Syndrome

willstillroot for you. God, I don't know what it was about you.' She paused a moment as though thinking. 'Maybe you're just too honest. Or just too sincere. Maybe that's what it was.'

'Don't try to butter me up. I know my weaknesses. But dammit, Jane, I'm this close to the story of the century. And the paranoid zillionaire who was in here just now yelling at me is trying to freeze me out'

'Well, please don't involve me in this anymore, Stone. You've just provided me with a week's worth of unnecessary shit. From now on, any communicating you want to do with Gerex's attorneys is going to have to be done by someone else. Trust me when I tell youI do not need this in my life.'

'Sweetie, wait till you see what I'm on the track of. What the Gerex Corporation is doing at a small clinic out in New Jersey is going to change everything we know about medicine. And it's going to blow wide open the second they finally let the press in on what's happening at the clinical trials they're now winding up for the NIH. When they finally hold that big press briefing, I want to have a manuscript already in copyediting. I want to befirst.'

'Then why is he so worked up over your question?' she mused. 'About somebody being dropped from the clinical trials?' She paused 'Incidentally, I can do without being called 'sweetie' by a man I'm no longer screwing.'

'Sorry about that.' He winced. It did just sort of slip out in this orgy of intimacy. 'But what I think Bartlett desperately doesn't want me to find out is thereasonthat patient was dropped. And he's afraid I'm getting close. Unfortunately, I'm not, and I just took my best shot at prying the information out of him and-you're probably right-blew it.' He was turning to leave. 'But I'm, by God going to find out somehow. Just see if you can keep me from getting fired for a little while longer. If I'm still working for theSentinelthree months from now, you may get honorable mention in my Pulitzer acceptance.'

It was bluff talk. But he believed it with every fiber of his body.You've gotta believe, right?

Come on, Ally, get lucky.Find out who that mystery patient was. The way things look now, you 're the only shot I've got left.

Chapter 15

Tuesday, April 7

8:13p.m.

What a day! When Ally finally settled onto her couch, after giving Knickers a long walk, she was exhausted. She leaned back and kicked off her shoes. There had been a few moments of tightness in her chest-maybe it was psychological, anxiety-induced-but that was gone now. She thought about calling New Jersey to ask how Nina was doing, but she doubted they would tell her anything.

She'd spent the latter part of the afternoon getting yet another heart exam. After driving to northern New Jersey and back, she'd had a formal (and exhausting) stress test for her heart at the New York University Faculty Practice. God, she was sick of examining rooms and those blue paper shifts you put on backwards, as though it was okay for doctors and nurses to see your bare ass. Then she put on shorts and sneakers and an Israeli physician stuck wired suction cups all over her chest and put her on a treadmill for seventeen minutes, boosting her pulse to over 150, which was as high as he dared to go. Then he called Van de Vliet, faxed him the charts, and they reviewed the squiggly lines for another ten minutes. Finally she had a high-speed CT scan, whose results were then sent directly to Karl Van de Vliet's lab computer.

The bottom line was, the damaged valve in her aortic ventricle was deteriorating even more rapidly than her regular physician, Dr. Ekelman, had thought, but her heart was still strong enough for the procedure.

She wondered if she had gone this far because she was letting hope outweigh a sober evaluation of the risks. Was this the sign of complete desperation? Whatever she decided, tomorrow was the day, D day, decision day.

She thought again about her mom, who had been bubbling with hope when she looked in on her. Nina hadn't even been formally checked in, but already she seemed transformed. It was enough for her just to entertain the possibility that her mind could be renewed. That in itself was sufficient to convince Ally to sign the consent agreement for Van de Vliet to go forward with her procedure. He even offered to provide a car service to take Maria home to the Bronx after Nina was settled and resting.

In her own case, the special injections for her heart, she was far less sure what she thought. The part that bothered her most was having to give herself entirely over to a person she scarcely knew. It was the kind of ultimate surrender that she abhorred.

While Knickers rummaged behind the couch for the remnants of her rawhide chew toy, Ally momentarily considered calling Grant. She couldn't think of a reason why except that he was the only coherent immediate family she had left and this felt like a moment for pulling together. God, she missed Steve. Sometimes she felt so alone.

Then she considered calling Stone Aimes, but she decided that would seem pushy. The truth was, she'd enjoyed talking to him and she'd been surprised at how comfortable she'd felt. Looking back over the elapsed years, she couldn't remember exactly why they split up. There must have been a good reason, but now she could only recall the good times. A picnic in Central Park, or the time they took the Staten Island ferry at night just to see the inspiring downtown skyline.

With those jumbled thoughts cluttering her mind, she finally got around to remembering she hadn't checked her phone machine. She got up off the couch and went into the bedroom.

There were three calls and at first she thought she was too exhausted to check them.

But no, that was irresponsible. She was running a business…

'Hi, Ally, it's me.' The voice was Jennifer's. 'No emergency, but call when you get in and let me know how it went, okay?'

Not tonight. There was too much to explain and she was too tired. She went to the second message.

'Hi, it's me again. I need you to look over the Jameson design, that Italian-marble bath. They're having trouble getting the ocher. Some kind of strike at the quarry. What can they substitute? But remember, it's got to be absurdly overpriced or they'll assume it's crap. If I don't hear back from you, I'll fax you some stuff in the morning.'

Okay, she thought,these rich clients love to show off. I'll get them what they should have ordered in the first place, knowing them. Stone from the quarry near Agra, where they got the marble for the Taj Mahal. That ought to be ostentatious enough. It’ll take an extra couple of months, but that will impress them even more.

As she considered going to the third message, she had a feeling of misgiving, though in truth there were several people she wouldn't mind hearing from.

Or maybe the Dorian Institute had called about Nina. Maybe she'd freaked. This whole thing was happening way too fast. In any case, she didn't really want to talk to anybody right now. What she really wanted to do was sit and think, maybe run the whole thing by Stone and get his take. ..

She decided to check out the third message.

'Hi, it's your intrepid reporter, just checking in to see how it went today. It's just after eight, and I'm at home. I may not be able to afford this place much longer, given all the excitement I've had today, so call me while I still have an apartment and a phone.'

She felt a ripple of excitement and the feeling pleased her. Maybe shedidhave someone stable and rational in her corner, someone who understood the risks and possible rewards of going forward with the procedure.

She'd put his number in her Palm, which was in her bag, and she went back to the living room, poured herself a glass of wine, and then retrieved it.

She heard him pick up on the second ring.

'Hi, it's Ally. Thanks for checking on me. I'm really not in the greatest shape at the moment.'