There was nothing public about the place; it gathered no data, made no findings that might be more generally applied. This was not “a place of treatment”; it was a place for the treatment of Ibrahim Alalayli. Remove that name from the equation and you had nothing.

Ashraf encountered young doctors who had never studied or treated anything but the health and habits of Alalayli: orthopedists who’d straightened only Alalayli’s bones; heart specialists who specialized in Alalayli’s heart. Of all these generalists, surgeons, hematologists, and vascular experts only a small minority, very rarely, were actually compelled to make some intervention. Most would stay in the laboratory for years on end, studying and analyzing and running routine tests. There were those, like Ashraf, who’d arrived after a short stint in the field; others had only known the lecture hall. Some were skilled and respected practitioners who had retired but accepted Alalayli’s proposal that they drop everything to care for him should the call come. Most worked in the building full time, a few lived there, and a very few actually traveled with him wherever he went. There was the car that carried the personal bodyguards and then, never more than a few meters away, another vehicle, unremarkable from the outside, but fitted out with state-of-the-art equipment and carrying a team of highly skilled doctors and paramedics. Never more than a few meters from their client, who wouldn’t move an inch without them, sat the emergency room elite and the specialists—heart and veins and brains.

Alalayli had resolved not to die.