Trent had placed this typed transcript on Dopp’s desk with a sigh, his best portrayal of disgruntlement.
“Nothing?” Dopp asked.
“I’m sorry. That time with her was useless.”
“Not good. She needs a push, a reminder of your trustworthiness.”
“What do you suggest?”
Dopp’s response was one Trent thought of now, as he caressed Arianna’s smooth hand. The plan needed to be made; it was dangerous to procrastinate. He asked about her plans for New Year’s Eve, the following Saturday night.
She shrugged. “I don’t have any yet.”
“Well, do you want to go to dinner with Megan and maybe my friend Jed again?”
The words felt like a dirty solicitation.
“Sure. I know she wants to meet you. And Jed seemed nice. Maybe they’ll hit it off.” She looked pleased at the idea.
“They might.” Sure, he thought, right after Jed brings flowers to your sickbed.
He caught her staring past him, looking wistfully at his Yamaha keyboard.
“Can I play it?” she asked.
“Of course.”
They rose from the table and squeezed onto the tiny leather seat in front of the keyboard. She picked out a few white and black keys before stumbling over the first few measures of Beethoven’s “Für Elise.”
“That’s all I know,” she said.
“Did you ever want to learn?”
“Always. I just never got around to it.” She looked down for a moment and then back at him. “What do you like to play?”
“Would you like to hear ‘Für Elise’?”
“Show me how it’s done.”
At the touch of his fingers, Beethoven’s melody sprang from the keys, flush with tension and nuanced by careful dynamics. Trent’s hands swept over rapid passages without compromising the pace. Each note lured his hands into the next chord and the next theme; the memory of the piece lived in his callused fingertips, crowded there with dozens of other pieces he had studied and loved. She applauded when he rested on the final chord.
“I knew you played piano, but I had no idea you played.”
He laughed. “It’s just a hobby. Thank you, though.”
She seized his hands, inspecting his fingers. “Who knew that these hairy hot dogs could pull off something like that?”
He laughed again, returning to that shifting, precious interval between bouts of anxiety. But the relief began to erode as soon as he became aware of it, like the edge of consciousness that splinters dreams. Trying to hold on to the feeling, he kissed her, and an idea struck him: it was one that would help enrich her days and, as a result, maybe help assuage some of his duplicitous guilt.
* * *
There was only one thing on Arianna’s mind as she rushed to the lab the next morning, black case in hand: the progress of the research. But as she passed Washington Square Park, she saw a little boy a few yards ahead of her walking awkwardly next to his mother. His right foot twitched and stomped with each step as he held his mother’s hand to stay balanced. As Arianna observed the pair, she noticed an orange rubber bracelet around the mother’s wrist: the awareness-raising accessory of the MS Walks Foundation, a nonprofit that sponsored charity walks to raise money for research. Arianna’s heart sank for them both—it was one thing to face the disease as an adult with access to a possible cure, but it was another to be a child or a parent staring down a lifetime of suffering.
“Can I play with them, Mommy?” the boy asked, pointing to the park, where a handful of kids were kicking a soccer ball.
The mother glanced at the kids with unmistakable longing. “Not today I’m afraid, sweetie.”
Arianna yearned to rush up and put her arms around the woman, and to tell her son that one day, he might be able to play any sport he wanted. They just had to hold on a bit longer … hopefully not too much longer.…
The pair took no notice of her as she hurried past them, forcing her numb ankle to cooperate. It seemed she could not reach the lab fast enough. As she knocked on the door to deliver embryos, it felt like a relief to be so close to the source of her obsession.
Patrick opened the door and smiled for the first time all week. Her heart fluttered; progress?
“How’s it going?” she asked.
“Better, now that we have more embryos.”
She walked in and saw Sam peering into a microscope, his shoulders hunched. He did not look up.
“He’s checking cells he altered the other day,” Patrick explained.
Arianna’s eyes widened. “So this could be it?”
Patrick looked hesitant. “It could be. But we test cells all the time.”
“But eventually you’ll hit on something. Statistically, you have to!”
A kind smile flickered on his lips, but Arianna could not read the emotion in his eyes. Was it hope, she wondered—or a tacit recognition of naïveté, a lament of idealism?
“You guys have come a long way,” she said firmly. “It could happen any time.”
She thought of the progress the scientists had made in the six months since they began researching: They had already coaxed the stem cells—total blanks—to differentiate into neuroprogenitor cells, the necessary first step before the cells could specify further into oligodendrocytes. These were the golden ticket, the crucial cells that could regenerate her spinal cord. But what would precipitate their occurrence remained a glaring unknown. They had to stumble upon the right combination of growth factors to coax the altered cells to differentiate the proper way. The growth factors were some series of molecular cues that would be injected into the cells to stimulate genes to make certain proteins that biologically spelled
