I understand," I said, the lie tasting like copper in my mouth. I didn't understand anything. not the bank building, not the lack of medical staff, and certainly not the predatory grace of the man sitting across from me.
Mr. Jason reached into a drawer and withdrew a small, sleek black case. He stood, his movements fluid and silent, and circled the vast desk until he was looming over me. He was close enough that I could see the fine weave of his charcoal pinstripe suit, close enough that the scent of him began to cloud my senses. He was towering, easily over six feet, casting a long shadow that swallowed my small, seated frame.
He set the case on the edge of the desk with a soft click and unzipped it, revealing a sterile array of needles, glass vials, and antiseptic wipes. I sat up straighter, my muscles tensing. Between the rounds of failed chemotherapy and the constant prodding of the Cleveland Hulgo staff, I'd become a human pincushion. I was used to the sting, but I'd never become blasé about it.
And besides, blood collection in a penthouse office? It was beyond unconventional; it was reckless.
"The results of this screening will indicate if your genetic markers make you a viable candidate for the procedure," Mr. Jason said. His voice was a low hums. He selected a needle from the kit, locking it into a plastic holder with a clinical snap. "But you must know, Amanda, that even if the outcome is encouraging, the treatment is only successful in a small minority of cases."
"How small?" I asked. I focused on a stray thread on my sweater, trying to distract myself from the silver glint of the needle. I figured I could always Google the statistics for this "experimental" trial later, assuming it even had a name.
"One in a hundred," he said, his voice devoid of any sugar coating. "Perhaps less."
"Oh," I whispered, the word escaping in a small, hollow breath. "That... that is small."
"And you must also understand the gravity of the failure," he continued, his eyes locking onto mine. "If the procedure is unsuccessful, it does not merely result in a lack of cure. It always results in immediate death."
"Wait, what?" I recoiled, my back hitting the brocade of the chair. My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird. What kind of medical procedure carried a hundred percent mortality rate for failure? "So, a one percent chance of a cure, and a ninety nine percent chance of... of dying on the table? That doesn't sound like smart odds. That sounds like a suicide mission."
He paused, the needle held steady in his long, blunt fingers. He looked up, his gaze piercing me, his eyes appearing deep and unnervingly hollow under his straight black brows. Up close, I noticed that despite his devastating beauty, he didn't exactly look like the picture of health either. There was a paleness to his skin that looked less like a lack of sun and more like a lack of life.
"Tell me, Amanda," he said softly. "What are your chances right now?"
I opened my mouth to argue, then snapped it shut. The silence in the room was the answer. My chances were exactly nil. Zero. I was already a dead girl walking; I was just waiting for my body to realize it. When the alternative is a guaranteed grave in five months, gambling on a one percent miracle didn't seem quite so insane. It was the only hand I had left to play.
"That is why we only select the terminal," he said, pulling a glass collection tube from the case. The vacuum seal hissed as he prepped it.
"What about relapse?" I demanded, clutching at the last remnants of my logic. I'd spent a year learning that cancer was a shadow; it could lurk in the marrow for decades, undetectable, until it decided to spring out and finish the job. "No treatment is perfect. It could come back."
"There is no risk of relapse. If you are cured by this method, you are cured." That mesmerizing, icy gaze caught me again, holding me still. "Forever."
He dropped to one knee next to my chair to reach my arm, and my heart did an unexpected, traitorous backflip. Oh, God, he was beautiful. Up close, his features were even more symmetrical, his skin like polished marble. It was a visceral, magnetic pull that I had no business feeling for a man who was currently holding a needle to my vein. I tried to force my brain to think of something else, anything else. I tried to summon images of pink elephants, counting them one by one in my head to drown out the heat rising in my face.
But as he reached for my arm, his fingers cold as ice against my skin, his scent overwhelmed my defenses. My mind refused to obey. Pink elephants, pink elephants, pink elephants, I chanted internally, while every nerve ending I had left screamed in response to his touch.