irrelevancy.
—My first view of the “medical research facility,” thinking it looked like the Adams Family Mansion, from the outside, anyway. Inside it was as modern and gleaming as any hospital. The weirdness of that contrast.
At the end of the week, after being probed, siphoned, sliced, diced and microscopically examined, I found myself sitting in a conference room with a bunch of serious men and women in business attire. There were pictures of me on the walls. Big color photographs ten times life size of my post accident, preoperative body. Dr. Jane gave some kind of lecture while she walked around with a pointer and, well, pointed. It was weird sitting in my jeans at that big mahogany table with all those adults looking at me splattered over the walls. I drank my whole glass of water and reached for the urn to pour another. My hand was shaking.
“In short,” Dr. Jane concluded, “complete regeneration of damaged and removed tissue, including the entire spleen.”
“In short, Doctor,” Langely Ulin said, “Ellis Herrick is a God damn miracle.”
chapter four
The God Damn Miracle woke up one morning ten years later and noticed his dog was dead. I’d stopped aging the previous summer, at twenty-nine, and now Jeepers had stopped aging, too. Maybe my approach seems superior, but give it a couple hundred years.
Yes, Langley Ulin had restored to me my beloved border collie Jeepers. But in retrospect Ulin was probably responsible for the dog’s disappearance in the first place. I’d wondered why Jeepers wasn’t in the house when I discovered my dad’s body. Or if not in the house why he hadn’t been posted at the back door, whining to get in. Because that’s what dogs do. Unlike most humans, they are loyal to the core.
Until I’d arrived at Ulin’s quaint village of Blue Heron, Oregon, I’d felt uneasy and insecure about the whole thing. Then I’d opened the door of my new cottage and Jeepers had leaped at me, all tongue, tail-wag and bark.
Contract sealed.
This morning in 1985, however, I jingled Jeepers’ leash and he remained motionless on his pillow-bed by the kitchen door. I jingled again, waiting for Jeepers to raise a weary eye, make a huffing noise, and gamely stand up on arthritic legs. He was old but he still loved to get outside and walk and sniff around at stuff, especially down on the beach where there were plenty of especially ripe odors.
But Jeepers didn’t move. I hunkered beside him and placed my hand on his cold head, confirming what I’d known since walking into the kitchen. Jeepers’ fur was liberally threaded with silver and had been for years. I stared at the silver and the black hairs and the mostly white eyebrows, and my eyes teared up and I had to get out.
Empty leash in hand, I opened the door on a crisp autumn morning. Late morning. I was due at the Clinic and probably should have skipped walking the dog, anyway. Today they wanted to take my eyes. Again.
Blue Heron was a caricature of a village. White picket fences dividing putting green lawns, chalky nondenominational church steeple rising above postcard elms, etc. Every inhabitant of the village was an Ulin Industries employee. So was I, the only difference being that my whole job was to give at the office. And give, and give, and give. Langley wanted to live deep into the future, and I was supposed to get him there. He had a vision ; I had endlessly replenishing organs and various glandular excretions. I guess that made us even.
The clinic was a couple of blocks away, but I turned onto the beach path instead, just as I would have done with Jeepers. Today I was the only beachcomber, unless you counted a couple of seagulls beaking away at tide-stranded delicacies. I kicked at an emerald rope of kelp glistening in the sun. The wind blew in my face, salty and brisk. A few fishing boats trolled far beyond the breakers. I looked back towards the village. The church steeple shone above the trees.
—My first view of the “medical research facility,” thinking it looked like the Adams Family Mansion, from the outside, anyway. Inside it was as modern and gleaming as any hospital. The weirdness of that contrast.
At the end of the week, after being probed, siphoned, sliced, diced and microscopically examined, I found myself sitting in a conference room with a bunch of serious men and women in business attire. There were pictures of me on the walls. Big color photographs ten times life size of my post accident, preoperative body. Dr. Jane gave some kind of lecture while she walked around with a pointer and, well, pointed. It was weird sitting in my jeans at that big mahogany table with all those adults looking at me splattered over the walls. I drank my whole glass of water and reached for the urn to pour another. My hand was shaking.
“In short,” Dr. Jane concluded, “complete regeneration of damaged and removed tissue, including the entire spleen.”
“In short, Doctor,” Langely Ulin said, “Ellis Herrick is a God damn miracle.”
chapter four
The God Damn Miracle woke up one morning ten years later and noticed his dog was dead. I’d stopped aging the previous summer, at twenty-nine, and now Jeepers had stopped aging, too. Maybe my approach seems superior, but give it a couple hundred years.
Yes, Langley Ulin had restored to me my beloved border collie Jeepers. But in retrospect Ulin was probably responsible for the dog’s disappearance in the first place. I’d wondered why Jeepers wasn’t in the house when I discovered my dad’s body. Or if not in the house why he hadn’t been posted at the back door, whining to get in. Because that’s what dogs do. Unlike most humans, they are loyal to the core.
Until I’d arrived at Ulin’s quaint village of Blue Heron, Oregon, I’d felt uneasy and insecure about the whole thing. Then I’d opened the door of my new cottage and Jeepers had leaped at me, all tongue, tail-wag and bark.
Contract sealed.
This morning in 1985, however, I jingled Jeepers’ leash and he remained motionless on his pillow-bed by the kitchen door. I jingled again, waiting for Jeepers to raise a weary eye, make a huffing noise, and gamely stand up on arthritic legs. He was old but he still loved to get outside and walk and sniff around at stuff, especially down on the beach where there were plenty of especially ripe odors.
But Jeepers didn’t move. I hunkered beside him and placed my hand on his cold head, confirming what I’d known since walking into the kitchen. Jeepers’ fur was liberally threaded with silver and had been for years. I stared at the silver and the black hairs and the mostly white eyebrows, and my eyes teared up and I had to get out.
Empty leash in hand, I opened the door on a crisp autumn morning. Late morning. I was due at the Clinic and probably should have skipped walking the dog, anyway. Today they wanted to take my eyes. Again.
Blue Heron was a caricature of a village. White picket fences dividing putting green lawns, chalky nondenominational church steeple rising above postcard elms, etc. Every inhabitant of the village was an Ulin Industries employee. So was I, the only difference being that my whole job was to give at the office. And give, and give, and give. Langley wanted to live deep into the future, and I was supposed to get him there. He had a vision ; I had endlessly replenishing organs and various glandular excretions. I guess that made us even.
The clinic was a couple of blocks away, but I turned onto the beach path instead, just as I would have done with Jeepers. Today I was the only beachcomber, unless you counted a couple of seagulls beaking away at tide-stranded delicacies. I kicked at an emerald rope of kelp glistening in the sun. The wind blew in my face, salty and brisk. A few fishing boats trolled far beyond the breakers. I looked back towards the village. The church steeple shone above the trees.
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