“I’ll be honest with you, Whitney, my superiors are pretty nervous about this interview. They’d hoped I’d finish my trials before we started bringing in the media. But I read your stuff, and the fact that someone who profiled Madonna wants to write about me and my work—let’s just say I pressed them for permission. I can fit all her albums on here.”

She tapped the iPod.

“What’s your favorite?” I asked.

“Ray of Light.”

Anyway, she went on, if her superiors thought they could keep the media out, they were being naive.

“But there’s an understandable need for discretion,” she said, “and I should warn you, if you’re going to do this story, you’ll have to get comfortable working around corporate protocols. Rubicon protects its trade secrets. Every medical technology company in the world wants what we have.”

“And what do you have?” I asked.

“You’re ready?”

“Sure.”

It was like a line she’d always wanted to say: “We have all the blood in the world.”

Later, I’d transcribe her word for word.

“Every two seconds, someone needs blood in this country,” she said. “The stats are terrifying. About 40 percent of Americans could donate, but less than 10 percent do. Do you?”

A brief silence as I shook my head.

“That leaves us with about seventeen thousand preventable deaths each year. That’s forty-six people per day lost because of a lack of blood, and we’re only talking about the US. We’ve taken to calling it the permanent drought. So many have tried, and failed, to find a solution.”

“And you have?”

She nodded.

“What is it?”

“Do you have a scientific background, Whitney?”

“Some,” I said, though that wasn’t really true. Mom had taught organic chemistry, that’s all.

“Nanometer-sized dendrites,” said Dr. Kriss, “a perfect equivalent to natural hemoglobin in terms of O2 and CO2 transport. The solution maintains arterial blood pressure and pH, and has intravascular persistence. It won’t overload the reticuloendothelial system, won’t react with oxygen. And it’s stable at room temperature, of course.”

When she saw my pen had stopped moving and I was just watching her lips, she laughed and said, “It’s plastic, basically.”

“Plastic blood.”

“Put very, very simply.”

“And it works?”

“We wouldn’t be in the final stage of the trial if it didn’t. We’ve jumped through a million hoops to get here. Your interest was sparked by a trial subject, right?”

“Yes,” I said. “Floella Bailey.”

Dr. Kriss reached for a laptop bag, withdrew a manila folder, and dropped a pair of purple-framed reading glasses on her nose.

“I brought her case file. My understanding is that her throat was severely traumatized, and the artery was severed.”

I remembered how the dog’s teeth had twisted the flesh. “It was horrible.”