Free Prescription: Makeover by Jessica Andersen Page B

against one another with apparent disregard for the laws of gravity, looking as though they might avalanche at any moment onto the desk that sat in the center of the small room, facing the single window. The desk surface was nearly dominated by a good size desktop computer and an industrial-looking printer, along with a Mason jar full of what looked like Super Balls and a beat-up-looking stuffed dog.
    Kupfer crossed to one of the bookcases and started flipping through a stack of papers, no doubt looking for the journal articles he’d mentioned. Ike wandered to the other side of the small room, where a few more personal items rested on a relatively neat shelf. She could’ve told him not to bother with the reprints, that she’d already studied everything he’d ever written, plus a handful of the most recent papers published by each of his competitors. Instead she scanned the shelf, looking for insight into Kupfer, a hint of whether he was Odin’s coconspirator or his next victim.
    She focused on a trifold frame that held three photographs, all of the same subjects — a handsome blond woman and a young, brown-haired boy with stick-thin limbs and a devilish glint in his eyes. She touched the frame. “This was your son?”
    It seemed safe to use the past tense without giving away her background research. Any Google search would pull up the story of how Kupfer had first started studying Duchenne muscular dystrophy because he’d had an affected son who’d died.
    “His name was Matthew.” Kupfer crossed the room and stood beside her so they were both looking at the photographs of a laughing mother and child. “He was only ten when the disease took him.”
    “Too young,” Ike said, trying hard not to let the boy in the photo blur to the memory of another challenged child, one with downward-turned eyes and her father’s chin.
    “I think he’d be proud of what I’ve accomplished here,” Kupfer said simply. Then he handed her a thick stack of reprinted journal articles and waved her to the door. “It’s getting late and you’ll want to settle in at your hotel. I’ll give you a quick tour of the lab so you can orient yourself and then tomorrow morning I’ll introduce you to my head tech, Sandy Boylen. She’ll help you run your tests.”
    It took Ike a half second to remember the blood samples Zach Cage had FedExed her from Boston General. That was ostensibly the reason she was there — to use Kupfer’s highly optimized fluorescent hybridization techniques to identify the genetic defects in three BoGen patients who had all the symptoms of the Duchenne but had so far screened negative for the known DMD mutations.
    She nodded. “That’d be great.”
    Beyond the heavy-duty negatively pressurized door, Kupfer’s lab consisted of five interconnecting rooms along one side of the building, plus a hallway leading to several smaller individual rooms that could be sealed and pressurized as needed, to protect the purity of the samples and experiments. As Ike followed the scientist from room to room, she inhaled the mingled scents of solvents, tissue culture media and floor wax that seemed to pervade just about every academic biotech lab she’d ever entered.
    Kupfer led her through a long room. “We process the patients’ blood samples in here, isolating the white blood cells and either immortalizing them in long-term culture or extracting DNA for amplification and sequencing. All of the procedures are performed under the hoods, to reduce the chance of cross-contamination.” He gestured to a series of glass-enclosed boxes along one wall, where panels could be pulled down to just above a tech’s gloved arms, allowing a gentle vacuum to suck up any fumes or debris. Lab benches were set along the other wall, some holding basic microbiological equipment, others piled with the bits and pieces of a working lab.
    “See if you can get him talking about the press conference,” William’s voice said suddenly in her ear,