Deadly Design - Emarsan Page 0,106
hundreds of years?
“You’re kidding, right?” He laughs. “Seriously. I mean . . .”
He pulls at his hair, as if he actually wants to rip it out. “Do you have any idea how brilliant, fucking . . . Einsteinish this sequence is? Yes, I destroyed his research about it, but I did glance at it just little bit before I hit the big Delete button. This sequence is like . . .” He searches for the right words. “You won’t age. You’ll be a hundred and fifty, swimming laps and shooting hoops and having sex with twenty-year-olds!” Suddenly he looks troubled. “Okay, that means you’d being having sex with someone who could potentially be the same age as your great-great-great-grandchildren. That’s a little creepy, but not as creepy as Mick Jagger doing it with a twenty-year-old, 3 1 4
Copyright © 2015 by Debra Dockter.
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because you won’t look like the Crypt Keeper. You’ll look like you—now. Young and healthy and vibrant. Who wouldn’t want that?”
“Me.” I think about Connor. He got eighteen years. Not a day more. Amber didn’t even get that. Why should I live for hundreds of years? Why would I want to live without Cami?
How could I watch her grow old in front of me and not be able to grow old with her? All I want to do is get better. All I want to do is live so I can take her on dates, real dates, not watching movies in the living room. I want to marry her, and it doesn’t matter that I’m saying that when I’m only sixteen, because I’m not sixteen. After everything I’ve been through, I’m already ancient, and I don’t want to live forever.
Dr. Rubenstein sighs. “Sorry, kid. No can do. I can give you a new heart. That will take care of the whole killing-you sequence, but the genetic sequence for longevity controls the neurons in your brain. I can’t give you a new one of those. If you want to die, we can forgo the heart transplant. You can call your folks, your friends, girlfriends, and you can all spend what time you have left together. Let’s see, that’s what . . . three weeks at most.” He sighs. “Three weeks or three hundred years. Your call. Of course, remember, the whole heart thing isn’t a given. Maybe we try it and let fate make the call.”
“You said there was a sixty-forty chance that the new heart will work.”
“This is all experimental. We know how to clone stem cells into heart tissue but not into outright hearts. I’ve been experimenting with ghost hearts—where you remove a heart from 3 1 5
Copyright © 2015 by Debra Dockter.
FOR REVIEWING PURPOSES ONLY--NOT FOR SALE
someone who obviously doesn’t need it anymore. It’s washed to strip away the cells, leaving a sort of heart skeleton, or what we call a ghost heart. Now, ideally, you then use stem cells from the person needing the heart, and eventually those stem cells turn into heart tissue. Then you have a heart that is a genetic match for the person needing it. This is great because then the recipient doesn’t have to take medications to prevent rejection.
But this won’t work with you because you need a heart with different DNA. We can use a ghost heart made with stem cells from another person. It won’t be a genetic match, so you may have to stay on antirejection drugs until we can figure out another option. This will buy us time, and quite a bit of it if all goes well. But it’s tricky. I’ve got a great transplant team, but ghost hearts are new, and new means risk.”
My head sinks into my pillow.
“These are all uncertainties, but . . . if anybody can save you, I can. I do not want you to die.”
“I don’t want to die.”
“Then we’re agreed. You need to get stronger. I want you healthy when the heart’s ready, and hopefully, it will be before the switch gets flipped. I’ll work on the heart, and you rest.
Then we’ll see what happens.”
“How long have I been here?” I ask.
“Two days.”
More time lost. More fucking time just gone.
“I’m going to save you,” he says, and I can’t help but think of the promises Dr. Claudia Bartholomew made me right before she put me in a coma and started hacking away.
3 1 6
Copyright © 2015 by Debra Dockter.
FOR REVIEWING PURPOSES ONLY--NOT FOR SALE
“Why did he give his research to you?” I ask.
He