Late the next morning, Emil apologized for his preoccupation the night before. He explained that his thoughts had been on the last three years of their lives and reaffirmed that having his name listed as the father on Jonna’s birth certificate was more than a formality and that, while he took his parenthood very seriously, their marriage came first, and he would continue his efforts to rekindle her trust.
After Emil left for his usual round of Saturday golf, Elizabeth sat quietly on the sofa allowing herself a quiet moment of her own. Their marriage had been turned upside down when Emil presented the news of Celia’s pregnancy. While he was adamant that it was the only time he had ever cheated, it had taken her nearly two years to accept his statement as truth. Now, they were facing a new challenge. Their future was on a road of thin ice that could crack and give way at any moment. Uncertainty was suddenly the only predictable commodity in their new world. The end of the road was nowhere in sight, but it was one they had to travel together. She had no way of knowing it was a road that would eventually astonish the world.
Chapter 28
September 5, 1992
San Francisco, CA
The morning spent visiting his grandson only added fuel to a fire already ablaze in Crockett’s belly. He plunked fifty cents into a corner newspaper machine, grabbed the last outside table at the North Beach Restaurant in the Tuscany district, and sat down to wait for Dr. Jeremiah Trent. Thirty minutes early, he said to himself.
The front page of the San Francisco Chronicle proclaimed there was change in the air. The presidential election campaign was in full swing and President George H. Bush still enjoyed a commanding lead in the polls for re-election that, until today, most leaders of the democratic hierarchy felt too large to overcome. Bush had been Commander-In-Chief presiding over the Gulf War that became the most decisive American military victory since World War II, and he was using that popularity to steamroll himself into another term. Suddenly, Bush had competition. Bill Clinton, the governor of Arkansas, was nominated the night before at the Democratic convention in New York City as the Democratic candidate to challenge for the presidency in November. Tennessee Senator Al Gore would be his running mate. Overnight, many democrats suddenly saw victory within their grasp.
While the Democrats had donned their political rose-colored glasses, Crockett could not. He had no such personal optimism. After a difficult morning visiting his daughter’s family, he still had mixed emotions. While he appreciated Elena and Terry’s well-disguised optimism, in his heart he knew their daily battles to maintain some sense of normalcy in their lives most likely futile. He was clear that their future would never include the phrase happily ever after. Elena and Terry’s insistence that the words learning disabled never be spoken in their home was a positive step in trying to give Scott some sense of a normal life, but he was afraid it was not enough. He felt a parental need to remain steadfast and calm, but sitting idly by and offering nothing more than moral support wasn’t going to get the job done. He had an emptiness that was not going away, and he planned to do something about it.
The newspaper’s political banter just underscored the frustrations Crockett experienced during his trip to the Capitol three months earlier. His annoyance with government covered many fronts. Recognizing and labeling the degrees of autism seemed the easy part, but the cause was either very elusive or nobody had bothered to look for it. An added insult was that cure was also never mentioned. The feds only provided statistics about the numbers of those afflicted, never any hint as to why the huge increase in the autistic population over the last thirty years. The feds just labeled them Learning Impaired. It seemed the government position was that their only responsibility was to report results, not seek the source of the increase. If autism were a plague or epidemic, the lack of governmental information on how to treat or prevent the spread of the disease would be met with public outrage. Receiving only shrugs and silence when he brought up the subject, Crockett reasoned that he may have talked to the wrong people in the wrong agencies. While promising, even the alliance he formed with Trent came with no guarantees.
Precisely on time, Jeremiah Trent walked up from behind, pulled up a chair, sat down and ordered a bottle of Perrier. “What do you know about mercury?” he demanded, still disdaining any form of a greeting.
Smiling, Crockett breathed a sigh of relief. He knew Trent worked with facts, not fantasy, and felt obliged to answer his question promptly, admitting he knew nothing about mercury.
Trent dismissed his ignorance. “Before we begin, let me tell you a little story that I think will help keep us focused as we move on. Everything I know, and every theory I have, revolves around mercury so you need to know why I think it is so important.”
Crockett smiled broadly. “I like a good story if it’s told well. That’s the reason I am sometimes forced to tell them myself.”
Ignoring Crockett’s levity, Trent moved on. “It’s a bit of a history lesson, but one we can use. Early last year, a research scientist, her name was Katherine, was working in a chromium research laboratory when she accidentally spilled a tiny drop of liquid mercury over her protective glove. She knew the risks. Mercury is second only to plutonium as the most toxic chemical on the planet and that it could kill if you if you got too close, so she had taken all the precautions. Besides the gloves, she was wearing eye goggles and worked under a ventilated hood that sucked up the chemicals fumes. When she accidentally spilled that drop of the mercury, she thought nothing of it. Later, after finishing her project, she removed her protective gloves and gear, washed her hands, cleaned her instruments and went home.”
Trent paused, as if choosing his words. “Now remember. What she spilled on her gloves was just a drop of liquid, a tiny sparkling trace.”
Crockett continued his respectful silence as Trent took a deep breath. He didn’t know where Trent’s story was leading, but he was willing to wait it out.
Trent was apologetic. “Let me shorten this up a bit. About five months after she spilled the mercury, she was working late again in the lab, and she thought she had caught stomach flu. The next morning, she started losing her balance, bumping into doors, that sort of thing. A couple of days later, she couldn’t walk, her speech became slurred and her hands were trembling uncontrollably. The initial diagnosis was that she had a virus, but that seemed awfully vague to her. She knew there was something seriously wrong, so she asked her husband to call in a specialist. A week later, after a series of tests, they had their answer. She had mercury poisoning. Somehow, the little drop of mercury that rolled across her glove had penetrated her skin. Eight months after she spilled that little drop of mercury, Elizabeth died.”
Crockett’s eyes remained locked on Trent. “I don’t mean to be callous, but I assume this has some sort of point,” he offered politely.
“There is!” Trent bellowed. “Katherine was a scientist. She knew she was dying. She urged doctors and scientists to learn everything they could from her accident. Before her accident, virtually nothing was known about the extraordinary dangers of mercury. That little drop of mercury seeped through her glove like a drop of water through facial tissue. What she spilled was dimethlymercury, a substance that is ridiculously easy to order in research catalogs. Obviously, it was more deadly than anyone had imagined. She couldn’t have known how bad the stuff really was. Truth is, no one knew. Saddest of all, by the time the symptoms showed, it was too late.”
Crockett leaned back in his chair “I know you know where you are going with this, but I still don’t understand. Right now, all I know is that you are no fan of mercury.”
“All I can say is that ever since the mining of mercury began it’s been used for all sorts of questionable purposes. Overall, I believe it would have been better to have left it in the ground but it’s too late now. We are all benefiting from both the good and the bad mercury and we have