Chapter 18
Sinclair Orville, a professor of nephrology.
He was a sharp-featured white man wearing horn-rimmed glasses and something like an everyday suit. Professor Orville scratched his head.
“So you’re the Asian resident?”
I nodded.
“That’s right.”
It was a strange way to start a conversation, wasn’t it...? Still, when I remembered there was only one Asian doctor at Stanford, I supposed it made sense.
I guess that was possible.
The professor nodded gravely.
“Thanks to you, we found multiple endocrine neoplasia in that pyelonephritis patient, and we’re treating it now. There was excessive secretion from the parathyroid, too.”
“Yes.”
“I made a mistake. I should have considered even an uncommon diagnosis from the start. If you hadn’t been there, I might have treated the wrong thing.”
“Not at all, Professor.”
Professor Orville seemed rather authoritarian. Even by the standards of the 1970s.
But we were doctors, and this was a hospital.
We had no choice but to accept whatever became clear during diagnosis and treatment. Someone’s well-being was at stake.
“You don’t need to be modest. The other doctors should know their stuff. It’s embarrassing if none of us can measure up to a foreign first-year resident.”
I’m not a foreigner. Still, maybe he was a decent person if he could admit his mistake. I just nodded politely.
“Thank you.”
“All right, keep up the good work.”
Professor Orville walked away with a hearty laugh.
***
I was finally on vacation.
Still, even resident doctors in America could take a few days off. We just had to stagger our leave so there wouldn’t be any gaps in coverage.
Developed countries really are different.
In Korea at this time, barbaric customs like 100-day on-call rotations would still be around.
The sun was just coming up.
Alice was at the wheel, looking like she was in a wonderful mood. She said it was a Porsche 911. I didn’t know much about old cars, though.
Alice was rich, too, but not so rich that she had an attendant on standby all the time.
Alice rolled down the driver’s-side window.
Her hair fluttered in the breeze.
Soft-looking brown hair and deep green eyes. As expected, she had the kind of elegance that came from having nothing to worry about.
“Nice weather.”
“It sure is.”
“You know you’re coming with my family, right? My father’s a bit peculiar, but, um... he’s a good person, so don’t worry about it.”
What kind of person was he, for her to bring that up all of a sudden?
But rich people all seemed to have peculiar personalities. They had no reason to act like normal people, after all.
“Hmm. What’s he like?”
“You’ll see.”
Alice didn’t explain in any more detail. We sat quietly for a few minutes. The California roads were empty.
“How much longer?”
“About an hour until we get to the vacation house... I heard a rumor you’re going to New York at the end of the year to receive the Lasker Award. Is that true?”
I nodded, and Alice looked impressed. Well, I’d been surprised when I got the invitation, too.
“Whoa... Isn’t the Lasker Award usually for senior scholars? I can’t believe it’s really happening.”
“Yeah.”
Actually, there was something I’d wanted to ask Alice for a while. Why was she so obsessed with the ocean?
“You said we were going to see whale sharks, right?”
When I brought up the ocean again, Alice’s eyes lit up.
“That’s right. Can you swim?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. I wish everyone could see a whale shark at least once... Oh, we’ll need to borrow full-body wetsuits. They should have some.”
There had to be a reason she liked them so much. Alice kept her eyes on the road.
A little while later...
I looked out the window, and our destination came into view.
The endless blue of the California sea.
Warm, above-freezing weather all year round. To a Korean, this really was a blessed land.
Yellow dust, monsoons, summers of thirty degrees, smog, winters cold enough to burst water pipes, blizzards, hail...
Where was all that?
If Dangun the Great had settled in a place like this, Koreans would’ve become the heirs to Rome ages ago. Why’d he have to get swindled in a real-estate deal?
“We’re here!”
Alice laughed.
A vacation house stood overlooking the sea along the California coast. I couldn’t even begin to guess how much a house like that cost.
Alice’s family and a few friends were waiting for us in the parking lot.
I got out of the car.
“Hello.”
I bowed toward the group in greeting.
Alice was greeting everyone warmly, too, while I took a moment to look around.
A man who looked like Alice’s father walked over to me. He looked like her.
We walked slowly toward the vacation house.
“Nice to meet you. I’m Alexander Axiotis.”
It might sound grand, but it was an ordinary Greek name. It only felt that way because we were so familiar with Greek and Roman myths and legends.
Was he from Greece?
Mr. Axiotis continued.
“Alice told me there’s a doctor among her fellow residents who’s a genius beyond compare. That’s you, isn’t it?”
“I suppose so.”
“I heard you started a pharmaceutical company.”
“Oh, I didn’t start one. I sold them a patent and am getting paid for it.”
Alice’s father paused to think.
“You’re not Jewish, are you?”
“Uh... no, I’m not.”
“Good. That’s a relief.”
I was a little taken aback. Was he prejudiced or not? I was obviously Asian, wasn’t I?
“Pardon?”
When I looked uneasy, Alice’s father started offering something that wasn’t quite an explanation.
I didn’t listen very closely.
People could think whatever they wanted.
A doctor had to treat even enemy soldiers who came in wounded from the battlefield, didn’t they...? I just stood there and listened.
Yep, this really was America.
That explained a few things—the things I’d thought were peculiar about Alice.
***
Alice’s yacht, ‘Cetus,’ cut through the waves and headed out into the open sea. I was wearing a full-body wetsuit with a bathrobe over it.
It was colder than I’d expected.
The yacht’s motor hummed.
“Oh, you’re all ready.”
Alice was wearing something similar.
A skin-tight full-body wetsuit.
“Do you think we’ll really see a whale shark?”
“There should be some heading south, but I don’t know if we’ll see one today.”
A pod of dolphins that had come to check out the yacht swam nearby. Alice waved to them.
I watched the sea where the dolphins were leaping, and heard Alice laugh beside me.
“Dolphins.”
“If there are dolphins, there must be schools of fish. If we’re lucky, there’ll be a whale shark, too.”
Among the dolphins, amid the sunlight glittering on the California sea, a huge triangle glided across the water’s surface.
It was a whale shark’s fin. Whale sharks usually swim just beneath the surface.
We’d found Alice’s bluebird.
“Oh, there it is!”
The Cetus cut its motor and unfurled its sails.
We got ready to enter the water.
“We won’t dive. We’ll swim along the surface toward the whale shark. They’re slow, so we should be able to catch up easily.”
Snorkels, goggles, and full-body wetsuits.
Alice eased herself into the water, leaning back.
We used the triangular fin as our guide and swam toward the whale shark. It was enormous, almost the size of a bus.
Its sheer presence was overwhelming.
I was beginning to understand why Alice was so obsessed with whale sharks.
We couldn’t talk underwater. I gave Alice a thumbs-up, and she nodded, her eyes smiling behind her goggles.
The whale shark was right in front of us.
We drew close to it.
The current created by its enormous body pulled us along. It paid us no attention at all, but it was as if...
Within arm’s reach was Alice’s bluebird, the whale shark she’d been searching for so long.
Of course, I didn’t reach out. A shark’s skin was as rough as sandpaper, so I could get hurt, and you shouldn’t bother wild animals.
It felt as if something magnificent were waiting just beyond my fingertips.
***
Emeryville, California.
A corporate research lab at a pharmaceutical company.
Kary Mullis sat dozing in the laboratory. He would win the Nobel Prize someday, though he didn’t know it yet.
How could he synthesize genes?
The language of God.
There had to be a way to efficiently find and copy genes in a test tube. Mullis just hadn’t found the answer yet.
That was the problem Mullis was thinking about.
‘The Lasker Award...’
In that regard, the paper by the young doctor being considered for a Lasker Award this year was fascinating.
It was practically a solution to the very problem Mullis had been pondering. You could use bacterial restriction enzymes as tools?
Eureka!
-moment hadn’t come yet, though.
Mullis could feel it. Eureka was right in front of him! He still didn’t know what it was, though.
Or should he go to Stanford? His instincts were telling him that research capable of changing the world was waiting right at his fingertips.