Jason opened his eyes, fighting the sunlight flooding his room, and looked at the clock on the bedside table. The big red glowing numbers read 11:37 a.m.—Jason groaned and pulled the pillow over his head. When he opened them again, he was still lying in a bed that hadn’t been made since Linda left a week ago and was still staring at a clock which now smugly proclaimed that he was still in bed at 11:42 a.m. on a Wednesday morning when every other normal 38-year-old adult was at work. Jason sat up and looked around. The room was resplendent with the residue of a week of the Scott Durrant Therapy for Anxiety and TL—so named during a Charlie’s Angels re-run at 3 a.m. last Saturday morning after several too many beers and chili dogs. Someone had thoughtfully arranged 28 beer cans into a pyramid on the dresser. Jason admired the work’s aesthetic appeal before moaning and rolling out of bed. He wasn’t sure what he landed on, but it left a reddish-brown stain on the side of his white cotton JC Penney briefs. The stain smelled vaguely of tomato sauce. Jason coughed and rubbed his temples, then grabbed two Alka Seltzer off the nightstand and hobbled out of the bedroom.
Jason made his way to the kitchen and threw an empty beer can at the flashing light on the answering machine. He glanced at the numeric display—16 calls. Up two from yesterday, he thought. Not bad to be so popular. Linda must be out trying to buy stuff using the credit cards he had cancelled. The thought of that gave him a wry sense of pleasure.
He opened the refrigerator and surveyed its contents: two pizza boxes, three cans of Budweiser, and a pint of orange juice. He grabbed the orange juice, dropped in the seltzer tablets and started gulping before he remembered that Scott had decided to make screwdrivers in bulk to save time. Jason spluttered and coughed, spewing the fizzing potent potable onto the cupboards. He had just about caught his breath when the doorbell rang.
He looked out the peephole and saw a kid in his late teens with spiky bleached-blond hair standing next to a bicycle. The bike had a rack over the rear tire with saddlebags attached to either side.
“I didn’t order a pizza!” Jason yelled through the door, still watching through the peephole.
The kid didn’t smile. He held up an envelope. “Courier. Hand delivery.”
“Who’s it from? Linda Kramer?”
The kid shrugged. “I just deliver `em.”
Jason opened the door and waved the courier inside. The kid wrinkled his nose and made a face. “Ugh. Pretty ripe in here, man.” He handed Jason a clipboard. “Sign on line 14.”
Jason scrawled his signature and exchanged the clipboard for the envelope. It was plain and white with no return address—just his name typed on the front. The courier was still standing there, palm out. Jason slapped his hands on his thighs and rear where his pockets would’ve been if he’d been wearing pants. “Sorry. I’m tapped out.”
The kid smirked and nodded. He turned to go but stopped, his eyes fixed on the stain on Jason’s rear end. “Nice undies, man,” he said. He went into the hallway and shut the door.
“Nice haircut, man,” Jason called after him. Jason walked to the window and held the envelope up to the light, but he couldn’t make out what was inside. He tore off one end and slid out a one-page letter, then sat down on the couch and read:
Dear Jason:
I’ve been trying to contact you by phone and e-mail, but you haven’t responded. I hope this reaches you. It is very important that you call me at my office in San Francisco as soon as possible. I have some urgent news about your latest test results.
Sincerely,
Craig Marcus
Jason rubbed his left temple and threw the letter onto a pile of mail on the counter. He sat down at the kitchen table and took another draw on the orange juice carton, contents still fizzing. Jason jumped when someone started pounding on the door.
“I told you I’m tapped out!” Jason yelled over his shoulder, but the pounding persisted.
“Jason! Open up! It’s me!”
Jason shuffled to the door and looked out the peephole at Scott. He flipped the deadbolt latch and made his way back to the table. “It’s open.”
Scott pushed the door open and walked into the front room. “You look like hell.” Scott sniffed. “And you smell like hell.”
Jason looked up through bloodshot eyes. “Thanks to you.” Jason tried again to focus on his tall skinny friend. “What are you doing here?” he said.
“I took an early lunch to come and check on you. You had just finished the beer-amid of doom there when I left,” Scott said, gesturing toward the stacked Budweiser cans in the bedroom. “That’s a lot of brew, bro.”
Jason belched, tasting acid in the back of his throat, and waved toward a chair at the table. Scott made his way into the kitchen but did not sit, walking instead to the counter to survey the growing stack of mail. “Just because you’re going to die doesn’t mean you don’t have to pay your bills.”
“I’m leaving `em to Linda in my will.”
“Nice. No, seriously, you need to look through this stuff.” Scott picked up the letter from Craig Marcus and read it. He looked at Jason. “Have you called him?”
“What, he’s going to tell me I have three months instead of six?”
Scott sat down and placed the letter in front of Jason. “Look man, everybody is entitled to a little pity-party, but yours has now officially ended.” Scott grabbed the phone from the counter and put it on the table. He picked up the handset and stuck it in Jason’s face. “Call him.”
“Why? I feel fine.”
“That’s what you keep saying.” Scott wagged the phone in front of Jason’s nose. “Put your money where your mouth is.”
Jason stared at Scott, thinking. Then, with a snort, he snatched the phone and punched in Marcus’ number. He held the handset to his ear, glaring defiantly.
“Dr. Marcus’ office.”
“Uh, hi, this is Jason Kramer and I—”
“Mr. Kramer! Thank you so much for calling! One moment, please.”
Jason’s mouth remained half open. Scott looked on, perplexed. “What?” he said.
“I’m on hold.”
Scott got up to go to the refrigerator. He opened the door and peered inside. He was just reaching for a slice of pizza when Jason said, “Yeah, it’s me.”
Fifteen miles to the north in an office in the San Francisco hills, Craig Marcus was breathing hard. A file was open in front of him on his desk. “Thanks for calling, Jason,” he said into the phone. “I’ve been worried about you.”
“I know. Sorry. I just haven’t felt much like talking to anyone for a while.”
“I understand. Look, Jason, we need to talk about your latest test results.”
Jason remained silent, watching Scott gnaw on a cold, tough piece of pepperoni and black olive pizza.
“Are you there?” Marcus said.
“Yeah.”
“Do you remember when you were up here last and we took some more samples so we could monitor how fast the TL was spreading and what it was doing to your bones and lungs?”
Jason’s sphincter twitched at the memory. “I remember.”
“Those results came back and you are, uh, well, . . .”
Jason waited, rubbing his stomach. “Yes?”
“For lack of a better word, you’re cured.”
Jason sat, watching Scott chew a thick piece of crust. He watched him take another big bite and then chase it with a swig of screwdriver, wondering how Scott could eat so much junk food and stay so thin. It must be the genes, Jason thought. Genes, and all that running. He remembered at that point that he was on the phone talking to Dr. Marcus. “Excuse me,” Jason said, his voice thick and garbled, his surroundings becoming surreal, like a Salvador Dali print. He watched Scott begin to rotate counterclockwise. “What did you say?” Jason said.
“The virus has disappeared.”
“Uh-huh,” Jason said, as he noted with amusement that Scott had now reversed rotation and was spinning to the right.
Scott stopped chewing, his mouth full of partially masticated pizza, and looked at Jason, who was now swaying in his chair. “Jason?” he said, moving toward him.
Jason, still holding the phone to his ear, tilted and fell to his right, toppling off the chair onto the floor. Scott rushed to him and knelt by his head, leaning over into Jason’s field of vision. He tried to take the phone from Jason’s hand, but a type of rigor mortis had set in, and Jason’s stiff, unyielding fingers gripped the phone with white-knuckled fervor. Scott put his face close to Jason’s. “Are you all right?”
Jason smiled, enjoying watching Scott’s face twirl above him. “The pizza musta gone bad,” he said before he passed out. His eyes remained half open, a faint smile on his face, his breathing deep and regular. The phone clattered to the linoleum.
“Hello? Hello?” Scott could hear the tinny voice coming from the handset. He picked up the phone. “Dr. Marcus?” he asked.
There was a moment of silence. “Yes. Who’s this?”
“Scott Durrant. I’m Jason’s friend. I was here when he called you. He’s passed out.” Scott looked up at the orange juice carton on the table. “He hasn’t been eating too well lately.”
“Call 911 and tell them to send an ambulance. I’ll meet you at the UCSF med center emergency room,” Marcus said.
“Should we come clear into San Francisco? There’s a closer hospital here in the South Bay.”
“No, bring him here. And hurry.” Marcus hung up the handset and opened Jason’s file. He grabbed a pen and began to write:
Contacted patient 30 June. Reported test results and arranged transport to UCSF. Anticipate prescribing full battery of tests to analyze spontaneous suspension of viral activity.
Marcus put the end of the pen into his mouth and chewed on it, thinking, then picked up the phone again and dialed. “Mr. Porter?” he said. “It’s Craig Marcus. We found Jason Kramer.”
—
“I hate these things.” Jason struggled to close the back of his hospital gown, but the fabric continued to part, revealing his nether region. “Every time I get up I moon somebody.”
Scott laughed. “Humiliation is part of hospitalization. That’s why doctors feel superior.” Scott studied Jason’s face. “How are you feeling?”
Jason looked up at a painting on the wall of his room. “Better,” he said. “Bozo has stopped moving.”
Scott followed Jason’s gaze to the impressionistic rendering of a clown. “Wonder if that’s an original Gacy?” Scott mused. “Must’ve been the first thing you saw when you came to. You screamed for five minutes.”
“Salmonella-induced hallucination. I thought it was real. ‘Coming to take me away, ha ha.’”
Scott shook his head. “Pizza didn’t make me sick.”
“Yeah, well you hadn’t just been told you were cured of TL either.”
“True.”
Jason starting flipping through the channels on the TV. “I appreciate your staying here with me,” he said. “I know you had to miss work.”
“Yeah, well, I only have about three thousand vacation days to use up and what better way to spend one than sitting in a hospital room with you looking at your naked butt.” Scott glanced up at the TV, and then pointed at the screen. “Hey, turn it up. It’s the Mariners game.”
Jason was pointing the remote at the set and obliging Scott when Craig Marcus entered the room. “Hi Jason, Scott,” he said. They turned and looked at Marcus and the man and woman who were with him. Marcus gestured toward the strangers. “Let me introduce Dr. Ruth Wilson and Dr. Vincent Samuels from the CDC in Atlanta. They are actually the ones who discovered Trips Lite. I brought them in to confirm my findings.”
Jason stared at Marcus, waiting for him to complete the pregnant pause. He did not. “Which were?” Jason finally said.
Marcus sighed. “In the last three hours we’ve done every test we can think of to look for Triptovirus L, short of killing you and performing an autopsy. We can’t find any. It’s like you never had it,” he said.
Jason reached for his stomach and rubbed it with extended fingers. He looked at the three doctors, his eyes moving from face to face. “How can that be?”
“We don’t know,” Ruth said. “Your blood contains no traces of the virus. It’s quite remarkable.”
The room was quiet except for the television sportscaster’s blathering. Jason felt the doctors watching him and waited for them to lick their lips. “I feel like a Thanksgiving turkey,” he said. “You guys just can’t wait to carve me up, can you?”
Marcus moved closer to the bed and placed his hand on Jason’s arm. “We would like to perform a few more tests, yes.”
“No!” Jason jerked his arm out from under Marcus’ hand. “No. No more tests. You say I’m cured, fine. Let me out of here.”
Scott stepped forward, defiant. “You can’t keep him here if he doesn’t want to stay. That’s false arrest or imprisonment or something.”
Marcus smiled. “No one is forcing him to stay. We’d like to pay him.”
Jason opened his mouth to protest, but stopped, coughing out only a half-formed expletive. He looked at Scott. Scott in turn squinted at Marcus. “How much?” Scott asked.
“Are you his lawyer?” Jason and Scott turned in unison to look at Dr. Samuels. Vincent considered them through thick glasses that magnified his eyes, making them big like a bug’s. His curly black hair was boyish, not at all befitting a senior cancer researcher. Vincent smiled and waited, his hands clasped behind his back.
Scott returned the smile, sarcasm evident in the lines around his eyes and mouth. “Does he need one?” Scott said.
Marcus held up his hand and shot a glance at Vincent. “No point in getting heated here, gentlemen. Jason is of course free to consult with his attorney. We have some papers here for Jason to look at—” he turned to Ruth who handed Marcus a stack of papers “—and we’ll talk to him again tomorrow.” He put the papers on Jason’s lap, and then looked at Scott. “Good?”
Scott motioned toward Jason with his hand. “It’s up to Jason.”
Marcus looked at Jason. Jason thought for a moment, then nodded.
“Good,” Marcus said. He motioned to Ruth and Vincent, and the three turned and moved toward the door. “In answer to your question,” Marcus said, “free room and board, and $1,000 a week.” He pulled the door shut behind him.
Jason whistled. “A thousand bucks a week? Just to lay here and get stuck with needles? Man, they must think that something really weird is going on inside me to offer that kind of money.”
Scott sat down on the edge of the bed, lifted the cover off Jason’s dinner tray, and surveyed gray meat loaf, stiff mashed potatoes and gravy, canned peas, a limp tossed salad, and a red Jell-O block. He swallowed hard and put the cover back on the tray. “Either that, or they feel they have to compensate you somehow for the free room and board.”
In a conference room three doors down, Doctors Marcus, Samuels, and Wilson sat huddled over Jason’s file. Computer printouts littered the table.
Ruth held up one of the printouts, scrutinizing the rows of numbers it contained. “It’s the most amazing thing. Is it possible Jason’s original ELISA results were a false positive?”
“No way,” Marcus said. “I performed it again myself, twice, and the TL antigen was clearly present.”
“But the amount of time between the procedures and today, . . .” Ruth said, thinking.
“. . . is insufficient for a remission this dramatic to occur,” Marcus said, finishing her sentence. He stood and began to walk around the room. “Plus, we have no idea how long he’s been clean. He may have been virus-free for days before he called me.” Marcus took a breath and looked at Ruth, who shrugged, while Vincent folded his arms. Marcus exhaled. “He killed it. He just killed it, that’s all.”
Vincent took a long drink from his coffee mug and grimaced. “Cold,” he said, swallowing. He put the cup down and looked at Marcus and Ruth. “I guess all we can do is start running more tests and see if we can find out what makes this guy tick.”
Ruth dropped the computer printout she was holding and rubbed her eyes. She laughed. “Maybe it was all those carrots he ate,” she said.