By Any Means

By James Morris

Lucas Turner is an ordinary teenager with an extraordinary genetic mutation: the cure for cancer rests in his body. When his father discovers that the only way to harvest the cure will result in the death of his son, he kidnaps him from the hospital, setting off a calamity of events from which there is no turning back.

Meanwhile, the doctor, intent on a cure at any cost, hires a female bounty hunter to bring the boy back by any means. She's never failed before and doesn't intend to fail now.

While on the run, the estranged father and son build a relationship on the road that brings them closer to the mistakes of the past and the consequences of the future. By Any Means is a literary thriller, and at its core is about a relationship between a father and son against all odds. The remedy, after all, may be less about science and more the human heart.

• Language: English
• Publisher: James Morris
• Release date: Jan 2, 2019
• ISBN: 9781386420668

James Morris

James Morris, recently retired from various Chief Executive positions within the Logistics and Support Services Business sector within the United Kingdom, has had an interest in occultism for several years and has transmitted this into fi ctional thrillers for others to enjoy. His interest in children’s fantasy and his books on ‘The Magical Adventures of Fairy Petal’ also introduce ‘soft magic’ for children to enjoy. His Grandchildren Niamh and Eoin love the characters in these books. Happily married for over 42 years to Jennifer whose support for his writings have made these publications possible.

Book preview

1

A sense of peace washed over him the moment he stepped foot into the ice-encrusted alley, his hands filled with scraps meant for the garbage, food overcooked or undercooked, too salty or sweet, or any number of diners’ complaints. He’d watch as the strays smelled food, maybe even the scent of garlic on his clothes, and hopped down from the walls and appeared from behind garbage dumpsters, tails twirling, purring, intertwining between his legs. Often, he let them eat out of his palms, their sandpapery tongues rubbing against his Band-Aids, and he ruffled their fur. How the cats survived the cold, he didn’t know.

He tried to remember the name—who was the Saint? The Saint with all the birds and animals? Saint Francis, that was it.

I am Saint Keith. Saint Keith of Chicago.

It was the only time he felt like anything anywhere near sainthood.

The alley was strewn with litter and swirls of graffiti and the sky coughed gray, but this was as scenic and comforting as any natural vista. Quiet enough for a man to think, to breathe and for the briefest moment, relax.

But his reprieve was cut short. The door clanged open behind him and a fellow cook, grease splattered across his white coat, said, Keith, phone.

He scattered the food for the strays, wiped his hands clean, and walked inside. Near an alcove, he held the phone to his ear as he listened to a school administrator, a woman he had only met briefly at obligatory parent-teacher conferences. I’m sorry, Mr. Turner, she said. There’s been an incident.

Had Lucas gotten into his first fistfight? Had he been caught smoking? Maybe he was more like his old man, after all.

Keith pressed himself against the tile in an attempt to gain a measure of privacy from the clanking of the restaurant kitchen behind him, helped in no part by the starting lunch rush.

Look, I don’t have much time, Keith said. Lucas is a good kid. It’s not like you caught him smoking pot, right?

He’s not in trouble. It’s much more serious. Your son suffered a seizure.

The noise in the background faded, replaced by the pounding of Keith’s heart in his ears. Is he all right?

He was transported by ambulance to the hospital.

Keith paused, everything seeming far away, the phone in his hand a kind of artifact. The woman’s tinny voice melded with the chaos from the kitchen. Mr. Turner? Are you there? Mr. Turner?

His hand moved like molasses, the phone struggling to find its place on the receiver. The steps from the restaurant to his car, though only a block away, felt like an ocean crossing.

Keith rushed to the hospital, braving through Chicago traffic, blowing past yellow lights, almost skidding on the winter’s ice. His thoughts churned. Sometimes, while lying awake at night, watching the hands of the alarm clock, he imagined what his life would be like if Lucas had been different. In his fantasies, he and Lucas would go to Cubs games, watch Sunday football together, maybe even share a beer down the line. But Lucas didn’t like sports. He didn’t like cars. He didn’t like anything Keith liked.

He parked and walked inside, holding his jacket tight around his trim figure, immune to the blast of wind that bent nearby trees, steeling himself for whatever news he was about to face.

Not since Lucas’s birth had Keith been back in a hospital waiting room. He’d hated waiting then and hated waiting now. It made him feel helpless, a mere observer to events beyond his control. A doctor approached him.

Mr. Turner?

Keith stood. How’s my son?

He’s stable, but we’ve called in a specialist.

Specialist? Why?

Dr. Hill is an oncologist who also conducts research at the university. He’ll be able to fill you in more.

What’s going on? What the hell’s an oncologist?

The doctor hesitated. Oncology is the study of cancer.

The air left Keith’s lungs. There had to be some kind of mistake. He felt his throat constrict.

Your son’s lab work was abnormal, the doctor continued. And his X-rays show a mass near his brain. Dr. Hill is looking for patients with a similar profile. He’ll be here shortly.

Can I see my him? Can I see my son?

Keith followed the doctor down the hallway and into a room. His son lay in a bed, eyes closed. Wires like re-grown umbilical cords emerged from him and receded into machines. Keith stood at the edge of the bed and stared at his son, realizing he hadn’t actually looked at him, really seen him, for a long time. Lucas had become a ghost in the apartment, walking through rooms, moving objects, but never communicating; never connecting. If their eyes met, it was over hellos and goodbyes and I’ll-be-back-laters. Who was this child, with a face so much like his mother it made him sad to lay eyes on him? Why couldn’t he be more like me?

Cancer. What did that mean? Lucas looked healthy, like any other gangly fourteen-year-old, all limbs and urgency. Then Keith was flooded with the obvious: he was too tired to cook after shifts on the line so they always ate TV dinners; lived in a polluted city, and Keith smoked. He’d tried quitting, used the patch, hypnotherapy, the e-cigarette. None of it took. He was a man with few vices and the calming high he got from nicotine was here to stay. How many times had Lucas complained the apartment smelled like an ashtray?

---

He found an exit past a stairwell and braced against the cold. Hunched in a corner, Keith lit a cigarette and enjoyed the deep inhalation as chemicals he couldn’t name rushed through his bloodstream and into his brain. He watched his exhalation drift into the sky.

The door opened and a nurse said, Mr. Turner? Dr. Hill is ready to see you. Keith flicked the cigarette and followed her into Dr. Hill’s office. Certificates hung on the wall like an explosion of artwork. Pictures of the doctor, his wife, their kids, even a grandchild rested on an orderly desk. It was all so neat and tidy. The exception was a row of frayed Teddy Bears on the couch. Some looked expensive, like the goofy Make-A-Bear things he’d seen in malls; others were the kind given away as gifts at local carnivals. He picked one up and by some law of Teddy Bear magic, couldn’t help but stroke the tufts of fake fur.

Dr. Hill entered the room radiating a sense of calm and precision, the kind of man Keith imagined walked through life with ease. I see you’ve met Mr. Snuggles. I give those away to kids in the hospital. He must’ve been at least sixty, but he looked fit and trim. I’m Dr. Hill, he said and he reached out his hand.

Fighting embarrassment, Keith placed the Teddy Bear down and shook hands. Dr. Hill had no calluses; his hand felt baby smooth. Keith Turner. How’s my boy?

Please, have a seat.

I can’t sit.

At this point, we need to keep him here under supervision. Run a few more tests. An MRI revealed the presence of a mass near his brain. The doctor swiveled his computer, allowing Keith to see the screen. An image of a smear about the size of a small tangerine ran alongside the base of Lucas’s skull. It looked like a storm cell, caught and caged.

Is he going to die?

The question hung in the air.

In a practiced tenor, Dr. Hill said, We don’t know.

Keith wanted to scream. But he stood, rigid, scared if he moved he would lash out, find himself arrested, his job lost, his health insurance revoked. Too much was at stake. He knew himself well enough to know it was better to find the calm in the chaos and the chaos would pass. He shut his eyes.

I know this isn’t easy, Mr. Turner.

Words, always words. Keith grew up hearing such empty nothings, whether from guidance counselors, psychologists, or reform school wardens. He opened his eyes and watched as Dr. Hill’s lips moved, sounds came from his mouth, words he barely recognized—mutagens, suppressor genes, and chromosome abnormalities. Minutes passed and he listened, the words a torrent, running together, making no sense. A certificate on the wall was slightly crooked and Keith had an overwhelming desire to walk over and fix it. One small tug and everything would be all right. Everything would be all right.

He became aware of silence in the room. The doctor looked at him.

What? asked Keith.

I said, do you understand?

Keith hesitated and nodded, never more lost than he was at that moment.

---

Back at home in his two-bedroom apartment, Keith sat on Lucas’s bed. He’d come back to pick up a bag of clothes, intending to return to the waiting room. The roar of an L-train passed only a block away.

He stayed in Lucas’s room, taking in the space his son lived. It smelled like boy, a mix of smelly socks and sweat. Or maybe, he thought, like sex. The room, like his son, was in the process of change. A poster from Star Wars hung next to some bikini model he didn’t recognize. Nail holes were the only remnant left from Lucas’s hat collection, all donated to Goodwill, including the sombrero Keith had gotten him for his 8th birthday. A pile of second-hand graphic novels covered the bookshelf. On his desk, a hermit crab moved in its terrarium, burrowing in the sand. Keith stood and dropped in a few sun-dried baby shrimp, surprised the thing was still alive. They’d won it at a fun fair years ago and Lucas named him Hermie. Keith smiled at the memory, a reminder of the boy Lucas used to be.

Where had that boy gone? And when did he change? Keith couldn’t pinpoint any one moment, only a long, indiscernible hardening, a slow freeze.

He waited for some revelation until the sun went down, sitting in darkness, which was where Keith’s girlfriend found him when she flipped on the light.

Sorry I’m late. I got here as soon as I could. Christy knelt next to him, still dressed in her cocktail waitress uniform, showing the deep V of her cleavage. Her heavy makeup accented her eyes, but did nothing to hide the fine lines around her mouth, a smoker’s mouth.

More defeated than angry, he said, I called you hours ago.

She didn’t offer an explanation. Will he be all right?

They don’t know.

She stayed with him, sharing breaths, finally taking notice of Lucas’s room. I’ve never been in his room before. Keith’s girlfriends were off-limits in here.

Neither have I. Not for a long time.

She began to fidget with her hair, circling a long strand within her fingers. Keith placed his hand on her thigh to get her to stay still. It worked for a moment, and then she started up again.

What’s wrong? he asked.

She stood up. I’ve gotta get out of this room.

They’d only dated a couple of months and Keith was still discovering her quirks and shifting moods. Why?

I just… She caught her words, quiet. I’ve never even met him.

Keith said, You’d like him, but the words sounded false.

I don’t know how to do this.

You don’t have to do anything.

She looked like a woman lost at sea, struggling to find something to hold onto. I’ve gotta go. I like hanging out with you. But… She let out a long exhale. I’m not ready for this. Not right now.

He thought a moment. I understand.

You’re not mad?

No, he said and sadly realized, she’s selfish and scared. Just like me.

---

The subsequent days melded together. Unable to take time off because he couldn’t afford it, Keith still worked at his job as a line cook at the busy hotel, blessed to lose himself in the meditative haze of chopping onions and carrots. He shifted hours when he could in order to visit his son. His visits were brief: Lucas was always sedated, unconscious, supposedly to prevent the reoccurrence of seizures. Keith had no choice but to trust Dr. Hill and the other white coats and wait for the results of his tests.

It seemed there was always some kind of new test they were doing. Multiple blood draws. Removing a piece of bone marrow. Placing him in one of those white coffin tubes. More blood draws, more tests, more wires and machines, an entire language of beeps and blips. Lucas was more a science experiment than a patient.

They’re the doctors. They’re the experts. Dr. Hill must know what he’s doing.

Keith had begun bringing Lucas’s schoolwork to the hospital. All the assignments piling up, assignments Keith feared Lucas would never finish.

He hated himself for thinking such thoughts.

Keith never liked school, was never good at it, but he took a renewed focus in his son’s work, reading about Manifest Destiny, or argument versus persuasion (he had no idea), mentally imploring Lucas to wake up and answer him.

Compartmentalizing his feelings, there were visits and there was work and the two didn’t leak into each other. He didn’t even tell any of his co-workers. The dinner table was as quiet as it always was. The hauntings of his son were gone, leaving only an empty apartment in its wake.

I’m no father.

He had no idea of what a real father was. Or how he should act, no guidepost or role model to emulate. Maybe he was the ghost who lived in the apartment.

Most nights he’d drive home, the streets abandoned, shops closed, metal gates covering store windows, the only movement yellow cabs shuffling drunks. Entering the apartment, he threw his keys on the table, opened the fridge and popped open a beer. He grabbed another and sat down, sliding the second beer across the table. He imagined his son at sixteen, popping the cap and taking a swig as he asked Keith’s advice about a girl. Keith would smile and talk with his son into the night about the ways of women, their tantalizing beauty, their penchant for craziness and maybe, just maybe, Keith might tell him tricks to satisfy a woman, one of the true benchmarks of being a man.

He finished his beer in a single pull and crushed the can. All the things they would never do together. All the chances he had to be a good father, gone. This wasn’t how the story was supposed to end. For you, he said and grabbed the beer meant for Lucas, held it in salutation and drank it in his place.

---

That night the phone rang. Can you come in? Dr. Hill sounded breathless.

Keith looked at the clock. It was three in the morning. You mean now?

I’m afraid time is of the essence, Mr. Turner.

For a second, he found the formality hilarious. Nothing was more intimate than death.

A dirty sock lay on the floor and he rubbed it with his toe. The carpet needed vacuuming. Lucas was right, the place did smell like an ashtray.

I’m leaving now. He hung up, but couldn’t move. Fear paralyzed him. This was the moment in his life that would serve as a cleaving from who he was and who he would be—a Before and After. He struggled to move, the chill of the room slapping him awake, and finally rose and took a long shower. It might be the last shower of his life as he knew it. He lingered in steam, enveloping himself in a cocoon of normality.

Then he made the now all-too-familiar trek to the hospital and there was no sense of normality—only a vague sense of impending doom.

When he arrived at Dr. Hill’s office, Keith asked, What’s wrong with my son? Dr. Hill shuffled him toward a chair and closed the door behind him. If Keith didn’t know better, he would’ve thought Dr. Hill was on drugs; he had the look of someone coming down from an all-night bender, rumpled clothes, dark circles under his eyes, jittery and manic.

Mr. Turner—

Keith, he interrupted.

I told you how cancer was an umbrella term for a group of diseases, all involving unregulated cell growth, or cells that forget how to die.

Keith nodded.

Think of all the billions of people in the world, all the variations in cell structure and chromosomes. Now imagine one person, or maybe a few, had a mutation never seen before—something completely unique.

Maybe the doctor really was on drugs.

All my life I’ve been seeking the answer to this disease. Conducting experimental trials. Trying to go beyond just symptom management and actually curing it. Stopping it.

What does this have to do with Lucas?

For over 30 years, I’ve watched too many patients… He sighed and looked at the couch lined with various Teddy Bears. Those Teddy Bears? I told you I give them to my patients, the children. What I didn’t tell you was…I get them back.

Keith picked up a Teddy Bear, wondering whose small fingers had held it like he did.

I never want to see another damned Teddy Bear the rest of my life. He paused. I remember them all. Every name. The look on their parents’ faces. Every conversation when I tell them I’m sorry.

Keith placed the Teddy Bear back. There was something dirty about it. Something disrespectful. Why did you call me at three in the morning?

Your son is a most impressive specimen. He holds the key.

To what?

Curing cancer.

Keith frowned. Was he still asleep and dreaming, or was this doctor crazy?

"For the last fifty, even one hundred years, we’ve looked for the answer to cancer outside of the body. As if we’d find some magic bullet in the jungles of South America that would kill it all off. But there it is, inside. Just waiting to be discovered. Nature is designed to adapt to adversity. It’s evolutionary diversification. The strongest survive. And it all began out of small mutations. Your son has such a medical anomaly. One that, previous to 21st century medicine, would have gone unnoticed. Who knows how many others in the past had his same mass but died with no one knowing."

You’re losing me.

After all the tests—the genotyping, looking over somatic mutations, the bioinformatic data—I couldn’t sleep. I had to call. Your son has the potential to cure the world. Think of it. All the people suffering. It could stop.

I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.

Lucas had a seizure due to a mass in his brain. The mass is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. It’s killing him. It will kill him. The only question is when. But if I can retrieve the mass from his brain before he dies….

Keith’s mouth was suddenly dry. My son is…? He knew the answer to the question before he even asked it. Had known it, in fact, as soon as he had picked up the phone in the middle of the night.

The doctor pinched his lips and nodded.

Time seemed to stop. The thoughts in Keith’s brain stopped. He didn’t want to believe it. It couldn’t be true. He had to pretend he hadn’t processed what the doctor said. If Keith had been at work, he could have cursed, yelled, caused a scene. Not here. This was why the doctor only called people by their last names: to maintain emotional distance.

I thought you just said he had the key, a mutation whatever, that can kill cancers.

He does. But the mass is still a cancer to the host. The cells continue to divide.

Keith tried to focus on his breath. He couldn’t. How long does he have?

I can’t give you an exact date.

Then guess.

It could be days. At most, weeks. Probably less. The doctor placed his hand on Keith’s shoulder. The action had a rehearsed quality to it. I know this is hard for you.

Why couldn’t it be me instead of my son?

"If I can get access to his tumor, I can separate the proteins from his cancer cells. Cancer-curing isotopes could be generated on site. I can then immunize cancer patients. Do you hear what I’m saying? I can stimulate an immune response that would kill cancer cells. A vaccine, Mr. Turner. A vaccine against cancer."

Keith stood, trapped in the moment, not knowing what to do.

I need your permission to pursue it. I’m sorry I can’t save your son. No one can. But if I can remove the mass, I may be able to stop the disease from cutting short the lives of anyone else, ever again. Your son’s life has been a gift. A gift to humanity. I believe God put your son on this earth for a reason. To rid the world of cancer.

2

Keith seemed to float above the city. Standing on the ledge of the Willis Tower Skydeck, head leaned against the glass, he thought he’d find perspective. He’d come here with his father back when it was called the Sears Tower. It was one of the few outings they’d made together that might pass for bonding. They’d zoom up the elevator, ears popping, tourists pressed against them, the smell of competing perfumes and sweat, and it always seemed vaguely sci-fi. The doors would close on one floor, and then whisk open to a new one, an expansive view of the city from inside the world’s tallest building. It made him feel larger than life, as if there were choices in his future, roads leading in all directions.

Those roads had all been dead ends, and he’d gone nowhere. He may have changed his perspective, but he never changed his life. The uplifting effect of coming here had lost its power.

People moved behind him, waiting their turn on the Ledge. Keith paid them no mind. He followed the sight of a garbage wrapper below as the wind took it, blowing every which way, finally whipping it out of view.

From up here, the city was one living entity. It all moved, pulsing with life. The people below flitted to and fro, like insects, random and wild. There was no will at work. Only chaos. Keith’s breath fogged the glass, appearing and receding.

My boy.

In Dr. Hill’s office Keith had stammered, There’s got to be something you can do.

The doctor shook his head. He wished it could be so simple, but it didn’t work like that. The mass in Lucas’s brain was killing him, but it also contained the cure. The mass, like a heart or lung, needed to be removed, harvested, he said, before the organism died.

My son.

Why