Addictive Contact: The Contact Series: Book 2 by Ash Remington

Author:Ash Remington [Remington, Ash]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ash Remington
Published: 2024-12-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

The Hypocritical Oath

Tess Fontaine: 2039

Every physician makes a promise to do no harm, and I’m sure we all mean it at the time. I certainly did. I took every word of the Hippocratic Oath as seriously as my wedding vows, and I’m left wondering which I trampled over harder.

There’s something darkly ironic about the closeness of the words “Hippocratic” and “hypocritical.” I don’t know if the ancient Greeks had overpriced medical care, predatory health insurance, or addictive chemicals sold as so-called “cures” in their time—but they sure seem to have had a modern sense of humor when they conceived the oath.

Leaving public practice to go work with the genetics team at Amaar Labs was the best thing to happen for my career. I shouldn’t have had any trouble doing no harm once separated from the traditional medical community; in fact, I had the chance to alter the course of mankind’s health care for the better.

Yet, I’ve never forgiven myself for choosing ego over ethics.

We learned a great deal while studying Gio’s body. Dr. Amaar discovered that he was twenty-two hundred years old and correctly surmised that long life wasn’t natural to the Praxi. He even traced the foreign strands in Gio’s DNA and formulated the hypothesis that whatever gave the Praxi their longevity could do the same for humans.

The doctor was an emotional man though, and his frustrations with his failure to connect the dots for a major breakthrough derailed him. There was a miracle cure for mortality hidden within Gio’s cells, but it wasn’t Dr. Amaar who would find it.

It was me.

The missing ingredient was human cells. I had tried for months to splice Gio’s regenerative tissue with human DNA to no avail. Our alien test subject had been dead for some time, and he was already quite old when he was murdered. His cells continuously rejected the foreign human strands I introduced until I tried those from a fetus.

I was alone in the lab the night of my minor breakthrough, and rather than consider the consequences of my work, I had my eye on a Nobel Prize.

My discovery should have gone in the trash. I should have deleted all the research files and burned Gio’s body until there was no trace of him left. But I couldn’t see past my hubris, and I suppose that’s why I’ve never blamed Dr. Amaar for soaking up all the credit and chasing glory across the cosmos.

I made the same horrible choice he had, except I saw my blunder for what it was. Of all the mistakes I’d made in my life, that was the one I’d take back first if I could.

The entire human race would be affected by my actions, yet I could only think about the one who would be hurt the most. I don’t know what Ranbir thought had happened to Gio’s body, but I doubt he ever imagined that his deceased friend—a hero—would be dissected, frozen, and cut to pieces.

Ranbir and I had only recently become

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