AN: The music this chapter is the Amelie soundtrack by Yann Tiersen because it just sounds like traveling. Though Delphine would have deleted the track "Guilty" from the playlist, not because of the title but because it jars you out of an otherwise lyric-less orchestral sound (at least that's what she tells herself).
When the safety instructions ended, Delphine found herself without a distraction. She hated flying. Though not for the usual reasons. To be sure, she experienced all the bodily grievances: long legs versus reclining seat backs; nausea upon both take-off and landing; how even the window seat - with all its permutations for repose - still stymied any possibility of sleep. Before, she'd actually enjoyed these sensations. Before, flight imbued a sense of adventure and the discomfort had amplified the promise of her destination. She used to feel like Darwin pitching his lunch over the side of The Beagle only to look up and see Galapagos on the horizon. Now, flying reminded her of that day in Malaimbandy when she'd boarded a last-minute jetliner to Hell. A one-way ticket printed on her most profound failure. Delphine took in the monotonous interior, the stale air, the mechanical hum. It all seemed to whisper: you're still en route.
"Gum?" The graying man in the middle seat waggled a stick in her direction. "For your ears?"
She hesitated and then took it, "Oh... em, thank you."
The wrapper was heavily creased and it stuck to the gum as she unwrapped it. For my ears? She eyed the man next to her. He produced another stick from his pocket, extricated the green strip, and began chewing emphatically. He winked at her and pulled on one of his earlobes, "Keep those eustachian tubes open!"
He put emphasis on "YEW-stay-SHUN" and Delphine couldn't help but smile. Her mother always brought hard candies to suck on when they flew to visit the Malta grandparents, though her explanation of la trompe d'eustache had been easier on the ears, literally. Working at DYAD's research center in Paris had reinforced one thing: science conducted itself in a lingua franca of hardened cognates.
They chewed in relative silence (her seat mate seemed oblivious to his mouth noises). Everything about the gentleman was so American. Especially the way he sat: elbows taking up both arm rests, one hand on a potbelly and the other thumbing news on a smart phone. She imagined Minnesota populated with men exactly like him, Skymall tucked under an arm as they went about. The scene got so far as Middle-Seat-Minnesotans paying for things not with green American bills but with rumpled sticks of mint gum. Everyone would have such wonderful breath!
The pilot instructed all flight attendants to secure the cabin and reminded Delphine of the 10 hours still separating her from the Twin Cities. She stashed a book and headphones within reach for when her nausea abated or when electronics were approved for use. Whichever happened first. Until then, she could only ruminate on the events leading up to her most unredeemable decision like a Sisyphean penance. There was no way to bring back a dead child. And when the earth opened up and swallowed her in the reckoning, there was no way back into the sunlight... right? This hope for absolution tortured her. She rekindled it only in the stomach-turning half-hour increments the few times a year she flew. Then she drowned it in months of double-downed hours at DYAD upon her return. In these brief introspections, hope illuminated her decisions since Malaimbandy and revealed most as additional stones she'd need to roll endlessly upwards. Delphine hated flying.
"Sir, I need you to turn off your phone, we'll be taking off momentarily. Sir?"
"Oh! Of course, of course." Middle Seat pointedly disarmed the device and buried it in the seat pocket. He settled back for a moment, then turned to Delphine and pointed at her book, the 2nd installment of Harry Potter.
"Ah ha!" He grinned, "A modern classic. Have you read it before?"
She blushed, "Yes, but it was in French." She was about to compose an excuse about improving conversational English but he responded, "Well, I admire your dedication to read such literature in the original language." And Delphine couldn't help but laugh.
"Tell me, how did they translate Tom Marvolo Riddle?"
She blushed again at how easily she accessed this information, "Tom Elvis Jedusor."
His eyes focused on imaginary letters as his fingers swapped them around into Je suis Voldemort. "Huh! That works."
She smiled. The plane was taxiing towards the runway and she expected the obligatory pre-take-off conversation had been fulfilled. Her thoughts drifted back towards Africa.
But apparently they were just getting started. He rejoined with, "So tell me, mademoiselle, what brings you to our Great Flat State?"
She hesitated. This would be good practice. "Actually, I'm a Ph.D student. At the University of Minnesota."
"Well met! What department?"
"Biology, that is, immunology, specifically. I study host-parasite relationships."
"Very intriguing. As a matter of fact, I am a doctor, myself."
"Really? I first enrolled in a both MD-PhD program..." Merde. Her alias, 'Delphine Beraud' did not have that history. Hell, it was expunged from Delphine Cormier's, too. As conditions of his silence on Malaimbandy, her advisor stipulated that she terminate her MD and swear to never work with human subjects again.
"And now you're just doing research?"
"Um, yes. It, ah... suits me better."
He changed the subject by leaning in conspiratorially, "Did you know that flight attendants only get CPR training? Nothing more?"
"Hmm?"
"It's true. The airlines rely on mere probability that there's at least one doctor on every plane! For real medical emergencies!"
Delphine did not know what Ms. Beraud would say to this. She didn't know how to respond. But after a pause for effect, he continued with a touch to her arm, "Looks like we've got this flight covered."
She laughed and nodded at the attractive woman in the aisle seat, one of the lucky few whose mouth now gaped in slumber. "Well, she certainly looks relieved."
Middle Seat glanced over and turned back with eyes lit up, "Ah ha! We..." He shook a finger as though he was both scolding and selecting her, "we are going to get along just fine."
Delphine enjoyed the casual flirtation of men. They were often eager to pay it to her. She noticed, however, disproportionate attention from older male acquaintances who had matured into a certain boldness or perhaps figured they had nothing to lose. What could she say? She liked them, too. They were always the most... what was the english word he had used? Intriguing.
The plane started to accumulate speed on the runway. "So, host-parasite relationships, huh?"
"Yes."
"Well, as a doctor, I'm naturally curious about your insights on the relationship between patients and their infectious diseases..." He seemed determined to steer the conversation this way, like her own personal Virgil. But better with this gentleman than alone.
"Well, you are in the luck because that is what I studied... non, study." She continued, hoping he either didn't notice the tense error or would make the obvious connection between it and her accent. "My interest is the evolution of human populations-" the cabin lurched and Delphine heard as well as felt the landing gear suck inwards. "Sorry. The evolution of human populations in malarial zones."
"Wow. Where are you based? South America?"
"Madagascar, actually. We study how people from Sub-Saharan Africa have affected the frequency of genes conferring malarial resistance. I work specifi-"
"Why Sub-Saharan Africa?"
Delphine looked at him in surprise, surely he would know this. "That is where the mortality rate from malaria is highest, of course."
"Ah. Right."
"You're familiar with sickle cell anemia and malaria? You know, the textbook heterozygote advantage case study?"
"Of course!" He drew his eyebrows together, pretending both seriousness and professional offense.
"Ok, well I study a different gene, DARC. It codes for the Duffy glycoprotein - very important receptor for this disease. The malaria parasite P. vivax uses it to infect our erythrocytes. So not having it-"
"Is another heterozygote advantage?"
"Non. No, see, the Duffy-null allele is very advantageous here and has few deleterious effects in the homozygote condition. So good on its own, in fact, it's practically fixed in Sub-Saharan populations!"
He didn't seem properly impressed by this, so she hurried to the punchline, "We think that is why P. vivax can't exist in these places of Africa! No Duffy means impervious red blood cells. The population evolved perfect immunity!"
"Fascinating. They slammed the door on it, did they?"
"Exactly!" She stammered, trying to decide which fascinating detail to produce next: Evidence that not one, but two different Duffy-null alleles evolved due to malaria's selection pressure? How the deadly P. falciparum still infiltrated Duffy-null red blood cells? The molecular structure of the Duffy glycoprotein epitope that-?
"Madam scientist, blame my American geography skills, but I don't see how you get Madagascar from Sub-Sahara."
Delphine feigned clearing her throat to hide a crest of nausea. "You are aware, sir, that Madagascar is a big island 400 kilometers off the east coast of Africa?"
He deigned to raise one eyebrow.
"Sooo you get there by taking a boat or a plane." She laughed as his half-smile became pursed.
"I'm serious! This is why I study there. These ways of mass travel are relatively new and Sub-Saharan immigrants bring with them their genes. As an island and as an area still with P. vivax, Madagascar..." She exhaled appreciatively, her old excitement surfacing. "It was the perfect laboratory to see human evolution happening in the present."
"Ah! So you've finished. Did you see evolution?"
"Well, you can't actually see evolution happen in a few field seasons..."
She nitpicked his question to stall for time. Could she steer the conversation away from her ignominious last year of dissertation data analysis? The dissertation whose title was read aloud with only her advisor to accept the epitoge? (She had felt certain he'd abandon the ceremonial cloaking gesture in order to strangle her onstage with this cloth so she opted to receive it and her diploma by mail.) "So you can't see evolution in that amount of time because human populations don't turn over that fast. And gene frequencies can't change without-"
"Ok, sure, but you must have found something in that perfect lab." Middle Seat looked genuinely curious.
She took a steadying breath, Delphine Beraud did not have this scar on her scientific past. "I did! In a few generations, frequencies of the Duffy-null allele are now so high, only positive selection from malaria can plausibly explain it!
"Wow."
"Yes, and this very much supports that theory - the one about the entire Sub-Saharan population having a null allele as an adaptive response."
"All the strings tied up, huh. You don't always get such a neat story, do you?"
She smiled despite that she would never know the precise mechanism of Ando's death. It could have been an even grander narrative but his ending prevented Delphine from finding hers. She shook her head as if deflecting his praise, "Enough of me, what do you do in your practice?"
"Oh people come in and then they go out, usually alive." A wink. "Doesn't hold a candle to your work."
"Come on, I bored you with my entire dissertation." She pointed at the woman still slumped in the aisle seat. "Tell me, if CPR didn't work, how would you save her?"
"I would tell her to sing."
"What?"
He grinned and continued with a theatrical air, "'He who sings frightens away his ills.' Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. In Don Quixote, of course."
"Wait." Her face must have been priceless because she had speak louder to be heard over his chuckles, "What kind of doctor did you say you were?"
"I, mademoiselle, am a doctor of early modern literatures of England, Latin Europe, and the transatlantic world." As she absorbed this, he held forth, "'I have seen a medicine / That's able to breathe life into a stone, / Quicken a rock, and make you dance canary / With spritely fire and motion...' Shakespeare that time, All's Well That Ends Well, Act 2, Scene 1." He bowed, a fluttering hand traced an arc towards his knees.
"You... you lied this whole time?!"
His look became wounded, "Only lies of omission, my dear. Never lie about your substance."
"But you talked about your patients, your practice..."
"Your words and assumptions! I do hold a writing practicum, though."
"And some of your students die?"
"Well, it meets rather early in the morning; forgive this old english professor his metaphors. Besides, would you have regaled me with your brilliant research had you not assumed I was in medicine?"
"Hmm." She smiled but her thoughts turned towards her mission in Minnesota.
"I think not."
They sat in amiable silence. The innards of a cumulus cloud completely obscured the view out the window. When the pilot announced it was now safe to move about the cabin, the professor sighed and reached for his computer bag. She watched the process of converting the tray table into a serviceable but clearly insufficient desk. He took a breath like a diver on the edge but looked at her and said, "Thank you for a most transporting take-off." Which she acknowledged by mimicking his flamboyant bow from before. The gesture also confirmed her nausea had abated enough to read. She collected the Harry Potter, leaned her seat back, and opened to her place. Immersed in its rich yet unambiguous world, Delphine Cormier felt as though sealed within a snow globe: protected from her past and distracted enough not to consider her destination.
To: Dr. Delphine Cormier
From: Dr. Aldous Leekie
Subject: Re: 324B21 & 658B21
Date: May 4th 2012
Delphine,
I trust your final travel preparations are going well. Your arrival to the States comes at an opportune time but developments with another subject are modifying my plans for your purpose here.
Please read the attached files on 658B21 and we'll discuss them in person.
Aldous
AN: Oh Delphine! What is it they say about the road to Hell…? I had a lot of fun speculating about her PhD research - sources for that are all below. I also included some resources about the scientific oversight structures that exist to prevent tragedies involving human subjects.
Chapter 4 Sources
A hyperlinked version (such convenience!) of the sources below can be found on the scienceintheblack tumblr's source page.
## The Duffy null allele and evolution of P. vivax malaria resistance in human populations
Dean L. Blood Groups and Red Cell Antigens [Internet]. Bethesda (MD): National Center for Biotechnology Information (US); 2005. Chapter 9, The Duffy blood group. Available from: . .gov/books/NBK2271/ A surprisingly readable summary on the gene, scroll past the table to get a discussion of the Duffy antigen system. Includes evidence of two different instances of the Duffy null genotype. You can also get a ton of information on this gene by reading the Wikipedia article, "Duffy Antigen System" but I think the article cited here is more lay-person friendly (though both include a fair sprinkling of jargon - it's hard to avoid).
Hodgson JA, Pickrell JK, Pearson LN, Quillen EE, Prista A, et al. (2014) Natural selection for the Duffy-null allele in the recently admixed people of Madagascar. Proceedings of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences 281. This is the paper I'm basing Delphine's fictional* PhD research on.
*IMPORTANT NOTE: I want to state very clearly that Science in the Black is a fictional work and while the science is as accurate as possible, Delphine's unethical decision is purely fiction. I do NOT want to imply that the real-life researchers of this paper have done anything unethical while collecting data from human subjects. I am sure they followed every requirement laid out by their Institutional Review Board to conduct research in a way that is safe, just, and respectful to the people participating in their study.
## Structures to ensure research involving humans is ethical, safe, and respectful: The Institutional Review Board (IRB)
Resnik, David B. "What Is Ethics in Research & Why Is It Important?" Bioethics. National Institute of Health, 29 June 2013. Web. 01 Dec. 2014. . /research/resources/bioethics/whatis/. A very thorough discussion of what ethics are in science written by the head of the IRB for US department on Health and Human services.
Wikipedia contributors. "Institutional review board." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 2 Nov. 2014. Web. 5 Dec. 2014. wiki/Institutional_review_board. I tried to find a better non-wikipedia source… but honestly, I think it's the best summary out there. You can also search the name of your favorite university along with "IRB" and a page will probably come up describing your institution's practices.
As always, I want to acknowledge that I'm writing in the universe of Orphan Black, a copyrighted creative work by Graeme Manson and John Fawcett, produced by BBC America.