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“The protective coating around the nerve cell. Kind of like the insulation around an electrical wire.”
“Which does what?”
“Helps the nerve cell transmit signals.”
“And in the case of MS?”
“In MS, the immune system attacks the myelin, so we’d see dysfunction and cell death of oligodendrocytes.”
“Are there any drugs currently being tested that show a possibility of promoting myelin sheath repair?”
She looked over at him, blinked twice.
“Too advanced?” he asked.
“A little.”
“Did anything else happen with your car?”
She paused, no doubt to reset her brain. “No, thank goodness. It’s only the electrical system.”
Until the repairs to her car were done, he’d volunteered to take her home. On the days he wasn’t at the university, it would mean him going out of his way to pick her up and then heading in the opposite direction of the new house, but this was about his wife’s kid sister’s safety.
They arrived at his car, and Delilah slid in like he’d been taking her home after classes since elementary school.
He tossed their stuff onto the backseat before getting in behind the wheel. “Do you have a gun?” he asked, the engine roaring to life. “Some days, you leave campus kind of late.”
Delilah shook her head. “Uh…no.”
“Taser? Combat knife? Freshly-sharpened pencil?”
She reached into the backseat, searched her bag, and pulled out a banana that looked like it had once belonged to a prehistoric monkey. “I have this,” she said. “It might not be sharp or sturdy, but if I shove this down an attacker’s throat, the gastrointestinal upset they’ll get will be as dangerous as a combat knife.”
He laughed but kept his laugh quieter than the engine’s low, steady hum as he pulled out of the parking garage. Sometimes, she reminded him of Khalid. Others, she reminded him of his sister Marianne. If that didn’t mean he was supposed to marry into this family, he didn’t know what would.
“So, Dr. S,” she leaned back against the seat, “how’d I do on your little pop quiz?”
“You did well,” he said. “I’m proud of you.”
“Isn’t there some movie called ‘Revenge of the Body Snatchers’ or something like that?”
“It’sInvasionof the Body Snatchers, Delilah.”
“Okay, yeah. It’s about people being replaced with, like, weird clones or something, right? Did you see it in theaters as a kid?”
“The first movie came out in the fifties,” he informed her. “The remake came out in the late seventies.”
“And when were you born again?”
“Do you want to walk home?”
She laughed, obviously pleased with herself. “I’ve just never heard you say you were proud of me. I had to ask. By the way, did Raina call you? You know she won’t be back until Wednesday, right?”
“Don’t remind me.”
“Don’t you have friends? Maybe you can hang out with friends this weekend and go golfing. Or big-game hunting. Or to the park to drink chardonnay and listen to Mozart. I don’t know your process.”
“My golf clubs are in the shop, we drink sherry and listen to Rachmaninoff, and my Elmer Fudd rifle is being fixed,” he quipped. “And if you tell me you don’t know who Elmer Fudd is, I will ignite where I sit.”
