“Everything’s going to be okay,” I say. “It’s okay, it’s okay. I’m right here.” But I honestly don’t know if any of that is true. I don’t know what the others have planned for him. And that’s not to say we’re not still studying him ourselves, and that I didn’t see fame and fortune when I first heard him speak. But reading to him every night, getting to know him a little more each day has changed everything. He loves belly rubs and having the back of his ear scratched. He prefers Star Trek to Star Wars, and after we took him outside to the little Japanese tea garden behind our building, he asked me about the sky. I couldn’t help but feel joy over the wonder in his eyes as he gazed upward. All the tiny little things we take for granted that he’s been deprived of—fresh air, the feel of grass on bare feet. Bird, he said. Bike. Girl on bike. He looked down at his feet, his reflection in the pond, becoming aware of how different he was from the rest of us. Tree. Many tree. Hot air.
The researchers bring in all kinds of equipment. But they need my permission to break his skin. I always say no. Not yet. There must be another way. I keep waiting for the call where Dean Hayes or the department chair tells me I have no other choice but to let them conduct their research as they see fit. And where is the limit to that? Drilling a hole in his head? Turning him into pork chops to see if he’ll taste the same? And as much as I hate all of this, we have learned more about why Snortorious decided to speak: First, the stem cells and genetic instructions that we used to grow human organs at accelerated rates went rogue, targeting his brain. Theoretically, this was always a possibility. The protesters outside of my lab never let me forget it. But after hundreds of procedures over the years, most of us had discounted the idea of a pig person, let alone one who could communicate telepathically. Second, Snortorious’s brain is continuing to grow in size and complexity at an alarming rate. Most of the researchers are focused on his cognitive ability and telepathy. Patrice helped Dr. Gaffney with the projections. We know that if Snortorious’s brain doesn’t stop growing, complications will soon arise—headaches, seizures, and eventually death.
How do you tell a child that he’s going to die? When Patrice told me the news, I couldn’t help but think of my son—how I’d sit with him at night as he breathed his medication through a nebulizer. I lost count of the lies I told Fitch through the medicated mist of his exhales—about how we’d go camping, just the two of us, or how we’d see about space camp when he was a little older, feeling a little better. Sometimes, long after Fitch had fallen asleep, I’d stay in his room and watch the stars from his toy planetarium shoot across the ceiling, a grown man making wishes on a sixty-watt light. What lies would I tell to Snortorious now? I pace the lab and listen to the gentle oinks of the pigs and find myself calling my ex. She doesn’t know anything about Snortorious, and I don’t want to tell her. Maybe she’ll think I’m full of shit anyway. I just need to talk to someone who loved Fitch, who remembers the moment when a doctor told us our son wasn’t going to make it.
“Do you regret not telling Fitch about how bad his condition was?” I ask, as soon as she answers.
“He knew. But I think he appreciated not really knowing. We let him be a kid.”
I don’t say anything for a moment. I listen to Dorrie breathing on the other end. She asks if I’m okay, but sounds so incredibly far away, as if she’s standing on the opposite end of a tunnel.
“David?”
“Yeah?
“What is all this about?”
“Nothing,” I say. I open a video of Fitch on my phone. He’s drawing one of his death-trap mazes in crayon—the last day I saw him before Dorrie took him away. “Are you okay there? At the park?”
“It’s hard to explain,” she says. “People don’t look at me like someone who lost a son here. Our customers have all been through this. I hand them an urn—their son, their daughter. Lately, older people have been riding the coaster, too. Maybe a wife, an uncle, a grandfather. I hold the hands of people who check out of the park. We look at each other. And I tell them to smile just once before leaving. I tell them to laugh, to think about one memory. Saying goodbye is part of life here. I don’t want to say that it’s comforting. But it’s something.”
“I really thought I could save him,” I say.
“I know.”
“And I’m glad you took Fitch.” I think about how I might have been there for his final months if I weren’t so stubborn. I picture Snortorious at a park like that, asking me to help him into a seat, to end it all.