In fact, the opposite was true. Lyle was completely about his wits. Through his inaction, he had prompted the note to be written, smoked out a move by an invisible adversary. He smiled sadly. On some level, it’s what he had wanted, hoped for, manipulated, even if he wasn’t fully conscious of his tactics. If only subconsciously, he’d sensed a pattern that entailed a foe, an enemy—his match?—trying to get his attention, and when he lay fallow, it provoked him. A car followed him, or a note disappeared, and then reappeared. Still, this reappearing note hardly qualified as a victory because Lyle didn’t exactly know what he would do with this new data point. He didn’t know if he could muster the energy to pursue the answers.
He had to look at his phone to discover the date, day, and time. It was a Tuesday in early December at 10:20 in the morning.
He pulled on a leather jacket and headed down the stairwell.
Thirty-Nine
Mission Bay’s campus had exploded since he’d abandoned his life. High-rises had sprung up in clusters belonging to different medical specialties. A wide promenade ran to the water, bisecting the sprawling campus. Open space braced one side of the promenade and shops anchored the other. Lyle drained black coffee at a café and listened to researchers bitch and moan.
He found Dr. Sanchez’s office on the eleventh floor of the new Kartling Immunology Center, a modern building that, despite its large windows and curved middle, came across as boring, lacking creativity. Dr. Sanchez wasn’t in her office and Lyle didn’t leave his name with her assistant. He did pick up that she’d be back in an hour.
Thirty minutes later, he found Emily Chase, his former assistant, in the Neuroscience Department, a long block away. She was a postdoc now, which entitled her to a small, shared office with desks along opposite walls. She was alone when Lyle poked his head in. She practically leapt from her chair.
“Dr. Martin!”
He looked bewildered and she laughed. “I forgot: you never grasped how appreciative your fans are.”
He smiled and looked down and realized that his assistant had changed. Her tone now came across not as unctuous or adoring but, rather, as confident enough that she could speak freely and candidly. She was all grown up.
“What brings you in? Are you coming back? What are you up to, Dr. Martin? I get asked all the time.”
He waved his hand and said, “Long story.” Which was true. “I could use your help.”
“Of course.” She picked up his seriousness and adjusted. She sat in her swivel chair and gestured to a plastic black chair against the wall. “I’ve got a subject coming in fifteen minutes. You want to talk now or will it take longer?”
Lyle sat and explained with as little fanfare as he might that he needed to get a list of the students from his last survey class. Did she have something like that? She pursed her lips, thinking about it, and, Lyle figured, considering about whether to ask him why he needed such a thing. But, in the end, she didn’t. She pulled her chair up to her computer and she clacked about on the keys.
“Something like this is probably the best I can do without working through the administrative system, and, even then…”
He stood so he could peer over her shoulder. Her screen showed an old e-mail that she’d dug up. It was titled: Martin, Section II; Population List.
Lyle, looking at the screen, realized he’d been copied on the e-mail. Naturally, he’d not paid attention; no point in a survey class like this and the e-mail had been little more than a formality. Emily clicked open a spreadsheet. It included names, student ID numbers, and affiliation as med student, postdoc, fellow, or audit/other. Lyle looked for a tab that might indicate there were pictures, though he was not surprised to find no such thing.
“Can you print it out?”
“Of course.” She clicked the command. In the corner, a printer hummed to life.
Lyle sat back and looked glassy-eyed.
“The deep-in-thought look,” Emily said. She laughed.
“Sorry. Sorry. Congratulations. Neuroscience?”
“All the rage these days,” she said.
“What’s your area of research?”
“Attention, prefrontal cortex, with some emphasis on the default network. Gets granular from there.”
“Good for you,” Lyle said and meant it. He cleared his throat. “You know much about seizures, electrical activity, ion channels?”
She studied him. “Only in passing.”
The printer came to a stop. Lyle could see her desperate curiosity to understand his reappearance. There would be gossip.
He stood. “Thank you, Emily.”
At Dr. Sanchez’s door, he didn’t have a chance to consider a strategy. She’d already seen him. An instant of concern-colored surprise crossed her face as she stood beside her assistant’s desk holding an opened manila folder. She snapped the folder shut and quickly reoriented as the best politicians can do.
“Look what the cat dragged in. Dr. Martin. Come in!” She pulled reading glasses from her nose and let them hang by the cord around her neck. “Ernie, hold my calls. Dr. Martin, can I get you a cup of coffee? Come in, come in.”
Once a world-class cyclist, Dr. Sanchez had grown sturdier and matronly. She sat behind a thick desk and offered him the chair across from her. She smiled. It was warm but affected.
“How are you?”
He nodded, fine, fine. “I know I’m barging in.”
“Not at all.” She could see he had something on his mind. She was accustomed to doctors with time pressure. “What’s up? What can I do for you?”
He smiled himself and touched his forehead with the folded pages of single-spaced names, signaling he wasn’t sure where to begin. He exhaled.
“I’m rusty,” he said.
She raised her hands as if to say: No problem. Shoot.
“Channelopathy.”
She laughed. “That’s the last thing I’d have ever guessed would come out of your mouth.”
He sat there, awkwardly. “It’s obviously not virulent.”
“Sorry?”
“You can’t catch it.”
She shook her head. No, of course not. She gave the standard doctor caveat that she wasn’t an expert. Some people, she said, were more susceptible than others, almost certainly on a genetic basis. She told him what he already knew about ion channels.
“What is its relationship to seizure?”
“If memory serves, they are distinctive but related. Some seizure disorders, epilepsy, are caused by channelopathy. Okay, my curiosity is piqued, Lyle. What’s up?”
Her voices carried all the harmonies and dissonance of her personality: genuine interest, intensity she tried to quiet, envy that she might be missing something or that Lyle could wind up discovering or getting something she might want, however unknown or irrelevant that thing might be to her.
“I was wondering if there are any signs that we’re seeing more of this. Any papers on growing incidence of electrical disorders?”
She thought about it and whether to take him at face value on such an unusual question. “Hmm.”
“Maybe related to your phone or all the electromagnetic fields from cellular technology.”
Now her eyes widened. It was true that there had been some talk about the potential for electromagnetic radiation, EMR, as a source of cancer. Nothing had been proven. It was more conspiracy chatter at this point than anything else. And she hadn’t heard anything regarding EMR and seizure. So her eyes were wide not from curiosity or recognition but from the thought maybe Lyle had revealed himself with a kind of desperation. From her standpoint, the proper order in this room had been established.