Morad Zaffron is a medical doctor who has worked in private practice in the United States, the UK, and South Africa. He has a master’s degree in creative writing from the University of Cape Town, South Africa, and his poetry and short stories have appeared in international publications.

The Cure

By Morad Zaffron

Real African Publishers

Copyright © 2013 Morad Zaffron
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-9870347-5-5
CHAPTER 1

Dr Vincent Sebastian Bach International Convention Center, Manhattan, New York

His little brother was dying. Their parents were already dead. And as young Dr Vincent Bach faced the raucous mob, he suddenly feared that his life was over, and that if he couldn’t save this moment, he would let a million more people die in the days to come.

He winced as the heckling in the audience grew wilder. The cacophony of whistling, boos, and laughter thundered through the Grand Auditorium making it impossible for him to go on. From the podium he could only stare in disbelief at their reaction to his paper. At the very least, he had expected a standing ovation. After all, he’d brought these scientists the one thing that had eluded the best of them for decades. Yet, barely halfway through his presentation, and led by Professor Emil Sarty, a man he idolized, they had turned against him and were rising in scorn and pushing for the exits.

His heart pounded. The room swam in his gaze. Catching his image on the giant screen behind him, he shook his head. What in the world made him think that they would ever believe someone like him!

At twenty-six, with his long tousled hair, jeans and worn leather jacket, the strapping former postdoc from MIT and Harvard looked more like a grunge rocker than a scientist who’d just shocked this international gathering of his peers.

When they began clicking phone cams in his direction — no doubt posting their version of his disgrace on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube — he knew he’d become a worldwide joke long before the room cleared.

Cold sweat drenched him. His gaze darted from the dwindling crowd to his tablet computer on the lectern. Even as he yelled into the wireless coms, begging them for another chance, his fingers were a blur on the touchscreen, typing the codes that would launch a million bots to find and destroy any image of his face online. The move was instinctive, a survival mechanism, to salvage some dignity in his sudden new-found notoriety.

Alone now, he lurched as a wave of dizziness struck him. Christ! How long had it been since he’d last eaten? A day …? Two days …? How long since he’d last slept? Vincent’s days of late blended into one another. He hardly left his apartment, began each day by bathing his brother Chris, giving his meds, and coaxing vital nourishment into the teenager’s emaciated body. The meds — his experimental IV cocktails keeping the boy alive — were nearly finished. And so was the money to make more of the drugs.

He’d spent the last month on his crude supercomputer, testing his hypothesis as he refined his paper for tonight. The one he believed held the best hope for Chris. The one he now flung in the trash on his way to the exit.

Dreading the mob in the foyer, Vincent drew a deep breath, his hands trembling as he mopped his brow. Unbelievable, he whispered. He’d become a doctor at age fifteen, had four PhDs by the time he was twenty, yet his mind was blank right now. He couldn’t figure what to do next, how to survive this.

Not since he’d watched his parents die had he felt this kind of pain and heartbreak and anger. Now he would face, for the second time this evening, those who had robbed him of the chance to save his only kin.

Earlier, he’d been heartened by the Big Pharma boys, the Biotech types, and the VC suits scouting the talent. How he dreamed of them fawning over his discovery. But his heart sank when he stepped into the foyer and found only antipathy instead of admirat