His voice is sad but holds an undercurrent of fury. Once again, I’m reminded of the difference between Patrick and Lorenzo. Both are sympathetic, but only Lorenzo has fight in him.

“Also, I need the bonus money,” he says.

“For what?”

“A personal matter.”

“What kind of personal matter costs a hundred thousand dollars?”

His eyes meet mine over the running tap. “A very personal matter,” he says before turning off the water. “Okay, you feeling better now?”

“Sure,” I say, not understanding whether he’s talking about my puke-fest this morning or our conversation. “Right as rain.”

“Good. Because we’ve got work to do.”

“Wait.” I twist the cold water back on. “When did they contact you about the project?”

“Just after Bobby Myers broke his head.”

I nod. “No one gets two Tesla MRI tubes ordered, delivered, and installed in three days, Enzo. Not even the government.”

He cracks a smile at the old nickname. “Yeah. I know. Come on. Let’s dig Lin out from her techno-orgasm and grab some lunch.” The tap goes off for a second time, and we walk back to the neuro section of the lab as the clock pings one.

“Who do you have in mind for the first subject?” Lorenzo asks.

“Definitely Delilah Ray. I saw her son the other day, you know. He’s our mailman.”

He’s also the man who blinked three times at me and said he had a wife and three daughters. I jot a mental note to be at the door the next time he makes his rounds. Right now, the only other thing on my mind is food.

Chapter Thirty-one

THIRTY-ONE

This afternoon, as I wind along with the snake of cars on Rock Creek Parkway, hunched down behind the steering wheel to avoid the stares of the male drivers who populate rush hour, I think of Jackie Juarez again.

She called Patrick a cerebral pussy; she’d never hang that epithet around Lorenzo’s neck.

“Men come in two flavors,” she said once. “Real men and sheep. That guy you’re dating—”

“—is a sheep,” I finished. “I suppose you’d think that.”

“I don’t think it, Jeanie. I know it.” Jackie lit a cigarette—she was in her Virginia Slims stage, and You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby kitsch decorated our flat that year—and blew out a cloud of menthol smoke. “I mean, if I were to switch over to your team, I’d want a man who—I don’t know—stood up for me.”

“Look at you, the romantic,” I said.

She shrugged it off. “Maybe. I’d just want someone who was tough when he needed to be.”

“Patrick’s kind,” I said. “Isn’t that worth something?”

“Not in my book.”

When I’d defended my thesis and Patrick started his residency, we got married. I invited Jackie, hoping she would come.

She didn’t.

Maybe I wouldn’t have, either.