by Susan Ward
I leaned back in my chair, worried. Had Khloe’s health taken a turn for the worse, and was Gideon wrestling with whatever it was he hadn’t told us yet? Was he telling me first because he couldn’t face Khloe with it? “I have perfect trust in your professional objectivity and judgment, Gideon.”
His mouth twisted in a wry line. “Thank you, but I’ve felt it necessary never to be the lead opinion on Khloe’s care plan. Every exam and test, the results are sent to Dr. Hern for his review. He remains the primary physician on her care team. The decisions and recommendations are made by him and the team in Pacific Palisades. I’m more of a facilitator than anything else.”
A sense of impending doom slashed through my veins. I’d been right about what Gideon’s preoccupation meant and now knew he’d been withholding something from us, awaiting clearance from Dr. Hern on how to proceed. “What is it you have to tell me, Gideon?”
“Khloe’s last exam was not what we hoped for only a month off all treatment,” he began carefully. “The tumor is growing rapidly again.”
“That can’t be possible.” My heart stopped. “She’s doing well. She looks well. How could she be getting worse?”
“We knew there was a possibility of this, Damon. What we didn’t know was how soon things would begin to change without the chemo or immunotherapy. If it continues as it is…”
“What are you saying?” I interrupted, grief ravished and angry. “Are you saying a year? Months? Weeks?”
Gideon’s jaw tightened, and his gaze lowered. “Weeks. Maybe a few months.”
I sank my fingers into my hair and clutched my skull as hard as I could to keep me from crying, but the thought of losing Khloe…no, no, I couldn’t ever permit myself to believe that would happen.
“Then we’ll do the transplant,” I pronounced in steely determination. “You’re a doctor, for Christ’s sake. You must know how to get a heart outside of the registry. It doesn’t matter what it takes or costs. Find her a heart, Gideon.”
“I can’t do that, Damon.”
“You’re her friend. Fuck your medical ethics and Hippocratic oath. Are you saying you’d just let her die?”
“Damon,” he said grimly. “I have to put the patient first, and Khloe has refused that option. Alan would have damned consequences and bought a heart off the black market a month ago if Khloe had been willing.”
My jaw dropped. “You mean it’s Khloe who’s blocking getting a transplant however we have to?”
“Yes. She considers it morally wrong, and I respect her for it. She’s a remarkable and brave girl.”
I was reeling. How could she have not told me this, and how could she be unwilling to explore every option—for us? This was her life. Our life. At the very least, Alan should have told me this. I was sure we felt the same way: that Khloe’s life had to be saved no matter what. If he’d shared this with me, I could have been working for the past month to change Khloe’s mind. I could have convinced her somehow. Nothing was more important to me than her.
“I need to call Alan,” I stated, disoriented, reaching for the phone. “Bring him up to speed. Have him come here and help me change Khloe’s decision.”
Gideon shook his head. “There’s no need to call Alan. Dr. Hern has already briefed Khloe’s parents on her current condition and on the status of our research. Khloe won’t permit us to buy her a heart, but there’s another solution, Damon. Though we would have preferred to continue our testing to make certain of our conclusions, given the deterioration in Khloe’s health, it’s time to bring you into the lab to show you what Dr. Hern’s team has been doing.”
Chapter Fifteen
Damon
The Past
THE ENTIRE WEST WING of my house had been converted into a high-tech emergency medical facility at Alan’s insistence and with his checkbook. I didn’t know why they needed so much space—nearly half the ground floor of the house—or what was in the rooms other than Gideon’s office and the examination area.
As I waited for Gideon to slide the security key card through the reader, Alan’s explanation for all this drifted through my mind. Something about Dr. Hern’s research and Khloe’s vital role in it. Her father had been nonnegotiable about having a facility for her medical support team built in my house, and as she was always my first concern, I agreed readily to it, since Alan wouldn’t support our decision to leave Pacific Palisades without it.
The discussion had been very intense; Alan could at times be forceful. I hadn’t given it much thought then, but as I was ushered into a stark outer chamber by Gideon, I realized how wrong I’d been not to question it or at least get a thorough understanding of what exactly Hern’s research was.
Gideon pulled off his sweater, hung it in a cubby, and grabbed a pair of surgical scrubs. “In order to go beyond that door”—he jutted his chin at what I was sure was another reinforced-steel security door—“you’ll need to strip down, put on the scrubs, then scrub at the sink. After that, put on a cap and gloves.”
Without another word, Gideon lumbered off to do himself what he’d just instructed me to do, leaving me frowning and trying to figure out what could be beyond the door that required such precautions.
We stood side by side at the basin, scrubbing without talking, then I followed him to the caps. I put one on, then the gloves, and waited behind him as he opened the lab door with his security card.
“This research project is over two decades old,” Gideon explained. “You’re the first person not a member of the team ever allowed inside the lab. I’m sure you’ll understand, after we show you what we’ve been working on, why this must remain confidential. It’s in Khloe’s best interest that what happens in the room remains secret until our research has been successfully proven. I won’t insult you by asking you to sign a confidentiality agreement.”
I quirked a brow. “That’s generous of you, as it’s in my house.”
“Nah.” Gideon smiled, attempting an air of lightness. “You have more of a reason than the team does never to talk about this.”
My stomach jumped. Oh, bloody hell, were they doing something illegal in my house? Then I shook my head, annoyed with my runaway imagination and hypercritical thoughts. If it saved Khloe’s life, what would the legality matter? After all, I firmly supported buying her a heart off the black market.
The lab was unlike any I’d toured before. There were high-tech gizmos everywhere which I couldn’t identify, though I did have a well-educated guess what some were utilized for. Equipment for nanotechnology and robotic development. Equipment for DNA research. Cases of medical samples—Christ, there were so many, and I wondered if they were all Khloe’s—and a team of men in white coats, hard at work.
Gideon made a wave of introduction toward a man I hadn’t met before. He was a short, lean man who looked near seventy, with harsh brown eyes and thinning black hair. “I don’t think you’ve had a chance to meet Dr. Mazumdar. He’s the senior member of the team. The groundwork for this project was Dr. Hern’s breakthrough research on genetics and cloning, but it’s Dr. Mazumdar who brought us where we are today. He and Dr. Hern were part of the original team who cloned Dolly.”
It was hard to maintain an impassive expression. Dolly, the first successfully cloned sheep? Dr. Mazumdar’s reputation preceded him, and I hadn’t been aware Dr. Hern had been part of that research.
I was standing in the presence of medical greatness, or what would have been if, after Dolly had been created, there hadn’t been questions about the ethics and global fear of cloning’s potential misuse, which led to a worldwide ban everywhere except the United States. While it was assumed research in the area continued for its potential benefit to cure birth defects and illness, because of the broader ethical questions and universal condemnation of attempting human cloning, the research in the labs was kept as confidential as the secrets in the Pentagon.
“No, I haven’t had the honor of meeting Dr. Mazumdar,” I said, visibly i
mpressed as I made a nod in his direction.
In his heavy Indian accent, he rattled off his areas of expertise and gave an overview of the research they’d been working on. While he never said it outright, as he spoke about their work in more detail, it began to be clear where this discussion would take me. But it didn’t seem possible. It didn’t seem conceivable…
“Are you saying you’ve cloned Khloe?” I couldn’t get my head around what they were trying to gently ease me into, the horror of it—cloning humans for transplants—or even if that was what they were telling me. “That Alan paid you all to clone his daughter to save her?”
“No, Damon, we’ve not cloned a human,” Gideon stated forcefully. “There’s a worldwide ban on the cloning of humans for organ donation. Very rightly so.”
Even after Gideon’s answer, I was still reeling. “Then what are you saying? What is it you’ve been doing in here?”
He guided me over to something that looked like an incubator. There lay what appeared to be a human heart, beating independently of a host, attached to a machine. “This is Khloe-Phanes One. It was completed one year ago. It’s a bionic heart. It is programmed to respond to Khloe’s unique physiology with nearly the perfection of a living heart and none of the irregularities of blood flow present in earlier generations of artificial hearts. Greater durability with less chance of mechanical failure. There is no technology this advanced in the world. Khloe-Phanes One was created and designed exclusively for Khloe. It is the next generation of artificial hearts and will save countless lives throughout the world with improved quality of life thanks to Alan Manzone’s generous endowment to our research.”
“A year ago?” Anger shot through my veins. “You’ve had this for a year, and you haven’t done a transplant? Who the bloody hell do you men think you are? God?”
“The medical team made the decision to keep Khloe in the treatment trial,” Dr. Mazumdar explained blandly. “It provided an improved quality of health and was part of prepping her for the transplant surgery. Additionally, we were so close to a breakthrough with Khloe-Phanes Two, and—”
“Who made the decision?” I interrupted hotly.
“Dr. Hern, myself, and her parents.” Dr. Mazumdar’s medical arrogance infuriated me.
Her parents? Had I heard him right? Alan and Chrissie had signed off on delaying a potential lifesaving transplant?
“I don’t believe you,” I countered hotly. “Her parents wouldn’t fund all this then deny her the very thing that might save her life.”
“No one denied her anything, Damon,” Gideon responded insistently. “The team has worked tirelessly toward the best solution for her, while maintaining her health for transplant surgery. If her health deteriorated to the point we couldn’t wait, we would have proceeded with Khloe-Phanes One. We’ve been working toward a more permanent solution. One that would return to her all possibilities in her life.”
“Introduce Damon to Khloe-Phanes Two,” Dr. Mazumdar suggested.
I was escorted to another chamber, and inside there was another heart. It looked different than the bionic heart, a mirror of a human organ. “Khloe-Phanes Two?”
“Yes, the better solution,” Gideon announced proudly. “This is Khloe’s heart, defect free, an exact match to her, which will require no antirejection medication and will never fail because it is Khloe.”
“Khloe?” I felt like I’d been hit by a truck then strapped to a rapidly rising helium balloon. Oh, they couldn’t have done that…I was too torn between hope and revulsion to ask the question in my head.
“No, Damon, we didn’t create a clone of Khloe,” Gideon said as if answering whatever he saw in my expression. “We went a different direction within the limitations of what is ethically permitted. You see, we can create an artificial heart and are not permitted to clone a human for organ harvesting, but Dr. Hern had the brilliant concept of developing an artificial host to grow a human organ from embryonic stem cells.”
“The process of cloning Dolly suggested that mature cells could be reverted back to the embryonic state,” Dr. Mazumbar began carefully so as not to lose me or cause another outburst. “The state where cells replicate and can be used to grow organs for terminal patients. As it’s a violation of accepted medical ethics and the law to clone an embryo for embryonic stem cells, reverting mature cells to the embryonic state was our only option.”
My God. “Are you saying you’ve successfully transformed mature cells into embryonic? I thought that was impossible.”
“Not any longer, though we’ve not completely achieved that ability with mature cells. But we didn’t have to. We had umbilical cord stem cells. Chrissie kept and stored samples of Khloe’s cord after birth. We used those cells to engineer embryotic cells, and with those cells we created Khloe-Phanes Two. A human heart from Khloe for Khloe.”
“Khloe-Phanes?” I mumbled, my thoughts ricocheting in all directions. Phanes, the Greek god of life. These men had broken through a scientific barrier and created life for Khloe.
I listened for several more hours to their discussion on the research. It was fantastic, almost beyond believable, like something out of a sci-fi flick, but I could see the heart, pumping in its glass and attached to its electronic host. It was unnerving and miraculous. Emotionally jarring and emotionally leveling.
If I was understanding them correctly, they’d achieved what had been the impossible to save Khloe, thanks to Alan.
My legs felt robbed of strength by the time Gideon escorted me from the lab. As we walked back to my study, there was only one question in my head that turned over and over. “Will it work, Gideon? Will it save her?”
“There are risks with every transplant,” Gideon said cautiously. “But, yes, if she survives the surgery, it will be her heart, and Khloe will live free from illness and medication. It will give her back her complete life. That’s why Alan and Chrissie were willing to wait a bit longer for Khloe-Phanes Two to mature enough to provide enough function for an adult woman. About the surgery, it’s been scheduled for next week. Alan and Chrissie are flying in. They’ll be here in the morning with Dr. Hern to explain everything to Khloe.”
“Good, good,” I mumbled. I was to a point where reacting to anything no longer seemed possible, beyond even making a simple decision, though it hadn’t seemed Alan or the team had left me any.
Gideon’s gaze sharpened on me. “Time is critical, Damon. She has an excellent chance of surviving the surgery if we do it soon, but we can’t afford to wait longer. You understand, don’t you? I’m a cardiac surgeon. I’ve been training for the past month with the surgical team for the procedure. That’s why I’m here. To perform the first ever transplant of a cloned organ. For Khloe.”
I nodded, and Gideon took off back toward the lab. Once alone in my study, I sank down in a chair and stared blindly at the wall. Tears began to pour out of me, fueled by a torrent of emotion: relief that Khloe would get a heart, horror at the grimmer realities this breakthrough could create, fear they wouldn’t be successful with the surgery, gratitude that Alan was a man who didn’t sit on his hands and wait, and shame that I’d thought so poorly of him when he’d refused to have a discussion about buying Khloe a heart off the black market. Yes, my emotions were a bit of everything.
A tidal wave of tears hit me, and I let it run its course until I was composed enough to see Khloe.
Chapter Sixteen
Khloe
The Past
I HEARD BOOTS scrunching the snow behind me, and I knew from the purposeful strides it was Damon. The first thing I saw after I turned my head was how the sunlight landed on his face, giving his amber eyes the look of brilliantly faceted gemstones and accentuating each alluring line of his features.
For a moment I couldn’t do more than gaze at him, breathless and mesmerized by how gorgeous he looked. I grew sharply aware of my pulse quickening the closer he got to me. Blushing, I admitted how much I missed him even when only a few hours
of his time were taken away from me.
“Damon,” I held out my hand to him. “Are you finally finished with your calls? Come be absurd with us. Cody and I were about to make another snowman before dark. You look like a man in need of behaving ridiculously for a while.”
He halted above me, my hand within reach of his, but instead he pointed an index finger at Cody. “You,” he said in a harsh tone that startled me. “You’re fired. Pack your bags. Get off my ranch. Today.”
I blanched. “Damon, you don’t mean that.”
He ignored me. Quirking a brow at my best friend, he said, “Was I not clear? You’ve been dismissed.”
“No, Khloe. He means it,” Cody mumbled in dread, easing up from the snow to stand facing Damon. “I don’t work for you, so you can’t fire me. If you’re pissed off about something, let’s go somewhere to discuss it privately. But you don’t have the power to fire me. Only she does.”
Cody’s posture was calm and reasonable.
Damon was having none of it.
My insides shuddered as I realized he was serious and that his familiar, quietly determined demeanor was actually something very different than I’d ever seen before. I’d missed the fact that he was furious and that the glint in his eyes was anger.
His burning gaze stayed pinned on Cody. “Part of your job is to safeguard her health.” His voice was ragged and intense, liked I’d done something that terrified him. “Your job isn’t to hang out, have fun, or let her do things that might harm her. You’re supposed to be the one who maintains good judgment always. You don’t seem to grasp that concept. You’ve been frolicking outside with her all afternoon, as though you’re unaware that it’s dangerous for her. She could fall and hurt herself. She could catch a cold or a fever right now. Are you trying to kill her?” He abruptly clamped shut his mouth, discomposed and anguished in a way I’d never seen before.