On the nineteen-inch screen of his office IBM, he was scrolling the medical file that he'd downloaded earlier that morning. How Grant Hampton got his hands on it, he didn't know and didn't want to know. Yes, Alexa Hampton would be perfect. She had aortic valve stenosis, well along, the same condition that had precipitated the coronary destruction that took Camille from him. It was the great tragedy of his life. He studied the charts carefully, trying to assure himself he was making the right choice. What if the stem cell procedure on her heart didn't work? To fail would mean he couldn't have saved Camille after all. That was actually the main reason he'd kept putting it off. He didn't want to know if he couldn't have rescued her. But Alexa Hampton was the obvious candidate. Her clinical condition had deteriorated to the point that, at some level, you might even say she had nothing to lose by undergoing an experimental procedure. And she was perfect in another way as well. Other than her heart condition, which she could do nothing about, she was in excellent physical shape. Her last blood pressure was 110 over 80 and her pulse was 67. She clearly had been exercising, which had been both good and bad for her heart, though on balance probably a plus. In fact, it was indicative of a strong fighting spirit, which was often the best prognosticator of all. He looked up to see Dr. Debra Connolly walking in. He had just paged her. She was an M.D. who had been his personal research assistant during her grad school days at Stanford. Now she was a full and valued member of the research team. Just turned thirty, she also was a smashing blonde, five-nine, with a figure that would stop traffic, even in her white lab smock. She held Van de Vliet in the reverence always bestowed on a brilliant, beloved mentor. "Hi, Deb, I wanted you to take a look at this." He indicated the screen. She knew all about the Beta and what had happened to Kristen, the Syndrome, but she didn't know about the plan to subject Alexa Hampton to two procedures at once: one for her aortic valve stenosis and another to develop antibodies to combat the looming side effects of the Beta in Winston Bartlett. "This is the patient I was telling you about. I wanted you to see this. Let's pray she signs on for the trials, because she looks like she could be perfect, in a lot of ways." But if she doesn't call back, he told himself, what am I going to do? "What am I looking at?" Debra asked, scrolling the page. "Is this what I think it is?" "It's her medical history." "How did you get it?" She turned back. "Did she send it?" "No, Deb, and I don't think you really want to know." "Somehow, I think I probably should." She looked again at the screen. "We're in this together."