No Time to Die by Kira Peikoff

knowledge and truth without retribution? Only she cared enough about the work to deserve it, even though Mitch would probably be the one to triumph with the faculty in the end. But that was beside the point now; if she did make a breakthrough as Nobel-worthy as she imagined, every biology department the world over would be begging to appoint her, no matter what technicalities she’d bypassed in the process. Theo would never have to worry about their financial stability again—and what was more, he’d have a confident hero in her, not a mother embittered from her dual failures at both love and work.
    Either she could sit around and wait for defensive lawyers and illogical parents and bureaucratic faculty to bicker it out for months or years. Or she could act. She turned on her heel for the tenth time and gazed across the room at her desk.
    The shiny black phone gleamed. She ran to her computer, did a quick Google search, and dialed a local number. It rang once before a recorded message picked up.
    â€œYou have reached the medical office of Dr. Ray Carlyle. To make an appointment, please press one. For prescription refills, press two. For the billing department, press three. For all other inquiries, please stay on the line.”
    She waited, inhaling the thick scent of gardenia.
    Soon a woman’s voice came on the line. “Dr. Carlyle’s office, how can I help you?”
    â€œYes,” she said in a higher-pitched voice than usual. “Hi. I’m the assistant to Dr. Mitch Grover at Columbia. You referred a patient to our lab earlier, Zoe Kincaid?”
    â€œOh yes, what can we do for you?”
    â€œDr. Grover needs another copy of her records faxed over. It hasn’t come through yet.”
    â€œOh, I’m sorry about that. I know I sent them earlier, but I could have gotten the number wrong. Can you give it to me again?”
    Natalie smiled. “Of course.”
    In just a few minutes, she’d have what she needed to begin.

    Fifteen minutes later, at 4:45 P.M ., the phone rang inside a locked and empty office nearby. When no one picked up, an answering machine beeped and a woman’s deferential voice punctured the stillness:
    â€œHello, Dr. Grover, this is Nancy calling from Dr. Carlyle’s office. I’m so sorry about the missing fax, but I’ve sent it again at your assistant’s request. I didn’t catch her name, but could you please have her call me back to confirm receipt? Thanks so much.”

CHAPTER 8
    New York City
4:45 P.M.
    T he mechanical beeping of the fax in the department’s common room was a beautiful sound. Natalie had the room all to herself—the water fountain, the Keurig coffeemaker, the bulletin board papered with outdated announcements, the vintage sofa—but most important, the dusty old machine in front of her. She watched with growing excitement as page after page of Zoe Kincaid’s medical history cranked out of it. Could this be a historic moment, she wondered—could these very pages make it into a museum one day? With a smile, she envisioned future people exploring an exhibit titled “The Age of Agelessness.” It would be about the twenty-first century’s advances in discovering and eradicating the biological causes of aging. Perhaps Theo’s kids would tour it, balking at pictures of sagging elderly folks, just as her generation had once balked at the fearsome scars of smallpox—a dangerous scourge of a bygone era, responsible for the deaths of countless victims.
    Perhaps she would still be around to tour the exhibit with them. Oh, how joyful it would be to know her child’s children, and theirs! Not as a bedridden grandmother, too weak like her own nana to answer the doorbell, but as a still-vigorous woman, immune to time, continuing to work, to love, to live. Life stretched ahead in her mind like an open highway, the horizon only a trick of the eye, with humanity riding not just into