Dr. Chad Finds a Kid Bleeding in the Ivy

Dr. Chad Finds a Kid Bleeding in the Ivy

by Paul Crehan

***PLEASE NOTE: This story contains references to and imagery of sexual assault and carnage.

The Chancellor told the two-hundred gathered in the banquet hall that Dr. Chad had arrived in Paris with nothing but the clothes on his back. This wasn’t hyperbole, the Chancellor told them. This was fact. Dr. Chad had arrived without shoes. A greedy river bottom had pulled them from his feet thirty miles from the city. So, he had arrived barefoot, and with nothing but the clothes on his back.

Greedy river bottom. Dr. Chad liked the phrase. He glanced out at the formally dressed diners, lambent in candlelight, gathered for this dinner in his honor. It appeared—though he could not say for certain—that they liked the phrase, too. There were smiles of appreciation for something well-put. That’s what it looked like, anyway.

This was his fourth time receiving the Wexler Prize for Contributions to Science. It never got old.

Dr. Chad, the Chancellor continued, was an honor to the university not just because of his work, but in his person: a living example of the principles upon which Wexler University was founded. Integritas, Humanitas, Humilitas. 

The Chancellor, a tight-lipped Boston Brahmin who wore loud bow ties, added, “I can only hope, however, that Dr. Chad’s humilitas will not suffer dimunition, given news that perhaps you caught last week—that he is the recipient of the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.” The line set up the thunderous applause and standing ovation the Chancellor had hoped it would. Dr. Chad stood and, one hand over the other, pressed them to his heart and bowed.

Dr. Chad was, of course, thrilled to have heard the marimba ring tone at 6am PST last Monday, a heavy rain on his roof at his home in Seattle.

On the other hand, Dr. Chad couldn’t help but be a little annoyed at winning the prize this year. He had, of course, proved that cataloguing the conditions for uncertainties in fractals provided a predictive tool for mutations in genes. Cross-discipline work like his was always thrilling to see, and always brave, because you opened yourself up to error on so many fronts, and to endless ego-driven argumentation not just from one’s confreres in chemistry, but from those in physics, math, and medicine, as well. Yes, he had done a remarkable thing, but what he hadn’t done—not yet, anyway—was prove how such cataloguing could do what it did, i.e., predict mutation. And that was the very big deal, because in knowing how something happened, you could begin to harness the power of its cause; and in so doing, there would be all kinds of benefits, particularly gene therapy.

So, as thrilled as indeed he was by the spotlight of acknowledgement, Chad wanted to win the big prize—prizes, actually—there were so many others—only when he had moved from proving that to proving how. But now, because all eyes were on his research, he was at risk for being put in the shade, sidelined, forgotten. He had opened the door for all kinds of whippersnappers to take his discovery and use it as a reagent, as a tool to build something magnificent. And they would win the Prize—too—but be remembered for an achievement far greater than Dr. Chad’s. And this was his work—all of it!

How much time did he have before such an eventuality? Two years? That was no time at all. So, this very afternoon, in fact, only a few hours before both men had to leave campus for the day to get ready for this dinner, Chad met with the Chancellor for lunch.

He had told him, Rupe, for Rupert was his name, my lab needs a boatload of money now, not in the steppingstone way we budgeted for. I’m telling you, we’re going to get scooped. Our great story here at Wexler is going to get scooped. Eighteen months—that’s all I need.

A.J., Rupe had told him, for Ajou—Ajou Chad was his name—I may want a second Nobel out of this even more than you. But like the entire rest of the academic world, I’m facing budget cuts I’ve never had to face before. Bottom line, I can—and will—get you all the money you need. You’re absolutely our best investment. But I can only do it in the way we’ve set up. And why do you want to rush science? Aren’t you the one telling me that, when I get nosy and wonder when you might publish? And you don’t want to get it wrong, do you? After all your miraculous success, you don’t, in the end, want to find an error that will undo, well, everything. Do you?

No, he didn’t, and Chad sat back with a sigh, though he was boiling with anger inside. Then Rupe, turning the screws, added, Can you imagine what it would do to Wexler, if, because you rushed, your work was exposed as flawed? We’re already all over the news because of this fucking war. Students for this, students for that. Alumni pulling support, and strange people we don’t know offering to make up shortfalls? So, A.J., please, just keep your head down, do what you do, and respect the challenges I face in keeping Wexler unbesmirched—and have a little faith! 

As he walked home from the dinner that night, Chad worried that he wasn’t working well lately. He was distracted; and it was just plain hard to think, given the marches on campus, the bullhorns, the chanting and yelling, and in general, the angry vibe he could feel everywhere he went.

He, too, felt angry—not the kind that might rise up in a person and recede or even disappear. No. He felt the kind that took over. In fact, upon pushing through the door of his house, he was already tearing off his tux—tie, shirt—the studs popping out and flying away— the cummerbund…and yes, Dr. Chad was steeped enough in American culture to think Hulk; to think—more appropriately—Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The thought penetrated like a laser, and as sharply, and he had to smile at himself. This helped him toward a calming down sufficient enough so that by the time he got into bed, he only had pleasant thoughts of the evening in his honor.

That was three days ago. And here he was today ready to sacrifice—no, not sacrifice, but destroy, his life’s work, which meant for him, his life.

 He got up from his chair, strode out of his office, and headed down the hall and through the chemistry building’s door. Even from here, he could hear the chanting.

Was it even moral for him to do what he was about to do, given how much his soon-to-be-completed work would positively impact humanity? He couldn’t even imagine the medicines, the interventions, and—it had lately occurred to him—the improved food production, the prediction of gene mutation would bring.

He had no family—wife and/or children to love and be loved by. All he had was humanity; what he could give to humanity. Leave behind to humanity. His parents were long gone, as were his two sisters—his mother and father beheaded, his sisters raped and then quartered.

He had been at the high school, a two-hour walk from home, so of course hadn’t seen what was going on. He’d come home to the aftermath.

Reducing the world to what he could see through a microscope, or better, what he could see of it indirectly and by inference, thanks to computer-generated numbers and imagery—that’s all of the world he wanted to see; and keeping him busy, it kept him from anger and hatred that skulked around the perimeter of his mind like the hyenas that used to skulk around the perimeters of his family’s hardscrabble farm.

As narrow (and deep) as his world was, he couldn’t not see the many things that had happened on campus over the past half-century. Wexler was a school and haven for science nerds. There was no sheep-making fraternity and sorority system here; no athletic department; and while there were history, and English, and social science classes here, one didn’t come to Wexler for them. One simply had to take these courses—to help humanize the scientist-to-be; to help him understand the human and societal context in which he lived and for which he worked.

So, given his focus—and his need for focus—Dr. Chad had either missed or avoided all the various brouhahas that had upset and occasionally rocked college campuses, including Wexler, during the last half-century. But this brouhaha, this one was different—in that it got under Dr. Chad’s skin; in that it stirred up his anger.

As he hurried down the many steps, steps, steps, steps of the chemistry building, Chad could hear the young man speaking through the bullhorn more clearly now. Not the words, just the volume. He could hear the emotion. That was clear, even though the words were not. It was just such a surprise for Dr. Chad that Wexler students, particularly his students—his grad students and post-docs—could be investing this much time and energy, this much emotion, into this…this hateful bit of nothing that was actually turning quite dangerous.

Fact: He had found a student groaning in the ivy earlier this morning. Half-buried in it. Was the kid drunk? Had he overdosed? Drinking and drug-taking were rare at Wexler, but it happened.

Chad had charged into the ivy. He put down his briefcase and knelt at the kid’s side. He asked questions. The kid was able to answer them, in between groans.

He’d been hit by rocks. People had thrown rocks at him. Dr. Chad thought rocks? This was Seattle! Where did anyone see rocks lying around? This was Wexler. There were no rocks, not even decorative ones. The only people who ever threw rocks were those people on the news, rock-throwers on the evening news.

Chad helped the kid sit up. A rock had gouged his forehead, and blood welled up and spilled out of the ragged hole. Chad applied pressure with his hand, then thought, I have a tie. He removed it. I have a package of Kleenex in my briefcase. The makeshift pressure bandage made the kid look comical. There were welts on the kid’s neck, too. There was a tear in his t-shirt.

The kid couldn’t remember how he got here, half-hidden in ivy. But he thinks he collapsed here.

After the paramedics left, Dr. Chad had continued to his office. As he passed the quad, he noted, for the first time really noted, how many students he saw wearing keffiyehs as scarves, a few even wearing them as headdresses. He noted the Star of Davids glinting from around necks.

And Dr. Chad knew anger. And it turned into hatred—for these kids, his students—so lovable, all of them, when they sought truth in his classes, so moved they always were by the truth in biochemistry. Such hard-workers. Such good lab partners. Always, always, always. It was just too bad that his science was but a part of their day and constitution. Where in their nucleobases was this atavism buried?—though, it appeared, planted might be the better word.

He hated because he was jealous. That thought just popped up in him as the chanting got louder. He had never had that thought before, or at least, had never allowed it into his conscious mind.

Why was he so jealous of these kids; jealous of their sides—both their sides? Fact: He was angry that they got so much attention, and his family never did. His people never did. Because (and he knew the hatred of this acknowledgment even as it formed in his mind, but it was true) he was black, and his family was black, and his people were black. Ten-thousand people would be slaughtered in a week’s time—Rwanda, Uganda, Sudan, in this decade and the next, and raped and quartered, his whole life shaped by terror and its fallout, and at best, there would be doleful shakings of the head over martini glasses at faculty parties, a news cycle or two, a celebrity or two making noise—and that was that. He had had to collect eight different parts of his tiny sisters, like big pieces of kindling, and he wasn’t allowed to bury them. He had to burn them, and he noted the base of what was probably a Coke bottle that had been shoved up his younger sister’s vagina. It was that image, of all images, that did it. He turned away from the shallow fire pit he had gouged out of the earth, the smoke drifting like a ghost to wherever it would end up, and with nothing but the shoes on his feet and the clothes on his back, he walked from Africa to Europe

The kid with the bullhorn and standing on a makeshift platform (milk crates on thick plywood) was clear to Dr. Chad now. This is our land…This is your crime…and blah-blah-blah and fuck you, Dr. Chad thought.

He was black. These kids were white and privileged from birth. With a tiny bit of charity, as if it were a nearly inaudible knock on a door, Chad thought that it’s not that they wouldn’t give a damn about slaughter elsewhere, it’s just that it was impossible for them to gin up real compassion, sufficient compassion, to be moved into action, when those bodies were just too foreign, too black, when they themselves were not. It wasn’t their fault, he thought. It was the way of the world.

And he was going to rub their noses in it. How privileged he found all this. Not one of them was going to have to pay for violence by walking three-thousand miles, sleeping wherever, debasing themselves by stealing from others to survive, stealing shoes out of street-side stalls or off the feet of the unconscious or dead, as he had to do four times. They could protest and then go get frozen yogurt and think they had done something.

Chad approached the platform. He was going to speak. Rupe would hear about it, in fact might actually hear him now, first-hand, and—oh, no, there were news cameras. He’d be everywhere now. Nobel Prize Winner Speaks at Protest. Rupe will be enraged. Donors—enraged. They’d call for his head, because that’s how it worked. Calls for his removal, because these days, that’s how it worked. He’d be cancelled. One side or the other would cancel him. There would go his funding, his necessary base at Wexler. His work. His life.

Well. Fuck it. Fuck it all.

He was going to use his celebrity and built-up gravitas. He was going to tell them, in professorial terms, and in his grave, deliberate, command-presence voice, that it was hurting him, physically hurting him, to see such division, when there was an option to be brave and tease things out dispassionately. In peace, over time, in a lab. There was always that option. That option never went away.

He was going to tell them that in choosing otherwise, the end result was always to end up seeing someone’s mother and father beheaded, their bodies inside the house, and outside, and getting nosed around by pigs, their heads. He was going to tell them that it always ended with someone’s sisters slaughtered into four parts, and the nine-year-old with a Coke bottle shoved up her vagina.

He was going to tell them that they would take the option of transforming the energy for emotion into the energy for inquiry, and they would do it with their integrity, humanity, and humility in the forefront of their minds, or he would resign from Wexler. And given his global reputation, everyone around the world, every future employer, would want to know why you no-nothing, smug little white bastards who would never know what suffering looked like, and who had far more ability to find a solution because you have the means to do so, where others don’t, and the resources, and the relative safety, and peace and calm--if anybody on the planet had the freedom, opportunity, and time to discover a new path, and not go down the super-old, it was you lot. You’re missing your moment! Dr. Chad’s emotions and therefore his thoughts were running away, amok, and he couldn’t figure out where he was going with his thinking.

He signaled to the kid with the bullhorn. The kid looked startled to see him. But he motioned Dr. Chad up onto the platform. The kid handed him the bullhorn.

Two-hundred or so students murmured, spoke his name.

And looking at them, their faces a mix of their roused anger and mystification at his presence here, he thought, this was a mistake. But I’m going to have to follow through, aren’t I, and resign? I can’t say I’m going to resign if they don’t find common ground, and then not do it.

Maybe this was the payment he owed karma. He owed…whatever…whoever…the sacrifice, the kind of death-oblation required in some great even-ing, for his having been enjoying himself in school, learning about cell division and feeling such intense joy at such miracles of creation, while machetes made mulch of his family.

“My friends. My students,” Chad began, feeling rage against them for being white, and safe, and he wasn’t sure where to go, but he said, “please give me the honor of your attention.” His hands shook. Violently. The small kindness extended to them worked. There was less restiveness. He could feel it. But what would come next?

This was stupid. This was rash. So much at stake for me because of these little shits?  

But they looked at him. To him. They wanted guidance. They wanted a way out. And so did he. He hated that he was hating them. “May I tell you a little something about myself? May I tell you my story--and entrust it to your care?"