Death Benefit by Robin Cook Page A

the gossip that she and Rothman had something going since she was the only person in the entire medical center that he got along with except for Dr. Yamamoto.
    Lesley looked over at Will, but he was staring at Pia. When they’d received their assignment, Lesley had told Will that she’d sat next to Pia in a lab every day for a month the first year but she was sure Pia wouldn’t remember. Lesley hadn’t made up her mind if Pia was extremely focused on her work or just plain rude, although she thought it was the former. As for Will, he was excited to be finally matched with Pia—he’d wanted to be for three and a half years. He’d been sure to introduce himself to every woman in the student body he deemed attractive, but this was the closest he’d come to her.
    “Okay. Introductions done,” Yamamoto said. It hadn’t been quite as awkward as he feared, and he was relieved. He could get down to business.
    “If it’s okay, we can go to my office. I’d like you to come as well, Pia. There are a couple of things we need to talk over and then we can all go take a look at the organ baths with Dr. Rothman.”
    Yamamoto beamed a smile and walked away, the two new students padding closely after him. Pia brought up the rear, reluctant to be leaving her reading but excited at the same time. Even though she had been working there for years, she had never seen the organ baths. Although she had spent more actual time with Dr. Yamamoto than she had with Rothman, she didn’t feel she knew him as well. In her mind he was more complicated than Rothman. She thought of him as a kindly man but knew that in his own way, he was just as demanding as the chief. He suffered fools no more gladly, but his reprimands and corrections were delivered more politely and at lower volume. Pia had gathered from experience that the quieter Yamamoto spoke, the more important it was to listen.
    “Okay, guys, find a seat.”
    The condition of Yamamoto’s office in comparison with Rothman’s was as different as the men’s personalities. Yamamoto’s looked like a typhoon had passed through it. Books, journals, files, documents, papers lay everywhere, including on each of the two seats in front of the desk. Visitors took it on faith that Yamamoto actually had a desk as every square inch was under paper, including a mountain of academic journals positioned so that a curious passerby couldn’t see whether the doctor was sitting behind his desk or not.
    “Just move those papers,” Yamamoto said, as Pia and Lesley Wong gathered them up from the chairs but searched in vain for a free surface on which to put them down. Yamamoto gestured to the floor, a suggestion the women took. He leaned his posterior against the front of the desk and folded his arms. “You could get a chair from the lab,” he suggested to Will.
    “No problem,” Will said. “I’ll stand.”
    “I thought it appropriate for us to do a small review and go over some introductory material so you people can better appreciate what you’re about to see,” Yamamoto said. “You are in for a treat today. I’ve gotten special dispensation from Dr. Rothman to show you our organ bath program, which has been kept a secret of sorts up until now. It couldn’t have been kept a complete secret as there are too many people working here, and we’re here in a very public medical center. Since the professor and I are close to publication, secrecy is no longer the issue it was since the university has already seen to it that the appropriate patents have been applied for. At the same time, we would prefer that you keep what you see today to yourselves. Deal?”
    All three students nodded.
    “All right, let’s start at the beginning. But I don’t want to make this a boring monologue so help me out! Somebody tell me what a stem cell is.”
    The three students eyed one another. Will spoke up. “In simple terms it’s an undifferentiated immature cell that has the potential of becoming a