“One more tube, I’m afraid. They’ve ordered quite a lot of tests.”
“I must tell Dr. Peterson that his cure will do me no good if I die of anemia. He keeps telling me that he must monitor my blood for evidence of side effects from the treatment. I should think he would also be concerned about the side effects of all this blood loss.”
I managed an awkward smile, and filled the last tube in troubled silence.
“Lilly has never found it easy to have friends, you know,” Vanessa said, flexing her arm as I racked the tubes. “I tell you all this so you will understand if she seems distant, or remote. Or if she does strange things, in her struggle to feel what others do.” She touched the arm of her wheelchair, moved to the window, and glanced back at me.
“Thank you for telling me,” I said quietly.
She nodded stiffly, and turned away.
When I finished my shift that evening I went nervously looking for Tyler Mackenzie. I’d never gone looking for him before; we’d only talked on the occasions that we had passed in the hall. I found him alone in the M.S. lab, intent on a computer screen. I stood in the doorway for a moment, hesitant. I didn’t want to interrupt him in the middle of something important. I was about to slip away quietly when he pushed his chair back from the screen, noticed me, and smiled.
“Hi, Heather.”
“Hi. How’s it going?”
“Oh, pretty well. What’s up with you?”
“I just wanted to ask you something. About the M.S. treatment.”
He looked surprised. “What about it?”
I knew a fair bit about it already; I had studied up on it when I’d noticed that Tyler was on the project. It was gene therapy, complicated by the fact that M.S. was caused by a combination of factors; there were two abnormal genes involved, plus a retrovirus, all working together to trick the body into attacking its own myelin sheaths. The goal of the current treatment was to stop the disease in its tracks, to prevent symptoms from growing worse with time. Not a cure, as such, but a great improvement over chronic progression.
“How effective is the treatment?” I asked.
Tyler hesitated. “It’s been difficult to prove,” he said. “M.S. treatments have always been hard to evaluate because the symptoms fluctuate so much in the normal course of the disease. Symptoms appear and disappear all the time. But the double-blind tests were promising. Extremely promising, in fact. That’s how we got the approval for this project.”
“What about the patients you’re treating now?”
“It’s too early to tell; we’ve only just started the treatments. But we’re very excited. It’s quite possible we may be able to stop the progress of the disease entirely.”
“What about reversing it? Will you be able to actually cure it some day?”
“Well, not yet. We’ve got some good theories on inducing remyelination but so far they’re not working out in practice. But someday…” He grinned. “Maybe I’ll get the Nobel prize for that. Someday.”
That grin transformed his face, making him look suddenly young and happy and carefree, and for a dazzled moment I completely forgot what we were talking about. But then I remembered to ask about Lilly; I wanted to know if she was at risk for M.S.
“She’s more at risk than the general public,” Tyler said. “The disease does run in families, of course. And it doesn’t usually manifest itself until people are young adults.”
“Could it ever cause something like autism?”
Tyler frowned. “I don’t think so. Of course, we don’t know what causes autism, but I’ve never heard of any kind of connection with multiple sclerosis. M.S. can affect the brain, the optic nerve and the speech centers, and occasionally it affects the emotions, but in the opposite way; emotions become much more labile and intense.” He stared at me suddenly. “Why in the world are you asking?”
“I know Lilly. She’s, well, a friend. And there’s something odd about her. About her emotions.”
“How old did you say she is? Nineteen?”
“Yes.”
“You think she’s autistic?”
“No. But something’s wrong with her, and Vanessa said Lilly’s doctors have never been able to figure out what.”
“Maybe I could meet her sometime,” Tyler said. “I doubt I’d figure anything out, but who knows?”
I felt a shiver of excitement; this was the perfect opportunity to ask Tyler out, with the convenient excuse of having him meet Lilly. I groped for words, but nothing would come. When the silence between us became awkward, I said lamely, “Well. Thanks for the info. Bye.”
“Bye,” Tyler said absently, and went back to his work.
I walked out of the lab and into the bustling hall, feeling frustrated, and stupid, and very much alone.
I got home late that evening, cranky and tired, and found Johnny in front of the mirror, checking his reflection from every angle.
“What do you think?” he asked me. “Do I look OK?”
“Of course,” I told him, surprised; Johnny is not usually one to stare into mirrors. Anyway he always looks good, even at his scruffiest, and tonight he was dressed in a good shirt and new jeans, his long hair neatly tied back in a tail. “Why?” I asked him. “Do you have a date?”
He smiled happily. “You bet. I asked Lilly to come down to the cafe tonight to listen to us play.”
“You asked Lilly out?”
“Sure did.”
“And she’s coming?” I said doubtfully.
“Well, yes, of course. Say, you’re coming to see us tonight too, aren’t you?”
“Oh, Johnny. I was going to, but I’m just so tired.”
“Tyler’s coming,” Johnny said.
“Tyler?”
“Well, I know you like him. And I bumped into him last week while I was waiting for you to get off work, so I asked him to drop by the cafe tonight to hear our music.”
I stared at Johnny.
“So you’re coming?” he asked.
I nodded silently. Then I gave Johnny a push out of the way, and claimed the mirror for myself.
Sad to say, the mirror didn’t help much. Johnny has all the good looks in the family, too, and it didn’t help that I ended up sitting at the cafe table next to the stunning Lilly. But Tyler was kind; though he did a double take when he saw Lilly, he sat down next to me. I introduced them, they said hello, and we turned our attention to the corner where Johnny and his band were setting up. It was almost eight o’clock.
Johnny joined us at our table, bright and happy, and sat beside Lilly and talked softly to her for a moment; I couldn’t hear what was said, and was a bit embarrassed when I realized that I was straining to eavesdrop. I was feeling some turmoil; should I tell Johnny what Vanessa had told me? Or should I stay quiet, and let things happen as they would? Troubled, I watched as Johnny slipped away from the table and returned to his group. Tyler leaned close to me and said, “Hey, Heather, what kind of band is this?”
He was gesturing at the band’s more unusual instruments. Johnny had his hammered dulcimer out, and Richard and Mary had a mandolin and a twelve-string guitar, while Gillian had the weird percussion and Jody her fiddle. I named off the instruments to Tyler.
He said, “What’s that thing that looks like a mixing bowl?”
“Ah, well. It’s a mixing bowl. Part full of water. It has some interesting tonal qualities.” I decided not to get into Gillian’s various strings of keys, all of which chimed with different tones; Johnny’s percussionist is talented but admittedly bizarre.