Phoenix Heart (5 page)

Dr. Richards turned to us. “Last one out lock up.”

The puppeteers jerked our strings and all three of us nodded.

They started out the door. “Chuck, be sure to cut the power
on the scintillation counter.”

“Sure Andrew.”

“Lance, don’t leave the fume hood fan on again.”

His head bobbed up and down, his eyes locked on the way Ms.
Granzella’s dress draped down to the small of her back.

Dr. Richards looked at me. “Good night, Melinda.”

“Good night.”

As I looked at the two of them, perfectly gorgeous together,
heading out for some fabulous night on the town to rub elbows with movie stars
and politicians the last of my Andrew Richards romantic fancies crashed down around
my feet.

Ms. Granzella looked back at me just as they went out the
door.

“I thought you said your name was Melanie.”

I smiled. “I must have been wrong.”

She looked a little puzzled, then shrugged her pretty
shoulders and smiled. “Oh,” she said as she disappeared around the corner.

“Cockroaches?”

“Yes, Ms. Brenner, cockroaches.”

“We’re going to dissect
live
cockroaches?”

“Yes, Ms. Brenner, very much alive. Now, if I might
continue?” Chuck lifted one eyebrow.

He gave me a pompous look, sniffed once, and then continued.
I just grinned. He may have not had the good sense to overlook Cheryl’s charm,
intelligence, and beauty, but I still liked him. He was so willing to make an
ass of himself, it would be hard not to. In the three weeks since I’d first
walked into the lab, I’d come to know him well. Not only did we work together,
he was responsible for those of us who were working as teaching assistants for
the first year undergrad biology lab. Every Wednesday he briefed us on what we
would teach the thirty-odd students in the next week’s lab sections.

“These are South Pacific cockroaches, imported at great
expense, so that you might enlighten your freshman lab students on the wonders
of cockroach biochemistry. Each cockroach is between two-and-one-half and three
inches long.”

“What?” This came from my left. It was Cathy Greggers, and
she was definitely looking a shade paler than when she had come in. Not that I
could attest to the fact that I wasn’t also taking on a nice shade of green.

Chuck just smiled. “I’m sorry, I’ll speak up. Two-and-one-half
to three inches long,” he said loudly. The brat. “You will take them from the
aquarium, place them in a covered petri dish, refrigerate them, and when the
cold makes them dormant, slice open their abdomen...”

He was loving this!

“…and peel the sections of the carapace aside. The first
thing you will notice is a substance looking remarkably like marshmallow cream.”

We all groaned at that one. Chuck naturally fixed on me. “You
had a comment Melanie?”

“A question actually. I was wondering, Chuck... Sir, when
this lab is scheduled?”

“Why, next week, Melanie.”

“Oh, dear! I’m afraid, sir, that I’m going to have to miss
it.”

“And why is that, Ms. Brenner?”

“Well,” I said, as I tried to look humble and modest, “after
the LIMOUSINE picks me up at my apartment on Friday, I’m flying FIRST CLASS, to
beautiful SAN FRANCISCO for an entire week of luxurious living, and I won’t be
able to stay here and dissect live cockroaches. I guess there’s no need to tell
you how absolutely crushed I am.”

“You bum!” he cried. “How do you rate?”

“Clean living, prayer, eating wheat germ every day.”

“But did you clear it with your faculty advisors?”

A voice came from the back of the room. “She cleared it.”

“But Andrew! She’s only a first year. I don’t think you
should allow her and I’d just like to say that I would be more than willing to
fill in for her in San Francisco while she stays here and learns all about the
origins of marshmallow cream.”

“Chuck, there’s no question that we’d all prefer to see you
gone for a week rather than Ms. Brennan.”

“Brenner,” I whispered.

“But, I think you’ve got a paper you owe me?”

“It’s almost done.”

“And a presentation on the immune system on Tuesday?”

“Details, details.”

The rest of the group was smiling at the two of them. I wasn’t.
With Andrew Richards near, I mostly concentrated on getting oxygen in and out
past the pulse hammering in my throat. I knew without a doubt now that I had
not a chance in hell with this guy. I understood that he barely knew I lived
and breathed on planet Earth. Even so, every time he got near me my heart
triggered like it had a direct link to an Andrew Richards proximity detector
(patent pending).

“Don’t listen to this guy. You have a great time in San
Francisco.”

He stood next to me, looking down. I looked up past Bullseye
and Dr. Richards’ left ear. “Thank you,” I said wittily.

“Now, if Chuck here has finished boring all of you.”

“Boring!” Chuck snorted. “They
live
to listen to me.”

“There is a seminar starting in ten minutes in the first
floor biochem conference room. I would suggest...”

“Read that as ‘order,’” Chuck said.

“...you all might want to attend.”

We all started gathering our notebooks and papers and I
managed to reach the door first, duck down the hall to the restroom, lock
myself in a stall, and give myself a good talking to about hero worship at the
ripe age of twenty-four.

* * * *

The limo was to pick me up at two on Friday, so early Friday
morning I walked from my apartment to the lab to make certain I’d left
everything turned off that was supposed to be off, and everything turned on
that was supposed to be on. Somehow at about three a.m., while tossing back and
forth, I knew that I’d managed to get it all backwards--the ons were off and
the offs, on. Unable to sleep anyway, when the sky started to lighten a little
after six o’clock, I headed out on the five-block walk to the University
grounds. It was a beautiful October morning, one of my favorite times: cool, but
not cold, the leaves turning, the air smelling fresher than it ever did during
the hot smoggy days of summer. Except for a solitary jogger who lifted a hand
and panted through grinning teeth in my direction as he passed, I had the
streets to myself, and smiled while I walked in the pearly morning light,
marveling that I did indeed walk these streets, streets which led to a
University that I had dreamed for so long to enter. The hard work in classes
four nights a week, Saturdays, and summers for four years had paid off.

And here it was, the morning of my trip. Two weeks at the
bank, three weeks of classes, and now a week of solitary pleasure in rich
decadence in the city by the Bay.

Solitary.

My smile began to fade, I could feel it, and I tried to grab
hold, force it to stay, tried to snag onto the feeling of happiness, but I knew
happiness could slip away quicker than a minnow through a three-year-old’s
fingers.

Solitary.

The trip had been for two. The coming week was the only one
I could reasonably miss and it was the one week Cheryl couldn’t get away from
work.

And I, at twenty-four, could come up with no one else.

In everything else I was so competent, dealing with all and
sundry like an adult—paying the rent, fixing the bathroom sink, making sure my
car insurance was paid up, getting the grades in school—handling it all,
relishing the feeling of independence and competence. Hey, look at me and hear
me roar.

And just about the time I’m surfing up there, cresting the
wave of my life, riding high, it’s time for the jaws to broach through the
blueness below, open wide, clench together, and jerk me under.

Oh, yeah, Melanie. You’re
independent. Hey, girl, you gotta be. Nobody would have you.

“Shut up,” I whispered and walked on, head down.
Someday
it will happen. Someone will come.

Oh right. Not even your best
friend believes that.

I walked faster, forcing that voice away, the caustic,
cutting voice that had plagued me in one way or another since I was eight.

I looked up, having almost walked past the path that wound
through the elms to the Biology Building. I ducked up it, through the trees. A
short, blond-haired man was just coming out of the back door of the building as
I walked up and I managed to catch the door before it slammed shut, grateful
not to have to walk all the way around to the front entrance. I headed up the
stairs, working fiercely to recapture the happiness of only five minutes
before. By the time I’d run up to the third floor, I thought I had a chance. And
then, no more than three steps up toward the fourth floor, a rumbling roar
followed by a sharp jerk flowed over the stairs. Small chunks of plaster flaked
off the walls and ceiling and fell at my feet, and a mixture of excitement and
fear washed up from the pit of my stomach. I froze, holding onto the railing,
but nothing followed the initial shake, and I started to smile, knowing that
once more we’d escaped The Big One—the earthquake that would eventually drop LA
into the ocean. And I was grateful not only for the escape, but for the good shaking
it had given me. Nothing like an earthquake to help you forget petty problems.
I grinned and ran up the last few steps.

The grin vanished when I opened the door onto the fourth
floor hallway. The chemical smell of burning rubber stung my nose and eyes. Black
smoke billowed out the last door at the end of the hall—the door to 413—and as
I stepped out onto the linoleum, the first klaxon fire alarm sounded.

“Chuck,” I whispered in horror, then, “Dr. Richards!”

I ran down the hall toward the smoke. “Chuck! Dr. Richards!”
I screamed, not knowing whether anyone would be there so early, but knowing
that most mornings they were there by no later than seven. I slid up to the
doorway, falling down on my knees as the smoke poured out the top of the
doorway.

“Andrew! Chuck!” I shouted again, but the only sound that
answered my cry was the pinging of metal expanding in the heat and the cracking
of shattering glassware.

“Is anyone in there?” I shouted again just as the overhead
sprinklers came on. Water sizzled into steam as it hit hot metal; I heard pops
like small firecrackers as cold water hit heated glass. Billowing steam turned
the black smoke grey and pushed a cloud of choking heat out the door.

I coughed, trying to blink the sting out of my eyes, and it occurred
to me suddenly that the last place in the world I should be was next to a room
full of flammable chemicals being rapidly consumed by flames. I duck-walked
back from the door, panic blossoming, knowing that it would be this instant
that the bottles of ethanol stored under the work bench just on the other side
of the wall would choose to explode, that a natural gas line would rupture,
driving the wall down on top of me. I took no more than two crouching steps
back when, just after one long whining shriek of the fire alarm, I heard the
sound of a low human cry come from inside the lab. I froze.

“Chuck!” I yelled. “Andrew? Is someone in there?”

I squatted, breathing shallowly, trying to choke the coughs
back, but I heard nothing but the drip of water, the sizzle as it turned to
steam, the crackle of a fire still burning somewhere in the room, the popping
of metal being heated by the flames and cooled by the sprinklers, and the
periodic, ear-shattering klaxon echoing up and down the hall.

I only thought I heard a cry. Not
human. Metal expanding, wood cracking.

Over the sound of the fire I heard sirens, faint with
distance, so far away that I knew they would come too late. The sprinklers were
working on the fire, but the smoke flowing along the ceiling of the hallway
over my head had dropped far lower in the lab and would choke whoever lay
within long before the rescuers could arrive.

Like it’ll choke you, idiot. Run!
Get away!

That inner voice rang so clearly that I actually backed
another step toward the stairwell.

It’s not your responsibility!
Leave them!

“Shut up,” I whispered.

I took several deep breaths, then one giant one and held it
as I crawled into the room on hands and knees. Rubble and glass jabbed into the
skin of my palms. Water soaked my knees and showered over my back and dripped
down each side of my neck. It quickly soaked my hair so that it swung in dark
lanks, falling into my eyes, helping the smoke to blind me. I swept outward
with my hands as I crawled forward, pushing wet glass and pieces of wood
shelving out of my path, praying all the while that the wetness soaking through
the knees of my jeans came only from the sprinklers, and not from acid or
caustic that had once been in bottles now lying shattered. I heard the crackle
of flames to my left, out of the reach of the sprinklers, and saw black smoke
continuing to pour out from under the central lab counter. I remembered
cardboard cartons of something under there, but couldn’t for the life of me
remember what lay inside.

Solvents! Poison! Radioactive
waste!

Lab coats hung on pegs and I reached up, snagged one and
used it to sweep ahead of me. I snagged another, already soaking wet from the
sprinklers, and held it to my streaming eyes. I crouched low, trying to look
under the smoke into the room. Charred books, broken beakers and bottles, test
tube racks, smoldering rubber tubing, and unidentifiable chunks of metal and
machinery lay scattered over the floor. A section near the center of the main
lab counter looked as if a giant hammer had come up under it, shattering the
thick, black material, fracturing it into chunks which had been flung aside. One
heavy chunk had landed on top of a water bath, and driven it down into the
linoleum. Smoke and steam rose toward the ceiling from the area beneath the counter
where sets of file drawers had once stood. Charred black metal twisted outward
like some bizarre otherworldly sculpture. The remains of lab notebooks and
files smoked and burned though the sprinklers were making some headway at
putting out the flames. I blinked against the smoke, squinting, scanning
frantically, but nowhere in the disaster could I see a sign of anything human.