SATURDAY, MAY 6
Cam had been home for three days and the media could not get enough of him. Every major news outlet again had him as the lead story Where had he gone? What had he been doing? Why did he run away? The president and first lady had formed a united front. They insisted this was a personal, family matter, and no details would be shared with the press or public. Period. No exceptions.
Lee was amazed at how well the secret had held. Ellen’s involvement somehow had been kept under wraps, and the team the president ordered to camp for the cleanup job had done remarkable work. There were no news reports anywhere of two dead guys from the same biker gang as Willie Caine. They disappeared. Vanished. Wiped clean from the face of the earth. Lee wondered if he’d ever learn their true identities. One would always be the repairman, and the other his lackey.
The FBI charged Dr. Frederick Gleason with conspiracy to commit murder for the failed assassination attempt of Cam Hilliard. As everyone expected, Gleason’s lawyers had their bail request denied. However, the case against him remained circumstantial, though Lee felt confident investigators would soon find more evidence linking him to the sensational crime. The media continued their feeding frenzy, with everyone speculating about the location and identity of the elusive Dirt Bike Shooter.
Since his return from camp, Lee had spent as much time with Tracy and the kids as possible. He closed his clinic, referred all patients to the MDC, and attended Paul’s memorial service. With his arm in a sling—an injury he explained as a strained shoulder from a fall—he gave a moving eulogy that praised Paul’s commitment to family medicine, to his community, his friends, and above all else, to his family. There might not have been a dry eye in the room, but Lee could hardly tell because his own vision was blurred with tears.
As far as he knew, there were no connections that tied Cam’s and Susie’s sickness back to Yoshi, nothing to Gleason either. The nootropics seemed to be a dead end.
The big concern now was for Susie and Cam. No doubt about it anymore. Those two were linked symptomatically. Before he was officially welcomed home, Cam was rushed to the MDC for evaluation. Only he was not given a typical checkup. He had been brought there under a false name (again), with Lee put in charge of his care and testing.
CT scans were used to measure the size of Cam’s organs. Sure enough, the liver was enlarged: 12.5 centimeters. His prostate was abnormally sized as well. Lee no longer needed an EEG to prove Cam had been suffering from seizures all along.
It was obvious now why Taylor began beating Cam at chess. Just as Susie had experienced, Cam’s seizures, his illness in general, made it difficult if not impossible to concentrate for extended periods of time. Regardless of the physiology, Cam would forget key chess moves and strategies the way Susie would sometimes forget how to read sheet music.
The most startling find, though, was the last test Lee performed.
After giving Cam eye drops, Lee used the ophthalmoscope to look into his eyes.
“Focus on the light,” he said.
And there it was, soon as the macula came into focus: the cherry-red spot. Lee blinked, thinking his eyes must be playing tricks on him, but no, it was there all right, bright and cherry red.
“It’s unheard of,” Lee said to the president and first lady during a debriefing session held in one of MDC’s conference rooms. “Cam is very sick, and honestly I can’t tell you why. The red spot in his eye—it should have been there since birth. If this was a genetic disease, it should have been there when I checked him the last time.”
“I don’t understand how the red spot would suddenly show up.” Ellen’s puzzled expression mimicked Lee’s.
“I don’t know either,” he said. “All I can tell you is that whatever this disease is, it’s new to medicine, something nobody has ever seen before.”
“What made you think to check again?” Ellen asked, massaging her fingers nervously.
“Nothing about this case has ever been logical. So I guess I thought to do an illogical thing.”
The one test Lee had not performed on Cam was the one Dr. Kaufmann was coming to the White House tomorrow to discuss.
The results of her genetic testing were now complete.
* * *
THEY MET in Ellen’s office, at Dr. Kaufmann’s request. She had specifically asked to hold this initial meeting with the first lady alone, and not with the president. It was an odd request, extremely odd, thought Lee. But Ellen had agreed, and now they were in her spacious East Wing office, anxiously awaiting news. Sunlight streamed in through the tall bank of windows overlooking the emerald green South Lawn, but the glorious morning and resplendent views did little to counter the somber mood inside.
Seated at the round conference table were Lee, Karen (whose rehire had been kept quiet), Ellen, and Dr. Kaufmann. Everyone wore grave expressions. Lee understood why Ellen had wanted him and Karen to attend. They were deeply involved, and she needed the support. But an important meeting about Cam without the president there? Nobody knew what to make of it, including Ellen, but all agreed to the conditions and trusted that Dr. Kaufmann had good reason for her unusual request.
“I’ll get right to it,” Dr. Kaufmann said, slipping on her glasses to read from a report stapled inside a yellow folder. “The results of my testing, and I have copies to share with you all, do show a gene mutation in Susie and Cam that could explain their symptoms.”
Tears sprouted in Ellen’s eyes. Lee’s shoulder throbbed angrily. He had misread all of the signs—he went down the rabbit hole, as Dr. Kauffman had said. But genetic diseases weren’t clustered! He felt baffled, lost in these uncharted waters.
“This particular type of genetic mutation, though it’s a variant I’ve never seen before, is known to cause lysosomal storage diseases,” Dr. Kaufmann continued.
“What are those?” asked Ellen, her voice shaky.
“It’s a group of approximately fifty rare inherited metabolic disorders that result from defects in lysosomal function. Lysosomes are organelles in almost every cell. They hold various enzymes, but their main function is to break down things, digest food, or dispose of cells when they die. Problems with lysosomal function result in a variety of cell deficiencies that could explain Cam and Susie’s highly unusual symptoms, including why Cam had developed the red spot in his eyes so late in life.”
Lee knew one did not cure genetic diseases; one lived with them, adapted to them.
“It’s near impossible for me to map the specific deficiencies to a specific symptom, but suffice to say, if the system itself is in disarray then the entire metabolic process can be thrown off-kilter. I’m sorry, this is not the news I’m sure you were hoping to receive.”
Ellen had gone into shock, as would any parent receiving such a devastating outcome, but she also seemed perplexed. Lee thought he knew why.
“Dr. Kaufmann, thank you. I have a million questions to ask, but the most important question of all is why isn’t my husband here? He should know all of this. I followed your advice and didn’t even tell him we were meeting. You said this was related to me, that we needed to talk in private first, and you were insistent. Now, I demand to know why.”
Dr. Kaufmann cleared her throat and eyed Lee with unsettled look. “Ellen, I can deliver this news to you in private, if you’d like.”
Ellen turned fierce, panic eclipsing her face. “No! Tell me now!” Her breathing turned shallow, and Lee worried she might faint. “Tell me now,” she said in a softer voice.
“I don’t know—I don’t know how to say this,” Dr. Kaufmann stammered, “so I guess I’ll just come right out and say it. According to the results of the biopsy and all of my genetic testing, you are Cam’s mother, but the president is not Cam’s biological father.”