37. Emory
Emory
Smidges of sunlight broke in through the small barred window above him.
His visible hands swam through the golden rays.
They were miraculous, these strips of yellow light beamed down from space, especially after the previous night’s storm, when it almost seemed like the wind would eternally howl and the sky would always be coated in clouds.
Each beat of his heart echoed love against the gray cinder block walls.
In the distance, the morning calls of the birds mixed with islanders greeting each other.
The energy of the previous night continued to buzz through his veins.
Unbelievably, he’d sung an original song that he’d helped write with Gerard Wells.
The girls in his undergraduate dorm with those loudspeakers and shiny posters on their walls would’ve never believed him.
He found that he really didn’t care one way or the other.
He might not have performed a giant I-told-you-so for a room full of his peers, but the song still meant something, especially when one of the children yelled, “Encore!” as soon as they had finished.
A bunch of the other children joined in the chant.
Sergeant Adye—more concerned about a sugar-fueled child uprising than Emory evading arrest—let it happen.
The choir even joined in on the chorus with surprising harmonies that made the song fuller.
Gerard had been right about his formula. The song was an earworm, one you could easily learn in a single listen. His discovery and Gerard’s expertise made something Sergeant Adye hummed from his nearby desk that morning between sips of his coffee, which smelled strong.
“You are up,” said Sergeant Adye when he spun around in his chair.
Keys jangled against his wide hip as he stood.
“Breakfast should be to you soon, but do you want to make your phone call now?” He pulled an ancient-looking rotary phone off the desk and nearly spilled his coffee cup with the curly, unwieldy cord.
Excited at first, Emory wanted to call Gerard and hear his voice, but then he remembered Gerard didn’t have a phone, and he doubted the sergeant would go all the way to Regina’s to retrieve his walkie-talkie. “No, thank you. I’m okay.”
“I know it’s a fossil, but it’ll call the mainland, too, you know?”
Emory tensed. “Of course, but still, I’m okay.”
“I can get you a phone book if you need…”
Ordinarily, Emory would bark at a stranger’s irksome insistence rather than confess a painful truth, but he decided to be vulnerable. “It’s not the numbers I don’t know. It’s the people. I don’t know anybody that would need to or even care to know where I am.”
The sergeant only gave a pitying look in response.
Emory tried to lighten the mood. “I think everybody here on the island knows where I’m at this morning. No sense waking anyone up after such a late night. I heard there was a madman running around.”
With the barest of smiles and the most half-hearted chuckle, Sergeant Adye said, “That’s awfully kind of you.”
A little while later, Sergeant Adye came by with a tray that he slid through a slat in the barred door.
On it was oatmeal, an apple, and a carton of milk.
He felt like he was in the elementary school lunch line instead of a jail cell awaiting judgment for theft and joyriding and maybe public indecency.
The sergeant was whistling the melody of Emory’s song again, which pleased him. “You got a visitor.”
Expecting Gerard, Emory was surprised by the appearance of a man in his mid-sixties wearing a checkered button-down, a windbreaker, and a wide, charming smile. That smile had a familiarity to it that Emory couldn’t put his finger on.
Sergeant Adye stepped out, presumably to give Emory and the man some privacy.
The man sat on the wobbly chair stationed before his cell. “Hello, Emory. You don’t know me, but my name is Dr. Humphrey Cuss. I believe you met my nephew.”
The floor of the jail cell felt like it tilted under Emory. Dr. Cuss’s arrival could only mean that proper criminal charges were being brought against him for his alleged theft and, worse yet, Anderson had likely succeeded in decoding his research.
“I did,” Emory said, sagging down onto the bed and nearly spilling his breakfast all over himself. Hungry despite his nervous stomach, he bit into the apple and chewed to try and quell himself, but its slightly bitter taste did the opposite.
“Well…” Dr. Cuss took a painful, drawn-out pause as if he were about to deliver a terminal diagnosis. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“What do you mean?” Emory asked, befuddled.
“Having Anderson see patients here on Iping in my stead was my sister’s idea.
You see, my nephew struggled through med school and was one of the unlucky few to not match into a residency program.
I took him on as a scribe and physician’s assistant at my practice on the mainland while he figured out his next steps,” Dr. Cuss explained.
“Over the last few weeks, the reasons he didn’t match have come to light.
He was applying to highly competitive residencies, giving bad interviews, and failing to disclose disciplinary actions including, but not limited to, professionalism issues and academic probation. ”
Emory rolled the bitten apple around in his hand.
Through the bite mark in the unbruised, bright red skin, he noticed brownish rot bleeding out from its core.
Immediately, he opened the milk to wash the nasty taste out of his mouth.
“Excuse me for being blunt,” he said once he’d swallowed, “but why are you telling me all this?”
“Apologies. As my patients can tell you, I do tend to prattle.” Dr. Cuss cleared his throat into a fancy-looking handkerchief produced from an inner pocket of his windbreaker.
He reminded Emory of Dr. Claude, his first PhD advisor.
“Those med school behaviors have reared their ugly heads once again as Anderson has been shirking duties. When we staged a small intervention for him, we turned up to his apartment to find it in disarray. Orange pill bottles everywhere, notes scattered about, dishes piled up for weeks. At the expense of everything else, he’d become obsessed with a project of invisibility. ”
From a bag, Dr. Cuss produced one of Emory’s notebooks, the one Anderson had stolen.
“I believe this belongs to you.” He passed it through the bars of the cell, though he certainly wasn’t supposed to.
The heavy tome shook in Emory’s hands. “Oh, there is one other recovered material I thought you might like back.”
Sergeant Adye reentered carrying a familiar cage, which he set down on his desk. Inside, a fully opaque Marvel Jr.—bigger now—puttered mousily about. Emory’s heart swelled at the sight of his friend. Marvel Jr. had always been more than a test subject.
“I can give you a few more minutes,” said Sergeant Adye. “You have got another person waitin’ for you.”
In the notebook, Emory spotted unfamiliar handwriting. Anderson had attempted to write up keys and make sense of Emory’s hasty scrawl. Some of it was correct. Most of it was way off base. “Did he … did he publish?” Emory asked.
“Anderson? Why, no.” Emory glanced down at the thick pages again.
It wasn’t just one foreign hand that had taken to his ledger.
There were two handwritings beside his own, each distinct.
“I don’t like to speak ill of family, but frankly, Anderson is not intelligent enough to have come up with this.
He couldn’t even decipher most of what you’d done himself. ”
“Some of these are yours, then?” Emory asked, swiping a thumb over blockier writing. He worried this meant he had a new enemy to worry about. One more established than him.
Dr. Cuss nodded. “After we got Anderson the help he needed, we took to cleaning up his apartment. When I came across this and the little fellow in the cage, I couldn’t help myself. I dove in with a kind of excitement that I haven’t felt in decades. This is some serious work you’ve done here.”
Even though he probably shouldn’t have, he glowed under the praise of a real doctor validating his research. “Thank you.”
The doctor’s expression darkened slightly. “As an old hand in this field, may I offer my two cents?”
Setting the notebook aside, Emory said, “Of course.”
“I’m not sure the world is ready for research like this,” he said, voicing a fear Emory himself had already formulated.
“The uses for a physiological invention like this could be life-changing, but perhaps not for the better. I worry that we don’t live in a time where we can ensure this would be used in good faith or with good intentions. ”
“I know what you mean.” Emory sighed.
“But a mind like yours, Mr. Griffin,” he continued, “with ingenuity and acumen, is much needed in other medical pursuits. I don’t think you should destroy your findings, but I also don’t think you should publish yet, either. Of course, it is entirely up to you.”
“I worry,” Emory said, “that someone else like Anderson will undercut me no matter what I do.”
“Anderson certainly won’t. You’ll see from his marginalia that he was not on the right track, and given the mind-altering substances he was taking, I doubt he’d have much memory for your complex formulas anyway,” Dr. Cuss said.
“I was born on Iping. I left to attend college and medical school and do my residency. When I was established enough to start my own practice, I considered doing it here rather than on the mainland. Mentors strongly veered me toward the mainland with its opportunities for growth and access.”
“How did you end up with your name on the Iping health center, then?” Emory asked.