She couldn’t argue. The scientific community was worse than Hollywood when it came to airing dirty laundry; rather than sex scandals or weight problems, academic gossip focused on research failures, perceived plagiarism, or ethical breaches. And Horton knew too many colleagues who would delight in seeing a fellow scientist fall publicly on her face.

“I’ll just vent to you, Neil,” she said. “Promise.”

“Consider me your exhaust pipe.” With a smile, he rose from his seat. He headed for the door, but then stopped halfway and turned back.

She shook her head. “What, Neil?”

He stared at her with the look of a wounded puppy. “El, we … you have come way too far to be undermined by idle rumors now.”

“I won’t mention the chimps outside the lab again,” she said. “Now go do something more useful than hassling me.” She forced a smile, but she felt a familiar tightening behind her sternum. She took a few deep breaths and tried to swallow away the sudden constriction in her throat.

10 - Vancouver, Canada

10

Vancouver, Canada

The moment Parminder Singh regained consciousness in the post-op assessment room of St. Michael’s Hospital, she forced her head off the bed and focused her swirling vision on her left arm. She had a nightmarish flashback to the moment prior to going under when Dr. Wong had warned her that she might wake up missing part or all of her arm.

Parminder scanned the limb desperately. From the shoulder down it was swaddled in thick bandages. She felt no sensation in the entire arm. For a few panicky moments, she wasn’t sure if she still had a hand. Then she glimpsed a trace of pink at the far end of the bulky dressing. Concentrating intensely, she wiggled the pink nubs poking out from the end of the gauze, and realized, with a flood of relief, she was looking at her own fingers.

“Thank you, God!” She moaned a prayer in Punjabi, and let her heavy head fall back on the bed.

She felt a hand on her forehead. “It’s okay, Parminder,” the nurse’s voice cooed above her. “Everything went well. Your operation is over.”

Parminder couldn’t hold her eyes open. They drifted shut. She thought of her little six-month-old, Harjeet. He was the most wonderful blessing imaginable. She hoped Gurdev could manage Harjeet alone. Her husband loved their son—the boy they had both prayed for—but he was so new to fatherhood, he could barely change a diaper. Like Parminder, Gurdev was only twenty, but she had an advantage: She had helped look after her younger brothers ever since she was out of diapers.

She wanted so desperately to be home with her family. All this trouble over a breast infection that the doctor had told her was common among nursing mothers.