Frameshift (6 page)

“Sure. That place right across the street is great,” Molly said, pointing.

She wondered if he was going to kiss her. It was exciting not knowing what he was thinking of doing. The moment stretched. He didn’t make his move — and that was exciting, too.

“Till tomorrow, then,” he said. “
Au revoir
.”

Molly went inside. She was grinning from ear to ear.

Pierre and Molly’s relationship had been building nicely. He had been to Molly’s apartment three times now, but she had yet to see his place.

Tonight was the night, though: A E was showing another
Cracker
made-for-TV movie with Robbie Coltrane, and they both loved that series.

But Molly only had a thirteen-inch TV, and Pierre had a twenty-seven-inch set — you needed a decent size to properly follow a hockey game.

He’d cleaned up some, gathering the socks and underwear from the living-room floor, getting the newspapers off his green-and-orange couch, and doing what he considered to be a decent job of dusting — wiping the sleeve of the Montreal Canadiens jersey he was wearing across the top of the TV and stereo cabinet.

They ordered a La Val’s pizza during the final commercial break, and, after the movie was over, they chatted about it while waiting for the pizza to arrive. Molly loved the use of psychology in
Cracker;
Coltrane’s character, Fitz, was a forensic psychologist who worked with the Manchester police.

“He is an amazing fellow,” agreed Pierre.

“And,” said Molly, “he’s sexy.”

“Who?” asked Pierre, puzzled. “Not Fitz?”

“Yes.”

“But he’s a hundred pounds overweight, an alcoholic, a compulsive gambler, and he smokes like a chimney.”

“But that
mind
,” said Molly. “That intensity.”

“He’s going to end up in a hospital with a heart attack.”

“I know,” sighed Molly. “I hope he has decent health insurance.”

“Britain is like Canada — socialized medicine.”

“ ‘Socialized’ is kind of an ugly word here,” said Molly. “But I must say the idea of universal health care
is
appealing. It’s too bad Hillary didn’t get her way.” A pause. “I guess it was a shock for you to have to start paying for your health insurance.”

“I’m sure it will be. I haven’t got around to it yet.”

Molly’s jaw dropped. “You don’t have any health insurance?”

“Well… no.”

“Are you covered under the faculty-association group plan?”

“No. I’m not faculty, after all; I’m just a postdoc.”

“Gee, Pierre, you really should have some medical insurance. What would you do if you were in an accident?”

“I hadn’t thought about that, I guess. I’m so used to the Canadian system, which covered me automatically, that I hadn’t thought about having to actually
do
something to get insurance.”

“Are you still covered under the Canadian plan?”

“It’s actually a provincial plan — the Quebec plan. But I won’t meet the residency requirements this year, which means, no, I’m not really covered.”

“You better do something soon. You could be wiped out financially if you had an accident.”

“Can you recommend somebody?”

“Me? I have no idea. I’m under the faculty-association plan. That’s with Sequoia Health, I think. But for individual insurance, I haven’t a clue who’s got the best rates. I’ve seen ads for a company called Bay Area Health, and another called — oh, what is it? — Condor, I think.”

“I’ll call them up.”

“Tomorrow. Do it tomorrow. I had an uncle who broke his leg once and had to be put in traction. He didn’t have any insurance, and the total bill was thirty-five thousand dollars. He had to sell his house to pay for it.”

Pierre patted her hand. “All right already. I’ll do it first thing.”

Their pizza arrived. Pierre carried the box to the dining-room table and opened it up. Molly ate her pieces directly from the box, but Pierre liked his to be burn-the-roof-of-your-mouth hot, so he nuked each of his slices for thirty seconds before eating them. The kitchen smelled of cheese and pepperoni, plus an aroma of slightly moist cardboard coming from the box.

After she’d finished her third slice, Molly asked, out of the blue, “What do you think about kids?”

Pierre helped himself to a fourth piece. “I like them.”

“Me, too,” said Molly. “I’ve always wanted to be a mother.”

Pierre nodded, not knowing exactly what he was supposed to say.

“I mean,” continued Molly, “getting my Ph.D. took a lot of time and, well, I never met the right person.”

“That happens sometimes,” said Pierre, smiling.

Molly nibbled at her pizza. “Oh, yes. ‘Course, it’s hardly an insurmountable problem — not having a husband, I mean. I have lots of friends who are single moms. Sure, for most of them that wasn’t the way they planned it, but they’re doing fine. In fact, I…”

“What?”

She looked away. “No, nothing.”

Pierre’s curiosity was aroused. “Tell me.”

Molly considered for a time, then: “I did something pretty stupid — oh, six years ago now, I guess it was.”

Pierre raised his eyebrows.

“I was twenty-five, and, well, frankly, I’d given up any hope of finding a man I could have a long-term relationship with.” She raised a hand. “I know twenty-five sounds young, but I was already six years older than my mom was when she’d had me, and — well, I don’t want to go into the reasons right now, but I’d been having a terrible time with guys, and I didn’t see that that was likely to ever change. But I
did
want to have a child, and so I… well, I picked up some men — four or five different one-night stands.” She held up a hand again, as if feeling a need to make it all seem somewhat less sordid. “They were all medical students; I was trying to choose carefully. Each time I did it was at the right point in my cycle; I was hoping to get pregnant off one of them. I wasn’t looking for a husband, you understand — just for, well, just for some sperm.”

Pierre had his head tilted to one side. He clearly didn’t know how to respond.

Molly shrugged. “Anyway, it didn’t work; I didn’t get pregnant.” She looked at the ceiling for a few moments, and drew in breath. “What I got instead was gonorrhea.” She exhaled noisily. “I suppose I’m lucky I didn’t get AIDS. God, it was a stupid thing to do.”

Pierre’s face must have shown his shock; they’d slept together several times now.

“Don’t worry,” said Molly, seeing his expression. “I’m completely over it, thank God. I had all the follow-up tests after the penicillin treatment. I’m totally clean. Like I said, it was a stupid thing to do, but — well, I
did
want a baby.”

“Why’d you stop?”

Molly looked at the floor. Her voice was small. “The gonorrhea scarred my fallopian tubes. I
can’t
get pregnant the normal way anymore; if I’m ever going to do it, it’ll have to be via in vitro fertilization, and, well, that costs money. Around ten grand per attempt, last time I looked. My health insurance doesn’t cover it, since the blocked tubes weren’t a congenital condition. But I’ve been saving up.”

“Oh,” said Pierre.

“I — ah, I thought you should know…” She trailed off, and then shrugged again. “I
am
sorry.”

Pierre looked at his slice of pizza, now growing cold. He absently picked a green pepper off it; they were only supposed to be on half, but a stray one had ended up on one of his slices. “I would never say it’s for the best,” said Pierre, “but I guess I’m old-fashioned enough to think a child should have both a mother and a father.”

Molly did meet his eyes, and held them. “My thought exactly,” she said.

At two o’clock in the afternoon, Pierre entered the Human Genome Center office — and found to his surprise that a party was going on. Joan Dawson’s usual supply of home-baked goodies hadn’t been enough; someone had gone out and bought bags of nachos and cheesies, and several bottles of champagne.

As soon as Pierre entered, one of the other geneticists — Donna Yamashita, it was — handed him a glass. “What’s all the excitement about?” asked Pierre over the noise.

“They finally got what they wanted from Hapless Hannah,” said Yamashita, grinning.

“Who’s Hapless Hannah?” asked Pierre, but Yamashita had already moved away to greet someone else. Pierre walked over to Joan’s desk. She had a dark liquid in her champagne glass. Probably diet cola; as a diabetic, she wasn’t supposed to drink alcohol. “What’s happening?” said Pierre. “Who is Hapless Hannah?”

Joan smiled her kindly smile. “That’s the Neanderthal skeleton on loan from the Hebrew University at Givat Ram. Dr. Klimus has been trying to extract DNA from the bone for months, and today he finally finished getting a complete set.”

The old man himself had moved nearer — and for once there was a smile on his broad, liver-spotted face. “That’s right,” he said, his voice cold and dry. He glanced sideways at a chubby man Pierre recognized as a UCB paleontologist. “Now that we have Neanderthal DNA, we can do some real science about human origins, instead of just making wild guesses.”

“That’s wonderful,” replied Pierre above the din of people milling about the small office. “How old was the bone?”

“Sixty-two thousand years,” said Klimus triumphantly.

“But surely the DNA would have degraded over all that time,” said Pierre.

“That’s the beauty of the site where Hapless Hannah was found,” said Klimus. “She died in a cave-in that completely sealed her in — she was an actual, honest-to-goodness cave-woman. Aerobic bacteria in the cave used up all the oxygen, so she’d spent the last sixty thousand years in an oxygen-free environment, meaning her pyrimidines didn’t oxidize. We’ve recovered all twenty-three pairs of chromosomes.”

“What a lucky break,” said Pierre.

“It sure is,” said Donna Yamashita, who had suddenly appeared again at Pierre’s elbow. “Hannah will answer a lot of questions, including the big one about whether Neanderthal was a separate species —
Homo
n
eanderthalensis
 — or just a subspecies of modern humanity —
Homo
s
apiens neanderthalensis
, and—”

Klimus spoke over top of her. “And we should be able to tell whether Neanderthals died out without leaving any descendants, or whether they crossbred with Cro-Magnon, and therefore mixed their genes with ours.”

“That’s terrific,” said Pierre.

“Of course,” said Klimus, “there’ll still be many questions unanswered about Neanderthals — fine details of physical appearance, culture, and so on. But, still, this is a remarkable day.” He turned his back on Pierre, and in an unexpected display of exuberance, tapped the side of his champagne glass with his Mont Blanc pen. “Everybody — everybody! Your attention, please! I’d like to propose a toast — to Hapless Hannah! Soon to become the best-known Neanderthal in history!”

Pierre’s lab looked like just about every other lab he’d ever seen: a poster of the periodic table on one wall; a well-used copy of the
Rubber Bible
lying open on a desk; lots of glass labware set up on retort stands; a small centrifuge; a UNIX workstation with Post-it notes stuck to the bezel around the monitor; an emergency shower station, in case of chemical spills; a glass-enclosed work area under a fume hood. The walls were that sickly yellow-beige that seems so common in university environments. The lighting was fluorescent; the floor, tiled.

Pierre was working at one of the counters that lined all four walls of the room, staring at DNA autorads positioned over an illuminated panel built into the countertop. He was wearing a stained white lab coat, but it wasn’t buttoned up, so his Quebec Winter Carnival T-shirt was visible underneath. He’d never been more shocked than when an American student had mistaken the Bonhomme on the shirt for the giant Stay-Puft marshmallow man from
Ghostbusters
 — something akin to confusing Uncle Sam with Colonel Sanders.

Burian Klimus appeared in the doorway, looking most put out.

Standing next to the old man was an attractive Asian-American woman with black hair that had been teased into a frizzy halo around her face.

“That’s him,” said Klimus.

“Mr. Tardivel,” said the woman. “I’m Tiffany Feng, from Condor Health Insurance.”

Pierre nodded at Klimus. “Thanks for bringing her up, sir,” he said. The ancient geneticist scowled, then shambled away.

Tiffany was in her late twenties. She was carrying a black attache case, and was dressed in a blue jacket and matching pants. Her white blouse was open more than one might expect at the top. Pierre was amused; he suspected Tiffany dressed differently when going to see a prospective male customer than she did when the customer was female.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” said Tiffany. “Traffic was murder coming across the bridge.” She handed him a yellow-and-black business card, then looked appreciatively around the lab. “You’re obviously a scientist.”

Pierre nodded. “I’m a molecular biologist, working on the Human Genome Project.”

“Really?” said Tiffany. “What a fascinating area!”

“You know about it?”

“Sure. We’ve had some great lectures on it at work.” She smiled.

“Anyway, I understand you’re interested in talking about insurance options.”

Pierre motioned for Tiffany to take a seat. “That’s right,” he said. “I’m from Canada, so I’ve never bought health insurance before. For a little while longer I’ll still meet the Quebec residency test, but—”

Tiffany shook her head. “I’ve helped several Canadians over the years.

Your provincial health plans cover you only to the dollar value that the same services would cost in Canada, where prices for medical services are set by the government. Here, there are no price controls. You’ll find that most procedures are more expensive, and your Quebec plan won’t cover the extra. Plus, the provincial plans provide for medical treatments, but not such things as private hospital rooms.” She paused. “Do you have any insurance under the faculty-association plan?”

Pierre shook his head. “I’m not faculty. I’m just a visiting researcher.”

She moved her attache case up onto the lab bench and opened it. “Well, then you’ll need a comprehensive package. We offer what we call our Gold Plan, which provides for one hundred percent of all your emergency hospital bills, including ambulance transfers, and anything else you might need, such as wheelchairs or crutches. Plus, it also covers all your routine medical needs, such as annual physical checkups, prescriptions, and so on.” She handed him a gold-embossed trifold brochure.

Pierre took it and browsed through it. Huntington’s patients usually ended their lives with a protracted hospital stay. If it turned out he had the disease, he’d certainly want a private room for that, and — ah, good.

This package also covered at-home nursing services and even experimental drug treatments. “Looks good,” said Pierre. “How much are the premiums?”

“They’re on a sliding scale.” She pulled a yellow-and-black binder out of her attache case. “May I ask how old you are?”

“Thirty-two.”

“Do you smoke?”

“No.”

“And you don’t currently have any medical condition, like diabetes, AIDS, or a heart murmur?”

“Right.”

“Are your parents still alive?”

“My mother is.”

“What did your father die of?”

“Umm, you mean my biological father, right?”

Tiffany blinked. “Yes.”

Henry Spade had passed away four years ago; Pierre had gone to Toronto for the funeral. “Complications from Huntington’s disease.”

Tiffany closed the binder. “Oh.” She looked at Pierre for a moment.

“That makes things rather complex. Do
you
have Huntington’s?”

“I have no idea.”

“You have no symptoms?”

“None.”

“Huntington’s is carried on a dominant gene, right? So you’ve got a fifty-fifty chance of having inherited the gene.”

“That’s right.”

“But you haven’t taken the genetic test for it?”

“No.”

She sighed. “This is very awkward, Pierre. I don’t make the decisions about who gets covered and who doesn’t, but I can tell you what’s going to happen if we put your application in now: you’ll be rejected on the basis of family history.”

“Really? I guess I should have kept my mouth shut.”

“That wouldn’t have done you any good in the long run; if you ever submitted a claim related to your Huntington’s, we’d investigate. If we found that you’d been aware of your family history at the time you applied for insurance, we would disallow the claim. No, you did the right thing telling me, but…”

“But what?”

“Well, as I said, this is awkward.” She opened the binder again, going to one of the tabbed sections at the back. “I don’t usually show this chart to clients, but… well, it explains it pretty clearly. As you can see, we have three basic levels of premiums in each age/sex group. Internally, we refer to them as the H, M, and L levels — for high, medium, and low. If you had a family history that showed a predisposition to, oh, say, to having a heart attack in your forties, something like that, we’d still issue you a policy, but at the H premium level — the highest level. If, on the other hand, you had a favorable family history, we’d offer you the M level. Now, M is still pretty high—”

“I’ll say!” said Pierre, looking at the figure in the column labeled “Males, 30 to 34.”

“Right, it is. But that’s because we’re not allowed to require genetic testing of applicants. Because of that, we have to assume that you might indeed have a serious genetic disorder. Now, what I’m supposed to do after showing you that premium level is say, ‘Well, you know, I can’t ask you to have a genetic test, but if you
choose
to, and the results are favorable, then I’d be able to offer you
this
premium here’ — the L premium.”

“That’s only half as much as the M premium.”

“Exactly. It’s an incentive to have the test, see? We don’t
make
you take a genetic test, but if you decide to do so voluntarily, you can save a lot of money.”

“That hardly seems fair.”

Tiffany shrugged. “Lots of insurance companies do it this way now.”

“But you’re saying I can’t get
any
health insurance because of my family history?”

“Right. Huntington’s is just too costly, and your risk level, at fifty percent, is too high, to consider covering you at all. But if you take a test that proves you don’t have the gene—”

“But I don’t want to take the test.”

“Well, this gets even more complicated.” She sighed, trying to think of how best to explain it. “Last month, Governor Wilson signed a Senate bill into law. It comes into effect on January first — ten weeks from now. The new law says California health insurers will no longer be able to use genetic testing to discriminate against people who carry the gene for a disease but have no symptoms of it. In other words, we will no longer be able to consider merely
having
the gene for Huntington’s or ALS or any other late-onset illnesses to be a preexisting condition in otherwise healthy people.”

“Well, it
isn’t
a preexisting condition.”

“Politely, Mr. Tardivel, that’s a matter of interpretation. The new California law is the first of its kind in the nation; in every other state, having bad genes
does
amount to a preexisting condition, even if you’re asymptomatic. Even those few states that
do
have anti-genetic-discrimination laws — Florida, Ohio, Iowa, a couple of others — even they make exceptions for insurance companies, allowing them to use actuarial or claims experience in deciding whom to insure and what premiums to charge.”

Pierre frowned. “But what you’re saying is, because we’re in California, if I wait until January first, you won’t be able to reject me on the basis of my family history?”

“No, we’ll still be able to do that — that’s valid information that you’re a high-risk candidate, and we’re not obligated to give policies to high-risk people.”

“Then what’s the difference?”

“The difference is that genetic information
supersedes
family-history information. Do you see? If we have concrete genetic info, it takes precedence over anything we might infer from the medical histories of your parents or siblings. If you take the genetic test, then, under the new state law, we
have to
give you a policy regardless of its results related to Huntington’s disease. Even if the test proves that you
do
have the Huntington’s gene, we still have to insure you as long as you apply before you have any symptoms; we
can’t
reject you or charge you a higher premium based on actual genetic information.”

“Wait a minute — that’s crazy. If I don’t take the test, you’ve got a fifty-fifty shot that I’ll end up making a lot of claims due to my Huntington’s, and so you reject me because of my family history. But if I do take the test, and even if it’s a hundred percent definite that I
will
get Huntington’s and therefore make a lot of claims, you
will
insure me?”

“That’s right, or at least it will be, after January first, because of the new law.”

“But I don’t want to take the Huntington’s test.”

“Really? I’d have thought you’d like to know.”

“No. No, I don’t. Hardly any Huntington’s at-risks have taken the test.

Most of us don’t want to know for sure.”

Tiffany shrugged a little. “Well, if you want to be insured, it’s your only option. Look, why don’t you fill out the forms today, but date them January — well, January second: the first business day in the new year. I’ll call you up then, and you can let me know what you want to do. If you’ve already taken the test by that point, or are prepared to take it, I’ll put the policy application in; if not, I’ll just tear it up.”

It was obvious that Tiffany simply didn’t want to risk losing a sale, but, dammit, this had already taken far too much time; Pierre certainly didn’t want to go through the same rigmarole again with somebody else. “I’d like to see some other plans before I make my decision,” he said.

“Of course.” She showed Pierre a variety of policies: the predictable Silver and Bronze Plans, with progressively fewer benefits; a hospital-only plan; a drug-only plan; and so on. But Tiffany pressed hard for the Gold Plan, and Pierre finally agreed, telling himself he would have made exactly the same decision even if her blouse had been done up all the way.

“You won’t regret your choice,” said Tiffany. “You’re not just buying health insurance — you’re buying peace of mind.” She got a form from her briefcase and handed it to Pierre. “If you could just fill this out — and don’t forget to date it January second.” She opened the left side of her jacket.

There was a pocket inside the jacket, with a row of identical retractable ballpoint pens clipped to it. She extracted one, closed her jacket, and handed the pen to Pierre.

He pressed down on the pen’s button with his thumb, extending the point, and filled out the forms. When he was done, he handed the form back to her, and absently went to put the pen in his own breast pocket.

Tiffany pointed at it. “My pen… ?” she said.

Pierre smiled sheepishly and handed it back to her. “Sorry.”

“So, I’ll call you at the beginning of the year,” she said. “But be careful between now and then — we wouldn’t want anything to happen to you before you’re insured.”

“I still don’t know if I’m going to take the test,” he said.

She nodded. “It’s up to you.”

Pierre thought,
It hardly seems that way
, but decided not to argue the point further.