the immortal life of henrietta lacks study guide

“That’s the ventilation system,” Christoph yelled. When the doors opened, we followed Christoph single file through a long narrow hall, its walls and ceiling vibrating with a deep whirring sound that grew louder as we walked. Inside the elevator, she pressed against Zakariyya, one hand leaning on her cane, the other gripping her tattered dictionary. “That’s wonderful,” Deborah said, as though he’d just said something entirely ordinary. “I thought we’d start in the freezer room so I can show you how we store your mother’s cells, then we can go look at them alive under a microscope.” He spoke with an Austrian accent, which made Deborah wiggle her eyebrows at me when he turned to press the elevator call button. “It must be pretty hard for you to come into a lab at Hopkins after what you’ve been through. He shook my hand and Deborah’s, then reached for Zakariyya’s. He was in his mid-thirties, with perfectly worn denim jeans, a blue plaid shirt, and shaggy light brown hair. Minutes later, Christoph walked toward us through the lobby of his building, smiling, hand outstretched. Zakariyya stopped laughing and followed as we headed toward Christoph Lengauer’s lab. “Be good or you can’t come see the cells,” she said. He looked at me and said, “That sister of mine, she crazy for not wantin money from them cells.”ĭeborah rolled her eyes and hit his leg with her cane.

The black plastic arms of his glasses were so tight they’d etched deep grooves into his head, but he couldn’t afford new ones. He’d gained weight since I’d seen him last, and his heavy gray wool pants and thick blue down coat made him look even bigger.

Then Zakariyya appeared behind us and let out a deep laugh. Her voice was utterly calm, her usual nervous laugh gone.ĭeborah closed her eyes and began to pray. Suddenly Deborah was beside me, whispering, “I hope He’s got our back on this one.” I walked to the statue, my heels echoing on marble, and rested my hand on its big toe-the closest I’d ever come to praying. “Lord thank you for giving me another chance.” “I ask you to provide my husband and I with jobs.”

“Please help my sons conquer their addictions.” Several people stopped to write prayers in over-sized books resting on wooden pedestals near the statue: “Dear Heavenly Father: If it is your will let me speak to Eddie this one last time.” His body was gray-brown and dingy, except for his right foot, which glowed a polished white from decades of hands rubbing it for luck.ĭeborah and Zakariyya weren’t there, so I leaned against a far wall, watching a doctor in green scrubs kneel before the statue and pray as others brushed its toe on their way into the hospital without looking or breaking stride. When I arrived at the Jesus, it stood just as it had when Henrietta visited it some fifty years earlier, looming more than ten feet tall beneath a tiered dome, pupil-less marble eyes staring straight ahead, arms outstretched and draped in stone robes.Īt Jesus’s feet, people had thrown piles of change, wilted daisies, and two roses-one fresh with thorns, the other cloth with plastic dewdrops. So Deborah locked them in her office, took the key with her, and called me saying, “Don’t tell him where you are or go see him without me.” He’d already called her several times that day saying he was coming to get the materials she’d collected related to her mother. So on May 11, 2001, Deborah, Zakariyya, and I agreed to meet at the Hopkins Jesus statue to go see Henrietta’s cells.Įarlier that morning, Deborah had warned me that Lawrence was convinced Hopkins was paying me to gather information about the family. Sonny had to work, and Lawrence said he wanted to talk to a lawyer about suing Hopkins instead of seeing the cells, which he referred to as “a multibillion-dollar corporation.” He’d said many times that he wanted to see his wife’s cells before he died, but he was eighty-five, in and out of the hospital with heart and blood pressure problems, and he’d just lost a leg to diabetes. By the time Deborah was ready to see her mother’s cells for the first time, Day couldn’t come.

The immortal life of henrietta lacks study guide