Their Memoriam: A Reverse Harem Romance (Utopia Inc Book 1) Read online

  Oz grew up in the US. Government dictated scientific objectives, and only those facilities accepting government funding, thus oversight, were allowed to operate. The legal red tape and bureaucracy created untenable conditions for deep dive studies.

  “All right, is there any way to identify if it’s progressive?” I couldn’t adapt to what I didn’t understand.

  “Not yet. I have to go over the CT Scan results, and I may want to repeat these with contrast. I’m assuming you’ve already done full blood panels?” He gave me a knowing look, a faint sympathetic smile on his lips.

  “Yes, and all I learned is that I am in excellent health. I already told you about the DNA.” We didn’t have enough information. Leaning back in the chair, I cradled the coffee. The steam gave his kind, if earnest, expression an ethereal air. “Even my medical history doesn’t suggest mental disease or defect…of course the genetic repairs might have fixed any abnormalities.” Which took us to a whole new level.

  “Hypothetically, do you think there is a way you could have repaired the shredding DNA issue you mentioned?”

  “The obvious answer should be yes, since mine is obviously no longer affected. But I lack confidence in that particular result, since I can’t recall doing it. Fact—I spoke to the White House Chief of Staff in a private meeting in Dubai. Fact, I returned to my facility and began genetic testing on a dozen independently taken samples, including one from myself. I found evidence of the genetic shedding he’d told me about. Fact, I began doing research on reported rise and fall in various areas—birth rate, genetic based disease, everything I could think of…but I didn’t have all the results yet.”

  An image of Oneora, a gorgeous beach on Waiheke Island. My lab had been located there—about a thirty-five minute ferry ride from Auckland.

  Auckland.

  New Zealand.

  The AJ—Dirk—he was Australian.

  Had we met there?

  “So, what is the last thing you can remember?”

  I’d asked myself that a hundred times. “I don’t know. I have a routine, I live by it. Yoga on the beach in the morning, fruit for breakfast, a single cup of coffee, and then my lab. I worked there until lunch when I took a break and stared at the view while I ate a sandwich, usually cucumber and cream cheese or salmon. Afterward, I took a short walk, then back to my lab. The point is, I did this every single day—and my last day that I can remember is all of those things.”

  “Do you remember going home? Going to bed?”

  “Not in specific, as it feels like every other day.” I’d never felt so useless. Pressing my fingers against my lips, I swallowed back the urge to shriek. Giving into anxiety wouldn’t help. “Why don’t you tell me about you? You went to Johns Hopkins—studied immunology?”

  Relaxing into his chair, he studied me. Whatever he found must have satisfied him, because he nodded. “I was a surgical resident for a time. I wanted to go into cardio-thoracics.”

  “Immunology and allergy studies is a leap from cardio.”

  “Yes and no,” he said. “Transplants—heart and lung transplants, to be specific—are the pinnacle for a cardio surgeon. Rejection drugs are in short supply, and only available to a designated set of hospitals and physicians.”

  “They can’t be produced in large quantities anymore.”

  “No,” Oz grimaced, then took a sip of his coffee. “Everyone blamed the pandemic on something—diseases allowed to get out of control, genetic dirty bombs, synthetic immune boosters, and conversely, immune suppressants used to treat transplant patients. For the first time, medicine had a plethora of donors but not enough medication to allow for the transplants.”

  “It bothered you.” The lack would bother any reasonable person, but Oz gave me a tight nod.

  “My mentor, Dr. Jeremiah Raglan—have you heard of him?”

  “No, I’m sorry.” The medical and scientific communities might have shrunk in the blowback against those in all phases of healthcare, but I tended to keep to myself.

  “He was a brilliant surgeon. Came up before the pandemic, and worked throughout it, treating patient after patient. He never left the hospital, slept in the on-call rooms. Six—seven months—he lost his wife and one of his kids while he was on duty.”

  What a horrific story. “That poor man.”

  “He wasn’t the only one affected, and he would only shrug if you tried to offer him sympathy.” He ran a hand over his smooth head, then shifted to sit forward. When he laid his hand on the desk, I slipped mine into his. Solidarity. “He treated my mom, and she was one of the few who recovered. She got pregnant with me a month after she left the hospital. Used to joke and say I was her miracle baby. She’d looked heaven in the eye, and they let her take home an angel.” His cheeks curved with his smile, self-conscious and yet adorable in the same moment. “Anyway,” he continued, giving my hand a squeeze. “Jeremiah kept in touch with my mom and with a lot of the patients he’d saved. Though he didn’t call it saving, he said he just didn’t give up on their lives and neither did they. I thought he was a magic man. A miracle worker. A gift. Yes, before you ask, my mother totally influenced the thought. When I decided to go into medicine, he wrote me a recommendation. When I finished medical school, he offered me an internship at Johns Hopkins. I worked with him for three brutal but amazing years.”

  Smile fading, he sobered and released my hand. “Then he was diagnosed with dilated cardiomyopathy. The powers that be decided he was not a good candidate for transplant, because he wouldn’t be approved for the anti-rejection medications. This brilliant mind, a man who never shied away from working right in the thick of the outbreak, wasn’t good enough for the government because he was only a doctor, and he was over sixty, what could he possibly have left to offer?”

  I didn’t fault him the bitterness. I would have been furious.

  “I watched him fade, bit by bit, until he died about six months after the last appeal of the decision was denied. I quit the next day and changed my specialty to immunology and allergy. I wanted to find a way to allow transplant patients to survive with an anti-rejection medication that wouldn’t be considered a danger to public health.”

  “Because the next time a Jeremiah crossed your path, you wanted to save them the way he saved your mom.” I could truly appreciate the desire.

  “More or less,” he said. “I wish I could say I was the winner of the medical lotto, but I was hamstrung most of the time.”

  “Regulations?”

  “Yep.” Then he winked, and I frowned. Regulations hamstrung him, yet he hadn’t been successful? Successful in finding the right combination or successful in getting approval for illegal research? We were being recorded, so I wouldn’t press for more information.

  Not yet, anyway.

  “Dr. Morgan,” I said raising my coffee cup. “It’s a pleasure to work with you.”

  He grinned and tapped his mug to mine lightly. “Agreed. You seem to be feeling better?”

  “I am.” I was warmer, inside and out. “I’m also starving.”

  “Then let me go grab us some lunch.” He rose, then tapped the screen to secure it. “Anything you hate?”

  Besides the lack of answers? “Nothing comes to mind, but we should probably keep it simple. Too much to eat, and we’ll need to go for a walk later.”

  “I don’t mind taking a walk, especially if Hatch already claimed your company for dinner.” Another wink from him, and a flutter filled my stomach.

  “I still need to get some work done myself,” I said, though I liked the idea of going for a walk with him. “Maybe we could go tomorrow?”

  Nodding slowly, he said, “I’d like that.” Crossing to the door, he glanced back and smiled again. “I’ll be right back.”

  I’d be here.

  Alone, I cradled the coffee and considered what I needed to add to my research—including what could cause a lesion on the hippocampus. Not only because of my memory, but for what it might mean for my future.

&nb
sp; As if we needed more problems.

  After lunch, I retreated to my lab for a couple of hours. Oz promised to go over the CT and MRI results with a fine-tooth comb, and I promised to return to the infirmary for a second round of scans with contrast. At my station, I loaded the most recent blood tests I’d run on everyone and began a comparison scan of our DNA. The most basic of DNA tests always highlighted problematic pairings, including alleles suggesting predisposition for certain medical conditions, or recessive genes which might lead to future issues for their progeny.

  Scan after scan returned data all within normal or acceptable ranges. All five of us were normal for our ethnic and cultural backgrounds, diverse as they were. I’d turned up the heat in my lab, but I was still wearing Oz’s medical coat. I needed to return it later.

  Rubbing a thumb against my lower lip, I stared at the results on the screen until they began to blur. Nothing within our genetic makeup suggested problems with shedding, mismatched chromosomes or dangerous, if recessive alleles. If I were to assess their profiles without having ever met them, I would label them ideal specimens, healthy and promising.

  Ideal.

  Tipping my head to the side, I stared at the screen. No one was ideal or perfect. Most of us had recessive genes for possible genetic conditions—like lactose intolerance, if nothing else. My father had a recessive for cystic fibrosis, my mother didn’t. I’d been fortunate…but how likely was it to find five people with no signs of any dangerous genetic recessive?

  Highly improbable.

  My DNA had been messed with… Who was to say theirs hadn’t been also? Scrubbing my hands over my face, I leaned back in the chair.

  “Computer, run hypothetical scenario—in the event of an individual with an autosomal recessive disorder present via recessive gene pairing, build a simulation for delivery via RNA virus, a repair for Tay-Sachs.” That had been on the list of chromosomal disorders my mother investigated during her time in a Russian think tank. She’d wanted to eliminate everything from multiple sclerosis tendencies to Huntington’s Disease.

  “More information required.”

  “Build model using alleles paired from subjects one and two, then add a recessive for Tay-Sachs.” I closed my eyes and tried to picture what the DNA strand would look like. “Time to completion of model?”

  “One hour and twelve minutes until match and replication comparison model built.” The response was a reasonable time to match, compare, and determine dominance versus recessive, then insert the troublesome gene.

  “Computer, while building the model, begin extrapolating RNA delivered vectors, viral and non-viral, for repairing or rewriting the Tay-Sachs gene.” Testing for carriers of Tay-Sachs had been in place for nearly a hundred years. Carriers could eliminate the chance of producing a child active with the disease by not partnering with another carrier or avoiding having children altogether. Treatments for a child with the active gene still remained few and not effective for long-term survival.

  “Parameters?” The computer inquired.

  “The RNA virus must only affect the gene, must not cause shedding of other DNA pairs, and must not affect the overall health and well-being of the modeled patient.” Hard to prove, but simulations could run likely outcomes. “Postulate all probable outcomes. Begin least invasive to most.”

  “Acknowledged. Estimated time to completion 31 hours.”

  Pushing away from the desk, I stood and stretched. The time to build the models, to run the various simulations and compile the data aggravated me. Methodical was the only way to begin looking for solutions. Pacing away from my desk, I paused… “Computer, add a secondary condition to the search of completed simulations—bruising or lesions on the brain.”

  “Acknowledged. Additional time required to complete all parameters.” Salt on the wound, but I accepted it as the cost of research. I was asking for some highly detailed specifics. Even if we had an actual DNA sample to work from and not one I was requesting to have constructed, it would take time.

  “Computer, third task—search archives for samples representative of a Tay-Sachs recessive carrier. Repeat the same models using RNA viral and non-viral vectors.” If I wanted to get real results, I needed to look at all possibilities.

  “Acknowledged…”

  “Yes, I am aware it will take longer. Add a fourth task, using a replicate of sample one, subject it to the same RNA viral and non-viral vectors.”

  “Query.” Funny, the computer almost sounded like one of my professors when I’d challenged them at medical school. “A replicate of sample one does not contain the gene associated with Tay-Sachs. Please confirm request.”

  “Request confirmed.”

  “Acknowledged. Time to complete all tasks in excess of 48 hours. Would you like me to send you a notification when simulations are complete?”

  “Yes.” Gripping the back of my chair, I blew out a breath. I needed to leave the lab. I’d only been in it for a couple of hours, but I wanted the results now, and I had multiple ideas for how I could tackle this problem.

  Had it been like this after Torrens presented the problem to me the first time around? I went back to Auckland, returned to my lab, and ran my DNA first. Torrens had given me a data disc with the files of more than three dozen women, all suffering the same genetic shed. Their symptoms included an inability to conceive. There was similar data on a number of XY patients—men—unable to father children.

  Closing my eyes, I pictured inserting the disc into my desktop set up while beginning the methodical review of each DNA profile. Torrens promised me samples, but I hadn’t received them yet. The information they provided me was uniform in the details, the tests run a very basic computer rendering of the details of chromosome twisting, enough to give me a framework but not the same kind of tests I’d run.

  Eyes open, I walked across the room to the drafting desk. In the top drawer were large pads of graph paper. Pulling them out, I set them in a row, then retrieved the colored pencils. It would take time, but I could reconstruct every single one of those initial reports.

  Sometimes, the eidetic memory could come in handy. If I’d read or reviewed it, I could picture it again, and I had read every single one of those reports. It was how I processed information. I needed the whole picture.

  Absorbed in coloring in the charts I created from memory, I barely glanced up at the sound of a chime. It was far too soon for the computer to have finished building the models. When the chime repeated twice more, I finished the last column of the sheet I’d been working on and turned to look at the screen. Nothing on the display indicated completion.

  The chime dinged again, and I twisted to glance at the door. My back protested the sudden movement and the stiffness in my neck along with the burn in my fingers told me I’d been working too long. “Enter,” I said, rubbing the back of my neck and stretching my lower back.

  Dressed in jeans and deep blue, button-down shirt which matched his eyes, Hatch appeared in the opening. A wry smile curved his lips. “Did you forget about our dinner date?”

  “No, but I had lunch a…” I checked the clock on the wall and frowned. It had been seven hours since I bid Oz adieu and came to my lab to work. “My apologies. I didn’t realize.”

  “Not a problem, gorgeous. You have to be hungry. I can bring the dinner in here, if you want.” He swept his gaze around the room, lips pulling taut against his teeth. “Then again, maybe we could go somewhere less—I’m going to dissect your brain, maybe?” He softened the criticism with a flash of a smile. “Pretty please with a glass of red wine on top?”

  Amused, I folded my arms. “Well, that would depend entirely on the vintage.”

  Squinting at me, Hatch’s smile grew ever wider. “It’s red.”

  Laughter welled up from within. “As opposed to?”

  “Not red?” The less than helpful response had his smile wobbling a fraction, then he spread his hands. “Actually, I have a surprise, and you’re kind of tap dancing on it.”
r />   “Hmm, I’d apologize but realizing you had a surprise for me would require me to read your mind.”

  “If you could read my mind, doc, you’d be traumatized or aroused—probably both.” With a wink, he closed the distance between us and spread his hands wide. “I’m unarmed. I’m here to spend an evening with a lovely lady. I worked to make it extra special, just for you.”

  “You really believe everything you say, don’t you?” The promise of being both traumatized or aroused intrigued me. As reluctant as I was to abandon my compiling of what I could remember of those files, Hatch made it sound worthwhile.

  “Believe what you say, say what you believe.” He held his hands out to me, palms up. “I love the dress by the way, but I promise you won’t need the lab coat.”

  Slipping off the coat, I laid it over the strewn papers and colored pencils. Appreciation filled his eyes, and he whistled.

  “Let me rephrase that sentiment. You look fantastic, and I approve of the color.”

  A quiver rippled through my belly. “Thank you.” Accepting his hand, I let him pull me close. When he dipped his head, I closed my eyes. He brushed his lips to my cheek, and the quiver in my midsection became a full-fledged quake. “I get preoccupied with my work, and no I didn’t forget we were having dinner. I merely lost track of time.”

  “Glad to hear it.” He lifted my hand and kissed it. “In that case, let’s get this surprise on the road.” Gripping my hand, he led me out of the lab, and the door sealed behind us. The hallway between my lab and the infirmary was empty.

  I hadn’t seen Oz since lunch, and come to think of it, I hadn’t seen Dirk or Andreas since my walkout the day before. “Is everyone else all right?”

  “They’re fine. Captain Awesome is working in the garden with Andreas. I’ll take a shift down there tomorrow with Oz. The doctors, in their infinite wisdom, have decided a timeout was in order.” His words intrigued me. Still holding my hand, he led me into the lift. “Level Three,” he instructed the computer.