Mutation

Sunday, Early Evening

DR. William Hobbs was looking across the chessboard at his son, marveling over him as he did most every day, when the boy’s intensely blue eyes rolled back into his head, and the child fell backward off his seat. William didn’t see his son hit the floor, but he heard the sickening thud.

“Sheila!” he screamed, jumping up and rushing around the table. To his horror, he saw that Maurice’s arms and legs were flailing wildly. He was in the throes of a grand mal seizure.

As a Ph.D., not an M.D., William was not certain what to do. He vaguely remembered something about protecting the victim’s tongue by putting something between his teeth, but he had nothing appropriate.

Kneeling over the boy, who was just days short of his third birthday, William yelled again for his wife. Maurice’s body contorted with surprising force; it was hard for William to keep the child from injuring himself.

Sheila froze at the sight of her husband juggling the wildly thrashing child. By this time Maurice had bitten his tongue badly, and as his head snapped up and down, a spray of frothy blood arched onto the rug.

“Call an ambulance!” shouted William.

Sheila broke free of the paralyzing spell and rushed back to the kitchen phone. Maurice hadn’t felt well from the moment she’d picked him up from Chimera Day Care. He’d complained of a headache—one of a pounding variety, like a migraine. Of course most three-year-olds wouldn’t describe a headache that way, but Maurice wasn’t most three-year-olds.

He was a true child prodigy, a genius. He’d learned to talk at eight months, read at thirteen months, and now could beat his father at their nightly chess game.

“We need an ambulance!” shouted Sheila into the phone when a voice finally answered. She gave their address, pleading with the operator to hurry. Then she rushed back into the living room.

Maurice had stopped convulsing. He was lying quite still on the couch where William had placed him. He’d vomited his dinner along with a fair amount of bright red blood. The awful mess had become matted in his blond hair and drooled from the corners of his mouth. He’d also lost control of his bladder and bowels.

“What should I do?” William pleaded in frustration. At least the child was breathing and his color, which had turned a dusky blue, was returning to normal.

“What happened?” Sheila asked.

“Nothing,” William answered. “He was winning as usual.

Then his eyes rolled up and back and he fell over. I’m afraid he hit his head pretty hard on the floor.”

“Oh, God!” Sheila said, wiping Maurice’s mouth with the corner of her apron. “Maybe you shouldn’t have insisted he play chess tonight with his headache and everything.”

“He wanted to,” William said defensively. But that wasn’t quite true. Maurice had been lukewarm to the idea. But William couldn’t resist an opportunity to watch the child use his phenomenal brain. Maurice was William’s pride and joy.

He and Sheila had been married for eight years before they finally were willing to admit they were unable to conceive.

Since Chimera had its own fertility center, Fertility, Inc., and since William was an employee of Chimera, he and Sheila had gone there free of charge. It hadn’t been easy. They had to face the fact that both of them were infertile, but eventually, via a surrogate and gamete-donation plans, they got their long-awaited child: Maurice, their miracle baby with an IQ right off the charts.

“I’ll get a towel and clean him up,” Sheila said, starting for the kitchen. But William grabbed her arm.

“Maybe we shouldn’t move him around.”

The couple sat watching the child helplessly, until they heard the ambulance scream down their street. Sheila rushed to let the medics in.

A few moments later, William found himself balancing on a seat in the back of the lurching vehicle with Sheila following behind in the family car.

When they reached Lowell General Hospital, the couple waited anxiously while Maurice was examined and evaluated, then declared stable enough for transfer. William wanted the child to go to Children’s Hospital in Boston, about a half hour’s drive. Something told him that his child was deathly ill. Maybe they had been too proud of his phenomenal brilliance. Maybe God was making them pay.

“Hey, VJ!” Victor shouted up the back stairs. “How about a swim!” He could hear his voice carom off the walls of their spacious house. It had been built in the eighteenth century by the local landowner. Victor had bought and renovated it shortly after David’s death. Business at Chimera had begun to boom after the company had gone public, and Victor felt Marsha would be better off if she didn’t have to face the same rooms where David had grown up. She’d taken David’s passing even harder than he had.

“Want to go in the pool?” Victor shouted again. It was at times like this that he wished they’d put in an intercom system.

“No, thanks,” came VJ’s answer echoing down the stairwell.