As gracious and endearing as James was being, Quinn had to admit to questioning whether the whole hero angle was the right approach for a kid like Molly—whether it might lead to even more gut punches, or possibly even a graduation to broken noses or dislocated jaws. Perhaps a secret collection of teeth. But Molly seemed to accept her new responsibility with a great deal of dignity and poise, and afterward they all went out for sprinkle-dipped custard and then to the playground, where Molly kept an eye on the smaller kids to make sure they were safe, and even relocated several insects she found in the grass far enough away that they would not get trampled. That night, while they were tucking her in, she explained that Molly Mitchell was her “altered ego,” but that her hero name was “the Scorpion.” Earlier that week, her class had gone on a field trip to the Natural History Museum in D.C., and one of the insect zoo curators offered to let someone hold a shiny black arachnid. Nobody stepped up except for Molly, who—according to what had already become well-established Sunrise Elementary lore—showed absolutely no fear whatsoever. The teacher took a picture and sent it home, and Quinn could barely even stand to look at it. That kid clearly had something inside her that Quinn did not. Whatever it was, it must have come from her father.
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During the long flight from Zürich to Joint Base Andrews on the C-130 Hercules with Moretti and his tactical team (terrible conversationalists, by the way, which was just as well given the perpetual pinches of dip in their lower lips and their constant need to spit into their empty energy drink cans), as her mind was trying to anticipate a return to normalcy, it occurred to her how overdue both she and her Honda Clarity were for maintenance. The car needed a new cooling fan; Quinn was delinquent on her mammogram.
Mammograms aren’t like other forms of cancer screening. Quinn recently learned about a woman who had dedicated her life to discovering a universal cancer vaccine, but who somehow ended up pivoting to narcotics manufacturing, and subsequently had to flee the country in order to avoid arrest. For some reason, the woman felt her life was in danger, so her identity and location were being withheld, but according to the segment Quinn watched on the plasma glass in the radiologist’s waiting room, she’d recently returned to the United States and somehow managed to negotiate a plea deal allowing her to participate in a work-release program in partnership with a nonprofit cancer research lab. In her very first week, she released open-source plans for a device as simple to use as a Breathalyzer that she believed would be able to diagnose early-stage lung cancer in seconds and at essentially no cost. Apparently, she’d transformed herself from corporate and social pariah into a public-health folk hero in just weeks.
But mammograms are still stuck in the past. Technicians in cute scrubs use words like “compression” and “tissue,” but the reality is that you’re having your boobs squeezed in a panini press. It is little comfort that the machine uses state-of-the-art particle imaging and detection technology developed for use in the Large Hadron Collider, since it feels like the only carryover from the particle smasher is the smashing part.
Your reward for all this is supposed to be absolutely nothing. As in clean results. You’re supposed to get dressed, hand over your co-pay, and feel good about yourself for being such a grown-up today. Maybe treat yourself to a Starbucks on your way back to work. What you are not supposed to do is be shown to an isolated room at the end of the hall with serene pastel paintings on the walls and boxes of tissues on side tables. And the scans are not supposed to show little white dots in the left breast that were not there before and that you are told are calcium deposits. And the follow-up needle biopsy is supposed to reveal that all of this is actually nothing—just something to keep an eye on—rather than a condition that has a long, hard-to-remember name. During your next consult, you are not supposed to need to take everything off and get into a gown, and there is supposed to be banter between you and your doctor, not silence as the paper crinkles beneath your bottom and she flips through your pathology reports. You are not even supposed to have pathology reports. And you are never ever supposed to hear the words “partial mastectomy” come out of a breast surgeon’s mouth.
But that’s just the technical term, Quinn has been assured. Better to think of it as a surgical biopsy. A more detailed fact-finding mission. And the procedure is minimally invasive. The radar reflectors that the breast surgeon distributed throughout the tissue during yesterday’s quick outpatient pre-op procedure will guide the robotic instruments with unprecedented, submillimeter precision. Sure, she’ll be sore for a few days, and she’ll be more comfortable wearing sports bras for about a week. She’ll want to avoid things like stair-climbers until the discomfort has passed. But that’s about it. And should they find the worst, they have plenty of options. More-aggressive surgery, hormone therapy—even genetically individualized immunotherapy, should she prove to be an ideal candidate. With a healthy lifestyle (keeping her weight down, eating more vegetables, and, sadly,
