Free The Proteus Cure by F. Paul Wilson, Tracy L. Carbone Page A

was wrong?”
    Dr. Takamura looked away. “I didn’t get a chance to work her up.”
    “But you gonna work
me
up, right?”
    She smiled. “Six ways from Sunday. We’ll start with blood tests, then I’m sending you to Doctor Haskins.”
    “Who’s he?”
    “A dermatologist.”
    “Hope he better than the one I been to.”
    “He’s tops. He’s going to look you over, then take a skin biopsy and do a hair analysis. First we find out what’s going wrong—the changes in the tissues that are making this happen. Then we find out why. Once we know the what and the why, we can start figuring out
how
to fix it.”
    Tanesha sobbed again. Couldn’t help it.
    “Oh, Lordy, I sure hope you right. ’Cause if you ain’t, I don’t know what I’ll do. I’m so sick of them strange looks people give me, I don’t want to go out. And even little Jamal’s starting to look at me like I ain’t his mother no more. He don’t understand—shit,
I
don’t understand—and I think he’s as scared as me. Maybe more.”
    Dr. Takamura touched her arm again. “I’m not promising a solution, Tanesha. I want to be clear on that. But I’ll use everything modern medicine has to offer to find an answer for you.”
    “Can’t ask for more than that, I guess.” She paused. “You think this was caused by my cancer medicine?”
    Dr. Takamura blinked. “What makes you think that?”
    “The doctor I saw yesterday—”
    “Who?”
    “At the Penner clinic. Real piece of work. All the personality of a collard green. Maybe less. Anyway, he’s looking me over, and as soon as he hears I had cancer therapy, he gets all shook up and says I gots to get back to Tethys.”
    “He probably wasn’t familiar with the therapy and thought your immune system might be compromised.”
    “You wanna say that in English?”
    She smiled. “What’s important is that he sent you to the right place.”
    Tanesha sensed something bothering Dr. Takamura.
    “But you didn’t answer my question, doc: Could this be from the treatment?”
    She shrugged. “I don’t know. But that’s one of the things I’ll be looking into.”
    “This other patient—she get the same cancer treatment as me?”
    Another head shake. “I can’t discuss other patients—privacy, you know.”
    Dr. Takamura seemed to be plenty worried, about more than privacy, but Tanesha let it go. She trusted this lady. Had to. She had no one else.

SHEILA
    Sheila wished she’d seen Tanesha before lunch so she could have told Abra. She’d told her all about the bug and Paul, but this was big. Exciting. Abra would have to wait, but not Bill. As soon as she finished her round of appointments, Sheila headed for Bill’s office, walking at top speed. It took all her reserve to keep from running.
    Two patients with pigment changes—radical, pervasive changes. Hair too—not only color but texture as well. And both treated with VG723. There
had
to be a connection.
    She pulled open the door to the clinic building and found herself facing a wall of rain. What had begun as a light mid-morning drizzle had graduated to a full-scale deluge. And her umbrella was in her car.
    Damn.
    Well, she’d just have to get wet. This couldn’t wait. She had to tell Bill. And a phone call wasn’t going to do it. This was face-to-face stuff.
    Wait—the tunnels.
    She passed the elevator and pushed through the stairwell door to its right. Two flights down, through another door, and she was in the tunnel system.
    The underground network that crisscrossed the campus had been dug back in the nineteenth century when this had been Bradfield College. The granite blocks forming the walls, floors, and arched ceilings gave the tunnels a chill, dungeony feel.
    Sheila wondered what it had been like down here before electricity. What had folks used to see? Torches? Kerosene lamps? Must have been dark and foreboding. Now, with fluorescent light boxes strung along the ceilings, they were anything but.
    Light alone couldn’t