“Last you told me, Kyra just had a new baby boy and had got her life in order,” Horton said. “Is she still … you know … okay?”

There was a long pause. When he spoke, Horton detected a strained lightness to his tone. “New baby?” He chuckled. “Wow, we’re aging. My little sister has a boy and a girl, ten and eight now. She’s a single parent, though. I help out a little where I can.”

“That’s good of you.” Horton said, not knowing what else to say.

“Listen, Ellen, have you heard at all about the new superbug in Vancouver?” Kilburn asked, his voice suddenly business-like.

“New superbug?” she said in genuine surprise. “I’ve been so tied up with Oraloxin and the FDA, I haven’t even looked at the paper in over a month. I haven’t heard a thing.”

“To be fair, I’m not sure the news has gone national … yet.” He sighed.

“What’s going on?”

“El, we have an outbreak of group-A strep that is multiresistant.”

“You mean to penicillin?” she asked.

“I mean to everything,” he said slowly. “Nothing we’ve tried has even touched it.”

“What? That’s unheard of!” she gasped. Her bleak mood and morbid thoughts were pushed aside as her mind churned through the staggering consequences of an ultraresistant G.A.S.

“It’s happened,” he said bluntly. He told her about Tom Mallek’s death and the mysterious connection to the young addict from the emergency room. Then he described Parminder Singh’s grave condition. “Listen, Ellen, if we don’t pull a rabbit out of our hats, she’s going to die.”

Horton’s pulse sped. She suddenly realized where Kilburn was heading, but she refused to make the leap for him. “I’m sorry, Graham. That sounds tragic. I don’t know what—”

“We’re all out of conventional medicine,” he interrupted. “I’ve got nothing left to offer, except … your new drug.”

She took a slow, deep breath. “Graham, it’s not approved for anything but clinical trials with MRSA.”

“I hear you,” he said. “But Oraloxin represents a whole new class of antibiotic, right?”

“In theory,” she said circumspectly.

“So there’s a chance it might offer something the others don’t?”

She shook her head at the phone. “Have you even tested Oraloxin’s response in the lab cultures to this resistant G.A.S.?”

“There’s no time. Besides, I don’t have any drug to test. All we have here are the study pills, which are blinded. So I don’t know which are the real drug and which are placebo.”

Horton swallowed. “I still don’t see how I can help you,” she said, though she did know.