On the other hand, Rab, ...his real name was Robert...had spent some time getting reading lessons in the library from one of the prison 'teachers'. He had read. A lot. He had seen pictures in books of places all over the world. Places he wanted to go. To see. To experience.
He had heard that outside he could get more lessons. He could learn 'stuff'. He could maybe even get a job, through a friend who he had met, who was running some sort of reform scheme for people just like him.
The minister in the prison had called him Robert. It sounded good. He liked that name. A good new name to start a new life.
He was getting out tomorrow.
He closed his eyes and tried to sleep, but couldn't.
He was too excited, and too scared. He didn't know which choice he was going to make.
To become good at being very bad, or to become very good.
..
Chapter Eighteen
.
.
Edinburgh Evening News
February
.
.
Peter sat at his desk, a cup of steaming coffee in his hand and the latest edition of the Evening News spread out on the desk in front of him. It was the end of his first full day back on the job. It felt great.
There had been times when he didn't believe that this day would come. He had come so close to giving up, to just letting it all go away. To closing his eyes, and forgetting about everything, forever. He had been so tired and so sick for so long, that he had simply lost the ability to remember what it felt like to be well again.
Then one day, after he had come out of his second coma, but was still lying in his hospital bed, the nurse had come into the room he shared with two others, followed by his renal consultant. They were both smiling.
He had had the transplant later that same day.
A week later he had smiled for the first time in months.
Two weeks later was still alive.
Three weeks later he had cried.
A month later he was allowed home.
Last week he had kicked a football in the park. He had walked alongside Dunsapie Loch in the centre of the Queen's Park, at the base of Arthur's Seat in the centre of Edinburgh. The doctor had told him not to overdo it. 'One step at a time,' was how he had so aptly put it.
Which is exactly what Peter had been doing. Every hour, a few more steps than the hour before. One day a walk to the front door of his house, the next into the garden. The day after back and forward, in and out of the door a few times. A week later into the street, a month later a trip out on the bus...etc. etc. Until he was now sitting here at his old desk, back at his old job.
At first Dr Jamieson had advised him against trying so hard. It seemed that Peter was doing too much, too soon. The speed of his recovery was astounding everyone.
Peter had had a double transplant. Two new kidneys from a matching donor had been put inside his body. The nephrology consultant had explained that although the kidneys he had received were in excellent shape, from a young, fit, compatible donor, there was still a risk that his body may reject them, infection could set in, or that unfortunately, one or both of the kidneys could simply fail.
The good news was that statistically after one year, 88% of kidneys transplanted from deceased donors were still functioning well. The survival rate after ten years was now well over 50%!
All good news.
"The first kidney transplant was carried out in 1954. Since then the biggest hurdle we have faced, " the consultant had explained. "...has been trying to trick the human body into accepting a piece of foreign flesh which had been grafted into it without fighting it. Normally, the immune system is all geared up to fight anything it doesn't recognise, to try and kill it and protect the body. So, how do we trick the body into not rejecting a new, healthy kidney that it needs?"
Peter had not thought about it like that.
"The answer is to suppress the immune system so that it doesn't view the new kidney as an invader. In the past twenty years great strides have been made in new immunosuppressant drugs that do exactly that."
"What happens when I stop taking the immunosuppressant drugs?" Peter had asked.
"Simple. Unfortunately we stop suppressing the immune system. It wakes up, sees the kidneys and kills them."
"Which means that I will be taking immunosuppressant drugs for the rest of my life?"
"Yes."
The consultant had paused, and then added.
"Which, by the grace of God, will then be an otherwise long, healthy, and normal life."
Peter smiled. That part he liked.
Peter had indeed been lucky.
The consultant was very pleased with all his progress so far. To date, there were no signs of any form of rejection or infection. On the contrary, the kidneys seemed to be flourishing.
Peter was one of the first people in Scotland to have been treated with a revolutionary new procedure, the details of which were not yet being publicised. Even Peter was unaware of the details.
It would therefore be incorrect to describe his recovery as a text-book success, because there was not yet anything written in any text book to describe the treatment he had undergone.
So far, this new treatment had gone very well. Surprisingly well. Astonishingly well.
The speed and strength of his recovery had been noted by not only his relatives, the consultants and the doctors. Others also, thousands of miles away, were secretly following his case notes every day.
They had never met Peter. They had never seen a photograph of him, or met anyone in his family.
And yet, they were very, very interested in his case.
They were watching.
..
Chapter Nineteen
.
.
The Fox and Hounds
Knutsford
7.55 p.m.
February
.
.
Carolina reached across the bar, and put the pint of cold beer down on the shining wooden counter.
"That'll be £4.10," she said, smiling.
The young man smiled back and handed her a five pound note. He watched as she turned round and opened the till, taking out his change and then turning back towards him.
She was a very attractive woman. Young, blond, and with beautiful large breasts that were tantalizing visible, yet modestly covered, the classic low-cut top displaying her assets to their best effect. Like a million other barmaids throughout the countryside, she maximised sales and tips by dressing provocatively, and keeping men's eyes open and entertained.
"Thanks." She said, handing the spotty young man back his money and smiling again. She saw the look in his eye. She saw the look in all their eyes. He had no chance.
Carolina was under no illusion as to why she had been given the job. She was good for business. It suited her too, as jobs were hard to come by now and she needed to earn as much money as possible to help keep her baby son fed, and pay her college tuition fees.
She turned and looked at the clock. It was time for her first break of the evening.
She turned to Simon, the bar manager, and he nodded in recognition. Carolina poured herself a hot cup of tea and stepped through the back door into the back room. She sat down and opened up the paper she had taken from the bar and started to read.
After reading the headlines, she opened up the paper and glanced quickly at a few of the articles, before reaching into her pocket, pulling out her mobile and checking the display.
No calls.
She checked her messages.
Nothing.
She went online and checked her emails.
There were a few new emails from friends, an announcement about some new 'Followers' on Twitter, but nothing from Gary.
It had been four months since she had heard from him. She was beginning to get really worried.
She had split up with him. He had been upset. She had moved on with her life.
Nevertheless,
she still cared about him. They had spent some good times together. Some very nice times. But she soon realised that he wasn't right for her family: she had to think not only about herself, but also about her son. She didn't think that Gary was ready to settle down, to accept another man's child. Commitments. He was too much of a free spirit.
But where was he now? Where had he gone?
Knutsford was a small village. Idyllic in many ways. A typical picture postcard perfect little piece of old England, where everyone knew the name of everyone else, and still said "Hello" to each other as they passed on the street. Which was exactly the point: she hadn't seen him on the street. In the supermarket, the pub, or the church. At all. Anywhere.
It wasn't that she wanted to get back together again with him. She was just worried that he may have overreacted and left town. Just upped sticks and gone. Possible, but nobody else had heard from him either. Even his friends said they didn't know where he was. Were they lying to her? Why?
Was it possible that he had liked her more than she thought?
Had she got it all wrong?
Wherever he was, she hoped that he would call her back soon. She hated feeling so guilty, and she couldn't get on with her life properly until she had heard from him again.
"Where the hell was he?"
..
Chapter Twenty
.
.
Delaware
February
.
.
Nic White walked in the sunshine, breathing in the fresh air and enjoying every second of being back topside. He had been out of the bunker for three days now, and he was spending as much time as possible out in the open, positively imbibing open spaces and being anywhere where the nearest wall wasn't just five feet away and his eyes could look to a distant horizon.
It wasn't that Nic was claustrophobic, but the more time he spent in the bunker, the more he appreciated the real world and what it had to offer. When he was out of the bunker, he spent as little time as possible at home, confined within a set of walls. At every opportunity he left his house behind and walked.
He loved walking.
He was walking now, through a forest close to his home in Newark, Delaware. He loved being back close to his Alma Mater, was a proud 'Blue Hen' and wore his University ring with pride.
Nic had seen a lot of the US,- America had many wonderful places to see and experience - but he loved Delaware: the beautiful beaches, the vast, beautiful waters of the Chesapeake Bay, the countryside, the quaintness of Newark, the home town of the university, and the proximity to Philadelphia and New York.
It was only when you leave something behind, that you begin to miss it. When Nic had left Delaware for Berkeley and then again later for Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, he had missed Delaware a lot.
The ability to work again now in Delaware at the StemPharma bunker in Dover had been a gift of opportunity and fate, one which he could never have turned down.
He had been lucky, and he knew it.
Nic's phone beeped, and he pulled it out of his small rucksack. He scanned his fingerprint into the StemPharma phone security App, said his name, and went to his email. The latest reports had just arrived back from the field trials of SP-X4.
Nic sat down, opening up the report on his phone, and quickly scanned through the feedback from the trial. He knew exactly what he was looking for.
He found it on page twenty-four.
The report showed that the drug they had developed and the patented treatment which they had built around it were still delivering amazing results, way better than they had ever expected or hoped for.
But Nic was looking for something specific. Something that he did not understand. Something which was initially totally unexpected, and now seemed to be repeating over and over again.
Twenty new cases had been reported.
Nic swore aloud.
It was obvious that Philip Grant and the management team were not interested in taking action. For whatever reason, they were ignoring the feedback that Nic had given them.
Nic shut his phone down and put it back into his rucksack. He looked up at the beautiful trees all around him, most of which were still without leaves. It was incredibly warm for this time of year, the ground was dry, and there had been no snow since December.
The problem was that Nic was not too sure what to do next. The results back from the field trials indicated something interesting, - no, it was much more than that- they indicated that potentially something amazing was happening. Something incredible. Something however, that should not be happening in the patients of a commercial drug. Now more than ever, Nic was worried that the figures and the reports were beginning to wave a big, red, warning flag in his face.
A warning.
But what did that warning mean?
What should he do?
Nic lay on the ground in the forest, staring up at the blue sky. As he watched, clouds started to form, and slowly the blue disappeared and was replaced by a dull grey. It was as if the forest had sensed his feelings. As the light changed, the vibrancy of the world around him started to fade, and a sense of despondency began to descend on Nic.
He felt alone. Frustrated. Stressed.
Data. He needed more data. He could not act yet, until he understood more about the feedback.
Slowly a plan began to form. It was not a very good plan, Nic knew that, but for now, it was the only plan he had.
Firstly, he would personally investigate as many of the reported cases as he could.
Secondly, they would extend the territories in which the new SP-X4 treatment was being sold. That way, if this was something real, and not just some unrelated phenomena, they would get more feedback in a shorter time-frame.
Data. Nic needed more data.
This way he would get what he needed.
In the meantime, sales revenues would increase, and Nic knew that, for now, this was the only thing that Philip Grant was interested in.
..
Chapter Twenty One
.
.
Craigmillar, Edinburgh
February
.
.
It was a beautiful day. The sun was reflecting off the frozen loch, twinkling back up from the ice crystals, as if someone had scattered a million little diamonds on its frozen surface.
Standing beside the fence by the side of the loch at the spot the accident had happened, Peter could hear the laughs and cries of the children skating on the opposite side of the frozen loch beside Duddingston Village.
Peter could not recall any other time in his life when the loch had frozen over. It had snowed for the past few days, but today the sky was clear. Blue skies and warm sun shone down on a magical mystery land carpeted with virgin white snow.
Looking up at Arthur's Seat, the big hill that dominated the city centre of Edinburgh and rose up tall and majestically just behind the village of Duddingston, Peter could also make out the little figures of people who were trying to ski down the hill. It seemed that today, everyone was outside trying to enjoy the sunshine.
Peter looked at the top of Arthur's Seat. Little black dots were moving around near the summit, tourists and Edinburgh locals who had made it all the way up and through the snow to witness the view across the city and the River Forth as it emerged into the North Sea.
For the first time is his life, Peter wondered what that view would be like. The thought caught Peter by surprise, and he almost laughed when he caught himself thinking it.
For Peter, it was an amazing thought. Although he had spent his entire life living in and around the city, he had never once been to the summit of Arthur's Seat. He had never even thought of going up there. Even though probably every visitor to the city, and every other inhabitant of the city had.
The reason why he hadn't was very simply. Peter was acrophobic. He had a terrible fear of heights.
It was not something he liked to talk about, or tell anyo
ne else, because normally it ended up in someone laughing, and him being the centre of unwanted attention.
Instead, he tended to just avoid any and all situations where viewing anything from high up may be involved: 'high up' being anything more than a metre off the floor. Which ruled out holidays abroad where flying was the only way to get there, climbing ladders, rescuing cats from trees, or standing on a chair to replace a light bulb.
He wasn't a 'woos' or a 'girlie' as others in his life had called him. Actually, he was quite brave. He was perfectly prepared to run into a burning building and rescue a cat, or scuba dive to the depths of the ocean (-oddly enough this was okay, because he could 'feel' the water supporting him underneath-), or climb over the top of a trench and attack the Germans ( if that had still been a necessary or applicable way to define courage and bravery). But climb a small ladder, or look out of an airplane window? No, both were things he simply could not do.
One day a scientist somewhere in the world would prove that acrophobia was a real condition, just like blindness, or deafness, but until that day, Peter planned to keep this little secret to himself.
He was just about to turn his attention back to the road and the place where the accident had taken place, when another strange thought occurred to him.
Perhaps one day he should take his camera and try to walk to the top of the hill, just so that he could take a photograph from the summit, for once and for all, which he could then frame and put on his wall.
Normally any thought of an action that would involve any concept of height would instantly send a shudder up and down his spine, ending in an uncomfortable feeling somewhere in his groin area, just as if his testicles had been jostled.
Oddly enough, today, no such feeling swept over him.
"Peter," a voice called him back to reality. "Hi, I'm Sergeant Cameron Angus of the Lothian and Borders Police."
Peter turned away from the view of the hill and focussed on the man coming towards him now, hand outstretched and smiling.
"Sergeant," Peter smile back, beaming. "It is a real pleasure to meet you at last. I am so grateful to you! Thanks! It's not often you get to thank someone for saving their life, but I for one, would like to do that now. Thank you, Sir! And as they would say in the old days, 'I am eternally indebted to you!'"
BOX SET of THREE TOP 10 MEDICAL THRILLERS Page 8