BOX SET of THREE TOP 10 MEDICAL THRILLERS

by Ian C. P. Irvine

  Silence at the other end of the phone. Philip Grant was wondering if he had been wrong to take this call. He had only accepted it because it was from Scotland, and because that was where the reporter had written from. He had wanted to see if the call had been connected to the article. Plus, it was actually his job to receive such calls that had been escalated up to him. Luckily, the doctor had not mentioned the article being published in the Scottish newspaper.

  "Mr Grant? If you wish, I would consider signing another Non Disclosure Agreement in relation to the details of the treatment? I just need to know more about it. What is in the drug? How does it work? Why does it have this effect?"

  "Let me think about that, Dr Jamieson. I will talk to our lawyers, ...see if I can arrange something."

  "Maybe meanwhile you could put me in contact with one of the scientists who developed it? Or get him on a call with us?"

  "And our lawyers...perhaps...Got to keep them in the loop!"

  "If you say so."

  A pause.

  "Mr Grant...can you please at least tell me, are you experiencing these symptoms and getting this feedback from others?"

  Silence at the other end. Philip Grant could not admit that in the past two weeks he had had similar conversations with others.

  Without thinking, Philip Grant looked across at the calendar on the wall above his desk. May 16th was still over two weeks away. Could he keep the lid on the cauldron which was beginning to boil until then? Would be able to sell his shares and invest his retirement fund before the problems with SP-X4 went public?

  "Mr Grant? Are you still there?" the doctor prodded, beginning to get annoyed. "I think I should also point out that a reporter in Scotland recently placed a request in the media for patients experiencing any form of post-transplant cellular memory phenomena to contact him? Perhaps he is planning to write something about this. I was wondering, that perhaps if StemPharma weren't willing to help answer questions that the field trials are bringing up, that maybe I should have a discussion with the reporter to see if we can pool our research and..."

  "Stop. Please, Dr Jamieson... That will obviously not be necessary. I would also not advise any such course of action...it's probably contrary to the legal stuff the lawyers would have drawn up, when you signed up to participate in the field trial. Actually, let me also stress that this is not a field trial, as you keep referring to it as. They were conducted a while back, with no reason for any concerns, and the treatment was given the full blessing of the US Food and Drug Administration to be released as a perfectly safe commercial product...The treatment is perfectly safe. Perfectly. But since you have asked, I will talk to my team and see if I can get the go ahead to arrange a conference call with you and my team, so that we can help find answers to your questions."

  Philip Grant looked across at his calendar again. Playing for time he said, "How about in two weeks time...that might work...can I get back to you with some suggested times?"

  "Please, that would be good, but a week would be better." Dr Jamieson replied. "Thank you for your time today. I look forward to speaking with you again soon!"

  .

  After he hung up, Philip Grant pushed back in his chair, looked up at the ceiling and closed his eyes.

  "Fuck!" he swore quietly to himself. "Fuck, fuck, fuck!"

  He glanced across at his calendar again.

  Perhaps taking the call with the doctor in Scotland was not a mistake after all. If Dr Jamieson in Scotland was going to be a problem, it would be wise to keep in contact with him, to understand what was going on, so that he could best manage the situation.

  The VP of Sales had no intention of sharing any secrets with some jumped up consultant who wanted to play god with his company. The big question for now though was could he delay their meeting, and then intentionally postpone it and delay it again until after May 16th?"

  String him along until whatever was revealed about SP-X4 couldn't stop Philip Grant from hitting the jackpot with his vested shares on May 16th?

  At the moment, it was the best plan he had.

  ..

  The phone rang deep in the underground bunker, and Nic White reached across his lab bench and picked it up.

  "Nic? Hi,...Philip Grant here...Any news on what's causing all the shit with SP-X4? ...Possibly? That's good! Listen, I'll give you another week, and then I want you here in New York to explain to me personally what's going on with SP-X4. You'd better have some good answers. And I mean good. People are beginning to ask questions. Decontamination? Fuck that, fuck the procedure. Just get here and bring me some answers. My secretary will send you details of the meeting later. Make sure you are here, okay?"

  Before Nic could say another word, the line went dead.

  Nic returned to his work. Smiling.

  He wasn't going to New York. He wasn't going anywhere. No one ever broke decontamination and quarantine rules, and Philip Grant knew that.

  He peered down through the electron microscope, staring at the image at the other end.

  If his boss had just given him the chance, Nic would have explained to him that he was onto something big. His hunch about what was happening with SP-X4 was beginning to develop into something far more. The gut feeling was progressing well along the road from gut feel to idea to hypothesis to thesis.

  If the image that Nic was looking at in the microscope was correct, it was just possible that Nic knew what was going on with SP-X4.

  .

  And it was incredible.

  Chapter Forty Eight

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  .

  The Meadows

  Edinburgh

  April 30th

  .

  .

  Susie was sitting on a park bench in the middle of the Meadows, a large expanse of wide open grassland criss-crossed by tree lined paths situated just south of the city centre of Edinburgh. It was one of her favourite places. She loved to come and sit here and watch life go by, especially during the Festival Season when the city came alive, bustling and thronging with tourists from all over the world.

  She was sitting reading a selection of the emails that she and Peter had received from transplant patients around the world.

  The stories that patients of transplant operations were telling them were amazing. Her initial disbelief and scepticism in the experiences that people were reporting had been replaced with an eagerness to learn more. To share with these people what they were experiencing, and to understand it all.

  She was amazed by the pattern that was arising from the stories she was reading.

  Quite simply put, it seemed that there was more to life than she had ever believed. Life, it appeared, went beyond the simple death of our physical bodies: when one body died, a life could be continued in another, lifted from the former, and put into the latter.

  Or at least, that was what seemed to be happening here.

  But was the effect permanent? How long did it last for?

  And why were none of the organ recipients complaining about the paranormal experiences they were having? Universally they all seemed happy with the experience.

  How would Susie feel if that happened to her, God forbid that it ever should.

  And then a strange thought entered her brain and wormed around, demanding decent consideration: "If I were to die, should I donate my organs so that I could perhaps be given the opportunity to live again in another body?"

  The thought both scared and excited her. Was it really possible?

  Another question: "When the organ recipient received an organ and began to experience personality changes, or sense the presence of another person, were they just experiencing the effects of some magical chemical phenomena, something that happened as a result of memories encoded within the neuropeptides from their donors which were then released within their new bodies... or...or were they actually having paranormal, supernatural experiences that went beyond anything any human being yet understood? Was this finally proof of life after death, or the existence
of a soul?"

  Susie wanted to know.

  Needed to know.

  Two years ago her mother had died. A heart attack in Sainsbury's. One minute she was picking out a nice piece of broccoli, and the next she was lying flat on the ground, her body full of nothing. Empty. Dead.

  Susie missed her. She had not fully come to terms with her death, and perhaps she would never would. Her father, on the other hand, believed firmly in God, and since her parting had spent more and more time going to Church and visiting the grave, talking to her gravestone for hours on end. "She can hear me!", he insisted. At first Susie had argued with him, but then she had decided that if that was his way of dealing with her death, then good for him. But now,...now for the first time, she wondered if maybe he was not so wrong after all.

  She wiped the tears away from her eyes and read the email in her hand one more time.

  It was from a mother and father in Baltimore, Maryland, somewhere on the east coast of America. They had received five emails from people in or around Baltimore, but this was so far definitely her favourite of the group.

  The parents had had a little girl, Mary. Aged six. Mary had been diagnosed with kidney failure and died a few months later. Her heart had been donated to another child in Baltimore the same age as Mary. The recipient child, Alice, had made an amazing recovery, but had quite quickly begun to show the now classic signs of personality change resulting from the donated organ. Nothing bad, all good, but still amazing.

  As was becoming commonplace in these stories, in an effort to understand what was happening to their daughter, the parents of Alice had tracked down the parents of Mary, and they had exchanged conversations and emails. Eventually they had met.

  It seemed that Alice had immediately recognised the parents of Mary, had hugged and kissed them upon first meeting, and called them 'Mummy' and 'Daddy'. She had also continued to call her own parents just 'Mum' and 'Dad', and there seemed to be no decrease in the love Alice felt for her real parents. And incredibly, there seemed to be no jealously between the parents.

  They became friends.

  Alice's parents had moved to the US five years before from Germany, and had very few friends in the US. A bond grew between the parents, and soon Alice's parents invited Mary's parents to become her godparents. They accepted.

  Two months later, the parents of Alice were killed in a car accident. Alice survived.

  With no immediate relations able to take over responsibility of Alice, the parents of Mary approached the court and applied to adopt her. Although the background circumstances were rather peculiar, the judge had been convinced by arguments from the lawyers that the parents of Mary would offer a caring and loving home for Alice.

  Custody was later awarded to Mary's parents, on condition that Alice was allowed to continue her education in the school she was already attending, and that the parents agreed to regular counsellor visits to ensure that they were accepting and caring for Alice as Alice, and not as Mary.

  The parents agreed, sold their house and moved to the neighbourhood where Alice had been living. Together they created a new family, and since then have been progressing well.

  At first, Alice used to speak regularly of the things that Mary had done in her life, without any possible way of her knowing such facts.

  With the passing of time, she spoke less of Mary, and she was now growing into a happy, confident child. Mary's parents reported that Alice had adopted and continued to demonstrate certain characteristics that Mary used to have: her laugh, the way she sucked honey from a spoon (Alice had never shown an interest in honey before), and the way she skipped and liked to play with her pet dog, Tilly, which was another amazing story in itself. When Mary had died, Tilly had become withdrawn, sad, and had become scared of strangers. If she had been a human being, a doctor would have diagnosed clinical depression. Yet, the day that Alice had walked up the garden path for the first time, even before they had opened the garden gate, Tilly had jumped out of her basket in the kitchen, ran out of the back door, around the garden to the front of the house, jumped up into Alice's arms and started licking her face. From that moment forward, Tilly had been her old self. In the eyes of Mary's parents, it seemed that Tilly had recognised Mary within Alice, or perhaps Tilly saw Mary, and not Alice...? Who knows? Whatever sixth sense that dogs possess, something strange and beyond rational explanation had taken place. They had witnessed it, and they couldn't explain it.

  "We know that Alice is not Mary," the email concluded. "We know that. We still miss Mary every single day of our lives. But, and this is difficult to describe and perhaps no one else will understand it, we feel that Mary is happy with what has happened. Sometimes we sense her, that perhaps she is still here. For a while we worried about what we had done. Then five weeks ago, Alice came to us in the middle of the night, and slept between us in our bed, just like Mary used to do. As she fell asleep between us, she kissed us both on our noses,...just like Mary used to do...it was so strange, but also so beautiful...Alice reached out to each of us, stroked each of our cheeks, smiled, and then said, quite simply "Goodbye."

  The next morning Alice woke up between us, and said, "Mummy, Daddy, Mary has gone to Heaven now. "

  We cried. A lot.

  And then we hugged our beautiful new daughter. Alice."

  .

  --------------------

  .

  Susie looked at her watch. She still had three hours to kill before her self-defence class started. She loved her class. Not only was it helping build her self-confidence again, after she got mugged last year, but it was genuinely teaching her lots of very simple ways to defend herself, should the situation ever arise again. It was incredible how effective the simplest of moves could be, if only you knew how; which thanks to the class, Susie now did!

  With so much time on her hands, Susie walked from the Meadows, up the tree lined path that took her past the back of the McEwan Hall, the graduation hall of Edinburgh University, and then across the road down past Greyfriars Kirk. When she got to the statue of Greyfriars Bobby outside the Kirk, she paused, trying to decide whether to walk down to the Grassmarket at the base of Edinburgh Castle, or to continue along, past the Central Library, across the Royal Mile, and then down into Princes Street.

  Susie liked to walk. It helped her to think.

  And right now, she had a lot to think about.

  The feedback they had got from patients responding to their request for personal experiences had really moved her. The story of Mary and Alice was just one example of many that had touched her.

  At the heart of it all though was her growing desire to know more about the human soul. Did it exist? Was it real? And if it was, what 'on earth' was it?

  As she walked through the streets of Edinburgh she thought. And as she thought she realised that formulating the question was easy...getting an answer would probably be impossible. Throughout the history of mankind, how many people had asked that same question? How many millions of minds had already searched for the answer but failed?

  She knew she needed to speak to someone about it though. Even if no one could help her in her holy quest, she still needed to talk. To someone.

  But who?

  As she stood beside the statue of Greyfriars Bobby, the famous little dog that had visited the grave of its master every day for the rest of its life after his master had died, her eyes were caught by a movement in the graveyard of the Kirk behind. She looked up and saw the figure of the Minister of the Kirk coming down the red gravel path towards her.

  Susie smiled.

  "Excuse me," she said, as the Minister approached. "I was wondering if you had a moment to help an inquisitive prodigal daughter find an answer to a very simple question?"

  The minister smiled. "Hmmm...That sounds ominous,...but also intriguing," he replied. "And what would that question be?"

  Susie looked around herself for a second, suddenly wondering just how daft she was going to sound.

  "My soul. Yo
ur soul. What is it? And what happens to it when we die?"

  The minister smiled again, and laughed.

  "Wow. That's a good question. A very good question..."

  Susie saw the minister glance at his watch, then look quickly along the street towards the Royal Mile.

  "Actually, I've got a few minutes free just now. Do you want to grab a coffee? I think it would be better to sit down and chat, rather than try to find an answer to your question out here..."

  "Thanks, I would like that." Susie replied, and a few minutes later she was sitting opposite a church minister, deep in conversation. Fascinated.

  Chapter Forty Nine

  .

  .

  Lochend

  Edinburgh

  April 30th

  .

  .

  The Internet is a wonderful thing. Wonderful. When Peter finally sat down at his desk, prepared to search the world looking at pictures of every single pedestrian footbridge in existence...if that's what it was going to take..until he could finally find a picture of a bridge that matched the one he had captured in his mind, he was amazed when after only ten minutes of looking at the vast selection of pictures of bridges that Google threw at him for his perusal, that he struck gold.

  Eureka.

  According to a picture that had popped up in his search engine window, the bridge that he had seen in his dream was called the 'Iron Bridge'. Clicking on a link on that page, it took him to Wikipedia which happily informed Peter that the "Iron Bridge was the first arch bridge in the world to be made of cast iron" and crossed the River Severn in Shropshire, England...in the rather aptly named town of Ironbridge in the Ironbridge Gorge near Telford.

  He spent the next hour surveying every single internet site that he could find that came up in any search relating to 'Iron Bridge' or the 'Iron Bridge' near Telford, printing off hundreds of different pictures of the bridge. It was only when his printer ran out of ink, and refused to help him carry on the search that Peter agreed to call it a day.