Death Benefit Read Online Free PDF Page A

tension hung in the air. For a few beats neither spoke, nor did they so much as exchange a glance.
    “But I have the sisters to think of,” Pia said. Pia’s education had been partly underwritten by the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart, an international religious order situated in Westchester County. Pia had fled to the order for emotional safety after aging out of foster care at age eighteen. Although initially Pia had thought briefly of joining the order as a nun, after finishing her high school equivalency and a portion of college at New York University, she had changed her mind. Consequently the relationship with the sisters, particularly the mother superior, had become more transactional. Although Pia would complete her medical training and still go to Africa to help with the organization’s missionary work, she would not become a novitiate.
    Although Pia had received full scholarships from New York University and Columbia Medical School, the Sisters’ contribution had been considerable. She felt justifiably obligated. “I don’t think I can renege on a plan I made ten years ago. Although I’ve come to agree with you that my personality is more suited to research, I think I have to go through with the original plan to become a doctor and, at least for a time, serve the order’s needs.”
    A rush of mumbled profanity escaped from Rothman’s lips. He shook his head in disbelief. “Here I am offering you a part in making medical history with my stem cell research, and I have to be concerned about a bunch of nuns in Westchester.” He paused for a moment to collect his thoughts. “What kind of money are we talking about?”
    “I don’t know what you mean.”
    “Come on. Don’t be obtuse. What do you think you owe them in dollars?”
    “I’m not sure I can think of it in those terms.”
    “Let’s not be difficult. Give me a figure however you want to create it.”
    Pia thought for a moment. It was not an easy task. She’d never put a figure on how the sisters had nurtured her and given her a sense of protection from the evils of her foster care experience. She shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe fifty thousand. Something like that.”
    “Done,” Rothman said. “You’ll get a loan from my bank to the tune of fifty thousand, and I’ll cosign for it.”
    Pia found herself momentarily speechless. Never in her life had someone stood up for her financially, especially to the tune of fifty thousand dollars. She didn’t know how to react. “I don’t know what to say,” she mumbled.
    “Then don’t say anything! We’ll revisit this issue, but for today I want you to jump on this paper for Lancet . It needs another set of eyes and the statistics checked. I know you are a whiz with statistics.”
    Rothman got up from behind his desk. With his attention buried in the piece of paper he’d been intermittently studying, he walked out of his office. Pia was stunned. Rothman had just essentially lent her a large sum of money and asked for her help on a vitally important paper.
    “Okay,” Pia said to herself, “I’ve got work to do. Now I just have to get that man out of my work space.” Following Rothman out through the door, she headed back to the lab bench where she had set up her temporary work space.

2.
    CONVENT OF THE SISTERS OF THE SACRED HEART
WESTCHESTER, NEW YORK
FEBRUARY 28, 2011, 7:20 P.M.
     
     
    A rmed with Dr. Rothman’s pledge of financial support, Pia made an appointment with the mother superior of the convent of the Sisters of the Sacred Heart for that same evening. It wasn’t a meeting she looked forward to. Pia recalled how years before the mother superior had found her as a teenager sitting on the convent wall after getting into a fight with her foster family at the time, who lived a couple of miles away. She had brought Pia inside, and they had talked. The result was that Pia returned the very next weekend, with her family’s permission, to help out in an unstructured