A/N: Thanks so much for your continued reads and reviews all these years later. Please let me know how you feel about this part, too.

Chapter 16

"Logan." He opened blurry eyes and accepted his glasses from a wide awake Max, her face pressed to the window behind him. She glanced back over her shoulder, looking down to where their hands remained entwined and tugged him toward her. "Have you seen this before?"

"What?" he asked, knowing they were due to arrive after one AM local time and even though he couldn't quite see out the window, it had to be pitch black outside the plane.

"The cliffs along this coast. It's like that movie with the dinosaurs made from the DNA in the amber."

"Jurassic Park. Yeah." Logan smiled as he recalled how enthralled she'd been by its premise. "They filmed those here."

"Oh. That's where we're going?"

"Yeah. Wait." He pulled himself into more of a sitting position. "Can you see the coastline now?"

She plopped down into the seat beside him, a flush creeping into her cheeks. "Yeah."

He reached for her, and she burrowed her head into his shoulder. "That's not a bad thing, Max." She leaned back to face him, and rolled her eyes. He elbowed her, a smirk threatening to show itself. "Seriously. But we can check it out tomorrow when I can see it, too."

She rolled her eyes again. "Yeah. Except…"

"Except what?" he jumped on her hesitation.

"There's no way you're gonna be able to sleep tonight."

She was right, of course. When they landed at the airstrip at Barking Sands on the west side of the island, Makiko and her assistant Takeshi greeted them. By the time they loaded the cars and drove the fifteen miles to the former long-term care facility near Waimea Bay that Makiko and her team had converted into their operation's headquarters, Logan was wide awake. Zack and Bling started on the set-up of the Penthouse equipment while Bennett and Marianne settled into their room. Makiko apologized profusely for the haphazardly prepared accommodations that consisted of two twin beds and hospital-grade sheets. She'd only had a few hours' notice to make a place for the stowaways. Marianne assured Makiko that they would be more than comfortable as Bennett snored from his bed right before she hugged Max and retreated to join him.

Max headed into her own room to find Logan. He sat staring out their window into the darkness. "There's some food in the main hall. Do you want anything?"

He shook his head but didn't speak.

Max tried again. "You want to try to sleep?"

He swiveled around and shot her a look. "Right."

"Well, what do you want to do?"

"I don't know," he shrugged. "Sit here and freak out?"

"There has to be a pool around here somewhere." She crossed the room and straddled his lap. "Maybe we can calm you down somehow," she suggested as she leaned in to kiss his neck.

"Max," he half protested, not quite pushing her away.

"This usually works," she pointed out before she stood. "But I'm willing to consider alternative methods."

"Let's go to the beach." He held up his phone with a map of the area pulled up on the screen. "It's one block east and two blocks south. There's a pier. Or there was when this was made."

"'Kay." She shrugged and took a couple of steps toward the door.

Logan waited a moment and exhaled into the empty room before he followed her to the front room. Zack and Bling had joined Makiko and Takeshi. They all stood at full alert when Logan and Max arrived.

"We're gonna get a little air," Max explained as Logan moved across to the door. "We won't be long."

Makiko handed them both a ring with several keys. "We may be asleep by the time you get back. We've lots to do in the morning, but you'll need these either way."

"Thank you," Logan addressed her before he turned to those assembled in the room. "All of you. I don't know how to express my gratitude for all of you taking time out of your lives to give this a go. No matter what happens after tomorrow, I want you all to know how much I appreciate you taking this chance on me."

"And me," Makiko chimed in. "We're all in this together, Logan, so I thank you for choosing me."

"I'm not gonna lie, Makiko, there weren't many other options."

She smiled. "For me, either. Obtaining funding can require quite a bit of creativity these days."

"Well, I guess we'll just have to trust each other to get where we want to be, then."

"Yes. And I know how anxious you must be, but do try to get some sleep. We'll have a lot of work to do starting right away in the morning."

"Maybe just a spin around the grounds?" Max suggested.

"That should do it," Logan agreed, losing steam but not ready to try sleep.

Max, who had already completed a quick sweep of the facility, led the way toward the door that opened into the back garden. "Come through here." Logan nodded and followed.

Once he entered the courtyard, he looked up, a sigh escaping as he took in his surroundings. "These stars are something, huh?" He managed before his voice broke as he wiped furiously at his eyes.

Max draped her body over her shoulders. "Hey," was the only word she could manage. She'd never seen him break down, not sure anyone buy Bling had actually seen it happen.

But his slip of emotion proved to be short lived. He took a deep breath and forced a terribly disingenuous smile that stopped somewhere around the bottom of his nose. "Sorry. I'm okay."

He wasn't, but there was no need to point that out. They both knew it. She kissed his cheek. "I know you're scared."

"More like terrified." His voice shook again. "And I brought all these people on my potentially downward spiral."

"Logan." She moved around and sat in his lap. "I don't think that's what anyone in there is thinking. You heard Makiko – this is as much of an opportunity for her as it is for you. If this goes well for us, it goes well for her. And if not, she goes back to the drawing board but with funding to do so for the next, what, five years."

"Yeah. Probably something like that."

Max sighed herself, leaning back against his chest. "It's late. We need to sleep."

He shook his head. "I don't think I can."

"I'll slip you some tryptophan," Max offered as her fingers trailed down his chest.

He wrapped his hand around hers and pulled her in for a kiss. "As long as that's not all you're slipping me."

"See, you're feeling better already."

"Fake it 'til you make it, right?"

"Let's go to bed, Logan."

"You're sleepy?"

"No, but you are and I'm happy to keep you company."

"I am fading."

Max stood and reached her hand toward him. "Let's go to bed."

They met the others in the multi-purpose room just before 8 am. Logan had managed somewhere around three hours of sleep, but it looked like the others had fared a bit better. Zack and Bling were sufficiently sweaty, having apparently just returned from a run. Bennett and Marianne clutched coffee cups and sat toward the back of the room, careful not to intrude but also wanting to be part of the action.

Makiko convened promptly on the hour. She outlined the plans for the next week – the first order of business would be for Zack to donate blood and for Logan to begin the immunosuppression therapy. After the preparation of the stem cells, there were several options for how to proceed. Makiko explained the process.

"Stem cell therapy after the immediate period of the injury has been such a disappointment in the treatment of spinal cord injury. The problem has been that regular stem cells, while pluripotent, which means they have the ability to become any cell type, cannot re-program the scar cells that have filled in the space of the damaged neurons into cells that can conduct an impulse. At the time of injury these stem cells may be able to promote growth of adjacent neurons, and they have even been made to grow into many different yet singular cell types, tissues, and organs in vitro, they can't change cats into dogs or birds into frogs. For example, if a frog's leg falls off, we can grow it a wing, but we can't change its remaining leg into a wing. If that makes any sense at all."

"So why not cut out the scar cells and bad connections and start over?" Zack inquired.

Makiko nodded. "It's been proposed and even tried in labs such as Manticore on animal and probably human models, but even then it's been too unpredictable to even make it to sanctioned trials, especially because we know there is some possibility of recovery in the first year or two following an incomplete injury where portions of the spinal cord remain intact. To cause further injury to see if a potential treatment might restore function would be unethical as some of us still follow the Hippocratic oath's tenant of 'First do no harm.'"

"So what are our options?" Logan managed to find his voice once he'd digested all of that information.

"I guess the point I'm vacillating over is whether or not to do just that – to surgically remove the scar tissue and use a polyethylene glycol Nano gel scaffold in conjunction with Zack's stem cells to allow your spinal neurons space to reconnect or to simply introduce the cells and see what they'll do on their own.

"Given that you had significant return of function with Max's cells several months ago, I think we may not need the Nano gel scaffolding, but you've also had four or five more months of scar tissue growth since then, and I don't know to what extent Max's cells have changed the matrix with which we'll be working. So one of the first things we need to do is to obtain a functional MRI. And we can do that today." She pulled up a map of the area onto the screen in front of them and pointed out a large building about three blocks away. "This was previously a VA hospital run by the government but is now under private control. They have the required equipment, and I've enlisted a radiologist there to help us obtain the images we need. There will need to be a contribution to the upkeep of their operation, but I hope I didn't overstep when I told them that wouldn't be a problem."

Logan nodded. "Whatever we need to do will not be a problem."

"Good. Let's break and get to work. Zack, Takeshi will take care of your donation here, and Logan, you and Bling can head up to the hospital. And Max, could you hang back for a moment?"

The others scattered, and Max found herself standing in the middle of an empty room facing Makiko. Her throat constricted as she tried to predict what her task for the day would be. She swallowed against the lump of sawdust in her throat a couple of times, coughed once and managed a strangled, "Yeah?"

"Now that everyone else is occupied, I thought maybe we could talk about what we might be able to do for you as well."

Max blinked a couple of times. "You really think you can stop the seizures?"

"And the heat cycles. But I don't think I can, Max; I know I can. I've done it before."

TBC

Reference: Nano gel technology for use in spinal cord injury in this context was presented by researchers from Northwestern University in the Journal of Neuroscience April 2, 2008. Yeah. The notes are from all the way back then, and I'm still writing this. bP