“Where’s my aunt?” my cousin demands with an intensity that implies I’m the one responsible for my mom’s disappearance. “Speak. Now.”
“The cops were here,” I reply tersely. “They thought you might know where she is.”
Joe steps toward the bed. His blue eyes glint with ice that reminds me of Hannibal Lecter’s signature stare. I glance at my uncle for help, but he’s clearly petrified.
“They also hinted that this could be the work of an enemy of yours.” I wait one frantic heartbeat, then ask, “Is it?”
My cousin stops his onslaught, considers the idea for a moment, then confidently shakes his head. “No. They got it wrong. No one who knows me would dare fuck with my family.”
The words aren’t spoken with any bravado, but his sheer calmness is what bothers me. He’s just stating a fact. Of course, there’s a subtext to his words, a threat to whoever the kidnappers are. In this moment, it’s all too easy to picture Joe going complete Keyser Söze on their asses and killing their kids, their spouses, their parents, their cats/dogs/parrots/goldfishes or whatever.
“How bad is it?” Uncle Abe asks, studying my face. His voice is so kind it’s hard to believe he and Joe share half of their DNA. “Does that hurt?”
“Not much,” I reply. I probably would’ve sounded more sincere if my voice hadn’t cracked and if I hadn’t cringed.
“Are you ready to tell me who did that to your face?” Joe asks. It might be my imagination, but did his intensity dial down from eleven out of ten to a mere ten?
“It was this big Russian guy,” I begin and tell my uncle and cousin the whole story, only without going into the nitty-gritty details of the Brainocytes—specifically that they’ll go into my head. Instead, I say there’s a technical solution.
My uncle looks petrified as I go on, while Joe’s features simply darken, an impressive feat given his semi-permanent somber expression. I fleetingly wonder if this whole situation is bringing back memories for them of how they lost Aunt Veronica. She had a heart attack before I came to America, so I don’t know many of the details surrounding her death, but I suspect both men were forever changed by it.
“This technical mumbo jumbo,” my uncle says. “Do you think it’ll help us find her?”
“It sounds promising,” I reply. “Plus, there’s this other solution Mitya is working on.”
“I don’t have much faith in these solutions,” Joe says, his expression unreadable. “And I don’t have any faith in any solution that involves the pigs.” He looks me over; then, perhaps deciding it’s too harsh to compare me to the cops, he adds, “Especially the pigs.”
“So what do you suggest?” I do my best not to sound challenging, since I need to keep my head to put the Brainocytes in.
“I’ll look into this myself,” my cousin says. “Whoever these fuckers are, they’re making me—” His jaw muscles spasm, and he stops talking. Taking a calming breath, he pulls out his phone.
His face is back to its expressionless state, but I think I briefly glimpsed some emotion there. Was he about to say, “They’re making me mad” or “They’re making me look bad”? I don’t mind if it’s actually the latter. Maybe if he thinks these criminals don’t respect him and are about to ruin his reputation by taking his aunt, he might be more motivated to help her. Or maybe I’m being unfair, and he genuinely cares about his aunt.
“You mentioned there was a Russian nurse at NYU Langone,” Joe says. “Her name was Olga, right?”
“Yes,” I say cautiously. “Why? Do you think she had anything to do with this?”
“Put in your number,” Joe says instead of answering and hands me his iPhone.
I take the phone and note he created a new contact in his phonebook, calling me “bro2.” I doubt it’s because he’s particularly fond of me. It’s far more likely he used that term because there’s no word for cousin in Russian. Instead of cousin, you use the word brother, but add a degree of separation to it. For example, Joe and I are secondary brothers, because our parents are brother and sister—kind of like how the term first cousins gives the same information. I wonder if this nomenclature results in cousins feeling more like family in the Russian-speaking part of the world. I certainly felt like Joe was my brother when we arrived in the US, but that quickly changed. Having said all that, Joe speaks English much better than Russian, having arrived here when he was just a kid. So maybe he meant “bro” as a kind of English slang, since he has another “bro” in his phone already. Still, even that suggests a closeness we don’t really share, at least as far as I know.
Seeing the irritation on my cousin’s face, I focus on the task at hand and put in my phone number.
“Check if you got my text,” he says and types something into his phone.
“You have a text from Joseph Cohen,” a German-accented voice says from my phone.
My uncle raises an eyebrow. “Should I read it?”
“No,” I respond and tilt the phone toward me. Joe’s message is just an ellipsis. “Einstein, please save this as a new contact and rename it Joe.”
“I’ll be in touch,” Joe says and turns on his heels. When he’s almost by the door, he says over his shoulder, “I expect updates on the technical solutions when you have them.”
Before I get a chance to come up with some witty but safe reply, Joe is gone.
My uncle is left standing with an uncomfortable expression on his face. I know this isn’t the first time his son has put him in an awkward position. Probably more like the millionth time. I can’t even fathom what it must feel like to be the father of a guy like Joe, especially when you’re as chill of an individual as Uncle Abe is. In that family, the apple fell so far from the tree it didn’t even land in the same garden.
“I think he’ll help,” my uncle finally says. He looks like he’s trying to think of the right words, but he ends up only adding, “Just be careful.”
I nod, ignoring the throbbing in my temples.
“Did you eat?” my uncle asks, and I recognize an attempt to change the subject.
“No,” I say. “Think you can bring me something light?”
Looking relieved, Uncle Abe asks me what I want, and I request fruit and Jell-O. In truth, I don’t think I can stomach something even that low-cal, but I’m too exhausted for any more conversation and could use a moment to close my eyes.
As soon as he leaves, I fumble with the bed controls to make the mattress flat and doze off.
I wake up to voices and a sharp pain enveloping my whole body. Breathing hurts, shifting on the bed hurts, and even thinking hurts. All remnants of the pain medication must’ve gotten flushed out of my system while I was sleeping. As a cherry on top, I also feel my bladder starting to complain.
“He’s been sleeping since I left to get food,” my uncle says. “Dr. Katz suggested I let him sleep, so I stepped out to buy him some clothes to replace the ones he bled on.”
Ada nods. “Good thinking. He might want to be awake for this, but maybe we should let him sleep a little longer.”
“I’m awake,” I croak and open my eyes. “How did it go?” I give Ada’s messenger bag a meaningful look.
“I’m almost done with the app,” Ada says. “I submitted the code to my own personal Git repository and asked Mitya to review it. Do you want to take a look? I can walk you through it.”
“Yes, please. Anything I can do to help.”
Ada gets her laptop out, and I put my bed into a sitting position. She places the computer in front of me, and I examine her code.
Now, I’m no programing novice. My MIT Bachelor’s degree was in Computer Science, and they don’t give you that without forcing you to get your hands dirty. More importantly, my very first job was as a C++ developer at a startup. I did that for a few years before I made enough money to start my venture capital fund. Though I was a good programmer, I admit the money had less to do with my coding skills than luck—or rather my uncanny skill at picking good companies, as I prefer to think of it. That startup gave me a load of stock options, which went through the roof when they had an IPO.
This is all to say that when I think Ada’s code looks too clever, it doesn’t mean I’m too dumb to get it, though I guess someone too dumb might say something similar. It’s just that, like with some of her speeches, Ada didn’t bother making this code easy to read. To be fair, as a bit of code that’s meant to be used once and thrown away, its illegibility might be excused, especially since she wrote it in a rush. But part of me cringes whenever I see her use the more obscure “?” format for her conditional statements instead of “If, else.” Call me lazy, but something like “if statementVar==true, consequenceOfTruth, else consequenceOfFalsehood,” reads much better to me than “statementVar?consequenceOfTruth:consequenceOfFalsehood.” She also didn’t include any comments explaining her code. Yet despite all these minor gripes, I get the feeling I’m looking at the work of a genius as I review line after line of the app.
I get so engrossed in the code that I automatically accept and eat the fruit salad my uncle brought me and then gobble down the Jell-O.
“I don’t know what any of the APIs you invoked do,” I say at the end. “But aside from that, this all looks good to me.”
What I don’t say is that I’m slightly disappointed by how error-free it all is. Had I found something wrong with her code, I could’ve shown off my skills. Then again, since this stuff will be running in my head, and since its purpose is locating Mom, Ada’s competency is a good thing.
“Great,” she says. “While we wait for Mitya’s feedback, should we proceed with the next part of the plan?”
She glances at my uncle. Her unasked question is obvious. Do we want to do the Brainocyte thing in front of him?
“Uncle Abe, can you please get me more food?” I ask. “Maybe mashed potatoes?”
If my uncle caught on to our scheme, he doesn’t show it. He simply says, “Ah, you’re getting your appetite back.”
In the Russian culture, having a good appetite and, relatedly, being slightly overweight is a sign of health. As a result, my grandmother had always tried to overfeed me.
“Yes,” I lie. “Starving.”
“How about you, Ada?” my uncle asks. “Can I get you anything?”
“I had a smoothie on the way, thanks,” she says. She watches my uncle leave before retrieving the giant syringe from her bag.
“Ready?” she asks and approaches my IV bag.
“I guess.” I look at the needle in her hand with distrust.
“Look, Mike, I can see you don’t like hospital stuff. I understand. I don’t like it either. After my mom got sick…”
Ada’s eyes look distant, and it’s clear she’s reliving the day her mom succumbed to cancer. I want to jump up and give her a comforting hug, but since I don’t think it would be appropriate, I just say, “It’s okay. Let’s do this.”
“You sure?” she asks, regaining her composure.
“Just one question,” I say. “Do you know what you’re doing?”
“Yes, I’ve done something like this before.” She rubs the corner of her eye with her finger. “You’ll be fine. I promise.”
She puts her hand on mine and gives it a gentle, reassuring squeeze. In an ironic turn of events, she’s the one comforting me.
I wish I knew where Ada got her unshakable optimism from, but I do feel a modicum better. Capitalizing on this, I remind myself that what’s about to happen is critical to locating Mom. I also tell myself that my fear of all things medical is irrational, a condition I developed from getting my teeth drilled without anesthesia—something that isn’t relevant to my current situation.
When I feel like my voice won’t quiver, I swallow and say, “Yes, I’m ready.”
Ada doesn’t give me a chance to change my mind. In a swift, confident move, she sticks the needle into the IV the way I saw the nurse do to Mom what feels like a year ago.
The clear liquid fills the bag, and the Brainocytes start their trek up my veins.