CHAPTER 17
Kat glanced at the camcorder Ramsey had left and then down at the sandwiches on her desk. She turned to Kevin. “Do you really want dry cafeteria sandwiches for lunch? It seems I have developed an appetite for something a little more elegant.”
“Almost anything is more elegant than BioTech sandwiches,” he answered with a smile.
She glanced over at Angus, still fast asleep under her blanket. “Then how about I treat you to the best deli in town . . . lunch at Antone’s?”
“That’s a deal! I love their tuna salad sandwiches with deviled eggs on the side.”
Kat laughed. “Their po-boys ain’t bad, either—especially with that chowchow they put on them.”
“Why are we still here? Let’s go.”
* * *
After they got back, Kat sat at her desk next to Angus’s bed and Kevin sat in the chair in front of the desk.
Kat yawned and then laughed. “Maybe we need to emulate Angus and take a long afternoon nap.”
“Hang on a minute while I fix us an after-lunch coffee.”
When he had done so, he handed a steaming cup to Kat and sat across from her. “Uh, Kat, there’s something I need to talk to you about.”
She stifled another yawn and quickly took a sip of her coffee. “Go ahead, but you’d better hurry while I’m still awake enough to listen.”
“I had initially planned on coming at this from a more oblique angle, but here goes. I made a mistake a few weeks ago and mentioned to my mom that we had had a breakthrough, and that the serum we were working on seemed to be working even better than we had hoped.”
Kat stopped with her cup halfway to her lips and frowned. “You talked to your mom about our research?”
His face flamed red. “Uh, yeah, but it was just kinda off-hand, and I didn’t give any specifics.”
Kat nodded slowly. “Uh-huh. Just what did you say?”
“Well, I said that our serum was performing better than expected and it seemed to make our rats act younger and smarter.”
Kat leaned her head back and sighed. “No specifics, my ass! You did everything but tell her the chemical formula of the serum.” She looked back down at him. “Kevin, you mean that after all those talks we’ve had about keeping our research a secret, you went and blabbed about it to your mother?”
“Uh . . . yeah, but then I told her to keep it secret and not to tell anyone.”
“And did she . . . keep it a secret, I mean?”
“Well, not exactly.”
“Oh Kevin . . .”
He held up his hands. “Hold on a minute, Kat. Remember I told you I had an uncle who is a famous heart doctor down at Corpus Christi?”
Kat’s eyes narrowed. She felt she knew where this was heading. “Yeah, I kinda remember.”
“Well, his name is Tom Alexander, and he visited her about a month ago and she just happened to mention it to him.”
“So, now there are two outsiders who know about our success with the formula?”
“Uh, again, not exactly.”
Kat shook her head and finished off her coffee in one long draught, then she slammed the cup down hard enough to crack it. “Come on, Kevin. Get to the point. Just how many people are we talking about who know all about our business?”
Again, he held up his hands. “Only three, I promise.”
“Three? Who is the other one?”
“Well, Uncle Tom has this really, really rich patient who is super-old and who has had a stroke and is partially paralyzed and who is going to die soon unless some miracle cure can be found.”
“Don’t tell me,” she said, dipping her head into her hands.
Kevin reached across the desk and put his hand on her arm. “Wait a minute, Kat. This is a tremendous opportunity. Uncle Tom said this guy offered not only to fund the rest of our research, but to give us millions of dollars to use the formula on him if we can prove it works.”
She looked up, her mouth agape. “This patient of your uncle’s offered to buy our formula for a million dollars?”
Kevin grinned and shook his head. “No, Kat. That’s the best part. He doesn’t want to buy or even control the formula. All he wants is for us to use it on him to make him younger and healthier. He says we never have to let the formula out of our control. All we have to do is inject him with it—and the amount is not a million dollars, it’s many millions of dollars.”
Her eyes narrowed in thought for a moment. “Are there any other conditions?”
“Just that we use it on at least one other human before we use it on him. If it works on our test case, then he will transfer whatever fee we negotiate to any bank account in the world that we want before we inject him.”
“Are you sure this is legit, Kevin? Millions of dollars is a lot . . . no, it’s a hell of a lot of money.”
“My uncle says this man’s net worth is over twenty billion dollars, and that a small percent of your assets isn’t so much to spend to prolong your life and end your suffering.”
Kat stood up and began to pace around the lab, talking to herself as much as to Kevin. “Well, several old proverbs or clichés come to mind . . . never cry over spilt milk, every cloud has a silver lining, it’s always darkest just before dawn.”
Kevin brightened. “So, what I did wasn’t so bad after all?”
She turned to glare at him. “Yes, what you did was terrible, Kevin. You betrayed my trust, even if it does turn out okay in the long run.”
He looked down at his feet, crestfallen. “Oh.”
Suddenly, in spite of her anger at him, she also felt sorry for him. After all, he is really just a kid at heart, she thought.
“Oh hell, Kevin,” she said, striding over to him and pulling him to his feet. She looked into his eyes. “I can’t stay mad at you, you little shit.”
When she hugged him to her, he almost gasped with relief.
She pushed him back and stared again into his eyes. “But this will not happen again, right? We need to know we can trust you or the deal is off.”
He smiled and crossed his heart with his index finger. “I swear I will never again breathe a word to anyone about anything concerning our research . . .”
She pointed her finger at him. “Or about anything we do or plan to do in the future!”
He kissed his little finger and held it up in the air. “Pinkie swear!”
Kat laughed and punched his shoulder. “You really are just a little kid.”
Kevin’s smile faded. He didn’t want Kat thinking of him as a “little kid.” He wanted her to realize he was a man, a man who cared about her more than he could ever admit.
Kat turned away and again began pacing around the lab. “What do we do now?”
She sat at her desk and motioned Kevin to sit across from her. “What you are going to do, Kevin, is to buy us some time. I want you to call your uncle and tell him that we are very favorably disposed to take his deal, but that we will need a couple of weeks or so to iron out some wrinkles in the formula, and then to find and treat another human with the formula to make sure it is safe for his patient.”
“Okay, but why lie to him?”
“It is not a lie, Kevin. We do need the time, and we need to be assured that while we are working on this, no one will get overly anxious and try to steal or otherwise interfere with the formula before we are ready to make the deal.”
“Oh, I see.”
She nodded. “We’re also going to have to move our lab to someplace secure, someplace away from prying eyes like Captain Sunshine’s, and we’re going to have to make damn sure no one can get their hands on our formulae. Not now that we know it’s worth millions of dollars.”
“Anything else?”
She thought for a moment. “Moving is going to be expensive, because we can’t take any of BioTech’s equipment with us . . . We’re gonna have to buy all new stuff. I think you should ask your uncle for a good-faith advance of about fifty thousand dollars to keep his patient first in line for our treatment.”
Kevin’s eyebrows raised. “You think they’ll go for it?”
“Kevin, fifty thousand dollars is peanuts compared to millions. If they can’t play for fifty, then I don’t trust them to come across with millions later.”
She thought for a moment, then snapped her fingers. “I know what will convince them.” She picked up Ramsey’s camcorder from her desk and held it up before him. Then she burrowed in her desk and took out a small pile of pictures. “Here are some pictures I’ve taken of Angus from earlier this year. We’ll wake Angus up and you can take some videos of him to show how young and smart he is, and then you can take them to your uncle and show him the before pictures and the after videos of Angus, and that should give them enough evidence of what we’ve got to make them trust us with an advance of fifty thousand dollars.”
He nodded. “I agree. After I take the videos, I’ll go right home and call my uncle tonight.”
She wagged her head. “No, not just yet. I’ve got to talk this over with Burton first before we make any hard and fast decisions. After all, we’re all in this as partners.”
“When will you talk with him?”
“It’ll have to be sometime tomorrow. Tonight he’s going over to his ex-wife Sheila’s house to try to talk her into helping us find a human subject for our next experiment.”
* * *
Later that night, after calling ahead, Ramsey showed up at Sheila’s apartment with an armful of Chinese takeout.
She greeted him at the door and showed him to the dining room table. “What’s with the Chinese?” she asked. “You usually don’t eat anything but American.”
He blushed as he arranged the cardboard boxes on the table and unwrapped the chopsticks. “Well, Chinese is less expensive, and I’m running a bit low on funds at the present time.”
She put her hand on his arm. “Well, if you need a short-term loan, you know you can always call on me, dear.”
He started to snap back at her, but when he looked into her soft eyes, he realized she was sincere in her offer of help and not trying to needle him. “Uh, thanks, Sheila, but I’ll manage to get by.” He gave a shy grin. “After all, I lived on bologna sandwiches for years in graduate school, and I’m not too highfalutin to do the same now if need be.”
She got a wistful look in her eyes. “I remember those days, Burton. Looking back on them, it seems they were the best of times.”
He put his hand over hers on the table. “For me, too, Sheila . . . for me, too.”
“Now,” she said brightly, “let’s see what magic our Chinese chef has performed for us tonight.”
* * *
Later, after dinner and over coffee taken on the balcony looking out over the Houston skyline, they talked.
He started by telling her of the remarkable changes that had taken place in Kat’s dog, Angus, and how astounded they’d all been at the massive increase in intelligence the dog evidenced along with his new youthfulness.
“Oh, that’s wonderful, my dear,” Sheila said, squeezing his hand with hers.
“And that brings me to my second point,” Ramsey said, his face reddening under her gaze.
“Uh-oh,” she said, leaning back on the settee. “Why am I now afraid of what you’re going to say next?”
“No, no, it’s nothing like that, Sheila. It’s just that I know you are opposed to us experimenting on human beings with our serum without going through FDA protocols.”
“That’s right.”
“But you know how that is, dear. If we file an application for human trials, the procedure could take ten or fifteen years before we get approval, and by then our formula will no longer be a secret.”
“But what other choice do you have, Burton? Even if you could get some person to agree to be a test subject, you’d still have to divulge the effects you would be hoping to get and your secret would still be out.”
“Let me propose something to you, Sheila . . . but you have to promise to let me finish before you make up your mind.”
She gave a half grin. “I have a feeling I’m going to regret this . . . but okay.”
He drained his coffee, set the cup down, and took both of her hands in his. “How about if the next time you work at the Ben Taub Clinic, you keep your eye out for a truly hopeless patient? One who is on his or her last legs and for whom there is no medical treatment available that will ameliorate their symptoms or improve their quality of life in the slightest.”
“But . . .” she began until he held up his hand.
“Let me finish, sweetheart. You’ve told me many times how working at the clinic often breaks your heart because of the many hopeless cases who come through the door. Men and women who are at the end of their lives and who are truly miserable and who are suffering greatly.”
She sighed and nodded her head. “Yes, it is true that I occasionally come across patients like that, but that doesn’t mean that I could in good faith offer them what is at best a crapshoot at a better life.”
He shook his head. “No, that is not what you’d be offering them. If the formula works as we think it will, they would have a chance at a completely new life, one in which they are younger, healthier, and even more intelligent. And the beauty of this chance is that if our formula fails to work, they will be no worse off than they were to begin with.”
She started to object, but he cut her off. “No, Sheila, I am telling the truth. Kat and I have agreed to let you see the ingredients of both of our serums so that you can see that there is no way either serum could do the patient any harm.”
She sat back and looked out over the city, thinking. After a few moments, she looked back at him. “You are absolutely sure that the formula will cause no harm, even if it doesn’t work as you hope?”
He nodded vigorously. “Even in the beginning, before we combined our serums, when they didn’t work the rats weren’t harmed—they just weren’t benefited. And it is the same now.”
“Okay, Burton. I won’t promise anything more than that I will keep my eyes open, and if I come across such a patient, I will arrange for you and Kat to talk to him or her and make your proposal. But I will be there to make sure that you give them full disclosure that the serum has never been tried on a human before and that you make no unreasonable promises.”
He grinned and leaned forward to put his arms around her in a hug. “That’s all we can ask and all that we want.”
When she hugged him back and gave a low moan of pleasure, he leaned his head back and stared into her eyes for a moment, then he kissed her gently on the lips.
When he pulled back, she smiled and whispered, “Would you like to stay the night, Burton?”
He sighed and nodded. “More than anything in the world.”
“Good,” she said and stood up, taking him by the hand and leading him into the apartment and into her bedroom.
He saw the bedcovers were pulled back and his pajamas were laid out on his side of the bed.
He smiled at her. “Did you know the evening would end up like this?”
“No, but it never hurts to hope, does it?”
“No, and I want you to know that I have never given up hoping, either.”