Prizes Page 9
As much as possible, he confined his scientific research and worrying to the daylight hours, so that he would not deny Toni her share of his emotional commitment.
Her drive to excel at everything extended to pregnancy as well. By sheer force of will she did not let morning sickness curtail her activities. She never once called Adam at the lab in panic, for she had read enough to be able to recognize Braxton-Hicks contractions as false alarms.
In her thirty-ninth week, Toni went into labor, and expertly breathed her way through the birth of six pound, eight ounce Heather Elizabeth Coopersmith.
Though not the first woman, Toni was, however, the first lawyer to avail herself of the firm’s maternity leave. And then to take advantage of their excellent day-care facilities so she could return to work immediately.
Lisl, who took her job as godmother seriously, felt obliged to express her misgivings. “I know this practice is very much in vogue. But there really is no substitute for the mother in the early months of childhood,” she observed diplomatically.
Toni took this advice as graciously as she could. “What if they have to work?”
“Well yes,” Lisl conceded, “if they have to.”
“Good,” Toni replied pointedly, “because I have to.”
Afterward Toni complained to Adam about what she regarded as Lisl’s excessive interference.
“Next time you have one of your heart-to-hearts with that woman, tell her I agreed to her being a godmother, not a godmother-in-law.”
“She’s genuinely trying to help,” Adam protested.
“She probably is,” Toni acknowledged. “But I can’t help her compensate for not having children of her own.”
At the weekly meeting of his brown-bag staff luncheon, Adam was beaming with joy. He read the information from a computer printout and then crowed:
“We’ve smashed our own record—thanks to the steroids—seventy percent of our worst ‘repeaters’ have finally made it through their first trimester with the pregnancy intact. It’s either a miracle, or we’re geniuses.…”
Len Kutnik, a junior research fellow, grinned. “Can we vote on that, boss?”
“This lab isn’t a democracy, Doctor,” Adam rejoined. “I’ll render my absolute judgment when I see real babies.”
And he did. They then witnessed a surprising development: once these previously unsuccessful women had reached this point, almost all of them proceeded to deliver healthy children on schedule.
But what was the explanation for this happy phenomenon? Why did these patients who malfunctioned so early somehow outgrow their difficulty? The answer might provide a solution to the entire mystery.
As it was, the procedure was far from satisfactory. The pregnant mothers began to resent the side effects of taking steroids: the extra weight, swollen limbs, and bloated faces. Not to mention the risk—in rare cases, to be sure—of glaucoma, diabetes, and functional dependency on the drug. Max Rudolph would never have approved.
Meanwhile, Adam encountered his own unexpected fertility problem. As Heather neared her third birthday he began to rhapsodize about the possibilities of a second child.
“Heather’s a handful already,” Toni countered. “I don’t honestly see how I could manage another little one and my legal practice.”
“They’re not little for long,” he commented.
“I know,” she said. “But I don’t see the need for adding to the world’s overpopulation crisis.”
“This isn’t China, Toni. Besides, it’s a documented fact that only children tend to grow up with more problems.”
“I was an only child,” she reminded him. “I mean, I never lived with my brothers. And it didn’t seem to do me any harm.”
I wouldn’t be so sure, Adam thought to himself. And then said aloud, “Toni, you can’t imagine the heartache I encounter every day. I see women willing to go through the most agonizing procedures just for the privilege—and that’s what it is—of having a kid. And here you are, in perfect health, abdicating the opportunity that other women would kill for. When I come home and little Heather runs to hug me, I feel incredibly blessed.”
“Are you sure there’s no ego involved?” she suggested. “Don’t you maybe think your patients would get a psychological boost from knowing you had lots of children?”
“One child is not lots,” he barked, losing his temper.
“Well, that’s what you say now. But if we came up with another girl, I’m sure you’d want to keep trying until we had a boy.”
“To be honest, maybe I would. It’s hardly an unnatural urge.”
“All right,” she replied, on the verge of losing her temper. “While we’re having this argument, let’s get all the unpleasantness out in the open. I would never have let you call him Max. That’s what you’d want, isn’t it?”
“Not necessarily,” he lied. And then added, tantalizing, “We could always call him Thomas—or even ‘Little Boss.’ ”
To his surprise, she was not enticed.
“Well,” Toni remarked with exasperation, “for once you and my father agree on something. But I refuse to be double-teamed. Whatever you’d call him—the baby still wouldn’t sleep through the night for at least two years, and I’m not prepared to go through that again.”
She was crushing his dreams with the recklessness of someone deliberately stamping on delicate glass.
Adam sat silent for a moment, inwardly bruised, then almost involuntarily murmured, “I never expected this.”
“You mean you regret marrying me?” she asked bluntly.
“Of course not,” he protested. “It’s just going to become another dream I’ll have to file under ‘impossible’—along with my Olympic gold medal in the high board.”
Toni saw the growing rift between them and, to counteract it, put her arms around him affectionately and stroked his ego.
“You forget something, darling. You’re still a bit of a child yourself and you need a lot of mothering. I hitched my wagon to a star. I want to take good care of my boy genius so he can win the Nobel Prize. I promise you, we’re doing the right thing.”
As Heather grew older, her mother worked longer and longer hours, leaving Adam to make sure his daughter wasn’t abandoned to the care of Toni’s vast network of baby-sitters.
There were times when he simply could not bear to leave the house even when Heather was asleep, lest she wake up with a nightmare and be comforted—or worse, neglected—by a paid surrogate.
To his daughter’s delight, he would put warm winter clothing over her pajamas and take her along to the lab, where she would nestle up on the couch with her Kermit the frog, covered in a blanket, and sleep peacefully until the awkward moment when he had to wake her up, and bring her home.
Adam actually grew to enjoy this routine, since it was far more inspiring to be able to look at his little daughter than wonder how she was.
There were, however, occasions when he was called out to emergencies and had to phone Toni and insist that she hurry home to take charge.
One evening she was in the midst of a crucial partners’ meeting and was extremely reluctant to leave. “Adam,” she complained when he phoned her. “When will you realize that you’re not the only surgeon in the world? You could hand the job over to somebody else.”
To which he retorted in a flash of anger, “And when will you realize that a mother can’t?”
He joined the local country club and took Heather every Saturday morning to a class at the warm indoor pool where parents and their little children went into the water together to learn the intricacies of the doggie paddle.
She was an apt pupil, fiercely determined to show Daddy how well she could swim.
On the ride home she would discuss her future career plans, which, at the moment, involved being a doctor and a diver.
She already knew whom she wanted to marry, and Adam answered her proposal with what he hoped was artful evasion.
Meanwhile, there was an explosion in the
lab that attracted world attention. Its antecedents had been such a well-kept secret that Adam and Toni only learned about it the morning all hell broke loose.
Ian Cavanagh had earned his reputation—and his fortune—primarily in the service of Hematics, a biotech company that had engaged him to test their new artificial blood substitute developed as a safer alternative for use by hemophiliacs.
His landmark paper demonstrating the efficacy of the drug elevated his standing in the scientific community—as well as the price of Hematics stock.
Yet subsequent attempts by other laboratories to repeat Cavanagh’s experiment could not replicate his success. There were increasing demands to see his initial data. The Englishman’s lame excuse that the original spreadsheets had “gone missing” convinced no one.
When the science editor of the Boston Globe caught wind of the brewing scandal, he blew the whistle, claiming in no uncertain terms that the eminent Professor Cavanagh had falsified his evidence. Every major wire service picked up the story.
Harvard was persuaded beyond doubt that he was guilty, and its terrible swift sword fell, instantly severing the scientist’s connection with the university.
That morning, when Adam, still unaware, was approaching the lab’s parking lot, a policeman waved him away, indicating that the road had been closed to all traffic.
“But I’m on the staff,” Adam insisted.
“Look, Doctor, I have my orders. And besides, from what I hear, a lot of heads have rolled and your parking permit might have been revoked.”
Finally, in an act of total frustration, he abandoned his car on Kirkland Street and raced back toward the lab.
Approaching the building, he was startled by the swarm of journalists, television crews—and the Law.
As he pushed his way through the crowd, Adam could see the officers berating what appeared to be graduate students who were trying to remove cartons of documents from the building and load them into the disgraced man’s station wagon.
A Brooks Brothered university administrator was politely but very firmly informing a disheveled, unshaven Englishman—Adam had never seen him so unkempt—that he was no longer a member of the faculty. He could, therefore, remove nothing from his former office except demonstrably personal effects.
“And may I remind you, Dr. Cavanagh, that you’ve only got till noon before we change the locks.”
All the while, newsmen were shouting a cacophony of questions which fell on deaf ears.
At the front door, there was yet another barrier to cross. Mel, the usual guard, stood helplessly by as a senior university policeman, holding a clipboard, preempted his authority.
Adam had a sudden attack of paranoia, thinking he too might be on what was clearly the blacklist. With some trepidation, he announced his name.
The officer glanced quickly at his documents, then nodded politely. “Go right ahead, Professor Coopersmith.”
He reached the tenth floor, and went to his cubbyhole of an office to phone Toni that he had arrived safely through the tumult.
“You mean they didn’t catch you?” she responded with surprise.
“Who?”
“The reporters, didn’t they stop you downstairs?”
“Why should they?” Adam protested with irritation. “I’m not involved in this dirty con job.”
“Of course not, darling,” she replied sweetly. “But you are very much involved with the lab.”
“I don’t get it.”
“The dean called a minute after you left, but it was impossible to reach you. I wish you’d listen to me and get a goddamn car phone.”
“What’s up?” Adam asked.
“You, my dear husband,” she replied. “You are extremely up. Officially, as of 12:01 today, you’re acting director of the whole shooting match. And their first three choices to succeed Cavanagh are you, you, and you.”
Adam let out a whoop. “Hey, Toni, it was worth all the crap I had to take. Why not meet me at the Faculty Club? Maybe we’ll even go wild and try the famous Harvard horse steak for lunch.”
He hung up and, heart still racing, immediately dialed another number.
“Hello, Lisl, I’ve got some wonderful news,” he said, his voice breaking. “I’m going to be in Max’s chair after all.”
The moment Adam’s equipment was reinstated in an area adjacent to the big glass office, he expanded the staff by hiring three newly minted Ph.D.’s as research fellows: Derek Potter, from Cal Tech; Maria Suleiman, from MIT; and Carlo Pisani, from Venice, Italy.
At his first brown-bag lunch as director of the lab, each team member reported on his own area of inquiry, and then Adam threw open the floor for discussion. And offered his own critical summation at the end.
“I have this gut feeling that we’re searching for a complicated answer and ignoring something obvious. Why don’t we all demote ourselves to freshmen med students and carefully analyze the physiological changes of a normal pregnancy. Maybe we can pinpoint the moment our problem women no longer need steroids to sustain their pregnancies.”
They all nodded, continuing the exercise with pencils in their right hands and sandwiches in their left. After painstakingly listing all the systemic changes in the course of a pregnant woman’s first trimester, they turned the corner. The answer was staring them right in the face.
“Why didn’t anybody think of this before?” Len Kutnik asked.
“Because we were working alone,” Pisani candidly suggested. “And when Prof gathers us for lunch, our brains work overtime to try to impress him.” He turned to Adam and inquired, “Right, Professore?”
“Right, Carlo,” he answered, and then articulated their new insight.
“In the second trimester the placenta, which nourishes the fetus by admitting maternal blood and oxygen, also starts to work overtime as an endocrine organ producing estrogen and … progesterone. Maybe in early pregnancy these multiple miscarriages needed more of the hormone to fight the mystery toxin that was keeping the fertilized egg from implanting.”
“It makes sense,” offered Maria Suleiman.
“Then why the hell don’t we set up some trials?” Adam suggested. “To see if large localized doses of progesterone would protect the embryo till the placenta kicks in with its abundant supply? Any volunteers?”
All hands shot up. Everyone wanted to be on what looked more and more like a winning team.
There was no shortage of pregnant women willing to brave a blind trial. Moreover, the side effects were minimal compared to those of steroids.
It took several months to set up the protocol and find the subjects. By the middle of the second year, Adam had tangible results. The progesterone worked. But what exactly was it working on? He had the answer, yet did not fully understand the question.
The atmosphere at home, while cordial, was not loving.
Despite Adam’s professional success, the most important thing in his life was his family. Toni, by contrast, seemed to derive most of her satisfaction from her career.
Quite unlike her husband, the goal of being an even better parent was not part of her ambitions. Adam had difficulty coming to terms with her attitude, but tried to convince himself that it was merely a phase from which they would both emerge, becoming closer and more loving than ever. He refused to see what was really happening.
They were simply running out of things to say to each other.
12
ISABEL
TWELVE-YEAR-OLD GIRL ENTERS BERKELEY
Child Prodigy to Study Physics
(from the Associated Press)
SPROUL PLAZA, the forecourt to the University of California at Berkeley, always has a carnival air about it. But for several hours yesterday it took on the aura of a coronation.
It was registration day for new freshmen, and the entire spectrum of undergraduates—from the barefoot bohemians to the primmest of preppies—crowded at the rope barrier to catch a glimpse of the young lady who was about to make academic history.
Accompanied by her father Raymond, a forty-six-year-old physics lab technician, Isabel was uncannily poised.
A gaggle of photographers tried to elbow their way for a closer shot, shouting enticements like, “Look this way Isabel,” and “Give us a smile, honey,” as she walked serenely into Sproul to enroll as a member of the class of ’88.…
Ironically, it was Raymond who had been unable to sleep the night before. As Isabel slumbered peacefully in the adjacent bedroom, he paced back and forth in the living room of their cramped apartment.
He could not understand why his emotions were so out of control.
What the hell am I so worried about? he asked himself. She’s going into the record books. But that won’t change our relationship at all.
Then he looked squarely at his innermost feelings and admitted, no, it’s inevitable. Tomorrow’s got to change something. Tonight she’s all mine. In the morning, she’ll belong to the world. He had somehow forgotten that he himself was responsible for the publicity extravaganza.
Dean Kendall was aware that a minor commotion was inevitable, and thus he vouchsafed the reporters a quarter of an hour—“and not a second more”—to interview the prodigy.
Just a few minutes before noon, Isabel stepped into the limelight as—uncharacteristically—Raymond hovered in the background.
“We’ve heard you’re going to major in physics, Isabel. Can you tell us why you’ve chosen this subject?” asked Natalie Rose of United Press International.
“That’s kind of hard to explain,” the young girl responded amid the locust clicking of cameras. “But I’ve always been drawn to figuring out how things work. That’s how I broke my cuckoo clock when I was three.”