Leaving Time(60)

The nurse on duty looks straight at Serenity when we walk in, which I guess makes sense, because we appear to be a family unit—if a dysfunctional one. “Can I help you?”

“I’m just here to see my dad,” I say.

“Thomas Metcalf,” Serenity adds.

I know several of the nurses here; this one I haven’t met, which is why she doesn’t recognize me. She puts a clipboard on the counter so that I can sign us in, but before I do, I hear my father’s voice, shouting somewhere down the hall. “Dad?” I call out.

The nurse looks bored. “Name?” she says.

“Sign us in and meet me in Room 124,” I tell Serenity, and I start to run. I can feel Virgil falling into step beside me.

“Serenity Jones,” I hear her say, and then I throw open the door to my dad’s room.

He is fighting against the grip of two burly orderlies. “For the love of God, let me go,” he yells, and then he spies me. “Alice! Tell them who I am!”

There’s a broken radio that looks like it’s been hurled across the room, its wires and transistors draped across the floor like a robot autopsy. The trash can has been overturned, and there are crumpled paper pill cups and tangles of masking tape and the peel of an orange scattered around. In my father’s hand is a box of breakfast cereal. He’s holding on to it like it’s a vital organ.

Virgil stares at my dad. I can only imagine what he’s seeing: a man with wild snowy hair and pretty lousy personal grooming habits, who’s skinny and fierce and completely off his rocker. “He thinks you’re Alice?” Virgil says under his breath.

“Thomas,” I soothe, stepping forward. “I’m sure the gentlemen will understand if you calm down.”

“How can I calm down when they’re trying to steal my research?”

By now, Serenity has come through the doorway, too, stopping dead at the struggle. “What’s going on?”

The orderly with a blond buzz cut glances up. “He got a little agitated when we tried to throw out the empty cereal box.”

“If you stop fighting, Thomas, I’m sure they’ll let you keep your … your research,” I say.

To my surprise, that’s all it takes for my dad to go limp. Immediately the orderlies release him, and he sinks back in the chair, clutching that stupid box to his chest. “I’m all right now,” he mutters.

“Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs,” Virgil murmurs.

Serenity shoots him a sharp glare. “Thank you so much,” she says pointedly to the orderlies, as they pick up the trash that’s all over the floor.

“No problem, ma’am,” one replies, as the other pats my dad on the shoulder.

“You take it easy, bro,” he says.

My dad waits until they leave and then stands and grabs my arm. “Alice, you cannot imagine what I’ve just discovered!” His eyes focus suddenly past me, on Virgil and Serenity. “Who are they?”

“Friends of mine,” I say.

That seems to be good enough. “Look at this.” He points to the box. There is a bright cartoon of something that might be a turtle and might be a cucumber with legs, saying in a thought bubble: DID YOU KNOW …

… that crocodiles can’t stick out their tongues?

… that honeybees have hair on their eyes to help them collect pollen?

… Anjana, a chimp at a rescue facility in South Carolina, has raised white tiger cubs, leopard, and lion cubs—bottle-feeding and playing with the babies?

… Koshik, an elephant, can accurately speak six Korean words?

“Of course he’s not speaking six words,” my father says. “He’s imitating the keepers. I Googled the scientific paper this morning after that imbecile Louise finally got off the computer because she’d reached the next level of Candy Crush. What’s fascinating is that he apparently learned to communicate for social reasons. He was kept apart from other elephants, and the only interaction he had socially was with human caregivers. You know what this means?”

I glance at Serenity and shrug. “No, what?”

“Well, if there’s documented proof that an elephant learned to imitate human speech, can you imagine the implications for how we think about elephants’ theory of mind?”

“Speaking of theories,” Virgil says.

“What’s your field of study?” my father asks him.

“Virgil does … retrieval work,” I improvise. “Serenity’s interested in communication.”

He brightens. “Through what medium?”

“Yes,” Serenity says.

My father looks baffled for a moment but then forges on. “Theory of mind covers two critical ideas: that you have an awareness of being a unique being, with your own thoughts and feelings and intentions … and that this is true for other beings, and that they don’t know what you’re thinking or vice versa until these things are communicated. The evolutionary benefit, of course, of being able to predict the behavior of others based on that is enormous. For example, you can pretend to be injured, and if someone doesn’t know you’re faking, they will bring you food and take care of you and you don’t have to do any work. Humans aren’t born with this ability—we develop it. Now, we know that for theory of mind to exist, humans have to use mirror neurons in the brain. And we know that mirror neurons fire when the task involves understanding others through imitation—and when acquiring language. If Koshik the elephant is doing that, doesn’t it also stand to reason that the other things mirror neurons signify in humans—like empathy—are also present in elephants?”