second sheet of paper, the form with his name.
Walter sat down, reading. “How could he…”
“Know the numbers?” Scotty’s the one who had our dosimeters, and Scotty had phoned day after we returned home to tell us “no worry.” Scotty promised to send the entire incident report, with our numbers, once the NRC review was complete. But I guessed Hap didn’t need to wait on bureaucracy anymore. Hap could get on the net and download NRC forms and then run his own equations. How many rads in the point source, how close I stood, how long I stood there. Still, Hap wouldn’t have exact numbers to feed into his equations. I said, “He took a guess.”
“And why the devil is he sending them to us?”
I didn’t want to know.
There were three more forms in the pile. I had the urge put them through the shredder. I had the urge to stuff them back in the envelope, along with mine and Walter’s, and return to sender. Instead, I continued to read.
Ballinger, Milton P. The numbers were huge but largely irrelevant because the neat cursive in the comments box said it all. LD. Lethal Dose.
Jellinek, Christine C. Lower numbers than Milt’s, far higher than mine. The individual’s shallow dose equivalent, max extremities, has required reconstructive surgeries of the hands and arms. Outlook for the individual’s short-term recovery is guarded; long-term effects are of grave concern.
Miller, Brendan F. Double-digit microcuries, triple-digit rems. I closed my eyes. Breathed in, breathed out, settling my stomach. When I gained the nerve to read the comments I had to follow the arrow and flip the page. He’d needed more room than the comments box provided. Under the heading Long-term Stochastic Effects he’d written odds-on favorite to win the cancer lottery. Under the heading Thanks For Asking, he’d made himself a diary:
Tuesday: Thought my latent stage would last longer but this morning when I rolled over I left my hair on the pillow. People think the hair falls out but what happens is it gets thinner and thinner and then you can’t even roll your head on the pillow without breaking it off. Here’s a health physics lesson for you — the parts of your body where the cells keep dividing are bullseyes for radiation. Like hair.
Wednesday: Still trying to maintain my morning schedule. Been reading the papers. Guess what? Our story made page one of the Vegas Sun today. I know you disapprove of my demonstration, Buttercup, but you have to admit it made a point. Even interrupted. Wish I could sit across the breakfast table from John Q Public, watch him reading what nearly happened to the water. See how that goes down with his morning coffee. To be frank, not really feeling up to morning coffee myself.
Thursday: Nurse put a diaper on me since I can’t seem to make it to the john. The cells that are supposed to maintain my intestinal integrity aren’t doing their job. Man in diapers talking about intestinal integrity — that strike you as funny?
Friday: Too bad it’s not Halloween because I’ve got bloody fangs. Scared the nurse anyway when she made me go aaahhh. Mouthful of lesions. Yuck. Stem cells in my bone marrow went on strike — how’s that for loyalty?
Saturday: Coughed up a hairball last night. (Jess funnin youse) Was the mucous membrane in my mouth sloughing off.
Sunday: Can’t write much more. Nurse will get your address and mail stuff for me. She’s a peach. Come tomorrow, only going to have one hand left. My drawing hand thank the good lordy. Right now I’m going to use it to sketch my left patty-cake so I don’t forget I had one. Infection’s gone gangrene. Where the knife went in — you remember.