Page 33 of You Can't Hurt Me

He catches my quizzical expression.

“My dad had died suddenly and my mom felt it was a good thing to send me away.” He shrugs. “I got a scholarship and my mom wanted me to get on with it, not just hang around. The day after he passed away, my two brothers and I went straight back to school as if nothing had happened. We didn’t discuss it again. I buried myself in books. We’ve all moved on.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be.” He looks at me. “It was decades ago now, there’s nothing to be sorry about.”

“It sounds like a tough start. Losing your father when you’re young is—” I shake my head, wanting to say more, much more, but a text suddenly lights up my screen. Tony.

I’m meeting Amira at a hotel launch tonight for some free booze. Wondered if you wanted to come along too?

An invitation to play third wheel for the night, no chance. I swipe it away rather than reply but I can see Nate looking, noticing the time.

“Sorry,” I say. “A work thing. Your childhood. You were saying?”

I feel caught out but he doesn’t seem to notice. “I was about to say it didn’t feel so tough, but looking back, well, I’ve recognized how the adults didn’t know how to handle grief. You weren’t expected to talk about any of that stuff.”

I nod in unspoken agreement. “Maybe a good place to begin is what happened after you met Eva. You said in our interview that a colleague told you about her case, how did you make contact?”

“Yes. I’d begun a research project actively searching for people with Eva’s condition, congenital insensitivity to pain, and my colleague put us in touch. I wanted to find out which part of her brain was able to trigger those responses, shut down all those sensations.” He sits up now. “It’s always been a part of my research. Do you know how many painkillers we pop globally? Fourteen billion and that’s per day. If we can pinpoint that master switch, we can create a completely different kind of painkiller.”

“Hugely profitable, I imagine.”

“I didn’t mean that.” He gives me a look. “I don’t want to be the next Sackler family if that’s what you’re implying. It’s about alleviating so much misery with an alternative that isn’t necessarily addictive.”

“So you called Eva?”

He nods. “We spoke for a few minutes. Being Eva, she was open, receptive to the ideas, my research. Instantly, she could see how helpful it could be for other people like her.”

“Except that it couldn’t really helpher, could it?”

“Well, no. I was looking at how to control chronic pain, not help someone actually feel it. But there was always a chance that the research could throw up other possibilities too. It was a million to one I’d find someone like her. I’d never seen a case before, only read about them. Often, they die young, many before they reach thirty, usually due to some unforeseen accident. Only the ones that are diagnosed early learn how to live carefully by constantly assessing the physical risks around them. The tragedy is their lives are often more defined by pain than people like us who are born to feel it.”

“Even so, Eva survived unscathed.”

“That’s what made her case exceptional. But she wasn’t exactly oblivious about her condition even if she wasn’t diagnosed. Eva knew how much her life depended on being super cautious, and yet her nature fought against it. She yearned for the freedom that she perceived in everyone around her. That’s where I think her hedonistic streak came from, partying hard to feel something, anything, that was memorable. When she first came to the Rosen, she told me how at the age of ten she managed to bite off the tip of her tongue. It upset her that she could damage herself so badly yet not feel a thing.”

“She opened up to you in that first meeting? Can you remember how she seemed, what she wore, the chemistry between the two of you?”

He looks disapproving, his expression catches between a frown and a smile. “I see what you’re doing.”

“Do you? I mean, I think we need a hint of the dynamic, a sense of what was going through your mind, how this meeting would change your life.”

He looks at me for a second or two, deliberating. He exhales sharply. “Okay, I suppose I have to go there. When I first saw her, what did I really feel? I guess all I could think was, imaginebeingher. Imagine not being wired up to the universal alarm system we all have, that enslaves us in fear, in so many ways.”

“But you’re always telling me it’s what keeps us alive. That people like Eva are terribly vulnerable, unlucky even.”

“Rationally, yes. And yet. As Eva sat there in front of me, I felt that I’d never met anyone more free. She wasn’t tied down like the rest of us. Despite her diagnosis, she was innately fearless. I admit I envied that about her.” He picks at the side of his nail while I tap away at my keys. As confessions go, it is hardly revelatory, but with a bit of work it could be a nice chapter opener, how he felt himself letting go, lifted and inspired by this contagiously wild, carefree woman. Nate leans forward.

“Actually, scrub that.” He swipes the air. “I don’t want people thinking I envied my wife.”

“You’ve only said you envy her ability to feel so free.” I look up from my laptop. “That’s very fallible, likable even.”

He looks unsure.

“We’re onto something here. Eva had that unique ability to provoke strong emotion in everyone around her. It’s part of who she was. Let’s at least leave it in for now and move back to you for a bit. It would be good to have a bit of context, an early memory of what drew you to your work in the first place, perhaps?”

This relaxes him, the possibility of recalling his earliest personal ambitions. It always does for successful men, who’ve never had to question their limitless vistas. He tells me how he was instantly captivated by a science book he found in a friend’s house when he was fourteen years old—full of vivid photographs of dissections through each of the brain’s hemispheres.

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