“What was Terrel doing down there?” he asked.

Deepra shrugged.

“Probably no chance of getting him shipped stateside.”

“He’s herniating into the medulla oblongata,” Deepra didn’t need to say more. The medulla oblongata controlled involuntary respiration. If crushed or severely damaged, a patient would stop breathing. Dead in 24 hours was the best prognosis, thought Taylor. Then Deepra added, “Besides, Customs’ll never clear him into the country.”

They sat in silence, staring at the scans.

“So,” Deepra slapped his hands like a drum roll against the desk, ”your answer is?”

Taylor shrugged, “I need more than this.”

“How about a guess. Something to tell them.”

“I don’t know, Deep.”

He quickly noted the name of the physician that sent the file. . .” Dr. Costas. . . St. Augustine’s Hospital, Manaus”- and that was it. Deepra shut down the email program, grumbling, “It’s gotta be some jungle virus.”

His friend was happy to leave it at that. This was just office politics to him. But for Taylor this was something wild, something like that jungle root four years ago. And it made his company wealthy.

Taylor Briggs made his living outside the box. In these MRI’s, he smelled possible cures for himself and his mother, maybe all of society. Or maybe not? Maybe it was all just a waste of time? Another dead end? Only one thing was certain. He was about to give himself one hell of a birthday present-
Because Taylor Briggs was about to take a trip.

Deepra pointed at one of the scans, “At first it looked like a limbic system lesion, but see how the mass extends into the cranium-”

“Yeah,” thoughts rushed through Taylor. Was it a tumor? But he’d never seen a tumor like this. Hell, no one had ever seen anything like this. It was as if the boy’s memory centers had blown through the roof.

The damn limbic system was swelling so big that it was about to press against the boy’s skull wall. His brain was going to blow through the side of his head.

Taylor’s voice grew hoarse, “Did they run tox screens or CBC?”

“Lab lost the workups. Third world, go figure. But they suspect it was toxicological.”

No way thought Taylor. A drug couldn’t do that! The MRI’s had now transformed in Taylor’s mind, turning into an elaborate puzzle. A wonderful riddle to solve. The promise of things to come whispered in his mind. This was a thing he had never tasted before. Something that hungered for the storehouses of long term memories. Something dark and wondrous.

“Manau-what?” interrupted Taylor.

“It’s a city in the Amazon delta in Brazil. And catch this, he was found with his eyes gauged out,” Deepra read Taylor’s facial expression, adding, “babbling, dementia and what looked liked abnormal strength. So they run an MRI on his brain and it blows their mind.”

“Wait a minute, how did you find out about this?”

Deepra explained that the kid’s father sat on the board at the medical school and was, “the big benefactor to that neurology wing who’s opening party you missed,” Deepra was never going to let him live that down, “Anyway, the parents are going nuts. The Brazilian authorities won’t let them near their kid. So now they’re back in Boston, calling all the favors. And nobody knows what to make of it.”

The email attachment finally opened, revealing the MRI scans. Deepra didn’t look at them. Rather, he put on his glasses and stared at Taylor, gauging his friend’s reaction with great interest. As Taylor realized what he was looking at, his jaw dropped.

Taylor’s mind raced.

If these scans were right, this kid’s brain was eating itself from the inside out. Most of it had liquefied as the limbic system swelled outward like a balloon, crushing the neocortex and hypothalamus….three massive tumors blowing out of all the areas that compromised Taylor’s life’s work. The three major regions dealing with long-term memory storage.

“He keeps saying it’s connected,” she griped as she cleared the pile of art magazines off the desk, “but I can’t get to that internet.”

“Carol,” Deepra held up the cellular modem chord which had popped out of the wall, “it does help to plug it in.”

“That’s not on the checklist,” she gestured at the hand-drawn instructions sticky taped to the keyboard.

Taylor had to give it to Deepra’s cousin for the detailed customer support. But indeed, everything but plugging it into the wall was listed. Deepra grunted as the laptop buzzed as it linked through her AOL account.

“Finally, some solitaire,” Carol crossed through the beaded curtain partition, warning, “Don’t be too long.”

“So what’s up?” Taylor asked once they were alone.

“I got something right up your alley,” Deepra hummed The Twilight Zone theme as he logged onto his Yahoo home page. It flashed on with news and weather-more problems in the Middle East-a father and daughter vanished while hiking in the New Hampshire mountains-the usual mess. Deepra’s email account loaded up slowly.

“I figured you’d be the only one who could offer an opinion on it. The patient in question is a Harvard grad student named William Terrel. . . discovered just outside of Manaus three days ago-”

“What do you think?” Deepra’s eyes flashed devilishly.

“Nah,” he sighed, “besides artists aren’t my type.”

“Well if we’re gonna be celibate,” sighed Deepra, “I need a quick opinion–”

“Champagne leather was the only way to go.”

“I mean a professional one.”

“You got a little itch down there?” Max jumped into the conversation.

“Dirty old man,” Carol henpecked her old friend.

Deepra turned to her, “Carol, did my cousin finally get that DSL going?”

Carol’s laptop sat atop a pile of art books.

Deepra opened the sleek Sony laptop. Taylor gave it to her as a birthday present a couple of year back.

He thought she could do her finances on Quickbooks and maybe learn to surf the internet-

She used it to play Solitaire.

He stepped close to the desk. The office was a cramped room covered in a sea of yellow sticky notes.

There was barely enough room for the desk, chair, and the Persian rug covering the bare floor.

But it was for Deepra. Now a neurologist on staff at Harvard Medical School, with his custom crafted BMW 7 series and newly renovated house in Westin, Deepra had fostered a sudden air of slightly pompous austerity. He worked hard now to complete the gloss with golf lessons and the prerequisite beach house at the Cape. But to Taylor, he would always be that skinny, buck toothed kid who had just moved into the neighborhood, bouncing along on his fire engine red Schwinn.

“Our Cuban buddies in yet?” Deepra asked Max.

The old man flashed the Cohiba cigar, “Two boxes of robustos.”

“What’s the damage?” Deepra’s eyes sparkled.
Max let the anticipation hang in the air, teasing his old friend for a second before he finally smiled, Two fifty.”

“I love you man,” Deepra exploded with a smile from ear to ear.

“Have a little sample,” Max stuffed the Bolivar cigar into Deepra’s breast pocket, “I got em for you in the car.”

Carol just rolled her eyes at Taylor. Max and Deepra were always doing their deals. It felt good to be around them. The warmth of something so familiar. Then the Chinese man gestured at Taylor to look at the two girls in turtlenecks in the corner. He suspected they were artist friends of Carol’s. One of them seemed to be trying to sell Taylor’s lawyer a piece of art.

On Saturdays, Carol and his mom used to do their nails. It was always a day of chardonnay, brie omelets, and manicures. Taylor remembered as a kid, pinching his nose to keep the fingernail paint fumes out while he watched “Super Friends” on TV.

She scoffed, “Max you need to open your mind before it’s too late. Astral projection is the way to the next world.”

“Try not to spin off the planet,” he nudged her. But even as Taylor smiled at them, he still had to admit that in a way, Carol was right. His mother did haunt them– even here at this very get-together. She had always been the nucleus of their group. And now she wasn’t dead for them, but she wasn’t alive either. She was an echo, the whisper of things not yet lost. Neither dead or alive. . . but still haunting them.

“Max,” a familiar voice cracked, “gotta check out the new ride.”
Everyone turned to greet Deepra Chang, looking very dapper in his new Brioni suit. Taylor set the tank on the floor and hugged the tall Chinese neurologist, his best friend since childhood.
Max draped his arm around Deepra’s shoulder, “Champagne leather?”

“But of course,” he smirked devilishly.

Deepra had custom ordered a BMW from Stuttgart, deliberating over the color of the seats on AOL Instant Messenger with Taylor and Max for almost three weeks. Deepra was pretty bummed when Taylor had to back out of their trip to Germany. They were going to drive it around on the sports package.

But this was no time to be taking trips.

“Happy birthday kiddo,” he handed Taylor the gift wrapped in Cowboy’s wrapping paper. He opened it revealing the tiny, SCUBA tank, “filled and ready to go.”

Scuba diving had been one of Taylor’s only passions. In the back of the Range Rover, his two scuba tanks still gently knocked against each other. Although he hadn’t used them in almost a year, they made him feel free. As if at any moment he could go diving beneath the blue water and escape from it all. Setting the gift down on the couch, he reflected on the fact that Max had aged a lot lately. A year ago, just before he was going to retire to Sarasota, Max’s wife, Barbara, succumbed to pancreatic cancer. It was quick and hard. Suddenly Max was the lonely man in the big old house in Weston. He said he felt safe there. He told Taylor that it reminded him of her. So the man who had glimpsed the heavens through God’s eyes now stared at the internet most of the time, trying to find a place where he could forget. He had taken to sending Taylor endless streams of emails. . . topics ranging from everything from the big bang theory to dirty jokes. Taylor imagined the man sitting alone in his bathrobe, surfing vainly through an empty universe.

“You guys read that study yet?” she pestered once again.

Max and Taylor mockingly grinned. Carol subscribed to just about every offbeat journal in the world.

Her last article of interest dealt with Eastern Pakistani gurus astral projecting into Alzheimer victims was just too farfetched to even entertain.

She sensed the mocking dissent, “I’m telling you, her aura visits me.”

“You two still doing your nails?” joked Max.

“Carol, you’re looking hot,” the old man playfully pinched her hip. But Carol never showed much interest in men.

“Maxy, the boy’s going to hell,” she grunted.

Max’s eyes locked with Taylor’s. He was suddenly reminded of Parents’ Olympics in fourth grade.

Taylor’s mom asked Max to run in the relay as his dad. Those well worn memories were like yellowing snapshots now: Max’s broad-chest tearing through the finish line. The way he joked with the other fathers after the race as Taylor cradled the trophy. With three daughters, Max seemed to enjoy having a young boy in toe. They were still trying to take in a game at every NFL stadium. Over the years they’d visited so many. . . St. Louis, Chicago, Dallas, San Francisco, Chicago–about eleven so far. Yes indeed–

Max was the man.

“You needs some romance,” she urged.

“What he needs is to get layed,” thick hands hugged him from behind.

He smelled Max’s “Old Spice” cologne before he saws the aging man smiling at him. Max Lichtenstein was his mother’s closest colleague at MIT. Blue eyed with a full head of gray hair, the fifty five year old man radiated warmth. His hug wasn’t as tight as it used to be either. But even through his sweater, Max’s fit chest still hinted at the college running back that existed now only in faded, old photos.
But the game was still one of his great passions.

Taylor remembered a thousand NFL Sundays, when he and his mom would visit Max and his wife, Barbara. All of them on the couch rooting for The Cowboys. The professor was originally from Texas. Sometimes Carol would come over—she was Patriots all the way. Taylor remembered after the games, an endless stream of Sunday evenings when they would sit in lawn-chairs in the Max’s backyard. Max loved to point up at the stars and explain the true state of the universe to Taylor. A place so massive that neutrinos and atoms were meaningless. As a theoretical physicist, Max’s universe teamed with hundreds of billions of galaxies dotting the dark cosmos like grains of sand. His words were so powerful that they almost made you feel like you were staring through the eye of God.