Dr. Allgood spoke. “What did you find?”
“The estrogen,” said Lyle, looking up. “What was that about?”
Dr. Allgood laughed hollowly. “If you’re anything like us, you immediately assumed it was a premature aging shift, but wait ’til you see the autopsy report.” He reached over to the folder and sorted through it quickly, pulling out a thick subset of papers clamped together with a paperclip. “Page four, somewhere in the middle. When they made the Y incision through the soft tissues of the chest, they found mammary glands.”
Lyle jerked his head back up. “Mammary glands? He had breasts?”
Allgood nodded. “Normally they don’t cut through those, obviously, but how were they to know? They were grossly underdeveloped, and there was nothing in his medical history about intersexuality.”
Lyle looked back down at the autopsy report, scanning through it desperately. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Did he have anything else?”
“Immature ovaries, a semideveloped uterus, and a corresponding weakness in all his-her male sexual characteristics, primary and secondary. Medically speaking, he was neither really male nor female, just a halfhearted attempt at both.”
Lyle couldn’t help himself; the first thing he thought was Susan was so into this guy. He shook his head to clear it and looked back at the notes, but Susan’s interest in Ford kept coming back to mind. It didn’t make sense.
“I’ve met Jon Ford in person,” said Lyle. “There was nothing feminine about him. He was manly and handsome and … manly.”
Allgood shrugged. “His testosterone was just as high as his estrogen. Now you can see why we were so confused.”
“He never told me anything about this,” said Lyle.
“He was probably pretty sensitive about it, for obvious reasons.”
“Then why did he agree to a medical test?” asked Lyle.
Allgood scratched his beard. “I don’t know. A cry for help, maybe? He wanted to be discovered?”
Or he didn’t know about it when he signed up, thought Lyle, because this is another crazy, impossible side effect of that damned lotion. Lyle stared at the papers, trying to think. He riffled the big file with his thumb. “Is this a full medical history?”
“As close as you’ll get without a lot of extra legwork; we’ve got a description of every visit he’s ever made to this hospital, but he may have been to others.”
“Did he have any previous blood work?” asked Lyle. “A blood test from last year, or even older than that?”
“He’s been a patient here a couple of different times, according to the file, I’m sure he had a blood test at some point.”
“Are those results saved somewhere?”
Allgood nodded, picking up his phone. “Sure, I’ll make a request.”
Lyle went back to the files while Allgood spoke to his assistant. The rest of the autopsy report was fairly standard, though apparently his kidneys had been thrashed. It wasn’t until the final page that Lyle found another surprise.
“His cause of death wasn’t the stroke?”
Allgood finished his call and hung up the phone. “No, we stabilized him after the stroke, and then his kidneys killed him a few hours later.”
“Renal failure,” said Lyle, reading the line again. “What was wrong with his kidneys?”
“He had an acute hemolytic reaction,” said Allgood. “You saw the low red cell count?”
“Yeah.”
“Something was killing them, and the hemoglobin this released into his system was very slowly destroying his kidneys. We should have seen it, but so many of the symptoms overlap with the flu.”
“What if it wasn’t flu at all?” asked Lyle. “Just a prolonged kidney failure that looked like a flu?”
“That’s the thing,” said Allgood, “this kind of kidney failure isn’t usually prolonged—red cell destruction typically happens in one big swoop, like you’d get from a bad blood transfusion. The antibodies from one blood type attack the red blood cells of the other, and the whole body falls apart. That could even explain the stroke, if enough of the dead cells got into a bottleneck in his brain.”
“So is that it?” asked Lyle. “Did he get a transfusion?”
“Not in our hospital,” said Allgood, “and nowhere else that his friends or family were aware of. So it has to be something else, we just don’t know what.”
“There’s no way he could have gotten foreign blood into his system?”
“Not as far as we can tell. We couldn’t even find any needle marks aside from our own, and we know we didn’t do it.”
Lyle sighed and rubbed his eyes. “This doesn’t make any sense.”
Allgood laughed again, a dry, humorless cough. “Tell me about it.”
Four hours later Lyle was back in the hospital lobby, staring listlessly at a mirrored wall. He’d gone through everything in the folder, found every scrap of evidence he could, but none of it led anywhere. All I need is just one clue, he thought, just one clue that can tie all the symptoms together—not just Jon Ford’s but everyone’s. Why had William England’s skin turned Caucasian? Why had Pedro Trujillo’s bones elongated? Why had Christopher Page lost so much weight? If there was a common trend, he’d have something to work with—if everyone was losing weight, or if everyone had bone deformation—then he could at least identify the direction of the problem, if not the cause. As it was he had nothing: no trends, no hypothesis, nothing.
Lyle thought about Christopher Page’s face in the grocery store—his own face—and shivered at the remembered shock of looking into his own eyes, familiar and foreign at once. He looked across the floor at his reflection in the mirrored wall—a man on an identical bench, tired and scared, the hospital bustling unnoticed behind him. Who was he, really? Who is Lyle Fontanelle? A chemist. A developer. If I’d never taken that first cosmetics job, would I be here now? Would I be somewhere else? Or would I be someone else—another Lyle altogether, living another life?
Lyle’s reflection stood up, and walked toward him.
“Holy—!” Lyle jumped back in shock. The reflection scowled angrily, pointed, and started running straight at him.
“You did this to us!”
In the seconds before he was tackled, Lyle had just enough time to realize two things: first, there was no mirror at all, simply another bench lined up beside another identical pillar.
Second: the other Lyle had a Mexican accent.
11
Tuesday, May 1
6:39 P.M.
Bellevue Hospital, Manhattan
227 DAYS TO THE END OF THE WORLD
The new Lyle smashed into the old with horrific force, tackling him to the ground and knocking the wind from his lungs.
“This is all your fault!”
Lyle gasped for breath, struggling to crawl away; he almost managed to inhale before something solid slammed into the side of his head, and his vision exploded in white stars. He fell on the floor, blind and deaf. His lungs ached for air, and he gasped a ragged breath. Somebody pulled the other Lyle off of him, and when his hearing returned he could hear the same voice again, with the same Mexican accent, ranting angrily.
“He did this to me. You see my skin? You see my arms? He did this to me!”
“Please calm down, sir, just tell me what’s wrong.”
Lyle saw himself standing about ten feet away, held tightly by a pair of hospital orderlies. The haircut was different, but close; the clothes were the same general color as Lyle’s. At a distance you might not be able to tell them apart.
It’s Christopher Page, thought Lyle. But no, he doesn’t have an accent.
“I do not look like this,” the man growled. “He ruined my bones, my skin, my whole life!”
“Wait,” said Lyle, clambering to his feet. He stared at his other self. “Who are you?”
“You know who I am!” the man shouted. “I am Pedro Trujillo—you used me like a rat in a lab, testing your poison, and then you called me on the phone.
Don’t pretend you don’t know me!”
“Pedro Trujillo,” said Lyle, realization washing through him like nausea. “You can’t be Pedro Trujillo—you’re nearly five inches taller than he is. And you’re white.”
“I know I’m white!” Pedro screamed.
One of the orderlies looked at Lyle. “Is this a … relative of yours?”
“No, he’s a … business acquaintance.” When Lyle had called him before, the same day he called the others, Pedro had mentioned intense leg aches but he hadn’t blamed Lyle or NewYew for any of it. “Pedro,” said Lyle, “why didn’t you tell me about the skin bleaching?” That’s two subjects with a similar symptom—the first match I’ve found yet. But what does it mean?
And why does he look like me?
“The skin change is new,” Pedro spat, “but I know that you did it—that’s why you called me, to see if it had started yet. When my skin changed, I knew you must have done something to my legs, as well.”
“What are you talking about?” the orderly asked. He looked at Lyle. “What is he talking about?”
I need to play this off, thought Lyle, I need to calm him down and keep this quiet. No one’s mentioned NewYew yet; if he says anything about NewYew this entire thing could explode. “Mr. Trujillo,” said Lyle, walking toward him, “I promise this is just a misunderstanding, and I’d be more than happy to offer some kind of compensation—” Lyle reached his hand toward him, a gesture of peace, and then stopped, frozen, staring at Pedro in shock. Now that he was closer, he could see that his eyes were green, with a small patch of amber in his right iris. Pedro had heterochromia.
Exactly like Lyle.
“That man gave me poison,” Pedro shouted. “He tricked me into using some kind of chemical, and it’s destroying my body. I demand that you call the police and have him arrested!”
“Your eye…,” said Lyle, but Pedro shouted him down.
“Call the police! This man is trying to kill me! He is!”
“Excuse me,” said another man, stepping purposefully into the circle. He wore a very expensive suit. “I’m Dr. Whitaker, I’m the hospital administrator. Would you gentlemen like to continue this discussion in my office?”
“It’s…” Lyle paused, too shocked to speak. Pedro has my eyes—not just the same color, but the same irregularity. How is that possible? And what does it mean? “We have to talk,” he said at last, pleading to Pedro. “We need to go somewhere and talk, we need to figure out what’s going on—”
“That was fast,” said Pedro, looking over Lyle’s shoulder, “the police are here.”
The hospital administrator glanced at another orderly. “Hold them both.” The orderly put a hand on Lyle’s arm, his grip light but solid, and the administrator stepped toward the police. “I’m Dr. Whitaker, the hospital administrator. Can I help you?”
“I’m Officer Woolf,” said the first policeman, “and this is Officer Luckesen. We’re looking for a man named Lyle Fontanelle.” He held up a photo. “His secretary told us we might be able to find him here. Have you seen a man matching this … description…” His voice trailed off as he looked at Lyle, then at Pedro, then back at Lyle again. “What’s going on?”
“He is Fontanelle,” said Pedro, pointing at Lyle. “I don’t know who called you, but thank you for coming!”
“Nobody called us,” said Officer Woolf, confused. “We’ve been looking for him all day.”
“I’m Lyle,” said Lyle, waving politely. “What’s this all about?”
“You’ve been connected to a robbery in Brooklyn,” said the second policeman, Officer Luckesen, stepping forward to grab Lyle’s free arm. “We’re going to have to take you in for some questions.”
“I haven’t been to Brooklyn in … forever,” said Lyle, confused. “I definitely didn’t rob anyone there. Or anywhere.”
“He’s crazy,” said Pedro. “He’s some kind of mad scientist—look what he did to me!”
Officer Woolf looked at the administrator. “What’s he talking about?”
“He attacked…” The administrator paused, looking at Pedro and Lyle to get his bearings. Finally he pointed at Pedro. “This one attacked the other one. I haven’t determined exactly why yet, but he’s raving about … well, you heard him.”
“They were doing some kind of test,” said an orderly. “They were both talking about it.”
“He is using me as a lab rat for chemical weapons!” Pedro shouted.
There was a small crowd gathered now, keeping a respectful distance but listening actively. Lyle could tell the administrator was upset by the upheaval in his lobby. He just wants to get this over with, thought Lyle. If I give him an easy out, I might be able to keep this quiet.
Lyle beckoned the administrator closer, and leaned toward him and the policemen confidentially, whispering so that Pedro couldn’t hear. “I don’t want to press any charges for the assault. Pedro is a relative of mine—you can see the resemblance—but he’s completely delusional. The family suspects paranoid schizophrenia. I mean, you heard what he said: I used chemical weapons to make him taller?” He looked at the administrator innocently. “I’ll just go with the police to sort out whatever misunderstanding we have about fingerprints, and meanwhile maybe you can get this man in to see a counselor.”
Officer Woolf chuckled, and Lyle held his breath in hope. It’s working.
“If you can make people taller, sign me up,” said the officer. “I’ll join the NBA and get away from these lunatics.” He looked at the administrator. “You need help with the, uh, crazy guy?”
“I’m sure we’ll be fine,” said the administrator softly, glancing quickly around at the periphery of onlookers. He was in familiar territory now—treating an overexcited patient instead of breaking up a fight. “The less commotion the better.”
“Let us know if you need anything else,” said Officer Luckesen. The policemen directed Lyle gently toward the main doors, and Pedro shouted triumphantly behind them.
“Make him pay for it! I can testify against him—we all can! He’s a Frankenstein!”
Lyle followed the policemen to their car, trying to force himself to stay calm. “So what’s this all about? Who got robbed?”
“It’s a house in Brooklyn,” said the officer, climbing into the driver’s seat. “A very expensive one, with very little evidence, and the detectives eventually resorted to a DNA test. I’m afraid your name came up as an exact match.”
“I swear,” said Lyle, “I haven’t been to Brooklyn in ages. I don’t know how my DNA could possibly be there—” Lyle stopped abruptly, frowning. “I don’t even know how my DNA got into your database. I’ve never been arrested or processed or anything.”
“That’s no real surprise,” said Woolf. “It’s an FBI database, and they pull in a lot of noncriminal records. Have you ever had a background check, like for a job? One that included a blood test?”
“Yes, New”—Lyle shook his head—“my current employer runs checks on everyone they hire.”
“There you go—a lot of these big companies sell those files to the FBI; helps offset the cost of the background check.”
“I see,” said Lyle, nodding. “That’s kind of creepy, knowing that’s out there.”
“It’s a lot creepier having your house broken into.”
“You’ve got to trust me on this one,” said Lyle, leaning forward. “Your test must be wrong. Look, when did the robbery happen?”
“April fourteenth; it was a Saturday night.”
“Perfect!” said Lyle. “Saturday nights I’m usually at work.”
“Sure you are.”
“I am,” said Lyle. “Almost every week.” He wracked his brain, trying to remember if this was one of those weeks. “We’ve got an electronic security system that logs our ID cards—it should know exactly when I got there and when I left.”
The officers glanced at each other. “Those can be faked. And that’s a conveniently specific alibi.”
“My fa
ce will be on the cameras,” said Lyle.
“Cameras can be faked, too. You could get somebody who looks like you—that guy from the hospital, maybe—to be on camera for you.”
“But what if I’m on the camera and that other guy robbed the house?” asked Lyle. “You could have the wrong guy.”
“DNA evidence doesn’t work that way,” said Officer Luckesen. “It’s not perfect, but it’s a lot harder to fake than a camera.”
Lyle snapped his fingers. “The security guard! Saturday night is such a weird time to be at work, the security guard usually comes in and talks to me for five or ten minutes. He gets bored. He’ll definitely remember me.”
Officer Woolf sighed. “We’ll call from the station to check, but you’re going to have to get processed regardless.”
Lyle’s cell phone rang, and he looked at the officers. “Can I get that?”
“Go ahead.”
“Thanks.” He pulled out his phone and checked the number; it was the hospital. Probably something about Pedro. He thumbed the screen. “Hello, this is Lyle Fontanelle.”
Dr. Allgood’s voice boomed on the other end. “I’m sorry this took so long, but I have that blood test you requested.”
“Which?”
“One of Jon Ford’s old tests, from a visit three years ago. Do you have a fax number I could send it to?”
Lyle looked at the policemen in the front seat. “I’m actually not sure if I’ll be able to get to a fax machine anytime soon.” He pulled a folded paper from his jacket pocket and fumbled in his pants for a pen. “I’ve got a copy of the other blood test here, could you just read me the results and I can jot them down for comparison?”