Robin Cook: Seizure

Although her faculty of reminiscence has faltered, mine hasn’t; so heartfelt thanks, Mom, for all your love, dedication, and sacrifices particularly during my early years… an appreciation made more poignant and profound now that I have a healthy, happy, and rambunctious three-year-old boy of my own!

As with many of my novels, particularly those dealing with expertise beyond my undergraduate chemistry and graduate medical training in surgery and ophthalmology, I have benefited greatly from the professional erudition, wisdom, and experience of friends and friends of friends for the research, plotting, and writing of Seizure , whose storyline spans medicine, biotechnology, and politics. A host of people have been extraordinarily generous with their valuable time and insights. Those whom I would specifically like to acknowledge are (in alphabetical order):

Jean Cook, MSW, CAGS: a psychologist, a perceptive reader, a courageous critic, and an invaluable sounding board.

Joe Cox, J.D., LLM: a gifted tax lawyer as well as a reader of fiction, who is conversant with corporate structure, financing, and offshore legal issues.

Gerald Doyle, M.D.: a compassionate internist cast from a bygone mold, with a first-class referral list of accomplished clinical physicians.

Orrin Hatch, J.D.: a venerated senior senator from Utah, who graciously allowed me to experience firsthand a typical day in the life of a senator and who regaled me with humorous stories of late senators whose biographies were a fertile source for creating my fictional Ashley Butler.

Robert Lanza, M.D.: a human dynamo who tirelessly struggles to bridge the gap between clinical medicine and 21st-century biotechnology.

Valerio Manfredi, Ph.D.: an exuberant Italian archeologist and author himself, who magnanimously arranged introductions and my visit to Turin, Italy, for my research into the remarkable Shroud of Turin.

Monday, February 22, 2001, was one of those surprisingly warm midwinter days that falsely prophesied the arrival of spring to the inhabitants of the Atlantic seaboard. The sun was bright all the way from Maine to the tip of the Florida Keys, providing a temperature variation astonishingly less than twenty degrees Fahrenheit. It was to be a normal, happy day for the vast majority of people living within this lengthy littoral, although for two exceptional individuals, it was to be the start of a series of events that would ultimately cause their lives to tragically intersect.

1:35 P.M.

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Daniel Lowell looked up from the pink phone message he held in his hand. Two things made it unique: First, the caller was Dr. Heinrich Wortheim, Chairman of the Department of Chemistry at Harvard, saying he wanted to see Dr. Lowell in his office, and second, the little box labeled URGENT was marked with a bold X. Dr. Wortheim always communicated by letter and expected a letter in return. As one of the world’s premier chemists occupying Harvard’s lofty and heavily endowed department chair, he was eccentrically Napoleonic. He rarely mixed directly with the hoi polloi that included Daniel, even though Daniel was head of his own department, which came under Wortheim’s authority.

“Hey, Stephanie!” Daniel called out across the lab. “Did you see this phone message on my desk? It’s from the emperor. He wants to see me in his office.”

Stephanie looked up from the dissecting stereomicroscope she’d been using and glanced at Daniel. “That doesn’t sound good,” she said.

“You didn’t say anything to him, did you?”

“How would I have a chance to say anything to him? I’ve only seen him twice during my entire Ph.D. travail-when I defended my dissertation and when he handed me my diploma.”

“He must have some idea about our plans,” Daniel surmised. “I suppose it’s not too surprising, considering all the people I’ve approached to be on our scientific advisory board.”

“Are you going to go?”

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

It was only a short walk from the lab to the building that housed the departmental administrative offices. Daniel knew he was facing a confrontation of sorts, but it didn’t matter. In fact, he was looking forward to it.

The moment Daniel appeared, the departmental secretary motioned him to go directly into Wortheim’s inner sanctum. He found the aging Nobel laureate behind his antique desk. With his white hair and thin face, Wortheim appeared older than his purported seventy-two years. But his appearance did not diminish his commanding personality, which radiated from him like a magnetic field.

“Please sit down, Dr. Lowell,” Wortheim said, regarding his visitor over the top of his wire-rimmed reading glasses. He had had a trace German accent despite his having lived in the United States most of his life.

Daniel did as he was told. He knew a faint, insouciant smile, which he was certain would not be missed by the department head, lingered on his face. Despite Wortheim’s age, his faculties were as sharp as ever and attuned to any slight. And the fact that Daniel was supposed to kowtow to this dinosaur was part of the reason he was so certain of his decision to leave academia. Wortheim was brilliant, and he’d won a Nobel Prize, but he was still mired in last century’s inorganic synthetic chemistry. Organic chemistry in the form of proteins and their respective genes was the present and future of the field.

It was Wortheim who broke the silence after the two men had eyed each other. “I gather from your expression that the rumors are true.”

“Could you be more specific?” Daniel responded. He wanted to be sure his suspicions were correct. He hadn’t planned to make an announcement for another month.

“You have been forming a scientific advisory board,” Wortheim said. He got to his feet and began to pace. “An advisory board can mean only one thing.” He stopped and stared at Daniel with acrimonious disdain. “You’re planning to tender your resignation, and you have or you are about to found a company.”

“Guilty as accused,” Daniel proclaimed. He couldn’t keep his smile from expanding to a full grin. A deep red had suffused over Wortheim’s face. Undoubtedly, Wortheim equated the situation to Benedict Arnold’s traitorous behavior during the American Revolutionary War.

“I personally went out on a limb when you were recruited,” Wortheim snapped. “We even built the laboratory facility that you demanded.”

“I won’t be taking the lab with me,” Daniel responded. He couldn’t believe Wortheim was trying to make him feel guilty.

“Your flippancy is galling.”

“I could apologize, but it would be insincere.”

Wortheim returned to his desk. “Your leaving is going to put me in a difficult position with the president of the university.”

“I’m sorry about that,” Daniel said. “I can say that in all sincerity. But this kind of bureaucratic shenanigan is part of the reason I’m not going to miss academia.”

“What else?”

“I’m tired of sacrificing my research time for teaching.”

“Your teaching burden is one of the least onerous in the department. We negotiated that when you came on board.”

“It still keeps me from my research. But that’s not the major issue, either. I want to reap the benefits of what my creativity has produced. Winning prizes and getting articles in scientific journals isn’t enough.”