Biogenesis (21 page)

That night Dan spoke with a fellow lawyer friend who was well versed in medical matters. The friend, in turn, referred him to a Professor Dokić, a leading authority on pediatric oncology at Stanford
University. The next day Dan canceled all of his work, traveling by plane to San Francisco and then catching a train to Palo Alto where the university was located. The university’s medical center was situated toward the center of campus. At the time of his appointment he was shown into a consultation booth to wait for Professor Dokić. The professor was a fat man in his late fifties with a ruddy face. Dan briefly introduced himself and then handed over the CT scans and urinalysis results. It only took a short glance for the professor to confirm the results. If there was any mistake, he said, it was that Linda likely only had six months remaining, and not a year.

“I wouldn’t expect treatment to have much success in a case this advanced,” he said. “In fact, it’s very likely that you would only increase her suffering. I would recommend against any aggressive approach for your daughter. Instead, why not let her enjoy herself during this time? Make her happy. Do some of the things she likes.”

Even after Professor Dokić confirmed the results, Dan found it difficult to resign himself to the notion that, in a matter of mere months, his baby daughter would be gone.

“Why didn’t you realize there was something wrong with our daughter sooner?”

“Why didn’t you?”

Every night, after Linda went to bed, Dan and Mary rehashed the same argument over whether or not to pursue chemotherapy.

“Even if the chance is small, shouldn’t we take it?”

“And if it just causes her more suffering?”

As dawn came, they found themselves no nearer to a decision.

Dan lost interest in work and began turning to booze, cracking open the bottle as soon as he woke. Mary, meanwhile, developed an overpowering, insomnia-induced neurosis. They had to bring in a home helper to manage the housework and look after Linda.

One day, Linda asked why she didn’t have to go to school
anymore.

“Mrs. Brady said we have to come to school every day,” she said, looking up into Dan’s face with her bright round pupils. “She says if we don’t we’ll be in trouble when we get older.”

Linda knew that she was sick, but as far as she understood, it was just an ordinary back pain. The fact that she was being kept home from school every day must have seemed baffling to her.

“Did you have a teacher when you were young, too, daddy?”

“I did.”

“What kind of teacher?” she asked.

“A very strict one,” said Dan.

The innocent expression on Linda’s face left no doubt that she believed a tomorrow was still out there, waiting for her. When Dan first began studying law, he had studied under an elderly professor who had been fond of repeating a favorite maxim to his students. Dan recalled it now.
You’d be better to not do a thing at all
, the professor had said,
than to do it and expect defeat. No one has ever learned anything by giving up easy
.

Dan finally stopped drowning his sorrows and began to think in earnest over what he could do to make the situation better. His first problem was that he actually knew very little about Linda’s illness. Before any big case, a lawyer always researched his foes. He went to the local library, where he spread out several medical texts he found in search of sections on his daughter’s disease. There, he discovered a twenty-page passage on neuroblastoma in a book entitled
Pediatrics
. Unfortunately, he understood almost nothing of its contents. Not only did Dan lack basic medical knowledge, he had barely even studied high school biology. Each new term he encountered was its own perplexing code. For each clinical term, he had to read dozens of pages on pathology, and for the histological terms he encountered in these new texts he had to read yet dozens more on anatomy. It took him three weeks to finally understand what neuroblastoma was, but even then the only
knowledge he had acquired was what was written in that one book, and that book was already five years old. In order to obtain updated information he did an article search for “neuroblastoma” on the library’s computers. The results showed 1,520 articles published on neuroblastoma in the last five years alone. Not wanting to waste precious time, he hired a student part-time to copy out the relevant articles, which he then pored through one at a time. He was waiting outside the library an hour before it opened every morning and was the last to depart every night, only leaving when one of the librarians chased him out the door. He was like a man possessed. Even after returning home at night he continued to bury himself in the articles. Twenty hours each day he grappled with the difficult texts, stopping only for brief and fitful periods of sleep. One day stretched into the next, and all the while, his only sight of Linda was of her sleeping face.

At first, Dan was lucky to get through even one article per day. Before long, however, he was working through ten per day, and soon nearly a hundred. The more Dan learned, however, the harsher the truth became. Medical knowledge, as it stood now, could offer Linda no salvation. To make matters worse, Dan’s newly acquired knowledge had robbed him of the luxury of denial. He also learned that much of the research out there wasn’t geared towards curing patients. Most of the so-called specialists that Dan had been reading struck him as no more than stragglers on the field of a losing battle. Just as chasing after old precedent does not lead to the establishment of new law, it became clear to Dan that innovation would not be found in the medical status quo. But he was under no misapprehensions that as a layman he might somehow stumble upon a breakthrough. Regret gnawed at him. Time was precious and he had been wasting it.

Wouldn’t it have been better for him if he had spent more time with Linda these past two months? As her father, surely it would have been the right thing to do. After weeks of near-absence, he finally returned home. His daughter lay in a slight daze from the painkillers she
was given. Kissing her on the forehead, he asked if there was anywhere she would like to go. She picked up a book that was lying by her pillow and opened its pages to show Dan. The book, entitled
Ratta’s Tropical Island
, described a place known as “Hope Shore.”

“Hope Shore?”

“It’s where the fairies live. People who go to Hope Shore get to make any wish they want. If we went to Hope Shore, I could ask the fairies to make me better.”

They had not told Linda how serious her illness was. Dan’s eyes misted over. Turning the next page, he found a picture. It was of a sprawling blue ocean, with white clouds floating in the distance. It was the kind of place that people always talk of visiting, but never really do.

The next morning Dan visited a travel agency with the children’s book in hand. He was hoping to find a place that resembled the picture. But the travel agent did a search and, as it turned out, a place called Hope Shore actually did exist. It was on Canda, the smallest of the U.S.-held Mile Islands, and likely received few, if any, tourists. There were certainly no pamphlets. Dan wasn’t sure if it was wise to bring his sick daughter to such a far-flung place, but if that was Linda’s wish, then Dan was going to grant it.

Mary was attempting to soothe Linda, who had begun to grow restless from the long flight. Four hours had passed since they embarked from their layover in Los Angeles, and the plane was finally touching down at a small island airport surrounded by lush palm trees. From the airport they travelled another thirty minutes by taxi. There they found Hope Shore, waiting for them, just as they had been told. But despite its evocative name there was nothing very exceptional to recommend the place. It was just a dull, rock-strewn coastline, the narrow beach that lay beyond the coastal road barely wide enough for a stroll. The few locals out walking their dogs were the only people they passed by. Yet, Linda was happy just knowing that she was there, at
the honest-to-goodness Hope Shore. She spent hours bounding back and forth with the lapping waves and playing with the shore crabs that scampered in and out of gaps among the rocks.

She was so engrossed in her play that they remained until the evening air began to grow chilly, at which point Dan picked her up and left the beach. Linda usually developed a fever in the evening that lasted into the night, and the pain would grow worse as well. The three entered a restaurant named Il Castello, located a short walk away along the road, but Linda’s strength was beginning to ebb. Other than her juice and licks of ice cream she barely touched the food her parents ordered. Dan scanned the menu, hoping to find something that might whet her appetite. That was when he spotted the oddly high-priced “Hope Shore sea squirt in wine sauce,” a dish that was “subject to availability.”

Dan called the waiter over to ask about the dish. The “Hope Shore sea squirt” was an ascidian species unique to the area. It was hideous to look at, but surprisingly delicious. Dan’s interest was further piqued when the waiter told him that, in the past, when the squirts were caught in abundance, they had been used as a local folk medicine. Due to over-fishing, they were now “the elusive” sea squirts, exceedingly rare. It had been almost three months since the restaurant had last scored a catch, but as luck would have it they had just gotten some that day. At the very least, the dish sounded nutritious. Dan placed an order.

Linda was growing tearful and peevish from the pain, but her eyes dried as soon as the dish of ugly, misshapen sea squirt was placed before her. It gave off an appetizing aroma, hinting faintly of salt spray and wine. The aroma seemed to work its spell. For the first time in ages Linda picked up her spoon and began eating of her own accord.

“From what I understand, the lumps on the sea squirt’s body are actually tumors,” explained the waiter. “Don’t worry, though,” he said. “They’re perfectly safe to eat.”

I guess even sea creatures get tumors
, mused Dan. Out of curiosity,
he sampled a small piece from the end. The lumps were crunchy and slightly sweet, and despite its appearance the sea squirt was actually quite delicious. It was a bit ghoulish to know that he was eating diseased flesh, but his recent studies had taught him that tumors were not contagious.

Linda’s cheeks bulged outwards as she continued to cram the food into her mouth. As Dan stared at the ugly lumps, an unusual thought occurred to him. Tumors could be either benign or malignant. According to one of the pathology books he had read, malignant tumors were generally characterized by abnormal, asymmetrical ulcerations. Based on sight alone, the lumps appeared to be clearly malignant. But how could the creature continue to live despite carrying so many malignant growths?

“Do all of the sea squirts have those lumps?” he asked the waiter.

“Yes, Hope Shore sea squirts do, though apparently not when they’re still small.”

“How are they fished?”

“Dived for, actually. They live on rocks, and the divers peel them off one at a time.”

That meant they were still alive when gathered. But then, how could one explain the advanced stage of cancer they all seemed to exhibit? Dan was only pulled out of his reverie to discover, to his great surprise, that Linda had polished off her entire plate.

The three of them left the restaurant and walked back along the coastal road. Moonlight was reflected on the ocean’s dark surface, and the crunch of sand beneath Linda’s small feet reverberated in the air. The image of the misshapen sea squirt remained branded into Dan’s mind. That was when it hit him.
Symbiosis
. Perhaps the Hope Shore sea squirt maintained a symbiotic relationship with its cancerous cells. He sent Mary and Linda ahead to the hotel and rushed back toward Il Castello.

“Are there any more of those sea squirts left?” Dan asked. He pushed past the waiter and headed straight to the kitchen. There he
found one remaining sea squirt, immersed live in saltwater.

“Another customer just ordered that. I was about to begin preparing it,” said the chef. “We’re the only place on the island that serves it, and that’s our last one. I’m afraid you’re probably out of luck trying anywhere else.”

Dan asked the waiter to introduce him to the customer who had ordered the sea squirt. He was an older gentleman in a black suit, sitting alone at a table by the window. Dan began pleading with the man immediately, not even bothering to introduce himself.

“My daughter has something called neuroblastoma,” he said, “and I need that sea squirt in order to cure her. Please, I’ll pay anything for it. Just name your price.”

Somewhat taken aback, the older gentleman smiled awkwardly and asked Dan to join him. “By all means, I wouldn’t dream of refusing. But you’ve piqued my curiosity. My name is Tom Anderson. I work as a doctor at the local hospital. If you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to hear more.”

Surprised to learn that the man was a doctor, Dan launched breathlessly into his theory. “I’m actually a lawyer, not a doctor. I only began studying tumors because of my daughter’s illness. From what I understand, for some reason this species of sea squirt develops multiple tumors all over its body. Judging solely on appearance the tumors appear to be malignant. That means that they should continue to grow and spread unchecked. But all of the growths seem to be about the same in size, almost as if the creature has adapted to accommodate them. What do you think? There must be some mechanism that prevents the tumors from growing larger, right?”

“My specialty is psychiatry,” said Tom. “I’m afraid you actually know more about cancer than I do. If I recall what I learned about pathology as a student—and that was a long time ago, mind you—the sea squirt’s tumors do indeed appear to be malignant. I’ve been living on this island, and eating this dish, for years, but I can’t honestly say that thought has ever occurred to me before. It’s certainly an interesting
observation. Obviously there are differences between a marine creature like the sea squirt and a mammal like us humans … Tell me, what exactly do you plan to do with the sea squirt once you have it?”