Chapter 8 Diversification of Bacteria and Archaea
DIVERSIFICATION OF BACTERIA AND ARCHAEA
*Samantha*
Andreas’s voice called out from somewhere behind me. I couldn’t comprehend the words. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t stop. I ran.
The door had barely opened. I already moved through it, not sure which way I needed to go but running anyway. For several disorienting seconds, the only thing I could process was the pounding of my heart and the amplified sound of my own shoes on the corridor carpet.
I don’t know if I was crying or just leaking adrenaline, but my eyes started to blur and sting and I wiped them on the back of my hand as I took the first corner too tight and hit my shoulder on the wall.
Someone’s hand gripped my arm and pulled me to a stop. “Sam! Sam—wait. Ms. Jarlston! What is it?” It was Tara.
I gulped air, hands shaking so badly I almost dropped my phone. “Please drive me to the hospital. My friend is unconscious and was taken by an ambulance to the ER.”
The words came out as a slurred tumble, the edge of panic made me sound hysterical. Tara’s face went instantly flat and professional.
“Of course. We’ll walk to the car together.” Her hand still gripping my upper arm, she steered me and I let her.
My other security guard fell into step next to us as my phone buzzed again.
I frantically checked it. A second text from Martin, this time the name of the hospital and instructions on where to meet.
I tried to read the whole thing out loud but my throat closed halfway through and I had to try again.
“‘Emergency entrance. I’ll meet you in the waiting area,’ he says. Just drop me off.” My voice sounded shrill and unfamiliar, like a bad recording of myself played too fast.
Tara pulled out her phone and, without looking at the screen, started typing as we walked.
We reached the elevators, and the three of us stood there in a triangle, all eyes on the small LED floor indicator as the numbers changed.
None of us spoke. I pressed my hand to my chest, hoping the pressure would slow my heartbeat or at least keep my ribs from vibrating apart. The elevator arrived. The doors opened.
I didn’t even realize Andreas had followed until—as my security team and I stepped onto the elevator—I heard his voice say, “I will explain the circumstances to the shareholders and Dr. Hauser. We will move forward with the proxy vote. Do not worry about that.”
Turning and facing the doors, my gaze connected with his as an automatic “Thank you” slipped past my lips, but I didn’t care about the shares or the vote right now.
Andreas nodded, hovering outside the elevator, his face twisting into an expression I couldn’t interpret. Tara jabbed at the Lobby button.
Doors still open, he leaned forward, voice rough. “Is it Kaitlyn?”
I nodded. My eyes filled immediately, and my chin started trembling before I could even try to stop it.
Andreas cursed under his breath, a rolling string of syllables. He turned to Tara and barked, “Give her a hug, for fuck’s sake.”
Then the doors shut and he was gone.
For a long moment, no one moved. I stood frozen in place, jaw set, trying to blink away the hot, suffocating pressure of tears.
Tara hesitated only a second. Then, as gently as she could manage, she wrapped her arms around my shoulders and pulled me in, my face mashed into her blazer and the starched cotton of her shirt. I leaned into her, let my weight rest there, and pressed my forehead to her collarbone.
A tremor ran through my whole body and my chest hitched with the first, traitorous sob. I bit my lip, shook my head, and fought to control it, but the more I fought, the worse it got.
Tara squeezed me tighter, murmured, “It’s okay, it’s okay, I’ve got you,” and let me sob into her like I was a little kid and not a nearly-thirty-year-old adult whose whole life and priorities had turned inside out in a matter of sixty seconds.
I squeezed my eyes shut and begged God, the universe, whoever was listening, to let Kaitlyn be okay.
* * *
I didn’t keep track of how long it took to get from the Genetix building to the hospital, but it felt like hours compressed into a single, taut pulse.
I spent the drive texting Diya, requesting that she pull whatever strings she could to give us frequent updates, and generally failing to keep my hands from shaking.
Tara ignored every speed limit and stop sign, cutting corners with incredible precision.
The other guard sat in the front, leaving me on my own in the back.
We pulled up to the ER entrance and I nearly fell out of the car in my scramble. My other guard must’ve switched into the driver’s seat and taken the car because Tara was next to me again before I entered the building.
The lobby was an assault of florescent light and clashing noises—monitors beeping, babies crying, the high, tinny drone of an endless TV infomercial.
I wove through the crowd, following the arrows for “Emergency Waiting Area” until I spotted Martin in the far corner of a rectangular room with rows and rows of chairs.
He looked worse than I’d imagined, and I’d imagined a lot. His hair was a mess, shirt untucked, eyes red and dazed. He had Joey in his lap, but the baby was writhing, arms flailing and face beet red from constant wailing.
Martin looked up as I approached, and I could see the wild panic in his eyes, the kind of fear that defies language, that lives in the bone marrow.
“How is she?” I asked, my own voice barely above a whisper.
“I don’t know,” he said, voice cracking. “They haven’t told me anything. She hasn’t woken up yet.”
He tried to bounce Joey on his knee, but I could see the movement was absentminded. The baby only screamed louder. In a fluid motion, I took Joey from him, cradling his little body against my chest and rocking gently. Joey’s cries didn’t immediately stop, but the rhythm helped me breathe.
“He’s just tired,” I mumbled to no one, though I knew it was more than that. The baby could sense the terror, the instability, and was amplifying it with every decibel.
I scanned the room for a distraction, something to entertain Joey, but the only thing I spotted was a pile of torn coloring books and a sticky cardboard container of apple juice. I dropped into a crouch, shifting Joey to one arm, and looked under and around Martin’s chair for the diaper bag.
“Where’s the diaper bag? He probably needs to be changed.” My hand at Joey’s tush told me the diaper was full.
Martin stared at his own hands, then at the empty spot next to him, and a wave of guilt washed over his face. “I . . . I forgot the diaper bag,” he said, and his face crumpled. He put his face in his hands and let out a sound that was half sob, half laugh. “I forgot the fucking diaper bag.”
For a second, he seemed to have collapsed in on himself, like he’d lost all muscle tone and was nothing but sorrow and cartilage. Taking the seat neat to Martin’s, I set Joey on my knee, holding him steady as I reached out and touched Martin’s arm.
“It’s okay,” I said, and then, because I didn’t know what else to do, I hugged him with one arm.
Really hugged him, the way I’d hugged Kaitlyn after she’d told me she was pregnant, or the way I’d hugged my mom the night my dad died.
Martin clung back, his arms going rigid and desperate, as if I was the only thing keeping him from being swept out to sea.
“Everything will be okay,” I said, even though I had no idea if it was true.
Martin sniffed, wiping his eyes with his shirtsleeve. “I should have made her go back to the doctor first thing this morning. I shouldn’t have let her go to the bathroom by herself.”
I shook my head, rocking Joey, who had ratcheted down to a whimper. “We all thought the fever was finally gone,” I said. “It’s not your fault.”
He pulled back from the hug, and his eyes were still rimmed red, but steadier. “I don’t know what to do, Sam. I can’t lose Kaitlyn. If I lose her . . . I don’t think I can live without her.”
For a long moment, there was nothing I could say. No science, no logic could fix this kind of raw animal fear. I held Joey while Martin absentmindedly held on to my arm. And the three of us waited, because it was the only thing we could do.