got the best of care and survived.
Mom, however, decided to swallow some cyanide. Nothing like a little irony.”
“So what happened to Claudia?”
“She wasn’t very happy. The way she saw it, if Eddie had been allowed to die, then her mom would have lived, and what little girl wouldn’t choose Mom over her brother? What was most weird was how the two kids came to see their daddy.”
Rubenstein’s eyes widen. “They both saw him as a hero of sorts. He was a scientist, trying to help mankind. It wasn’t his fault that he was given Jews to experiment on. If it hadn’t been him cutting away at them, burning them, injecting them with chemicals and viruses, it would have been someone else.”
He laughs. “It wasn’t until my little conversation with Eddie that I realized why Claudia hated me so much. I mean, the thought that she was anti-Semitic never crossed my mind.
Not in this day and age. But Eddie made it sound like his sister might have a white robe to go along with her white doctor’s coat. He said that she blamed the Jews for their father not 3 2 3
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getting the respect he deserved. That such a big deal shouldn’t have been made over a few Jews being experimented on. A few Jews . . .” He shakes his head and clears his throat. “Well, that’s when I understood why she had it in for me, besides the fact that she hates that I’m smarter than she is. Anyway”—he drums against the table for a few beats—“as I was saying, Eddie and Claudia went different directions—scientifically speaking.
“They both wanted Daddy to gain some respect. Even with his work at Los Alamos, they saw how people treated him.
I think they both wanted to redeem him somehow. Eddie planned on being the savoir of humanity by killing billions instead of the meager millions the Nazis killed. But at least in his head, he had a just cause, and he was willing to kill everyone without discrimination. But Claudia.” He shakes his head.
“I can’t explain it.” His face twists with disgust. “She’s hungry, and there’s no delusional higher cause. She doesn’t want to help anybody. She wants money, power, prestige. Years.” He stares at me.
I shiver because I know he’s right. No matter how she smiled or how she tried to reassure me that I could trust her, there was always something, or a lack of something, in her eyes: compassion, caring.
Cold. They were just cold.
“You know you’re safe here, right?” Rubenstein says, wheeling his chair so close, our knees are touching. “I’m a resident at the hospital two miles from here. I have an office and a receptionist and nurses. But this place is off the grid. It’s my own special little work space. Only a few select people know it’s 3 2 4
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here, and Dr. Bitch-tholomew is not one of them. And she’s not going to find out.” He looks up at the heart suspended by artificial vessels and floating in clear solution. “I’ll save you, then we’ll call your parents. And then we shove it in Claudia’s pinched little face. But after that”—he looks back at me—“you and your family have to disappear.”
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The smell of Chinese food lingers in my room, along with a bag of microwave popcorn. I’ve been here almost a week, and every night Rubenstein brings in dinner and watches television with me. Tonight, it’s basketball.
“They’re going to win,” Rubenstein says. “My Bulls are not losing to the Thunder. No way.” He’s standing in front of the recliner I’m sitting in, blocking the television, but it doesn’t matter, because he won’t be in that exact spot for very long. He never stays anywhere very long. “Get it to Rose! Get it to Rose!
Get it to Rose!”
Rubenstein jumps a good six inches off the floor, like it’s him making the jump shot. The buzzer sounds, and Rubenstein comes crashing down, landing first on his feet, and then his knees. He lies down on his back, hands over his face, shaking his head.
“Did you see that?” he asks. He’s wearing sweats, a Bulls T-shirt, and Converse shoes.
“No, actually,” I say, because I couldn’t see through Rubenstein’s imaginary jump shot.
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“They lost!” Rubenstein gets to his