“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Acklen,” Dr. Grind said. He felt a deep, disorienting fuzziness overtake him, as if he had just finished holding his breath for three minutes. He focused and tried to stay present in the moment.
“It’s fine. I’ve had the best life of probably anyone in the entire history of the world. It’s been very good for a very long time. The reason I’m telling you this, Dr. Grind, is not to make you sad or to worry you. It’s to let you know that, even if I die before the project ends, it will continue to be funded. You will have complete control over the project and can continue to run it as you see fit. On our end, Patricia is going to help deal with the particulars. I’ve stressed to her how deeply I feel about this project.”
Patricia then spoke up, saying, “I see real potential for The IFP, something that shifts the paradigm in ways that will be beneficial for all involved.”
“So,” Mrs. Acklen continued, “no matter what happens, you’ll be safe. Patricia will be your liaison and she’ll make sure you get what you need. I do wish you the best of luck. It’s unique, what you’ve made here, so I hope you can keep it going.”
“I’ll do my best,” Dr. Grind assured her.
“And what about the postdoc fellows?” Patricia then asked.
“What do you mean?” Dr. Grind replied.
“When would I talk to them? It seems that it’s necessary for me to have contacts with the people who work for you, to receive some sense of how you’re performing.”
Dr. Grind stiffened; it seemed disrespectful to be discussing this before Brenda Acklen, who was dying, was actually dead. “I guess that could be arranged,” he allowed.
Brenda interjected, “This is Dr. Preston’s show; he chose the families and he chose the fellows. Everything comes through him. That’s how we’ve done it and I aim to keep it that way. He’s the one I trust.”
“Okay, Gramma,” Patricia said, smiling so hard that it erased the frown Dr. Grind could see if he looked hard enough. “You’re the boss. We do it your way. I was just trying to open lines of communication for more effective management.”
“Never mind that,” Brenda said, done with the subject. There was a moment of silence, the awkwardness settling in the air.
“What will you do when it’s over?” Patricia suddenly asked him, as if she’d been waiting to offer this question the entire day.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“What are your plans once the project ends and the families disperse?”
“I haven’t thought about it very much, to be honest. I suppose I’ll look into continuing the study, setting up more rigorous testing to decide the outcomes. And the families won’t truly disperse, I believe. They’ll stay in contact with each other, remain a large part of each other’s lives. That’s the hope.”
“And you’ll continue to be a part of their lives?” she asked, as if the idea was slightly troubling to her.
“In some way, perhaps,” he said, embarrassed to be saying this aloud. He had truthfully not discussed the end of the project with any kind of definitive outlook for the future. He had avoided the strangeness of what would happen to these children, to their parents, once the families left the complex and began their own lives.
“Of course he’ll be a part of their lives,” Mrs. Acklen said, smiling, reaching for Dr. Grind’s hand. “It won’t end, will it, Dr. Grind? It will keep going, just in different ways.”
“That’s right, Mrs. Acklen,” Dr. Grind replied.
“I wondered if Infinite was just a kind of grandiose word,” Patricia said.
“It’s not,” he said, surprising himself by how certain he sounded.
chapter fourteen