business part?”
He shrugged. “I’ll help.”
Eva said, “Marta. This is not, ‘Eva’s going behind our back’ but ‘Eva’s taking on the crappy part of the job so her friend can study.’”
“I’ll think about it,” said Marta.
“Think about it?” Eva shot back, as close to shouting as she might ever come. “Think about what? What are you going to do, spend the rest of your life cataloging plants that are going extinct? Here you have a chance to do something real. Catalog, my ass. Let’s build something. Take that brain of yours”—she reached up and tapped Marta’s forehead with two stubby fingers—“and use it on something practical.”
Marta winced at the touch. “I don’t know,” she said. “There’s an awful lot to find and preserve. That could take me the rest of my life.”
Jim broke in. He positioned himself slightly between Marta and Eva. Marta relaxed. He said to her, “Didn’t you tell me that Abuela said the same thing? That you could teach the doctors? Maybe this is your destiny. Here’s a chance to find out.”
“Maybe after finals,” Marta allowed.
“Meantime, Marta? Approve the damned application. Deadline is tomorrow.”
“I’ll look it over. No promises. I guess I’m a bit miffed. You bring this to us as a
Eva mimicked,
Marta reviewed the grant application. “Okay, I’ll do it. I have to admit that it’s well-organized. Your writing is easy to read and it has enough detail to demonstrate the project’s feasibility. You did a good job. And I can use something from El Yunque, from Abuela. I might even help the world understand the Taino culture.”
But before Marta and Eva could tackle nanoassembly they had to tackle final exams. Weather conditions conspired to make life miserable late in April, a time that is filled with flowers and robins and budding trees everywhere except in Boston, which might as well have been in a weather quarantine. Lowering gray skies unleashed daggers of sleet that etched their faces. Acres of half-melted snow conspired to trap the exhausted collegians’ feet. Around them, unsuspecting pedestrians stepped into curbside potholes, ankle-deep with dirty slush. They cursed the weather, cursed their drenched feet and, for good measure, cursed each other.
And yet… winter must stand aside for spring’s arrival, even in Boston. Final exams and meteorological ordeals were over. The morning of June 7 was a smile after winter’s glower. Snow was a melted memory. Sunshine swept aside the gloom and Marta’s misgivings. She had linked to Eva to congratulate her on a successful proposal and its funding and to tell her how much she looked forward to independent work.
“When my grandmother told me I’d be teaching doctors about our healing plants, I thought she was being, well, unrealistic, shall we say. Eva—thank you.”
Now Eva waited for Marta on a bench outside the Northwest Science building. The massive steel and glass- fronted building was a research center for neurosciences, bioengineering, systems biology, and computational analysis. It stood near Harvard’s museums and Harvard Yard—’Hahvahd Yahd’ in the local dialect—and was surrounded by a manicured expanse of grass and trees, green with new life.
Jim waited with her. He was excited too, and brought coffee and bagels. The baby was due any day, and Jim used every break in his schedule to be with his wife.
“The sunshine is a good omen,” Jim said.
Eva gave him a sideways glance. “You sound like Marta. She thinks everything is an omen. Where is she, anyway?”
“There.” Jim pointed across a wide lawn. “She’s walking kind of slow. Her due date is in two weeks.”
“Guess we can cut Plant Lady some slack. She looks like a whale.”
“I’m not quite sure that calling her a whale goes with cutting her some slack. At least, don’t say it to her face. She’s a bit sensitive about her size.”
“How about ‘massively pregnant’?”
“Oh, yeah, that’ll work just fine. Folks, meet Eva Rozen, diplomat.”
“At least you understand me, lover boy,” she said. They watched Marta hobble towards them. She added, “That’ll be your legacy, Jimmy.”
“What, the baby?”
“No. The epitath. I can see it on your gravestone, ‘He, alone, understood Eva Rozen.’”
Jim looked at her. “You’re not getting all sappy on me, now, are you?”
Eva punched him on the shoulder. Hard. “That answer your question?”
Marta reached them. “Well, here we are. How exciting.” That was as far as she got. Her face took on a look of surprise, her lips formed a tight circle as she mouthed the single word, “Oh!” then expanded that to, “Oh, crap.” Wet slacks clung to her legs. A small puddle appeared on the sidewalk.
“What’s going on, Marta?” Jim asked.
Marta looked surprised. She managed, “My water just broke. You may need to start without me.” She sat heavily on the bench, looked at her husband and colleague. She smiled and tried to apologize. Instead, she fainted.
She recovered in seconds, grimacing with the pain of her first contraction. Jim and Eva sat her on the lawn. They looked like three students enjoying the sunshine before classes.
“Well,” said Marta, “the timing is a bit awkward. I guess I should go pack a few things and maybe get to the med center.” Then, ashen-faced, she rolled onto her side in the grips of another contraction, even more intense, by the look on her face. Eva recognized that Marta’s labor had begun in earnest—a precipitous delivery. She touched her datasleeve, jacked into the Science Building’s datapillar and ran through a checklist to determine the immediate care that Marta might require.
Most of the students milling in the courtyard were medical students and it seemed as if each one of them wanted a head start at building a practice—with Marta as their first patient. There was one small impediment to the mob of Samaritan attention: Eva Rozen decided that she would organize Marta’s care. She barked orders to several nearby students.
“Get out of here, you morons!” to the three closest gawkers. They were not in the way, but the command helped Eva warm to her task. To another, “You? You want to make yourself useful? Get an ambulance. We’re going to the Med Center, stat.” Harvard Medical Center was nearby.
She pointed to a third student, a tall onlooker who had made the mistake of stopping to take in the excitement. “Give me your shirt,” she said.
“What?”
“Take off that ugly crimson shirt, you idiot.” Crimson was Harvard’s school color. “This woman needs something under her head. Give me your shirt or I’ll take it off you. Now!” The prospective donor started to laugh until he caught Eva’s glare. Then he stood, slack-jawed, a rodent in thrall to Eva’s unblinking python gaze. Without a word, he stripped and handed his shirt to Eva. The shirt was brand new, its bright white letters unsoiled. A single word, broken into three syllables, “Ve- Ri- Tas”, proclaimed the college’s commitment to truth. Eva tucked the shirt under Marta’s head.
Eva felt the presence of the half-naked donor and looked back up at him. His face twitched. An overpowering impulse welled up from the deep recesses of primal instinct and flooded him with one half of the fight-or-flight impulse. He ran.
The ambulance arrived twelve minutes later. The EMTs were calm and concerned. “Ma’am? Can you tell me what’s wrong,” one asked Marta. Marta didn’t respond. She was in thrall to the powerful contractions. This would be a fast labor.
Eva stepped forward and barked orders in a machine gun cadence that would please a drill sergeant. She kicked at one of the EMTs when he ignored her, concentrating instead on Marta. Her foot missed him but her message did not. She had the attendant’s full attention. She grabbed his elbow and pointed to the ground.
“Look. Blood in the amniotic fluid,” Eva said. She pointed to a dark spot where Marta’s water broke. “There. Now look at her. She’s starting contractions. This is going to be a precipitous delivery. She needs to get to the hospital. Stat. I’m going to ask you nicely, so we don’t upset the mother or the baby.”
Eva lowered her voice. The EMT leaned in to hear her whisper,
