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SYNDROME
They were promised a miracle cure for the deadly diseases destroying
their lives. It seemed too good to be true, but to the desperate and
dying it was the only chance for survival. Now they're part of a
bizarre secret experiment that reverses the aging process - an
experiment gone out of control. To stop the madness, one woman must
enter a shocking nightmare world, where scientists control your body -
and your mind - and living makes you beg for death . . .
In her mid-thirties, Alexa Hampton runs her own interior design firm in
New York's Soho and has a daily run to keep fit. But now her world is
narrowing as a childhood heart mishap increasingly threatens to
lethally impact her life. Then out of nowhere her black-sheep younger
brother appears and insists she go to a clinic in New Jersey to enter
stem-cell clinical trials that are working wonders. The clinic is owned
by her brother's boss, the eccentric millionaire Winston Bartlett.
Also interested in the clinic is the medical reporter Stone Aimes,
who's hoping to penetrate Bartlett's veil of secrecy and find out
what's going on there. He has personal as well as professional reasons
for wanting to get closer to Winston Bartlett. He is also a long-ago
lover of Alexa's and still carrying something of a torch for her though
they have long been out of touch.
As Alexa investigates the clinic, their paths cross and together they
slowly uncover the horrifying truth about what can happen when stem-
cell technology is taken to its ultimate limit. A bizarre secret
experiment to reverse the aging process has gone out of control.
Winston Bartlett's young mistress, the TV personality Kristen Starr,
had an anti-aging procedure that went awry and now all her cells are
being replaced with new. The side effects are horrific. No one can stop
what is happening: she is growing younger, destined to become a child
again. Bartlett has had the same procedure and now he knows he's next.
It's only a matter of time till he too regresses to childhood, and then
. . . no one knows.
Alexa and Stone become prisoners in the clinic and then Bartlett and
his Dutch medical researcher Karl van der Vliet begin a bizarre
experiment on Alexa, hoping to produce antibodies to save Kristen, and
Bartlett. In a stunning, blazing finale, Alexa turns the tables on them
all, only to discover that she's now, suddenly unlike anyone else who
has ever lived.
BOOKS BY THOMAS HOOVER
Nonfiction
Zen Culture
The Zen Experience
Fiction
The Moghul
Caribbee
Wall Street _Samurai_
(The _Samurai_ Strategy)
Project Daedalus
Project Cyclops
Life Blood
Syndrome
All free as e-books at
www.thomashoover.info
THOMAS HOOVER
PINNACLE BOOKS Kensington Publishing Corp.
PINNACLE BOOKS are published by Kensington Publishing Corp. 850 Third
Avenue New York, NY 10022
Copyright (C) 2003 by Thomas Hoover
Quote copyright (C) 2000 The New York Times Company. Reprinted by
permission. All rights reserved. First Pinnacle Books Printing:
November 2003 ISBN:0-7860-1314-1
Key Words
THOMAS HOOVER (Author)
SYNDROME (Novel: Medical Thriller)
Heart disease, Alzheimer's, Stem Cells, Aortic Stenosis, Medical Columns,
Aging, Fountain of Youth, Regenerative Medicine
_"The potential [of stem cells] for saving lives . . . may be
unlimited. Given the proper signal or environment, stem cells,
transplanted into human tissue, can be induced to develop into brain,
heart, skin, bone marrow cells--indeed any specialized cells. The
scientific research community believes that the transplanted stem cells
may be able to regenerate dead or dying human tissue, reversing the
progress of disease."
_Michael J. Fox
The New York Times (Op-Ed), November 1, 2000
SYNDROME
Chapter 1
_Sunday, April 5
6:49 A.M.
_
Alexa Hampton was awakened by a sensation in her chest. The alarm
wasn't set to go off for another eleven minutes, but she knew her sleep
was finished.
Not again! She rolled over and slapped the blue pillowcase.
That little sound from her heart and the twinges of angina, that
catchall for heart discomfort, was happening more and more now, just as
Dr. Ekelman had warned her. But she wasn't going to let it stop her
from living her life to the fullest as long as she could, and right now
that meant having her morning run.
She curled her legs around, onto the floor, reached for a nitroglycerin
tab, and slipped it under her tongue. Known as a vasodilator, the nitro
lowered the workload on her heart by expanding her veins. It should get
her through the workout ....
That was when she felt a warm presence rub against her leg.
"Hi, baby." Still sucking on the tab, she reached over and tousled
Knickers' gray-and-white hair, then pushed it back from her dog's eyes.
Her Old English sheepdog, a huge hirsute off-road vehicle, turned and
licked her hand. Knickers was ready to hit the trail.
She'd been dreaming of Steve when the chest tightness came, and maybe
the emotion that stirred up had caused the angina. She still dreamed of
him often, and it was always someplace where they had been together and
loved, and they were ever on the brink of some disaster. That
frequently caused her heart to race, waking her.
This time it was the vacation they took six years ago, in the spring.
They were sailing off Norman's Cay in the Bahamas. She was raising the
jib, the salt spray in her hair, but then she looked up and realized
they were about to ram a reef.
She felt the dreams were her unconscious telling her to beware her
current precarious condition. If, as is said, at the moment of your
passing, your entire life flashes before your eyes, then the dreams
were like that, only in slow motion. It was as though she were being
prepared for something. The dreams were a premonition. She had a pretty
good idea of what.
Ally had had rheumatic fever when she was five, which went undetected
long enough to scar a valve in her heart. The formal name was
rheumatoid aortic stenosis, a rare, almost freakish condition that had
shaped her entire life. The pediatrician at Mount Sinai had told her
parents they should think twice about allowing her to engage in any
vigorous activity. Her heart's function could be deceptively normal
during childhood but when she got older . . . Well, why stress that
organ now and hasten the inevitable day when it could no longer keep up
with the rest of her body?
She had refused to listen. She'd played volleyball in grade school,
basketball in high school, and she became a disciplined runner when she
went to Columbia to study architecture. She wanted to prove that you
could make your heart stronger if you believed hard enough and wanted
to live hard enough.
Now, though, it was all catching up. She'd had a complete checkup two
weeks ago Thursday, including a stress test and
Doppler echocardiogram, and Dr. Ekelman had laid out the situation,
gazing over her half-lens glasses and pulling at her chin. The normal
twinkle in her eyes was entirely absent.
"Alexa, your condition has begun worsening. There's a clear aortic
murmur now when your pulse goes up. How long can you go on living in
denial? You really can't keep on stressing your heart the way you have
been. You can have a normal life, but it's got to be low-key. Don't
push your luck."
"Living half a life is so depressing," she'd declared, not entirely
sure she meant it. "It's almost worse than none at all."
"Ally, I'm warning you. If you start having chest sensations that don't
respond to nitro, call me immediately. I mean that. There's a new drug,
Ranolazine, that temporarily shifts your heart over to using glucose as
a fuel instead of fatty acids and provides more energy for a given
amount of oxygen. It will make the pain back off, but I only want to
start you on that as a last resort. That's the final stop before open-
heart surgery and a prosthetic aortic valve."
Day by day, the illusion of normality was getting harder and harder to
maintain. She had been playing second violin in an amateur string
quartet called the West Village Oldies, but a month ago she'd had to
drop out. She didn't have the endurance to practice enough to keep up
with the others. Blast. It was having to give up things you love that
really hurt.
Still, she was determined to keep a positive attitude. There was your
heart, and then there was heart. You had to understand the difference.
She lay back to wait for the alarm and try to compose her mind. This
Sunday morning was actually the one day of the year she most dreaded.
The anniversary.
It had been back when Steve was still alive. They were living in the
Chelsea neighborhood of New York, in a brownstone town house they were
renting. The rent was high, but they were doing all right. Steve was a
political consultant, who had helped some fledgling candidates overcome
the odds and win important elections. In between campaigns here, he
also got work in the nominal democracies in Latin America.
She was a partner in a small firm of architects who had all been at
Columbia together and decided to team up after graduation and start a
business. There were four of them--she was the only woman--and it was a
struggle at the beginning. For the first three years they had to live
off crumbs tossed their way by the big boys, subcontracts from Skidmore
and other giants. They felt like they were a high-paid version of
Manpower, Inc., doing grunt work, designing the interiors of shopping
malls in the Midwest and banks in Saudi Arabia, while their prime
contractors got to keep all the sexy, big-budget jobs that called for
creativity, like a glass-and-steel office tower in L.A.
But then interesting work finally started to trickle in, including a
plum job to convert a massive parking garage in Greenwich Village into
a luxury condominium. Through a wild coincidence (or luck) she had
personally designed the apartment she later ended up buying for
herself.
Just when everything seemed to be turning around and going her way, an
event happened that stopped her in her tracks. Five years ago on this
very day, April 5, her mother, Nina, phoned her at six-thirty in the
morning and, in a trembling voice that still haunted, announced that
her father was dead.
Arthur Wade Hampton was fifty-nine and he'd been cleaning his Browning
shotgun for an early-morning hunting trip to Long Island--so he'd
claimed the night before--and ... she was awakened by the explosion of a
discharge. A horrible accident in the kitchen of their co-op in the
West Village.
Like Hemingway. Thinking back, they both realized it was the wrong time
of year to hunt anything--but they both also knew he wanted the world to
think that. Moreover, it was precisely the kind of vital lie they'd
need to get through the pointed questions and skeptical looks that lay
ahead. It was a knowledge all the more palpable for being unspoken.
There's no time like those first moments after a tragedy to create a
special reality for yourself.
It was only in the aftermath that she managed to unravel the reason. He
owned and operated an interior-design firm in SoHo called CitiSpace,
and he had mortgaged it to the hilt. He was on the verge of bankruptcy.
(That was why Ally had not spoken to her younger brother, Grant, in the
last 4 1/2 years.)
She felt she had no choice but to try to salvage what was left of the
business and her father's reputation. She left the architectural firm
and took over CitiSpace. It turned out she was easily as good an
interior designer as she had been an architect, and before long she had
a backlog of work and was adding staff. She restructured and,
eventually paid off the firm's debt; it was now on a sound financial
footing.
These days CitiSpace specialized in architectural rehabs in the
Greenwich Village area, with as many SoHo and TriBeCa lofts as came her
way. The work was mostly residential, but lately some lucrative
commercial office jobs were beginning to walk through the door.
Anything dependent on luxury real estate can be vulnerable in dicey
times, but she'd been able to give everybody a holiday bonus for the
past couple of years. She'd even given herself one this year, in the
form of this new condo apartment, which she loved.
Another major reason she'd taken over CitiSpace was to try to provide
her mother some peace and dignity in her twilight years. But then,
irony of ironies, Nina, who was a very lively sixty-six, was diagnosed
eighteen months ago with early-onset Alzheimer's. Now her consciousness
was rapidly slipping away.
All the things that had happened over the last few years had called for
a special kind of heart. She had known Steve Jensen, a freelance
political consultant, for eight years, and they'd lived together for
three of those, before they got married. He was warm and tender and
sexy, and she'd envisioned them in rocking chairs forty years down the
road. They'd been married for only six months when he got a job to help
reelect the president of Belize. At first he was reluctant, concerned
about human rights issues, but then he decided the other candidate, the
alternative, was even worse. So he went.
How many things can be destined to go wrong in your life? Exactly seven
months after her dad died, she received a phone call from the American
Embassy in Belmopan, Belize. Steve had been flying with the
presidential candidate over a stretch of southern rain forest in a
single-engine Cessna when a sudden thunderstorm came out of the
Caribbean and the plane lost radio contact. That was the last, etc.
She rushed there, but after two weeks the "rescue" officially became a
"recovery" mission. Except there was never any recovery. After two
months she flew back alone, the loneliest plane ride of her life.
She still had his clothes in her closet, as though to keep hope alive.
When you love someone so much you think you could never live without
them--and then one day you're forced to--it resets your thinking. Her
dad's death and then Steve's . . .
She wanted to love life, but life sometimes felt like it was asking
more than she should have to give. She currently had no one special to
spend her weekends with, but she hadn't given up, nor was she pushing
it. All things in time, except time could be running out. . . .
Brrrring went the alarm and Knickers responded with a lively "Woof" She
was anxious to get going.
"Come on, baby," Ally said. "Time for a treat."
She struggled up and made her way into the kitchen and got down a box
of small rawhide chews. It would give Knickers something to occupy her
mind for the few minutes it took to get ready.
Since she lived at the west end of Barrow Street, right across the
highway from the new Hudson River Park esplanade that defined that
mighty river's New York bank, she had a perfect course for her morning
runs. She usually liked to run down to the park at the rejuvenated
Battery Park City and then back. She didn't know what the distance was
exactly, maybe three-quarters of a mile each way, maybe slightly more,
but it fit her endurance nicely. The weather was still cool enough in
the mornings that Knickers could accompany her at full trot. In the
heat of summer, however, they both had to cut back.
She'd put on blue sweats, got her Walkman prepped with a Beethoven
quintet, and was just finishing cinching her running shoes when the
phone jangled.
_Sunday, April 5
7:18 A.M.
_
Grant Hampton listened to the ringing and felt the sweat on his palms.
For a normal person, this would be an insane time to call, but knowing
his nutbag sister, she was probably already up and about to go out for
her daily run. And this on a Sunday morning, for chrissake, when
rational people were drinking coffee or having sex or doing something
sensible like retrieving the Times from the hallway and reading the
columns in the Business section. He had left Tanya, his runway model
live-in, to get her beauty sleep and had driven downtown at this
unthinkable hour on a mission. He was chief financial officer of
Bartlett Medical Devices, Inc., which was in imminent danger of going
under and taking him with it.
Come on, Ally. Pick up the frigging phone.
He gazed out the windshield of his blue Porsche, now parked directly
across the street from Alexa's lobby, and tried to calm his pulse. He
hadn't entirely worked out the pitch, but that was okay because he
wanted to sound spontaneous. Who was it said, "Sincerity, if you can
just fake that, you've got it made?" That was what--
"Hello."
Thank God she's picked up.
"Hi, sis, remember the sound of my voice? Long time, right?" Come
on, he thought, give me an opening here. There was a pause that Grant
Hampton thought lasted an eternity.
"You picked a funny time to call."
Is that all she has to say? Four and a half frigging years she
shuts me out of her life, blaming me, and then ...
"Well, Ally, I figured there's gotta be a statute of
limitations on being accused of something I didn't do. So I decided to
take a flier that maybe four years and change was in the ballpark."
"Grant, do you know what time it is? This is Sunday and--"
"Hey, this is the hour you do your Sunday run, right? If memory
serves. So I thought I might drive down and keep you company."
He didn't want to let her know that he was already there. That
would seem presumptuous and probably tick her off even more. But by God
he had to get to her.
Again there was a long pause. Like she was trying to collect
and marshal her anger.
"You want to come to see me? Now? That's a heck of a--"
"Look, there's something really important I need to talk to
you about. It's actually a big favor for you, sis. You've surely heard
of Winston Bartlett?"
"I've also heard of Donald Trump. So?"
"Well, he's got a clinic out in New Jersey that--"
"Grant, I know you're a big shot in his medical conglomerate
or whatever it is, but I'm not interested in whatever you're peddling.
I'm going out to run now."
He heard the sound of the phone clicking off, without so much
as a good-bye.
Jesus, he thought, she really is ticked. This is going to be
harder than I thought.
Okay, here goes Plan B.
He started the Porsche and slowly backed to the corner of
Washington Street, where he parked again and then hunkered down, loving
the smell of the new leather seat. Ally was going to come charging out
of the front door in about two minutes, with that damned sheepdog that
Steve gave her, assuming it was still around.
Grant Hampton was three years younger than Alexa and he lived in a
different world. Whereas she'd never wanted to be anything but an
architect, he had aimed directly for NYU School of Business. After
that, he had gone to Wall Street and gotten a broker's license and
begun an extremely lucrative career as a bond trader for Goldman Sachs.
He discovered he had the nerves, as well as a gift for handling big
numbers in his head. Soon he had a duplex co-op on the twenty-sixth
floor of a new building on Third Avenue in the East Sixties. He loved
the money and the pad He also liked how easy it was to pick up models
at downtown clubs if you had your own co-op, a Porsche, and were six
feet tall with a designer wardrobe.
That was where he met Tanya, also six feet tall, a striking (natural)
redhead who did a lot of runway work for Chloe.
He thought he was making a lot of money, but Tanya, who could order a
two-hundred-dollar bottle of Dom Perignon to have something to pass the
time while the hors d'oeuvres were being whipped up at Nobu, taught him
he was just barely getting by. She was accustomed to screwing men who
had some depth to their money.
But when he tried a financial endeavor on the side, it turned into a
disaster. Time to move on. He sent around his resume and managed to get
an interview with BMD, which was looking for someone to help them hedge
their exposure in foreign currencies. The next thing he knew, he was
trading bonds for Winston Bartlett's personal account.
When Bartlett's CFO died of a heart attack at age forty-nine (while
undergoing oral sex in the backseat of a chauffeured Lincoln Town Car),
Grant Hampton got temporarily drafted to take over his
responsibilities. That was two years ago. He was aggressive enough that
there was never a search for a replacement. He had made the big time,
and he had done it before he was thirty-five.
But now it all hung in the balance. If this didn't work out,
he could end up cold-calling widows out of Dun & Bradstreet, hawking
third-rate IPOs. Tanya would be gone in a heartbeat.
_Ally, work with me for chrissake.
Sunday, April 5
7:57 A.M._
As Alexa stepped out of the lobby, the morning was glorious and clear.
Spring had arrived in a burst of pear and cherry blossoms in the garden
of St. Luke's Church, up the street, but here by the river the morning
air was still brisk enough to make her skin tingle. The sun was
lightening the east, setting a golden halo above the skyscrapers of
mid-town. Here, with the wind tasting lightly of salt, the roadways
were Sunday-morning silent and it was a magic time that always made her
feel the world was young and perfect and she was capable of anything.
This was her private thinking time--even dreaming time--and she shared it
only with Knickers, who was trotting along beside her now, full of
enthusiasm. Ally suspected that her sheepdog enjoyed their morning runs
along the river even more than she did.
As she headed south, toward Battery Park City, she pondered the weird
phone call she'd just gotten from Grant Seth Hampton. That was his full
name. She called him Grant, but her mother, Nina, always called him
Seth. Unfortunately, by whatever name, Grant Seth Hampton, an
unremitting hustler, was still her brother. She wished it were not so,
but some things couldn't be changed.
In truth, she actually thought Grant had exhibited a kind of sequential
personality over his life. When they were kids, he'd seemed rakish but
also decent. At the time, of course, she was impulsive and rebellious
herself, admiring of his spunk. Now she viewed that as his Early
Personality.
Later, when he was pushing thirty and the Wall Street pressure and the
coke moved in, he evolved into Personality
Number Two. He lost touch with reality and in the process he also lost
his inner moral compass. His character bent and then broke under the
stress, proving, she now supposed, that he was actually a weak reed
after all. Now she didn't know what his personality was.
Grant, Grant, she often lamented, how did everything manage to turn out
so bad with you?
He'd been a bond trader for Goldman, and at family gatherings he'd brag
about making three hundred thou a year. But he had a high-maintenance
lifestyle involving downtown models he was constantly trying to impress
with jewelry and expensive vacations, so that wasn't enough. He decided
to freelance on the side. He set up a Web site and, with his broker's
license, opened a retail business trading naked futures contracts on
Treasuries. He managed to get some naive clients and for a while made a
profit for them. But then the market turned against him, or maybe he
lost his rabbit's foot, and he began losing a lot of other people's
money.
A couple of his clients with heavy losses felt that he'd misrepresented
the risk, and they were getting ready to sue. They also were
threatening to file a complaint with the SEC. There was a real
possibility he could be barred from the financial industry for life.
The only thing that would put the matter to rest was if he made good
some of their losses. But Grant, who lived hand to mouth no matter what
his income, didn't have any liquidity. A reserve? That's for guys who
don't have any balls.
She pieced this story together after the fact. Somehow he'd gotten to
their father, who bailed him out mainly to save the family from
disgrace. In doing so, he had mortgaged CitiSpace right up to the
breaking point.
When she finally unraveled this poignant tale, she realized her father
believed he was going to have to declare bankruptcy and close the firm,
laying everybody off and leaving Nina a pauper. He thought the only way
to save the family from ruin was to collect on his life insurance.
Unfortunately, however, he botched the plan. Nobody believed his death
was accidental and suicide voided the 3-million-dollar policy....
Grant had always inhabited another planet from her dad but surely these
days he was able to support any lifestyle he chose. For the last two
years he'd been some kind of hotshot financial manager for the high-
stakes conglomerate owned by Winston Bartlett, or so Nina said. He
should be making big bucks. Had he managed to screw that up somehow?
Anytime he came crawling back to the family for anything, it was
because he was in some kind of trouble.
She hadn't seen him in so long she wondered if she'd even recognize
him--not that she had any plans to see him.
But what could Grant possibly want from her now? Also, why would he
pick this morning, this anniversary morning, to reappear? Didn't he
know what day this was? Or maybe he didn't actually care.
He'd been living on the East Side that fateful morning of their dad Is
death, in a doorman co-op he surely couldn't afford, and she'd taken a
cab there to tell him in person rather than do it over the phone. When
she did, her voice breaking, she could see his eyes already filtering
out any part of it that touched him. By today he'd probably purged it
out of his memory entirely....
She had reached the vast lawn that had been built on the landfill
behind Stuyvesant High, the Hudson River on one side and the huge
expanse of green on the other. It was manicured and verdant, a La
Grande Jatte expanse of grass where you could see visions of wicker
picnic baskets and bottles of Beaujolais. The space was deserted now
and smelled of new grass. Knickers had gotten ten paces ahead of her,
as though impatient that Alexa was slowing her down, but then she
paused in midstride to sniff at a bagel somebody had tossed.
"Come on, honey." Ally caught up with her, wheezing. "Time to
backtrack. My chest is getting tight again. Goodies at home."
Knickers glared at her dolefully for a moment, not buying the argument.
"Let's go." She resumed her stride back north, knowing--well, hoping--
Knickers would follow. "Home."
Her senses must have been slowing down too, because she honestly didn't
hear him when he came up behind her three minutes later....
_Sunday, April 5
8:29 A.M.
_
"Didn't think I could keep up, did you?" Grant Hampton quipped from ten
paces back. "Guess you didn't know I've started playing handball every
other morning. Half an hour, with the Man. Great for the stamina. Not
to mention brown- nosing the boss, since naturally I let him win."
She doesn't look half bad, he thought. Maybe she's getting out ahead of
that heart problem. Maybe she's actually okay and I'm screwed.
Fuck.
But why is she still so fried at me? Sure, I had a little trouble, but
everybody has ups and downs. Nina, that hardhearted bitch, wants to
blame me for Arthur's death, when it was nobody's fault but his own
that the old fart pulled the plug. Hell, I was going to pay back the
money. He just didn't believe in me. He never did.
"What are you doing here, Grant?" When she turned to look back at him,
she realized she wasn't prepared for this moment at all, but here he
was, complete with a trendy CK running outfit.
She'd only seen him a couple of times after the funeral, and he looked
like life was treating him well. The perfect tan, the lush sandy hair
with an expensive cut that covered the top of his ears like a precise
little helmet. He was a touch over six feet, with athletic shoulders, a
trim figure, and a graceful fluidity to his stride. No wonder he scores
with models. Damn. How could such a creep look that great?
"I told you, I'm trying to do you a favor." He momentarily pulled
ahead, as though to head her off, then looked back and grinned. She
thought she detected a vaguely demented quality in his gray eyes. "Hey,
I've turned my life around, Ally. Lots of good karma. I'm CFO for BMD,
and W.B. lets me handle a lot of his personal investing too."
She put on a burst of energy, trying unsuccessfully to get out ahead of
him. Even though she'd rehearsed this inevitable moment over and over
in her mind, she hadn't realized that seeing him again would be this
upsetting.
Why was he here? But now that he was, maybe she ought to momentarily
let go of the anger long enough to find out what he wanted.
Fortunately, they were almost back to Barrow Street. So this was going
to be quick; no way was she going to ask him up.
"Look," Grant declared over his shoulder, "I think it's high time to
admit I've been a shit. To you and to a lot of people." Now he slowed
enough that she pulled alongside. "For a long time there, back when I
worked for Goldman, I was an immature asshole. But at least I'm mature
enough now to admit it."
"I think the window for owning up is past." She didn't need his belated
mea culpa. Nothing was going to bring their father back, and having a
scene on this anniversary day would only demean his memory. "Sometimes
it's better just to let things rest."
"No, that's wrong, Ally, and I want to try and start making amends. For
all the money Dad helped me out with. I want to do a kindness for you,
to repay you and Mom as best I can." Now he was jogging along beside
her as smooth as a stroll, barely breathing. It was adding to her
humiliation.
"Grant, it's a little fucking late for that. Dad's gone. Money's not
going to bring him back. And I'm okay, Mom's okay--at least for money."
Well, she thought, that's true for now, but who knows what lies ahead?
"So what's a couple of million or so between siblings, anyway? Right?
It's the price of finding out who everybody is."
Just now, she told herself, the biggest "kindness " he could do would
be to disappear. Forever. She'd thought she was over the bulk of the
pain and the feelings of humiliation, but seeing him again, hearing his
voice, and looking at his eyes was bringing all of it back. She
realized she was never going to be over it.
"Ally, go ahead and say whatever you need to ... Look, I can't really
do anything about the money, at least not right this minute--though I've
got a big ship on the horizon, assuming a deal I'm working on comes
through. But right now I'm about to try to do you a favor."
"I think I can muddle through without any of your 'favors,' Grant. And
I really don't appreciate your showing up out of the blue like this,
bullying your way back into my life."
She glanced over and saw his gray eyes were hangdog. It was the soulful
look he used to melt her resolve. But not this time. She was yelling at
herself inside not to give an inch. If she let him anywhere close to
her life again, she was sure she'd only regret it.
"Well, like it or not, I am here at the moment," he said, once more
jogging a pace ahead then twisting his head back. They were at the
crossing and he could see her building from where they were. He had to
get a hook into her before she disappeared into that damned lobby. Time
for the bait. "By the way, Ally, how's your ticker doing these days?
You still have to watch out for... that heart thing?"
"Look, Grant, I've got a busy morning. I'm going up to see Mom, not
that you'd give a damn. So thank you for inquiring about my health, but
frankly what do you care?" She paused. "Tell you what. If your 'favor'
is so wonderful, I'll give you one phone call. Tonight, at home." She
had Knickers' leash on a short hold and was waiting for the light to
change. "But I've got to go now."
Shit, he thought, the hook didn't catch. "Can't be on the phone, I'm
telling you. I needed to see you. Why the hell do you think I took the
trouble to catch you before your day got started? You know I hate
getting up this early." He stepped onto the curb and stopped. "Ally,
please listen. This is something I can do for you. I won't insult you
by saying it's for old times' sake, but in a way it is. I got you a
shot at a big job. Bartlett wants to redo the ground floor of his place
on Gramercy Park. I told him about CitiSpace, and he sounded interested
and said he'd like for you to come by and meet him and help him kick
around some ideas."
She looked at him, not believing a word.
"You hacked into my life at seven o'clock Sunday morning for that. You
had to see me? Give me a break. What do you really want? And this
better be good."
Okay, he thought. Cut to the chase.
"You're correct. It's about your heart."
"What about it?"
Make it real, he told himself. This could be your only shot.
"All right, here's the unvarnished deal. What I really did for you.
About five years ago, Bartlett bankrolled a start-up bio-med firm
called the Gerex Corporation. It was the brainchild of a Dutch doctor
whose research project had just been sawed off at the knees by Stanford
University. Then Bartlett moved the entire operation to a clinic at the
BMD campus out in New Jersey called the Dorian Institute. It's all very
hush-hush, but I can tell you Gerex has a new procedure in clinical
trials that can literally work miracles. The head researcher, this
Dutch doctor, has pioneered a new treatment using a stem cell procedure
to trick an organ into regenerating itself, even a heart. It's like you
grow your own transplant."
Now she was finally listening.
"I was talking to the Dutch guy late last week," he went on, picking up
a faint positive vibe and hoping desperately he could build on it, "and
he said he's looking for someone in their thirties with a rheumatic-
heart thing--I think it's like what you have--to be part of this big
clinical trial they're wrapping up. But they have to do it immediately,
so they can put the data in their final report to the National
Institutes of Health."
"And you thought about me? That's very touching, Grant. Your idea of
doing me a favor is to let some Dutch quack experiment on me?"
"Hey, don't be so fast to turn up your nose at this." Shit, he thought,
how am I going to make any headway? "His procedure operates at the cell
level. The way they say it works is he takes cells from your bone
marrow or blood or . . . whatever and makes them 'immortal' with this
special enzyme and then injects them into organ tissue. It causes that
organ to start regenerating itself."
"That sounds completely like science fiction. Besides, I'm not--"
"Well, he's doing it. Trust me. But there're only a couple of weeks
left in the clinical trials, so everything's on a fast track now. If
you're the least bit interested, you've got to call him tomorrow. If
you don't, I'm sure he'll find somebody else by the middle of the
week."
He reached down and tried to give Knickers a pat, but she drew away.
Good for her, Ally thought. Then he looked up and his voice grew
animated. "Ally, the Dutch doctor--his name is Van de Vliet, by the way--
is the smartest man I've ever met. I'd say he's a good bet for the
Nobel Prize in Medicine this time next year. I'd put my last dime on
it. What he's doing is so incredible I shouldn't even be talking about
it. At least not till the clinical trials are finished. But I wanted to
do you this favor."
Uh-huh, she thought. What it amounted to was, he was coming to her with
another one of his hustles. Probably they needed somebody to round out
their clinical trials and she was conveniently handy. "You know, Grant,
maybe I'll just pass. I already have a cardiologist."
She found herself wondering what Dr. Ekelman would say to this radical
new treatment.
"All right, Ally, do you want to make me beg? I need you
to do this. When I described you to Dr. Van de Vliet, I could tell he
was very excited. This could change everything for you." He paused,
perhaps becoming aware of the pleading tone in his voice. "For
chrissake, give me a break. Is there someplace we can have coffee? I'm
not asking to come upstairs or anything. I just want to see if we can
be on speaking terms long enough to help each other out."
In a way she was relieved though she was secretly hurt all over again
too. He wasn't crawling back to her to beg forgiveness for destroying
lives. No, he was back and groveling because he thought she could help
him butter up his boss. How could she not feel used?
God, that was so like him. At that moment she knew there was never any
chance he'd change.
"Come on," he said again. "A lousy cup of coffee. There's that little
French bistro on Hudson Street." He tried a grin. "Hey, I'll even buy."
For a moment she thought she felt her resolve slipping. It's funny, but
after you break up a family, no matter how dysfunctional, you start
repressing the bad memories. But then something comes along to remind
you all over again.
"Grant, are you hearing yourself?" She stared at him. "You sound like
you're selling snake oil."
"Why was I afraid you'd back off? You're really doing it because you're
pissed. Okay, you've got a right. But I've brought you something I
think you ought to at least look at." He was unzipping his fanny pack
and taking out a Gerex Corporation envelope, folded in half.
Christ, he thought miserably, why is she doing this to me? I've got to
keep the door open.
"Read this and then give me a call tonight, like you promised. It'll
tell you more about him."
She hesitated before taking it. It was thick with papers and she was
planning to spend the day visiting Nina. "I think I've heard enough
already."
"Just look at his CV. Van de Vliet's. He's done a lot of
things. You've got to take him seriously." He urged it into her hand.
"Look at it and call me. Please."
She took it, and then she reached down and patted Knickers. "Come on,
baby. Let's go up."
He watched her disappear into the lobby and start shooting the breeze
with the doorman, some red-haired jerk with a ponytail who'd just come
on duty.
Damn. Maybe the best thing would be just to chloroform her and let her
wake up in the lab. W.B. needs her.