Chapter 2

TWO

Friday, December 17, 8:53 A.M. CDT

Sternberg Center for Cancer Cures

Kansas City, KS

Thomas sat

by the floor-to-ceiling windows in his corner office, looking over his clinic schedule for the day. The office still felt new to him, unfamiliar, but it was part of an amazing facility—lab, cancer treatment center, and clinic—for which he himself had been both visionary and founder. He enjoyed being his own boss, and under his leadership, Kansas City was fast becoming the Silicon Valley of innovative gene therapy research.

Most of the children he would see today were routine follow-ups, kids cured of their cancers with his original GTAC gene therapy. A few were new consults, children for whom contemporary chemotherapy and radiation had failed. He would discuss his new CRISPR gene therapy with their parents. His newest treatment, CUTR, was still under development in his lab.

Thomas shook his head, still marveling at the enzyme his lab tech Ivan had found in the toxic red tide sample Thomas had taken from Roatán earlier in the year. That was an amazing trip—for reasons that had nothing to do with enzymes.

Thomas turned his attention to the newly framed picture on his desk. A photo of him and Eva on Bailey’s Key, grinning with elation at the birth of Taffy’s baby, Eva’s emerald eyes sparkling. She looked stunning. He’d hoped to stay in contact with her this time around, but it seemed that between her breakthrough in dolphin communication and his new cancer treatment trials, there just wasn’t enough time in the day.

Taking a deep breath, he stood and walked down the hall to an exam room. After knocking, he entered. Sitting on the exam table was a nine-year-old girl holding a dolphin plushie and a book.

“Dr. Sternberg!”

“Good morning, Nevaeh. What are you reading today?”

“

I Survived the Shark Attacks of 1916

.”

Nevaeh’s mother, Laveda, who was sitting in a chair to one side, laughed. “I let her read whatever she wants after she makes her reading goal for school.”

Laveda was the president of the Freedom from Cancer Foundation, and thanks in part to Thomas’s successful therapy for Nevaeh’s rare toenail melanoma, she was now one of Thomas’s greatest fans.

Thomas smiled. “Take what you read with a grain of salt, Nevaeh. I’ve been diving with sharks, and they aren’t the most terrifying creatures in the ocean. We’re more a threat to them than they are to us.” As he turned to wash his hands—the water, soap, and paper towels all dispensing automatically with electricity generated by solar panels on the roof—he added, “Do you still want to be a marine biologist when you grow up?”

Nevaeh shook her head, her tiny braids swinging from side to side. “I’m going to be a pediatrician

and

a marine biologist, just like you.”

Thomas sat down on a stool and rolled over to her. “Okay, let’s see that toe.”

Nevaeh placed a dark brown foot on Thomas’s knee. He peered at the toe then squeezed it. She giggled. Her toe looked perfectly normal, the melanoma long vanished.

“It looks great,” he said. “Let’s plan for another follow-up in three months. At that point you’ll be in complete remission and visits can be yearly.”

Nevaeh squeezed the dolphin plushie he’d given her. “Thanks, Dr. Sternberg. I’ll miss seeing you though. If you take another sabbatical, you better bring something back for me.”

Thomas laughed. “Don’t worry. I’m not planning to leave anytime soon.”

As much as Thomas loved his work, he wondered if he would ever get another vacation. That was the downside of being the leader of a place like this—too many people depended on him. That was a blessing in many ways, but also a burden—and as he headed down the hall to his next patient, he couldn’t help but think about the picture on his desk, and what he’d left behind.