Nathan opened his eyes to find Grace sitting next to him. Usually, she was so placid and composed that she reminded him of one of those medieval paintings of angels. This evening, though, she looked angry and agitated. Her short brunette hair was all messed up and her green-gray eyes were as dark as a stormy sea.
‘Hi,’ he slurred. He was still recovering from the general anesthetic. He lifted his left hand and saw that it was covered by a large polythene glove. Inside the glove, his fingers were mottled red and tightly curled over, although he wasn’t feeling any pain. A cannula had been inserted in his right wrist and connected to both a saline drip and a morphine dispenser.
‘Why the hell did you do it?’ Grace snapped at him. ‘There are plenty of ways to win an argument without setting yourself on fire.’
‘Not this argument.’
‘I don’t understand this at all. Haven’t you always said that you get your own way by persuasion, not by violence? You’ve told Denver that often enough.’
‘This wasn’t violence. I didn’t hurt anybody else.’
‘It was violence. It was violence against yourself, and Ron Kasabian, and most of all it was violence against me and Denver. How are you going to make a living with only one hand?’
‘I won’t have to, believe me.’
‘Oh, no? I talked to Doctor Berman after your operation and be said that the burns were so deep that your hand is going to be permanently scarred and contracted. It could take months for you to heal, and I’m still going to end up with a husband who has one hand and one monkey’s paw.’
‘Grace, sweetheart, I knew exactly what I was doing, believe me. Ron was going to pull the plug on us. We got as far as creating the phoenix, for sure, but the whole project is going to be meaningless unless we can show what the phoenix is for.’
Grace shook her head. ‘You’re crazy. You’re crazy and you’re thoughtless and I’m very, very angry with you. In fact I hate you for doing this.’
Nathan reached out and tried to take hold of her hand, but she snatched it out of reach.
‘Don’t you believe in me any longer?’ he asked her. ‘For all of these years, you’ve always believed in me. Even when I couldn’t find funding. Even when every research institute between here and Seattle turned me down flat.’
Grace’s eyes were crowded with tears. ‘Supposing I set fire to myself? How would you feel about that?’
‘Not very happy, it’s true. But this is different. Ron Kasabian refused to pay for any clinical tests on burns patients, so what option did I have?’
‘What are you telling me, Nathan? You mean you deliberately turned yourself into a guinea pig?’
‘Come on, Grace. I couldn’t ask anybody else to do it, could I?’
‘Do you know something? You’re much crazier than I thought. I thought you did this because you were angry. I thought you did it to shock Ron Kasabian. But you didn’t, did you? You did it coolly and calmly and deliberately.’
‘Well, I wasn’t exactly cool and calm. And it hurt like hell.’
‘I don’t know what to say. You’ve left me speechless.’
‘Don’t say anything yet. You can give me a hard time if this doesn’t work out, but I can promise you that it will.’ He paused, and then he repeated, ‘I promise you.’
Grace tugged a tissue from the box beside Nathan’s bed, and wiped her eyes. He felt terrible, hurting her like this, but Ron Kasabian hadn’t given him any other choice, apart from abandoning the cryptozoological program altogether, and that would have been like asking Vincent Van Gogh to give up painting.
‘Do you have your cell with you?’ he asked her. ‘I want to call Aarif.’
‘You don’t have to call Aarif. Aarif is right outside – and Kavita, too.’
‘I’m touched. I really am.’
Grace gave him a tight, humorless smile. ‘Yes. Touched. I guess that’s one way of putting it.’
*
Aarif and Kavita came into the room. Kavita was carrying a bouquet of purple orchids and a box of maple candies, while Aarif had brought a selection of books and magazines, including Playboy and National Geographic. They dragged chairs over to his bedside and sat looking at him with a mixture of admiration and disbelief.
‘How does it feel now, Professor – your hand?’ Aarif asked him. He was wearing a brown knitted skullcap and a floppy brown sweater, and he looked more like a member of the Taliban than a research zoologist.
‘It’s starting to throb some,’ Nathan admitted, in a hoarse, whispery voice. ‘But I have morphine on demand if it starts to hurt too much. How’s Torchy?’
‘Oh, Torchy’s fine,’ said Kavita. Her glossy black hair was parted in the center and braided, and she was wearing a black turtleneck sweater and at least a dozen Navajo bead bracelets. ‘He’s eating well, all of his vital signs are excellent, and he really seems to have adapted to his environment. He’s even started to warble. I’ve made some recordings.’
Aarif said, ‘We are not being closed down immediately. Mr Kasabian is giving us a month to wind up the project and finish up all of our notes.’
‘Oh, very generous of him,’ said Nathan. ‘Hopefully, that’s as much as we’re going to need.’
‘You should not have burned yourself, Professor,’ Aarif told him, in a grave tone. ‘You should have thought of what they say in Egypt, that the barking of a dog should not disturb the man on a camel.’
‘I understand what you’re saying. Unfortunately, this particular dog happens to finance my camel.’
‘I’ve told Nathan myself that it was a crazy thing to do,’ Grace put in. ‘Crazy, and selfish.’
‘But it is done now, Doctor Underhill,’ said Aarif. ‘We cannot extinguish a flame that is now only the memory of a flame. We have to do everything we can to restore Professor Underhill’s hand. I presume, Professor, that you will be wanting me to extract stem cells from the phoenix and bring them here.’
‘First thing tomorrow,’ Nathan told him.
‘Are you going to tell Doctor Berman what you’re doing?’ asked Grace.
‘Of course not. He’d be too worried about a malpractice suit if anything went wrong.’
‘But what would happen to you, if anything went wrong?’
‘Grace – nothing is going to go wrong. I’m injecting myself with avian pluripotent stem cells, that’s all, which potentially have the capability of rapidly healing burns. The very worst that can happen is that nothing happens, and that I’m stuck for the rest of my life with this monkey’s paw, as you call it.’
‘Well, terrific. But I still think you need to tell Doctor Berman, out of professional courtesy, if nothing else.’
‘I’ll think about it, OK?’
‘No you damn well won’t. I know you.’
Kavita stood up and walked around Nathan’s bed and laid her hand on Grace’s shoulder. ‘Doctor Underhill, I know that you must be finding this very frustrating and very hard to understand. But Aarif and I have been working every day with Professor Underhill on the phoenix project and we both have such faith in what he is doing, and such respect for what he has achieved.’
‘Well, so do I,’ said Grace. ‘But to burn his own hand, for God’s sake—’
‘I was as shocked as everybody else,’ said Kavita. ‘But many pioneering scientists take terrible risks with their health and even their lives. Think of Marie Curie. She used to carry test tubes of radium around in her apron pocket, and she died of anemia. Think of Jeremiah Abalaka. He injected himself six times with HIV-positive blood to test his AIDS vaccine. Or Daniel Carrion, who infected himself with pus from a chronic skin lesion, to prove that it also caused Oroya fever. Which it did, and which killed him.’
Grace looked up at her and said, ‘All right, Kavita. I’ll give it five days. But if I see any deterioration in Nathan’s condition, I’m going to tell Doctor Berman myself.’
‘That’s fine,’ said Nathan. ‘Five days will be plenty.’
Grace stood up. ‘I should go now. Denver will be home at ten thirty, and I’m sure you three have a whole lot to talk about.’ She leaned over and gave Nathan a kiss.
‘I’m sorry I’ve upset you so much,’ he told her. ‘But trust me – please.’
‘Let’s wait and see,’ she said. ‘But this is one time when I really want you to prove me wrong.’