Until learning that he would die soon, Nigel Leary (who preferred to forego the title of “Doctor”) had never missed an appointment. Once stunned with the diagnosis, he had already failed to make it to many, that morning, in a row. At ten o’clock (two hours after his consultations were supposed to have gotten started), he staggered into the lobby. By using a side door to the office, which hadn’t occurred to him in his virtually vegetative state, he could have escaped any hint of hostility. The group that awaited his entrance into the little room assailed the newcomer. They complained about how long the delay had lasted. Nigel moved among them in a daze. It deafened him.  He couldn’t hear –– nor was he aware of –– what troubled everybody. Rather, he mentally dealt with the news of his own alarmingly imminent death.

The remarks only worsened as he passed the impatient people. Had the target of their displeasure been remotely preceptive, he would have observed one elderly woman who calmly kept her almost aristocratic composure. The frail lady was seated by herself in a corner. She regally held what resembled a medieval book in her lap. It weighed on her legs with its leather heft. Rivets, straps and a padlock bound the text together. Nigel would have admired the artifact on a less horrifying day.

Marian Nicks, Nigel’s secretary and assistant, alone realized how oddly her employer behaved. It scared her. Nigel had always prided himself on his punctuality. Plastic surgeons had worries enough without any scheduling issues arising. They worked in a field where the quacks who preyed on the rich and insecure earned their colleagues an equally bad reputation. Nigel adhered to a stricter code of conduct. A decent image was important to him to uphold. In 1974 (yet even more so in Los Angeles, California), bellbottoms, ridiculous sideburns and giant collars were common. Nigel fought the trend. As a blond, handsome and fit thirty-nine-year-old, he could have exploited his surfer’s appearance –– while indulging himself as a bachelor –– but didn’t. Instead, his respectable haircut, traditional wardrobe and overall bearing painted the picture of a dedicated professional. From her sliding window, however, Marian witnessed another vision altogether. Far stranger to her than a shirt tucked only halfway into the top of his slacks, how they were a little wrinkled or his tie somewhat askew, Nigel seemed distraught to the point of a loss of his self-control. Marian rushed to his aid.

With an extra body there to brace him, the pair advanced deeper into the building. Watching it happen hushed everybody up. Regret descended over the waiting area. Nigel Leary wasn’t well and it was suddenly obvious.

In the private world of his inner-office, Marian lowered Nigel into his swivel chair. He collapsed to the sound of the woman asking, “What on Earth is wrong?” His headaches, she knew, were bad. Had they become debilitating?

Nigel answered her, “It’s inoperable.”

His statement delivered a blow to Marian that knocked her into the desk where Nigel had rested an elbow. The past handful of weeks inundated her memory. She could recall how Nigel had first described what afflicted him: migraines so bad that he would draw the drapes were mostly referred to as simply “spells”. At her urging, Nigel had reluctantly agreed to undergo an examination. A fellow tenant in the medical complex had complied. The general physician (Charlie, since the two were on friendly terms) had ordered tests. A neurological evaluation, a CT scan, a second, a third and even a fourth opinion later, Charlie had arranged to review the results earlier than normal. A 7AM meeting wouldn’t interfere, Nigel reasoned, with his work. Coping with the news –– after climbing into his Volvo in the parking lot determined to race away yet without ever so much as starting the engine –– had taken a while longer than expected.  He sincerely said to Marian, “I’m sorry for being late.”

Without acknowledging his apology, Marian wondered about his illness, “How do we fix it?”

Nigel lamented with a heavy sigh, “We don’t.”

“Why not?” Marian regarded him more critically.

“It’s malignant.”

“You haven’t had a biopsy done yet.”

“That would take a while. Imaging is enough for an educated guess. Nothing so aggressive is benign.”

“Okay. Even so, it’s a tumor, that’s all. Am I right?”

“More than one, actually,” Nigel explained to her, “Their number is a problem. Where they are makes it even harder. Also, their vascular involvement rules surgery out. To operate would do no good.”

Nigel had adopted a clinical tone. It drained his startling words of any emotion. While he spoke, however, Marian looked terrified enough for them both. At twenty-eight, she was eleven years younger than Nigel yet often assumed a motherly role. A pair of cat-eye glasses (attached to a chain around her neck) reinforced her mature persona. With her black hair shaped around her shoulders along a line as even as her bangs were, the layer contrasted with her ivory skin; her personal palette was achromatic. Although not a nurse’s uniform, her clothes were, in a similar way, devoid of any color, too. The flawless white of her polyester frock concealed what she considered to be her overly plump proportions. Even so, the hemline of her garment rose high enough for the bare knob of her knee to bump into Nigel’s where he sat. Her sorrowful gaze strayed to the tabletop calendar beside which she was leaning. With the days arranged in a numbered grid across the paper pad, they prompted her question, “How long do you have?”

When he told her, “A year … maybe less,” he lied. In reality, Charlie had given him, “Months … or even weeks.” Their coordinator had combined the expertise of four specialists into one verdict: “To be completely honest, you’re lucky to be alive.” For Marian, Nigel’s ambiguity spared her the shock of Charlie’s severe pronouncement.

Even with the victim minimizing what should have already killed him, Marian assertively said, “You get time off for terminal cancer, whether you like it or not.” Her awkward humor, once uttered aloud, sounded inappropriate. Implementing a plan of action, nevertheless, would keep her eyes suitably dry. She therefore continued, “Why don’t I get rid of your patients? We should also clear the rest of your schedule. You’re in no condition to be here.” She went to execute her idea before he could disagree.

From his secure location, Nigel heard his strong-willed assistant, after reaching the lobby at the hallway’s other end, declare, “The doctor isn’t well. He cannot help any of you today. We’re closing up.”

Angry voices, although out of visible range, arose. With their commotion reaching him, even if only audibly, Nigel’s searing headache worsened. As a consequence, he cradled his skull in his hands and hovered over the surface on which he more normally wrote. While he studied a list of the weeks ahead of him and wondered how many remained, the sound of the door being sealed and locked relieved him. A footstep or two approached. He didn’t look up when he struggled to say, “Thank you, Marian.”

While expecting his secretary’s reply, a much older woman addressed him, instead, “I am Ms. Ida Inkettle, your eight o’clock appointment.”

Nigel lifted his sight. The speaker stood at the edge of the room. A grey tangle of fine hair escaped a knot to the back of her scalp. Her lips were lined with the ridges of a tightly pressed together grimace. A Victorian-era accessory, the brooch affixed to the chin-high collar that topped her burgundy blouse added an earlier century’s aura to her age. What truly drew Nigel’s attention, however, was something else: her bony arms where they barely filled her almost empty sleeves were wrapped around a bulky book.

Instead of asking about her burden, Nigel locked on her face and demanded, “Who let you in here?”

The stranger responded, “A two-hour wait did.”

“What do you mean?” Nigel winced in his strenuous effort to understand her.

She explained, “You see, that’s why I am entitled to just a few minutes of your time.”

“Maybe,” Nigel admitted.

“Your girl is running everybody off. How much of our morning have you wasted? You owe us all. It’s only me who won’t accept it.”

“I guess … okay … you’re right.”

“I usually am,” her answer had an arrogant tone. “If you’re under the weather, toughen up and do your job,” was still less sympathetic. “Growing old is such absolute torture. You can’t appreciate what I go through,” further worsened her insensitivity.

Because of his condition, Nigel wasn’t too likely to make it to forty (although only a few months away). That he wouldn’t enjoy another birthday made the toll that time would take –– especially getting wrinkles –– seem more like a privilege than a curse. The early death that loomed in his future would rob him of that opportunity. He couldn’t tolerate a lecture from anyone having apparently doubled his age. Her audacity gave his statement a bitter edge, “What you’re after, Ms. Inkettle, is a facelift. Try a different doctor. I only repair the effects of accidents and deformities. A full life is a gift, however you look cosmetically because of it. What I do is reconstructive.”

Far from obeying his words of wisdom, Ms. Inkettle leapt to the desk and dumped her book where Nigel was hunching over. “Do what I tell you, my boy,” she ordered him, “and reconstruct my youth!”

The mysterious object defied his immediate urge. He would have flatly refused her command. It tempted him, instead, to reach out to the lavishly bound tablet. A padlock kept it closed.

Another noise interrupted him elsewhere, anyway. The door handle turned unsuccessfully and, afterwards, underwent a shake. With therefore heightened anxiety, Marian raised her voice, “Hey Nigel, why did you lock yourself in?”

“Ida Inkettle and I are just discussing her treatment options,” he yelled to the barrier that hid his worried assistant.

Without any more of a clue from Marian’s side, her silence signified her disapproval.

“Like I was saying …” when Nigel was sure that his employee had departed, he strove for a way to show the intruder that he was serious. He rested his eyes on her property once again, however. The book intrigued him more than he could deny. Asking its owner, “What’s in it?” revealed his almost overwhelming interest.

Two chairs were angled to face him where Nigel was situated. After choosing one, Ida –– as if an offering had earned her a place at an altar –– took a seat. Whether about to perform an occult ritual or start a story, she gave her seemingly ancient relic a nod to begin, “What’s in it, to answer your question, is scientific research. You may have heard of my father, Conrad Inkettle. If you haven’t, I can assure you that he was a genius … and a threat to the medical establishment. His work is why. They couldn’t watch anybody jeopardize such a lucrative industry. That’s what a cure for everything would do. It dates way back to the 1880s. I wasn’t even alive yet. He studied how the flesh wears out and devised a procedure whereby whatever had decayed would assume a younger state. As it happens, he kept a journal. It details what he discovered. Regeneration is how he described it in his writing. It’s starting all over again with the skin of a baby, not a facelift, to be clear.”

Nigel was silent while Ida awaited his reaction. He didn’t reflect on a solitary benefit to her but considered the cancer infesting his sickly brain. As a man about to drown would, he seized onto something afloat; a scrap of an earlier wreckage had drifted into reach. He wondered if he could, once equipped with her father’s secrets, heal himself with his so-called “regeneration”. Nigel had decided to look her text over already when Ida reminded him, “It’s all,” after raising a hand to the book, “in here.” She used it to forge a firmer agreement, “What I ask of you is simple. When you verify how it works, I demand to be the subject of your experiments. In return, I would allow you to keep any proceeds. What do you say to that? How would you like a legacy? Don’t you want to have a peek?”

“If you had a key,” Nigel indicated where the pages were tightly secured, “I might.” Two metal plates were pressed together, one attached to the back cover by a strap around its right edge and the other riveted to the front with a hinge in the middle. The first had an eyelet, the second a slot and, above them both, a mechanism prevented their sliding apart.

Ida acted embarrassed while admitting, “I broke it open … with a hammer … accidentally.” 

Nigel gave the antique a tug. It loosened. The assembly released and fell askew. Although no longer locked into place, he didn’t free the contents when remarking, “I’ll read what I can if you leave it here.”

Ida consented, “We have a deal. What Daddy wrote is so complex. You’re better suited to make any sense of it. I sure couldn’t!” After standing up and having accomplished a noble retreat to the nearby door, she added, “We’ll be in touch,” while letting herself out.

With a turn of the knob, it twisted away from her grip before Marian erupted into the consequently accessible room. “Ms. Inkettle, you were supposed to leave with the others. I warned you not to bother Dr. Leary, now didn’t I? How she got in is a mystery, Nigel,” his secretary made excuses while leading Ida into the hall. After she had ushered her out of the building entirely, Marian returned to check on her employer. She found his office empty. Nigel was absent along with the book.