"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.