“We’re finally going to get back on track,” she said. “Once those embryos are in Sam’s hands, I’ll feel so much better.”
“Me, too. And with the eggs from today, we’ll have more embryos ready, let’s see—” He counted five fingers in the air. “—next Wednesday. So Sam will have a continual supply again. No more gap days.”
Arianna smiled, thinking of Sam’s wry sense of humor. “It sounds like SADFACE finally found its slogan,” she mused. “No more gap days.”
* * *
Sam Lisio was terrible at waiting. With no embryos to research for several days, and thus, no means of productivity, he returned home after spending hours in the lab cloning replacements. The process was monotonous, constantly splitting embryos at the four-cell stage to coax out more and more clones. At last, when several hundred petri dishes of tiny embryos filled the incubator, Sam felt it was enough. That large a reserve would take months to deplete, he reasoned. Months they didn’t have anyway.
The new clones would soon need to be frozen, but in the meantime, Sam had nothing to do. So he went to his apartment, which felt less like home and more like a temporary holding cell.
As soon as he opened the door, he dumped his duffel bag on the floor and went straight to the kitchen, stopping in front of a particular wooden cabinet above the sink. Its bronze handle was rubbed down to a dull yellow. He grabbed it and swung open the door, feeling a familiar heady anticipation. Inside the cabinet stood deliciously full bottles of liquor: whiskey, rum, vodka, and scotch. Hesitating only briefly, he seized each bottle and emptied them, one by one, into the sink.
He did not trust himself to be patient the right way; it was far too tempting to be alone in his apartment with nothing but pressure and worry as his constant companions. Once stripped of his only desirable means of escape, he let the hours wash over him, hoping their ebb and flow would begin to soothe him into sleep. Instead, time seemed to stagnate like a swamp, and he felt stuck in its dense muck. Fully clothed and awake on his bed, Sam pictured the blue eyes that had looked at him so tenderly in the lab. His heart began to race as the memory replayed: he pacing and talking, she sitting and listening.
“But this technique has never been tried on humans.”
He’d stopped pacing, and at the moment he felt his own worry and longing burst forth onto his face—their eyes met.
In that moment, some kind of understanding had passed between them. Could she have read him, and mirrored his sentiment in a glance? Or was she simply thrusting all her hope upon the one man who could save her?
Could he?
To find the combination of growth factors that yielded oligos was the key, and he knew he was close. Yet so many critical hours were passing by, delivering no change except for the further deterioration of her spinal cord.
How much would these five wasted days matter?
It was the main question Sam obsessed over as he plodded through the time, alternately studying his notes long after he had memorized them, cursing the DEP, and thinking of her. When she unexpectedly stopped by with takeout on Saturday night, he had to hide his disproportionate joy at seeing her, and his devastation at seeing her wheelchair. He wondered if she might mention their charged glance in the lab; part of him wished she would. But she did not, and craven as he was, the topic was never broached.
Sunday’s arrival felt like the landing of a trans-Atlantic flight: a thrilling moment, even though all he did to reach it was wait. At last the five days were over, although their damage done. But ahead lay an uninterrupted week of research, an hourglass dripping golden sand.
When Megan arrived at the lab that morning with the black case, he hugged her as soon as she stepped into the basement.
“That was out of character,” she joked.
He only smiled and unloaded his precious red flasks, each one a vase cradling a rare seed of hope. One, two, three, he counted … nine altogether. A foreign feeling overcame him as he held each flask, and after a moment, he realized it was sentimentality. In the potential for life, he thought, there was so much promise for those already living.
Megan watched him carefully place each flask into the incubator. “There are also five egg cells in a special flask that Arianna labeled for you. She told me you needed them.”
“We better.”
“Do you think you will?”
Sam paused. He knew that the longer he waited to answer, the less legitimate his confidence would sound, but he couldn’t lie either. “Whether we will in time, I don’t know.”
Megan lifted her chin slightly up and down, her nose twitching.
Aware that she might start to cry, Sam turned away and carried the now-empty black case to the freezer. Without speaking, he loaded it with flasks of cloned embryos that awaited their final destination in the clinic’s freezer.
“Are you going to have enough clones after this to account for the next batch of embryos?” Megan asked him from behind. “Arianna told me they’ll be ready in a few more days, on Wednesday.”
Sam turned around and, seeing her composure, relaxed. “I made a few hundred clones last week, so I don’t have to waste time on that BS anymore, or worry about shortages.”
Megan sighed. “At least you’re prepared. Arianna told me that same inspector showed up every day last week.”
“I know. And the bastard will probably show up every day this week. If he could, I bet he would rent out one of her examining rooms and sleep there.”
Megan rolled her eyes and reached out for the filled case Sam handed back to her. “I wouldn’t speak too soon.”
* * *
Sunday night, Trent reluctantly found himself on a train to Long Island at the behest of his mother to come home for a family
