Megan's Cure (30 page)

Nick swung in tighter, forcing the
Oblique
over until it was once again heading straight into the wind, its mainsail fluttering.
 
Lee moved to the front of the
Snapper.
 
He wanted to be a way in front of the fender – a white rubbery cylinder dangling parallel to the ocean surface with a rope passing through it.
 
It protected the sailboat from banging against other boats.
 
Novak must have forgotten to haul it on deck.

Lee needed time to position himself while the sailboat continued to move past him in the water.
 
He found his spot.
 
He was just ahead of the
Oblique’s
bow
.
He felt the
Snapper’s
engine throttle down.
 
He guessed he would hit the water 10 feet away from the sailboat.

Lee abandoned the life vest at the last second, tossing it to Choy.
 
He needed to swim and climb as fast as possible without any hindrance.
 
The vest would just impede him.
 
He climbed over the railing and hung off the outer side of the boat for a moment facing inward.
 
His legs were bunched under him.
 
Then he pushed out to get some distance from the
Snapper’s
hull and dropped down into the dark water below.

“Oh, no.”
 
He heard Choy’s voice as he dropped toward the water.

Chapter 57

LEE SCISSOR KICKED and flung his arms down as he hit the water.
 
He didn’t want to lose time by sinking far below the surface.
 
His head just barely went under and he was back up in a moment, taking a few quick overhead strokes toward the sailboat and trying to judge how close he was as it began to pass almost directly over him.
 
Lee ignored the cold of the water although he knew it would rob him of his strength and coordination even after just a couple of minutes.
 

The
Oblique
was almost on top of him when a big swell passed under her so the sailboat was suddenly high above him.
 
It looked as if it might slide down sideways on Lee.
 
He backpedalled furiously.
 
Then the swell was past the boat and lifted him upward.
 
He was briefly high enough to see inside the boat.
 
He saw Novak in the back, one hand on the wheel while the other reached behind him.
 
He guessed he was pulling in the mainsail. That would transfer the force of the wind to the
Oblique’s
forward movement.
 
It would soon be moving far faster than he could ever swim.

As he dropped down on the other side of the swell, Lee moved another stroke closer to the boat.
 
The port side of the sailboat slid past.
 
He saw the fender hanging from the middle of the boat coming at him above his head.
 
As it reached him, Lee pushed down with his arms and began the eggbeater kick, the one move he remembered from water polo. It elevated his body a few extra inches for a handful of seconds and left his hands free to block a shot on goal…or to grab hold of a sailboat sliding past.

His hands hit the fender.
 
He held it as if he was hanging from a log overhead.
 
But, it was wet and slippery.
 
He felt it slipping away from him as it dragged him along while the ocean resisted, holding back his lower torso and legs.
 
Finally, just before he lost his grip Lee kicked one last time, twisted his body hard and grabbed desperately with his right hand.
 
He found the rope and gripped it, holding on as he lay with his back against the fiberglass hull of the
Oblique,
his legs streaming behind.

Then Lee felt the
Oblique
surge as the sailboat completed its turn across the wind and the breeze filled its sail.
 
The sailboat heeled over on its starboard side, lifting Lee farther out of the water.
 
He hung down almost vertically now with only his legs in the water up to mid-thigh, leaving a white wake behind him.

He had to get his other hand on the rope.
 

Lee flipped over onto his stomach. He kicked, half hitting water but also getting some traction from the side of the
Oblique.
 
He reached with his left hand and now had both hands on the rope.
 

The angle of the boat was an asset now.
 
He used his hands on the rope and his feet on the side of the sailboat to crawl up.
 
It was slick and his bare feet slipped.
 
But, he pulled and scrambled, hauling himself higher. Finally, he got his elbow hooked over the fender.
 
He kept working his way up until he got his left knee on the rubbery cylinder.

Lee clawed himself higher still until he finally got his fingers over the edge of the cockpit.
 
With a final pull and a barefoot push off the wet hull, he tumbled into the cockpit head first. He slid past the bench and onto the steeply canted deck and kept on going until he found himself wedged head first in the right corner of the cockpit next to the hatch that led down into the
Oblique’s
small cabin.
 
He was exhausted and in a helpless position for the several seconds it took to untangle himself and flip over until he was at least sitting.

Finally able to look up and back toward the stern, Lee saw Novak holding the wheel with his left hand while he aimed the spear gun at Lee’s face.
 
The black rubber tubing stretched tight and the silvery point of the spear dipped and wavered in small jerky motions as Novak adjusted his weight to keep his balance in the moving sailboat.

“Walter…wait,” Lee said.

 
“You aren’t going to get her,” said Novak.
 
“You…you aren’t going to get her.”

“Walter,” said Lee. “I’m on your side.
 
Remember?
 
I want to help you.”
 
Novak’s expression didn’t change.

Then Lee saw a bundle of yellow come flying from the opposite corner of the cockpit toward him.
 
It was Megan, launching herself along the tilted deck.
 
She half fell and half ran toward Lee.
 
He caught her before she crashed onto the bench and inner wall of the cockpit. The top of her head hit his check and he held her in his right arm while steadying himself with his left.

Novak moved a half step as if trying to catch Megan as she flew in front of him.
 
But he was much too late and his hands were full anyway.
 
He lost his grip on the wheel for a second and the
Oblique
spun to the right.
 
She dipped more deeply on the starboard side for just a moment before righting herself.
 
Novak fought to keep his balance.
 
The spear gun waved wildly, pointing skyward, then down and finally back at Lee’s head when it went off with a soft click and the slick sound of metal sliding against metal.
 
Lee cringed as the shaft passed over his head and just cleared the top of the cockpit.
 
A few inches lower and it would have hit him in the face.
 
A foot lower and it would have impaled Megan.
 
He looked up at Novak, summoning all the anger and disgust he could muster.

“Damn it, Walter,” he said.

Novak looked at him for a moment and then his eyes dropped down and he let the spear gun fall.
 
He turned the wheel until the
Oblique
was heading into the wind and came to a stop.
 
He sat down on the seat behind him and buried his face in his hands.
 
Hunched over, he was a beaten man.

Lee helped Megan to her feet.

“Are you okay?” he asked.
 
Megan nodded.

Lee pulled himself to his feet and moved to the stern, using the mainsail boom that was waving in the wind over the cockpit for support in the rocking sailboat.
 
When he got to Novak, he pushed him on the shoulder to get him to move to the side bench.
 
He wanted him away from the wheel.
 
Lee picked up the spear gun and dropped it over the stern.
 
It bounced once before plopping into the ocean.

It took him a minute to figure out how to drop the sail and several more of scrambling around to finally get it down. He wrapped a loose line around it to keep it from flapping.

The
Snapper
had been slowly circling the
Oblique.
 
With the sail down, Lee waved at Captain Nick and he brought the fishing boat closer.
 
As it passed by, Choy threw a line toward the sailboat that uncoiled in the air until it landed almost in Lee’s hand.
 

Lee tied the end of the line to a cleat in the
Oblique’s
bow.
 
Soon, both boats were heading back to the bay, the fishing boat steadily towing the sailboat as the swells pushed them along, rolling past from stern to bow.
 
Lee realized he was shivering uncontrollably.
 
His teeth were clattering.
 
He dropped down the hatch and rummaged around inside the cabin.
 
He found Novak’s bag and put on a pair of sweatpants and a heavy sweatshirt.

Back topside, Megan sat next to Novak on the side bench.
 
Lee took a seat on his other side even though it left the
Oblique
tilting to port.
 
Novak stared over the opposite cockpit wall at the dark ocean and the half moon now fully visible.
 
After a moment, he looked over at Lee.

“I’m sorry,” said Novak.
 
“I don’t know.
 
I just…I don’t know.”

Lee nodded.

“It’s okay, Walter,” he said.
 
“You’ve done a lot.
 
I think we can take it from here.”

He looked across Novak at Megan whose eyes flicked up into his for a moment.
 
The rest of the trip in, they held Novak between them while Lee told stories about the bay, the red-orange bridge they passed beneath and the city that glittered brighter and brighter.

Chapter 58

IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE for Miriam Pastor to say with absolute certainty that Megan Kim was free of cancer.
 

The tests had been exceedingly thorough.

Her lab had studied Megan’s blood carefully.
 
It had collected and examined multiple tissue biopsies from the young girl.
 
She had undergone PET scans using different radioactive tracers to isolate metabolic activity unique to cancer cells.
 
Everything came back negative.
 

But who could say there wasn’t a tiny handful of cancer cells too small or too inactive to show up on the tests?
 
You can’t check every cubic centimeter of someone’s kidneys, lungs, skin, skeleton or brain.

Within that limitation, though, the petite, gray-haired microbiologist believed that Megan Kim was clean.
 
Given the records and tests from Megan’s period of illness more than a year earlier, either Roxaten had cured Megan or a spontaneous miracle had coincidentally occurred at the same time.

Pastor believed in singular miracles.
 
She had seen them, giving patients life when it should have been taken away.
 
That’s why she and scientists like her repeated experiments over and over and over again.
 
She didn’t believe that miracles occurred on demand and in bunches.
 

But Pastor didn’t have the authority or time to retest Roxaten on another 50 patients – or even on five for that matter.

She had no more patients.
 
The lab would have to suffice.

From the many vials of Megan’s blood, she converted a small amount into blood serum.
 
She further refined the serum to isolate several types of antibodies that she believed were the most obvious candidates to have attacked Megan’s cancer.
 
They probably were what had kept Megan’s cancer from reappearing.

The antibodies would be treated to bind with a fluorophore, a chemical compound designed to emit a florescent green light when exposed to light of a certain frequency.
 
It was the laboratory version of the black light.

Small amounts of Megan’s treated antibodies would be applied to 86 separate slides holding a range of cancer types – thin slices of tumors preserved in paraffin.
 
Pastor had collected the specimens from colleagues from the Mayo Clinic, Sloan-Kettering, Dana Farber and other research centers.
 
Many of the slides came from patients having cancers in the same location – say lung cancer – but the cancer cells themselves were different types.
 
There were six varieties of melanoma alone.
 

The overall goal was to see how well Megan’s antibodies could bind to the antigens present in the different cancer cells on the slides, surviving the rinses that would otherwise wash them away.
 
In real life, such strong binding would typically be a death grip – marking the cancerous cells for destruction by the body’s white cells.

Roxaten’s potential would be measured by color.
 
The more slides that contained the glowing green after the processing, particularly if it was of high intensity, the greater would be Roxaten’s potential as a broad-based cancer cure.
 
It also would provide a measure of how widespread and effective the C Factor-based vaccine could be.

Pastor couldn’t sleep the night that the slides trays were left inside the Ventana autostainer at her lab.
 
She knew that while she tossed and turned, the slides would go through nine separate processes over an eight-hour period, all of them with much greater precision than anyone could achieve by hand.

Pastor was in the lab by 6:45 a.m., long before anyone else.
 
When she set the tray holding the first 40 slides on the table in front of her, she imagined a green glow emanating from them.
 
She laughed at herself.
 
It wasn’t possible.
 
She knew her mind was playing tricks.

One by one, she placed them on the Leica MM fluorescent microscope.
 
A lighting source underneath the slides excited any fluorophore on a slide, causing it to glow green.
 
She zoomed in on single cells and back out to see big clusters.
 
She recorded the images as she methodically worked her way through the tray.

When she finished, she threw up all the images on a wide computer display and scrolled through the collection.

There was green that looked as if it might be the ocean observed from far above with white lines of waves passing through.
 
There was a field of light green with darker nuggets attached together in small clusters.
 
There was forest green in slender stalks with a horizontal row of white filled with lime dabs in the middle, resembling a Van Gogh painting of wildflowers.
 
And there were blobs of deep green against black that might have been some interstellar plasma in remote outer space.

Pastor saw green everywhere in a wider variety of shades and hues than she had seen the previous summer on her first trip to Ireland where the palette of green had seemed inexhaustible.
 
The shades and shapes differed, depending upon the vagaries of the different tissue samples and the degree of magnification she had used.
 

Only a few of the slides contained no green at all.
 

Pastor’s heart was pounding as she slid the second tray of slides next to the microscope.
 
She would finish the initial survey and then go back to methodically measure the amount of color she saw on each slide.
 
She would repeat the process on the control slides derived from a blood sample taken from a normal healthy volunteer.
 
Her assistant would duplicate each step later in the day as a further check.

But Pastor knew what she was seeing was huge, unprecedented and would likely alter the course of cancer treatment – perhaps even within just a few years.
 
She was both humbled and amazed by it.
 
She doubted that she would be any more affected if she had witnessed Krakatoa erupt or seen a star explode.

Dazed, she stood up and walked into the small kitchen off her lab where she filled a mug with hot water on top of a bag of chamomile tea.
 
She stared out the window at the neighboring buildings, trees and streets.
 
She blew across the top of the mug.
 

Pastor contemplated the email she would compose to Bernard Winthrop at NIH at the end of the day.
 
Roxaten was the real deal, she would say.
 
The C-Factor discovery opens a whole new front in the cancer wars, she believed.
 
This was far too important to leave in the hands of one company motivated more by profits and share price than public health.
 

Then Pastor smiled at her reflection.
 

In the past she’d always paused in indecision whenever someone asked for her favorite color.
 
Not anymore.
 
From now on it would always be green.