A number of patients were coming down the stairs and heading for a hallway leading to the back. They were mostly women, whose ages ranged anywhere from forty-five to well beyond seventy.
Whoarethese people? Ally wondered. They must have been sufferers of various kinds of debilitating afflictions, but now they were certainly ambulatory, if not downright sprightly. She wanted to talk to some of them, watching them moving along chatting and smiling, but this was not the moment.
"At eleven-thirty we have meditation in the dining hall," Elise was saying as she led them through the lobby, "for those who care to participate, and after that a vegetarian lunch is served at twelve-thirty sharp." Then she glanced back. "After you see Dr. Van de Vliet-and assuming you're admitted-there'll be an orientation and then you're welcome to begin participating fully in our activities."
"Actually," Ally said, "if people are well enough to be in 'activities,' why can't they be outpatients?"
"These clinical trials require twenty-four-hour supervision," Elise explained, heading for the wide desk in the center of the room. "Now, if you would all sign in here at the desk, Ellen can take you downstairs to the medical reception."
A dark-haired woman smiled from behind the desk, then got up and came around. A sign-in book was there on a steel stand. Ally finally noticed that light classical music was wafting through the room, Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake suite.
"You must be Ms. Hampton," the woman said. "And this must be your mother. We were told to expect you."
She nodded a farewell to Elise, who said, "It was so nice to meet you. Good luck."
She then turned and headed for the back.
Ally signed all three of them in.
"Good," the woman said as she checked the information.
"My name is Ellen O'Hara, by the way. I'm in charge of the nursing staff here. We're ready to go downstairs now."
Ellen O'Hara had a knowing, earnest face that fairly lit up when she smiled. She had short brown hair streaked with gray and was pleasantly full-figured.
When they reached the elevator, she zipped a small plastic card through the reader on the wall and the doors slid open. As they emerged on the lower level, Ally realized they were in the precincts of a very sophisticated medical laboratory. Occupying most of the floor was a glassed-in area, inside of which she could see three men and two women, all dressed in white. She also noticed rows of steel containers that seemed to be ovens or incubators of some kind as well as racks and racks of vials. At the far end of the laboratory, there was a blackboard on which one of the men was drawing something that looked like hexagonal molecules, linking them together.
"That's Dr. Van de Vliet," Ellen said pointing. "I'll let him know you're here. The laboratory is a special environment. The entrance there is actually an air lock. The air inside is filtered and kept under positive pressure."
She walked over to a communications module, buzzed then announced into the microphone, "Dr. Vee, your eleven-thirty appointment is here."
He turned and stared in their direction, then smiled and waved. Next he walked to a microphone near the center of the room and clicked it on.
"I'll be with you in a minute. Can you please wait in the receiving room? And Ellen, can you start getting them ready?"
"Of course." She nodded then clicked off the microphone and turned. "Receiving is just down at the end of the hall. Next to his office. Please come with me."
She led them through a large wooden door, into a room with a retractable metal table covered in white paper and several chairs. It was a typical examination room, with a device on the wall to monitor blood pressure, a stethoscope, and other examination paraphernalia.
"If you'll kindly take a seat," Ellen said, "I'm sure he'll be here as soon as he can, in a few minutes at most. But while we wait, I need to take your temperature and blood pressure, and start a chart."
"Ally, where are we?" Nina asked. Her face was becoming alarmed, and Maria reached to comfort her. "Are we in a hospital somewhere?"
"Yes, Mom, it's actually the institute I told you about last night The doctor here wants to see if he can do anything to … help you."
"Oh," she said, "is he the one you told me about? I thought that was just a dream."
"No, he's real. Whether he can help you or not that part is what’s still a dream. But we're all praying."
She looked around at the pure white walls and wondered again what she was getting into. Meeting a new specialist in the sterile white cold of an examination room, could be frightening in itself. God, how many times before had she done this as she trudged through HMO hell? Maria was so unsettled she was deathly pale.
Ellen took their blood pressure and temperature, including Maria's, even though she protested mildly, half in Spanish-a sign of how unsettling it was to her. Ellen had only just finished putting all the numbers on clipboard charts for each of them when Karl Van de Vliet opened the door and strode in.
Chapter 13
Tuesday, April 7
11:39 a.m.
He had a high forehead and prominent cheekbones, just like in the photo. And just as in his photo, there was a genuine dichotomy between his face, which looked to be early forties and unwrinkled, and his gray eyes, which were much older. That was it. That was what seemed odd. He was different ages.
Underneath his white lab coat he was wearing a black suit and an open-necked blue shirt. Ally noticed that his fingers were long and delicate, like those of a concert pianist, and overall he had a kind of ghostly presence, as though he were more spirit than man. Although he looked exactly as he did in the photograph in the Gerex Corporation brochure, in person there was an added dimension, a kind of raw magnetism about him. It was more than simply a physician's bedside manner, it was the allure of a pied piper. The first thing you wanted to ask him was How oldareyou, really?Maybe the next thing you'd want to do was ask him to dinner.
What had she expected? Maybe a self-absorbed nerd researcher in wrinkled stained lab attire, anxious to scurry back to his test tubes. But in person Karl Van de Vliet was debonair and youthful, living proof that his photo wasn't retouched and was recent. He had to be twenty years older than she was, easily, but to look at him you'd guess he was close to the same age. She was dying to ask him about that but she couldn't think of a polite way to raise the subject.
She introduced herself. "We spoke yesterday." Then she introduced her mother and Maria. "Mom and I talked last night about the clinical trials, and she said she's interested. This morning, unfortunately, I'm not sure she remembers what we discussed."
He placed a hand on Nina's shoulder and studied her face as he smiled at her, embracing her with his eyes. "Well, we're going to see what we can do about that aren't we, Mrs. Hampton?"
"I've got a question right up front" Ally said. "Have we already been entered into the National Institutes of Health clinical trials?"
He seemed taken aback for a moment, caught off guard, but then he stepped up to the question.
"As a matter of fact I did take the liberty of authorizing the preliminary NIH paperwork for both of you. Of course it doesn't obligate you in any way. The thing is, there's a lot of red tape, so if you do decide to participate, the sooner we get that part started the better. On the other hand, if you decide not to, we can just terminate everything at this preliminary stage and you won't even be part of the official record."
Well, Ally thought,that undoubtedly explains why Stone saw our names on the NIH Web site. But why did Van de Vliet look so funny when I brought it up?