’cause he’s messing with the wrong guy. I can get his nice car towed tonight, and it ain’t goin’ to the pound.”
“Yes, I’m sure you can. That’s what keeps me honest in our relationship.”
Hooper laughed, then added, “One other thing. He mentioned that I might ask one of the bankers Higgins mentioned when we talked this afternoon. He said if I wanted dirt on our friend to ask him, because he thought he had been literally and figuratively fucking her back in their Morgan days.”
Trotter frowned. “Which one?”
“The thick guy with the short hair,” Hooper said.
“Now, that
“Got it,” Hooper said.
As Trotter hung up the phone, he smiled. “Edmund, you rogue.”
19.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER NEW YORK CITY MARCH 3, 2011, 9:02 P.M.
Pia waited more than two and a half hours for Rothman and Yamamoto to finish their work in the BSL-3 lab. She spent the time productively reading papers on tissue engineering and organ printing on the Internet, which is what she would have been doing anyway if she’d gone back to the dorm. As the time had passed and her empty stomach growled, she became progressively concerned it had something to do with her being late two days in a row. Eventually, Rothman and Yamamoto appeared. Yamamoto immediately left. Rothman wordlessly waved for her to join him in his office, where he got straight to the point.
“I want to talk to you about the future. Your future. I need to know that you are committed to this work.”
“I am, truly,” Pia said. She was panicked. “I know I was late this morning-”
“You were late two mornings in a row, at least according to Miss Langman.”
“I’m sorry . . .” Pia stammered. Her fears were coming to pass.
“It doesn’t help to be sorry,” Rothman shot back. “I’m concerned about what it implies.”
“I will make sure it never happens again,” Pia offered.
Rothman waved her off. “Let me speak while I’m inclined to do so. As you know, I’m not accustomed to talking too much about this kind of nonsense. I don’t have the time. Last year I confided in you some information about myself because I had been progressively confident that you were turning out to be the person I thought you could be. Remember, as I told you, I played a role in getting you admitted when others on that damn admissions committee where I was forced to serve were reluctant because of your foster care experience. Since I had the same experience, I thought you might have promise of being a researcher.”
“I’ve come to the same conclusion,” Pia blurted.
“Don’t interrupt!” Rothman snapped. “Last year when I told you those secrets about me that are only known by my wife, bless her soul for putting up with me, concerning my foster care history and my Asperger’s, I wasn’t completely open. I said my sons were not as healthy as I would like. To be more specific, not only are they too on the Asperger’s spectrum, but even worse, they have type 1 diabetes. Having passed on the Asperger’s was reason enough for guilt and depression. The diabetes has put it over the top. The main reason I’ve turned to stem cell work is to see that my boys are cured in my lifetime. It’s a quest that pulled me out of a serious bout of depression. Depression has been my bete noire.”
“I’m so sorry to hear about your boys,” Pia offered.
“I’m not telling you this to elicit any sympathy. I’m telling you this so that you understand me better. I have never ever agreed to mentor anyone, and it is not just because my Asperger’s puts me at a social disadvantage. I feel I don’t have the time for other people’s nonsense, and this includes Ph.D. students as well as medical students. You were a first. I thought your foster care experience would make you thrive in the lonely pursuit of science and that you should have been given a chance.”
“I think you’re right,” Pia said. “I know I struggle with social issues as well.”
“Pia, commitment to research has to be total. Two days ago you came in here and told me that, yes, you were going to take me up on my offer to do your Ph.D. here in my lab. At the same time you told me you were going to do a simultaneous residency in internal medicine. And then you expected me to be pleased. Pia, that old myth of the doctor doing both clinical medicine and research at the same time is totally passe. It wasn’t even true when it was current. Research is more than a full-time job.”
For one of the first times in their three and a half years of knowing each other, Pia and Rothman held each other’s eyes. It was a kind of Mexican standoff. Both were conflicted. Pia had struggled hard and surmounted considerable obstacles in her drive to become a doctor. And now she was so close. In months she would be getting her M.D. degree. The problem was she wouldn’t yet be a doctor, one that can get a license from the state. A resident was on his or her way to becoming a real doctor. If she didn’t take a residency, she’d always be a medical student with an M.D.
Both individuals looked away.
“I realize that I’m hard to read,” Rothman said, breaking a short silence, “or at least my wife tells me so. She advised me to have a conversation with you.”
“She knows about me?”
“She knows about everything in my life. It is the only way we could have survived as a couple. I’m not easy to live with.”
Rothman had been rehearsing this speech for days so he was relatively comfortable once he had started talking.
“What I seek in a colleague is commitment. A med school graduate knows nothing. No offense. But if they’re able to pass through medical school it means they have the basic intellectual wherewithal to do research. After the initial flash of inspiration that tells you what to look for, most of the success in research lies in doggedness. In covering every angle, tracking down every lead. I’m mixing metaphors but you know what I mean. Dr. Yamamoto was in fact a rather mediocre student, but he exhibited more application than ten other men who had better grades. I can already tell what kind of doctors your colleagues will be. Ms. Wong is desperate to help sick people, and she’ll be very good at it. Mr. McKinley will probably end up doing something flashy but unchallenging, like surgery, and worse yet, plastic surgery.”
Pia didn’t know what to say.
“I’m pleased you made the right decision about the nuns. It shows me that you’re orienting yourself in the direction of research, but I don’t want you to make the same mistakes I made. For me, doing a residency in internal medicine was a big waste of time.”
Rothman paused.
“I think we’re similar in a number of ways.”
Pia’s eyes opened wide, and she flushed and looked down at her feet. She didn’t share Rothman’s newfound comfort in discussing such personal matters.
“I need more help here. Dr. Yamamoto can’t do everything, and I can’t rely on med students rotating in and out of the lab. No offense. The two of us are spread thin, working on salmonella and organogenesis at the same time. But the university is committed to helping us, and I hope we’ll be able to add laboratory staff and take over more lab space to ramp up our organogenesis work. We need at least another researcher. Which is why I’m talking to you about commitment. Although I usually have no time for excuses, tell me why you were late the last couple of days.”
“There’s no excuse, really,” Pia admitted. “But I’ve been having trouble sleeping.” Silently she cursed George for her getting accustomed to him waking her up even though she knew it was totally unfair.
“Why have you been having trouble sleeping? Anxiety?”
“Nightmares.”
“About what, if I may ask?”
“Childhood memories. Ancient history.”
