After the door was closed, he turned back.
"Your mother is quite an inspiration," he said with a smile. "I'll need those tests to create a baseline, but already I can tell she'll almost certainly respond to the treatment. She fits our success profile. I'd say the odds are heavily on her side." Then he darkened his look, for effect. Better let her know I don't have to do this, he reasoned.
"The truth is, we already have enough data on Alzheimers that I don't really need any further clinical trials. I know the parameters of what the procedure can do and what it can't. But when Grant told me about his mother's condition, I saw no reason not to work her into the trials. We're winding down now and we have some empty beds."
"Don't think I'm not grateful," she said, "even though I may ask a lot of questions."
She got the message, he thought. Good.
"Alexa, I'm now going to tell you something I've never told anyone else," he went on, feeling a tinge of sadness arise in his chest. He hadn't planned to say this, but for some reason he now wanted to. Perhaps because it was true. "My late wife, Camille, was a brilliant medical researcher. We worked together for many years, first at Johns Hopkins and then at Harvard. What took her from me was a heart condition very similar to your own. That was over a decade ago and I vowed I would dedicate my work to her. I wanted the final clinical trial in this program to be on a young person with advanced valvular stenosis, but I could never find a patient who matched that profile. But you would be perfect." He looked carefully at her. It was all so true, which made this whole scene especially poignant.
"I'm sorry about your wife," Ally said. "I read in your—"
"You see, if I can succeed with you, it would almost seem as though I'd had a second chance to save her life. You bear such a striking likeness to her in several ways. You look something like her, but more importantly I sense that you share her indomitable will."
"So I'm not just another statistic to you?" She seemed to be trying to gauge the depth of his sincerity.
"No one here is a statistic, but you would definitely be someone special."