Suddenly, he heard a sound that sent another thousand watts coursing through him.
A key in the lock . . .
Silently he prayed, Please don’t let it be Chris.
CHRIS STEPPED INSIDE and closed the door behind her. Inexplicably, she began to cry. All the horrors she’d experienced cascaded from her eyes. It was over. She was home.
Then, through the tears, she saw the impossible: Ash rising from her favorite chair, turning toward her. He stepped around the chair, and Chris saw the gun dangling at his side.
“The way I had it planned at the farmhouse, our bodies would have looked good,” he said, his voice rattling like an apparition from the grave. “Now they’re going to be a mess. And once again it’s all your fault.” He clenched his teeth. “I wish I’d never met you. I wish you’d never been born. I wish your father had never been born. Now die.”
The hand with the gun began to move, lifting toward her. And this time she had no answer. When the gun was a few degrees shy of horizontal, she saw a blur from her right—her father, charging toward Ash, growling like an animal.
Ash spun toward Wayne and began firing—
Once . . . Twice . . .
Both rounds thudded into Wayne’s body, but he kept coming. Wayne’s head and shoulder hit Ash in the midsection and drove him backward. Ash’s gun hand flew upward, and a third round hit the ceiling. Though he was hit twice, Wayne’s legs kept churning like a linebacker pushing a training sled. Ash backpedaled, but didn’t go down. Wayne’s momentum carried them into the French doors leading to the balcony, and they splintered open.
Seeing what was coming, Chris had time to scream, “No,” before they hit the balcony railing and it gave way. Then they were gone.
Chapter 47
CHRIS LOOKED AWAY from her father’s newly installed headstone to the huge oak tree nearby and the little artificial waterfall beyond.
“It’s a pretty site, don’t you think?”
“Very,” Michael said.
“Was I wrong to bury him next to my mother?”
“I’m sure he would have approved.”
“I know it’s what she would have wanted. She always hoped that one day he’d come back, and they’d be together again.”
“There can’t be any doubt in your mind now that he really loved you. He could have remained hidden in the kitchen, and Ash would probably never have known he was there. But he put his life on the line to save you.”
Chris looked at the rolling green hills dotted with markers. “And I made it so hard on him, throwing Gene up to him, refusing to accept him, holding on to my anger. And ultimately being responsible for his death.”
“You weren’t responsible. He just did what any good father would have done under the circumstances.”
“He wanted so badly for his life to have meant something.”
“And so it did. With every patient you save from now on, he gets some of the credit. Then there’s that other little thing.”
She looked up at him. “What?”
“The transplant virus. There’s something very important there, and now that the entire viral sequence is known, someone will eventually figure out the secret behind its ability to stimulate tissue regeneration. And the mutation that caused it all, that once-in-a-million chance event, occurred in your father. So when we’ve learned how to harness that potential . . . Well, it couldn’t have happened without Wayne.”
Chris’s lips arced in a thin smile, and she nodded. “It’s going to take me a while to sort all this out. And I’m going to need some help. Are you available?”
“I’ll have to check my schedule, but I think I can find some time for you.”
Epilogue
WITH WAYNE gone, there was some discussion at the publisher that had bought Wayne’s novel about canceling the book. Wayne couldn’t help with the editing, and there wouldn’t be a second one. Despite these problems, they ultimately decided to proceed with the single book. As sole heir to Wayne’s estate, Chris signed the contract. Following its publication, Wayne’s novel was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award, but lost to a book that in Chris’s opinion wasn’t nearly as good.
After a lot of thought, Chris accepted John Scott’s offer and became the medical director of infection control at Monteagle. There, she started her own infectious disease practice, which quickly had to add two more physicians to handle all the work. When the stress mounts, Chris still goes to Stone Mountain to relax, but only when Michael is free to accompany her. Research on the therapeutic effects of the transplant virus continues.
(Please continue reading for more about Don Donaldson)
Author’s Note
Over the last two decades, a variety of biotech and pharmaceutical companies in the real world have collectively spent more than a billion dollars on research aimed at the use of pigs as organ donors for humans. Much of that money was spent trying to eliminate the severe rejection reaction that occurs when a pig organ is placed in a primate. While that problem has not been fully overcome, considerable progress has been made. Should it become possible for pig transplants to function normally in humans, no one needing an organ would die for the lack of one. But there really is a functional retrovirus in the DNA of all pig cells, and there’s considerable concern that it could pose a transplantation health hazard. Best estimates are that the first pig organ transplants are still a few years away. What will happen when that becomes a reality? Will the pig retrovirus as it currently exists cause human disease? Will it mutate into something far more dangerous? When can we relax—after ten transplants with no problems? A hundred? No one can answer these questions. But one thing seems certain: We’re about to embark on a great adventure.
Acknowledgements
This book couldn’t have been written without the generous help of Dr. Santiago Vera, who provided me with the necessary technical background in liver transplantation. Nor could it have gone forward without the contributions of Dr. Bryan Simmons, who helped me understand what’s involved in being both a practicing infectious disease specialist and the infection control officer of a major hospital. I’m also grateful to Dr. Clyde Hart and Dr. Walid Heneine of the CDC for taking the time to discuss retroviruses in general and pig retroviruses in particular with me. I received an excellent overview of the potential dangers of transplanting animal organs into people and the regulatory role of the FDA in this endeavor from Dr. Michele Pearson and Dr. Louisa Chapman of the CDC.
When I needed information on patent law, my old friend from graduate school and a truly exceptional woman, Dr. Claudia Adkison, stepped right up to help. The hospitality and assistance I received from Patrick and Julie Burnett during my short stay in Atlanta were outstanding and far beyond anything I expected. Any evidence in this book that I have a working knowledge of safety procedures with regard to infectious agents is due to conversations I had with Don Bailey. My road was additionally smoothed by discussions with Melissa Crouch, Dr. Valery Kukekov, Dr. Dennis Steindler, Dr. Dianna Johnson, Dr. Renate Rosenthal, Dr. Michael Heard, Dr. Kevin Newman, Dr. Howard Horn, Dr. Bill Armstrong, Laura Reed, Dennis Paden, and Lucinda Williams. If I’ve made any mistakes of fact, they are solely my own.
About the Author
Don holds a Ph.D. in human anatomy. In his professional career, he has taught microscopic anatomy to over 5,000 medical and dental students and published dozens of research papers on wound healing. He is also the author of seven published forensic mysteries and five medical thrillers. He lives in Memphis, Tennessee with his wife and two West Highland terriers.
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The Judas Virus Page 37