The meeting with Linton Reed started off on a bad note. Pete reached the university in ample time, but he was forced to drive around the campus in search of the Health Sciences Building, which he hadn’t spotted on the map he’d picked up at the campus information center. He pulled a ticket from the dispenser and circled the lot until he found a parking space. On reaching the clinic’s administrative offices, he made a point of asking to have his parking ticket validated. In the event the conversation didn’t go well, he didn’t want to get stuck paying the campus parking fees. The department secretary didn’t approve of his being there, but she didn’t have the nerve to refuse to validate his ticket. She pasted three stickers to the back. He took a sly satisfaction from her dislike of him, which she could barely conceal.

To retaliate, Pete was made to wait thirty-five minutes before he was escorted down the hall and allowed into His Holy Presence. The good doctor was handsome; smooth cheeks, clear blue eyes, fleshy lips, and a nose with a slight upward tilt to it. His was the kind of face most would trust. Dr. Reed’s first glimpse of Pete had generated a nearly imperceptible flicker of surprise in the good doctor’s eyes. Pete caught it. He always caught that look.

Linton Reed observed him with clinical detachment and Pete could see his mental processes at work. Dr. Reed had doubtless read about Pete’s disorder in medical texts, but this might have been the first real live instance he’d come across. Naturally, that would make Pete a curiosity. Dr. Reed said, “Which of your parents suffered from Marfan syndrome?”

“My father,” Pete said. He felt an instant dislike for the young man, who apparently thought his being a doctor entitled him to probe Pete’s genetic history when the two had only just been introduced. Marfan was an autosomal dominant condition, which meant that a defective gene from only one parent was needed to pass the disease on. It also meant that each child of an affected parent has a 50-50 chance of inheriting the defective gene. It annoyed Pete that in his “doctor” role, Linton Reed had adopted a deeper tone of voice. This was meant to underscore his authority, conveying the rights vested in him as a medical wizard entitled to pry into everybody else’s private business.