“I don’t believe this,” Jack said.
“Well, they didn’t, either,” Bart said. “In fact, Dr. Raymond Lynch, the head of the DNA lab, asked me if there was any chance you were running some kind of a covert personal test on their work. He felt that it couldn’t have been a heart transplant unless it was from an identical twin.”
“Good grief,” Jack said. “It was definitely a heart transplant. I was told the donor had been in a motorcycle accident. I suppose it could have been an identical twin. No wonder it was a targeted donation.”
“What’s a targeted donation?”
“It’s when a transplant organ is gifted to a specific individual outside the official sharing system.”
“Well, now you know,” Bart said. “I promised Dr. Lynch I’d tell you right away.”
“Thanks, Bart,” Jack said. He felt a bit shell-shocked.
After he’d hung up with Bart, Jack stared ahead for a few minutes with unseeing eyes. It seemed that nothing about this case was conventional. Could the donor truly have been an identical twin? What a bizarre coincidence.
Pulling himself over to his monitor, Jack went on the Dover Valley Hospital website. The first thing that confronted him was a number of photos, and he was impressed from the moment the page opened. He’dexpected a small, generic community hospital with a bit of age. Instead, he was looking at pictures of a decidedly modern structure, considerably larger than he would have imagined, with carefully manicured grounds.
Selecting the “About Us” section and then the “Overview,” he read that the hospital was private, nonprofit, and founded in the 1920s as a community hospital, but by the turn of the century had evolved to be more of a nursing facility. Threatened with bankruptcy, it had been bought by GeneRx, the largest local employer, with the goal of renovating it to serve the health needs of its employees. But then GeneRx, being the good neighbor it was, decided to return the hospital back to functioning as a community resource as well, so that all the inhabitants of Dover and the immediate towns would have access to superior healthcare and not be forced to travel to find it. With two hundred beds and ultramodern facilities, the hospital was now fully accredited by the Joint Commission as “a provider of high-quality, comprehensive, and humanistic care.”
Moving on to the “Facts and Figures” section of the website, Jack read that it had been selected as a “Best Regional Hospital” according to a recentU.S. News & World Reportwith recognition of its 3T MRI machines, its hybrid operating rooms, its IVF, or in vitro fertilization, unit, and its certification as a transplant center that included heart transplants in addition to all the other more usual organs. He then read that the hospital was associated with the prestigious Manhattan General Hospital and many of its departments, although particularly through its own award-winning Zhao Heart Center.
Jack stopped reading and looked back at the mention of the Zhao Heart Center. “My word,” he said aloud. “This Zhao guy gets around.”
Going on to read the rest of the website, Jack found himself progressively more impressed, which considerably surprised him. Although he hadn’t admitted it to himself, he had been prepared to have a negative feeling about the place. Yet the hospital sounded as if it was an island of healthcare excellence out in what he envisioned were the backwoods compared with NYC.
Jack’s positive reaction to the Dover Valley Hospital stimulated a curiosity about the facility’s owner, the company GeneRx. Jack had never heard of it, which wasn’t terribly surprising, as he was not oriented toward business, particularly businesses relating to healthcare. GeneRx sounded as though it was definitely healthcare-oriented, and probably related to gene therapy, according to its name.
Typing “GeneRx” into his browser, Jack was in for yet another surprise. It wasn’t in the same category as the donor heart and the recipient having the same CODIS result, but it was surprising nonetheless. GeneRx on its website was described as an up-and-coming biopharmaceutical company totally owned by a Chinese billionaire by the name of Wei Zhao, the same man Jack had just complimented as “getting around.”
Reading on, Jack learned that although the company had only a few products on the market currently, it had almost a dozen in phase III trials, all of which were expected to be available within a year or two. Looking at photos, Jack could see it was a sprawling, modern facility that had most likely been designed by the same architects who had done the Dover Valley Hospital. Looking further, Jack could see that the complex included a farm, aptly called the Farm Institute, in the same architectural style. Jack knew enough about current bioscience to know that the cutting edge in drug development was proteins such as monoclonal antibodies. Although these proteins were originally made laboriously by cell culture, now they were often made in bulk by farm animals such as goats, sheep, pigs, and chickens. Using the latest methods of genetic manipulation, such as the gene-editing technique CRISPR/CAS9 to add genes or to remove them, these familiar barnyard animals were turned into transgenic, living bioreactors producing the desired drugs in their milk, eggs, or blood.
Fascinated, Jack next focused his search on Wei Zhao. In a fraction of a second there were millions of hits. Jack might not have heard of Wei Zhao, but a lot of other people obviously had. Most of the articles were about biotech and the pharmaceutical industry. A number were inChinese. Glancing down the links, Jack found a promising Wikipedia article and clicked it open. There was more material than he wanted because he knew he needed to get home, so he skimmed it. Even the highlights were riveting.
Wei Zhao had been born in 1960 in Shanghai, China, to parents who were academics at Fudan University but also landowners. It was being landowners that was their downfall, as the family became targeted by students during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Although only six years of age at the time, Wei was banished along with his parents to the countryside, where the parents were forced to work the land. All three almost starved. But as a resourceful teenager who was willing to accept the dogma and emulate the Red Guards, Wei ended up back in Shanghai, where he eventually managed to be admitted into the Shanghai Jiao Tong University. There he applied himself and studied biotechnology with a particular emphasis on pharmaceutical manufacturing. Seeing a future in generic drugs on the world stage, he founded his first company at age twenty-five and never looked back. He was a millionaire by thirty and a billionaire by thirty-five as he expanded into all aspects of the pharmaceutical industry. It was at that time that he expanded his operations into the United States and founded GeneRx in Dover, New Jersey.
Jack’s mobile phone pulled his attention away from his reading. A quick glance confirmed the worst: It was Laurie, and he immediately felt guilty. Another glance informed him it was after six. He answered with a manufactured cheerful hello.
“Why aren’t you home?” Laurie demanded. Jack could tell she was stressed, which he could have guessed would be the case. He wondered if it had to do with the “company” but resisted asking.
“Still at the grindstone,” Jack said instead, trying to be cute. “I’ve made some progress on the subway case. I now have a name, even if I don’t have a confirmed diagnosis.”
“I need you here,” Laurie said, not taking the bait.
“I’m on my way,” Jack said. “I’ll be home in twenty minutes or so.”
“Don’t take any unnecessary risks,” Laurie cautioned. “I wish you’d use Uber or Lyft. I hate to think of you on that bike in traffic.”
“It would be twice the time by car,” Jack said, trying to help her see the bright side.
“At least you’d be in one piece.”
After appropriate goodbyes, Jack grabbed his bomber jacket and headed for the back elevator.
16
TUESDAY, 6:40 P.M.
Once again, there was a good turnout on the basketball court, Jack noted, as his route home brought him past the neighborhood park. It was obvious people intended to take advantage of the string of decent days the city had been experiencing. That day the high had been in the sixties, despite it being the beginning of November. Most important, Jack could see that Warren was already there. Jack had hoped his friend would be playing that evening, because Jack had a big favor to ask and wanted to do it in person.
