The Cure - Durwood White - Bog

Jenny Lynn Bateman, pert ER nurse, arrives in New York the day her best friend steals her boyfriend, the same day she realizes she is pregnant. She frequents an offbeat café as she decides what course she must take; somehow she still loves the man who has fathered the child she carries. Dr. John Cook, the owner-physician of a clinic hires her on the basis of her nurse credentials, later falls in love, and asks for her hand in marriage. When she tells him she is pregnant, he agrees to raise the child as his own son. The clinic expands into a major hospital. The child is born and has the same hazel eyes of Jenny Lynn's boyfriend. The memory haunts her. Dr. John Cook, prominent New York physician and Chip, his twelve-year old son stand at the foot of Kilimanjaro Mountain in search of a one-room laboratory entangled in the vines. They discover that a physician in 1929 actually built the laboratory and was experimenting on a cure for cancer using the natives as his test specimens. Meanwhile back in his New York hospital, Cook isolates the active ingredient in the old physician's formula. While working late in his laboratory he is clubbed on the head and injected with sarin posion. Dr. Chip Cook, newly minted physician and son of his deceased father, finds his research data encrypted on a cassette, and continues his father's work. Late hours in the lab causes frequent crashes in a secretary's townhouse nearby. When the housemaid discovers the secretary's dead body, Chip realizes his father's death was a homicide and he may be the next victim. Jenny Lynn warns her son that she suspects a Judas is on the Board of Directors of the hospital. Clyde Nevins, a pharmaceutical rep and Chip's best friend, whose daughter has aggressive leukemia and Chip's formula is her only chance, disarms a bomb hidden in Chip's car, packed with C-4 stolen from Fort Dix. Jenny Lynn is the hospital spokesman to the press. Dr. Robert Caruso, NSC agent appointed by the President, Jenny Lynn's former boyfriend locates her when the bomb report lands on his desk in Washington, DC. Jenny Lynn eagerly anticipates his arrival but lacks the courage to reveal that he has a son, neither has she told Chip he is not John Cook's biological son. Caruso traces the C-4 from federal records; it has been signed out by a soldier whose name is sealed by the court. Detective Henson of Midtown Precinct, finally arrests a psychopathic salesman, but forensic evidence points to the Board of Directors, even incriminates two other suspects. The investigation surprisingly unravels in a nest of misfit cousins of the Judas on the Board of Directors who has fled to Peru, and is finally found dead bitten by a local poisonous snake.