chapter TEN
• COLE •
Back on the planet called New York, my father, Dr. George St. Clair, MD, PhD, Mensa, Inc., was a fan of the scientific process. He was a good mad scientist. He cared about the why. He cared about the how. Even when he didn’t care about what it was doing to the subject, he cared about how you could state the formula to replicate the experiment.
Me, I cared about results.
I also cared, very deeply, about not being like my father in any way. In fact, most of my life decisions were based around the philosophy of not being Dr. George St. Clair.
So it was painful to have to agree with him on something so important to him, even if he’d never know about it. But when I opened my eyes, feeling like my insides had been pounded flat, the first thing I did was feel for the journal on the nightstand beside me. I had woken earlier, found myself alive on the living room floor — that was a surprise — and crawled to my bedroom to sleep or finish the process of dying. Now, my limbs felt like they’d been assembled by a factory with lousy quality control. Squinting in gray light that could’ve been any time of day or night, I opened the journal up with fingers that felt like inanimate objects. I had to turn past pages of Beck’s handwriting to get to my own, and then I wrote the date and copied the format I’d used on the days before. My handwriting on the facing page was a bit sturdier than the letters I scratched down now.
EPINEPHRINE/PSEUDOEPHEDRINE MIX 4
METHOD: INTRAVENOUS INJECTION
RESULT: SUCCESSFUL
(SIDE EFFECTS SEIZURE)
I closed the book and rested it on my chest. I’d pop the champagne over my discovery just as soon as I could stay awake. When progress stopped feeling so much like a disease.
I closed my eyes again.