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She found herself wondering what he’d been like as a teenager, all lanky limbs and dreams of basketball. He’d told her once, in an offhand way, that he’d wanted to be Kareem Abdul-Jabbar when he was younger.
No wait… he hadn’t told that to her. He’d made the comment to someone else, when they’d been riding the elevator in a group.
Gus turned his whole body toward her, swiveling his chair around. And even though they had known each other professionally for a couple of years, and she trusted him as much as she trusted anybody, she was suddenly scared of him. But that was more what he might say, wasn’t it.
His face was a mask, no emotion showing.
“Tell me,” she said in her best C.P. Phalen voice.
“I think you’re a good candidate for Vita.”
As C.P. released the breath she had been unaware of holding, she couldn’t tell what exactly she was relieved by: That she was the guinea pig they’d been looking for… or that, as a patient, she might have a last-ditch option that could, possibly, give her a little more time—because she knew better than to think in terms of a cure. Not after childhood cancer, then the two bouts of the AML before this moment.
Time. That was all she wanted.
“Yeah,” Gus said. “That’s what we all want.”
“I didn’t know I’d spoken that out loud.” She gave an awkward laugh. “Anyway. Good. This is what we want, right? This is… a good outcome.”
As he blew out a breath, he put his elbows on his knees and leaned in to her. The triangulated pose emphasized the size of his shoulders and his biceps, and for a self-defined geek—she’d heard him in the break room calling himself that—he was in better shape than most college guys. Then again, with the amount of Coke he sucked down on a regular basis? He had to burn all that energy off somehow, and evidently that would still be on the basketball court. Or at some gym.
When he stayed quiet, she frowned. “Okay, spill it. What isn’t going to work.”
“You know what my concerns are. All along, I’ve worried about what it’s going to do to the liver. If we get the leukemia under control, but leave you on dialysis? That’s not what we’re after.”
Her eyes went to his hands. They were blunt-tipped, his fingers squared off, his nails precisely trimmed and totally clean. He was lean enough that the veins that ran down into his hands were evident, and for some reason, that was sexy as hell.
Maybe because it made her wonder how tight his abs were.
“Anything else you’re concerned about?” she prompted.
“Where are you with all the negotiations? I know you went somewhere this morning? Can you tell me anything?”
“No, I can’t.”
His mouth thinned. “Well, what do we do if you crash? What if you can’t be… C.P. Phalen anymore?”
She opened her mouth. Closed it. “I don’t know. We’ll have to cross that bridge if we get to it.”
“Do you have a second-in-command?”
“On the business side? No. I’m a solo operator—it cuts down on the conversation.”
He laughed in a short rush. “Why am I not surprised.” Then he got serious again. “Okay, so as your oncologist, I’m going to go into my spiel here. You need to be prepared for side effects, some of which may be debilitating. I’m going to ask that you stay down here when we administer the protocol—”
“Why can’t I just be upstairs in my home.”
“Your bedroom is not a clinical space.”
“Yes, it is—”
“Look, I’m not going to argue with you, or remind you that we will be introducing a novel agent into your body that has never been in a human before.”
She pointed to the screen. “Is there anything else we need to discuss with the tests?”
“No, MD Anderson did an extensive workup when you were there two weeks ago. Is that where you went today?”
“I did go to Houston. But I didn’t follow through on my appointment.”
