In addition to being longtime buddies, Raj and Spencer were research collaborators, both professors at the University of California. Spencer was no slouch in the IQ department, and he jokingly pointed out to friends that what Raj did for a living wasn’t exactly brain surgery. But they both knew that Raj’s intellect, armed with an MD from UCLA and a PhD in applied physics from Cal Tech, could run circles around Spencer’s.
Together, they aimed to improve the diagnosis of brain tumors and other diseases with magnetic resonance imaging: MRI. Rather than enhance the MRI machines themselves—which were big, expensive things that filled up entire rooms—they were working on the pictures: the grey-hued images from which radiologists diagnosed diseases, and which neurosurgeons like Spencer used as road maps for performing brain surgery. MRIs were essentially digital photographs. And like any digital photograph, MRIs could be touched up, their pixels coaxed into sharper and more precise images.
So, like a super-advanced form of Photoshop, Raj and Spencer were writing new software to improve MRIs. They were a perfect team: Spencer supplied the surgical expertise, patients, and MRIs; Raj supplied the engineering and software-coding skills, and a few grad students for grunt work. They’d been working on this for the last three years and were getting really good at it. A few months ago, in fact, they’d scored a five-million-dollar government grant that would keep their lab going for at least another five years.
“Really. Wait till you see the images. They’re awesome. We’re able to make out structures the size of proteins. Proteins, Spencer! Small ones, on the order of less than fifty amino acids in length. Think about it. Think about what we could do with that!”
Over the phone, a door squeaked on its hinges, followed by a knock of plastic striking ceramic.
A toilet seat going up, Spencer recognized. Raj continued to talk over the sound that started, predictably, a moment later.
“Yeah. I’m thinking if I tweak the algorithms a little more, we’ll be able to see early recurrent glioma. And possibly structural changes consistent with a pre-Alzheimer’s state, or early Parkinson’s. What do you think?”
“Uh, sure. Okay.” Spencer tried to block, without success, an image of Raj at the other end of the line, holding the cell phone with one hand while obliging his biological needs with the other. “Raj, do you really have to take a piss while we’re talking on the phone?”
“Yes,” Raj said, yawning. “Anyway. It’s going to put us years ahead. A goddamn work of art, if I do say so. Those envious pricks at Hopkins (like Coleman, remember that asshole?) are going to shit when they see this.” Flush. “When we submit to a journal … Oh, shit. Shit.”
“What?”
“The storm!” Raj was practically shouting into the phone. “Dude, I totally forgot about that storm.”
“What are you talking about?”
“That offshore storm! It’s all over Twitter.”
He didn’t know how Raj had pulled off that feat of multitasking: checking his Twitter feed while talking on the phone and taking a piss. He didn’t want to know. Raj had always been incapable of doing just one thing at a time. His mind always seemed to be racing in at least five different directions, even, Spencer suspected, during the few hours he slept.
“Oh. Right. What about it?”
“Consistent swells with ten-foot faces. Ten feet! And breaking totally clean. I’ve got to get down to Black’s, dude.”
Black’s Beach was a popular surf spot at the base of steep cliffs. Turner Hospital and the university campus sat at the top of the cliffs overlooking Black’s. Spencer’s understanding was that, back in the seventies, Black’s had been some kind of hippie nude beach. These days, though, it drew properly attired surfers, sunbathers, families, and the occasional paunchy old man wearing nothing but a G-string and leering grin. It went without saying that you never made eye contact with those guys, who wandered the shoreline like enormous, bronzed crabs. Ever.
Raj was a surfer, and, despite his ungainly physique, a damn good one. Raj preferred the most direct route to Black’s from his campus lab: clambering down steep, switchbacking trails carved into the precarious sandstone of the four-hundred-foot-high cliffs, surfboard tucked underneath his arm. Spencer thought he was nuts, risking his life for a couple of seconds perched atop a damn six-foot piece of fiberglass.
“Thought you would have heard about that by now. I saw a bunch of guys down at Calumet this morning on my run. It was packed.”
“I’m not surprised. I’ll get in a quick surf, then head over to the lab.” Raj’s enthusiasm and energy spilled through the receiver; it sounded as if his four hours of sleep would suffice. “Probably only a few good hours of waves left.”
“You want to meet for lunch?”
“Sure. Sushi? At that place near Higdon Park?” The view from there, a sweeping one of the Pacific, was phenomenal.
“Okay. How about one o’clock?”
“Great.”
Spencer was approaching the mouth of a steep canyon. “Raj. I’m about to drive through the canyon, so I’m probably going to lose you. I’ll look over those data, and we’ll talk more at lunch. Sound good?”