He walked in and greeted his research team. He'd managed to keep the core group that had been closest to him at Stanford, four people who, he believed, were among the finest medical minds in the country. They were the renowned molecular biologist David Hopkins, Ph.D., the strikingly beautiful and widely published endocrinologist Debra Connolly, M.D., and two younger staffers, a couple who'd met and married at his Stanford lab, Ed and Beth Sparks, both Ph.D.'s who'd done their postdoc under him. They all were here now in the wilds of northern New Jersey because they knew they were making medical history.
David was waiting, his long shaggy forelock down over his brow as always. But his eyes told it all.
"Karl, Bartlett's blood work from yesterday just got faxed up from the lab at Princeton. His enzyme level has increased another three point seven percent."
"Damn." It was happening for sure. "Did you run—"
"The computer simulation? A one‑standard‑deviation estimate is that he's going to go critical sometime between seventeen and nineteen days."
"The Syndrome." Van de Vliet sighed.
"Just like Kristen."
"She faked us out. There were no side effects for weeks." Van de Vliet shook his head sadly as he set his handheld Palm computer onto a side table. Later he would transfer all the day’s patient data into the laboratory's server, the Hewlett‑ Packard they all affectionately called the Mothership. Then he began taking off his white coat.
"Bartlett looks to be inevitable now." David exhaled in impotent despair. The frustration and the tension were getting to everybody. They all knew what was at stake. "It's in two and a half weeks, give or take."
What had supposedly been a cosmetic procedure had gone horribly awry. Van de Vliet wondered if it wasn't the ultimate vengeance of the quest for something you shouldn't have.