Six months later, the spring sun came pouring through the tall windows of a recovery villa on the California coast, and the whole place smelled of clean salt air off the ocean.

Phedra sat on the sunlit terrace with a soft silk scarf wrapped around her head, and there was color in her cheeks again — real color, the flush of a living body doing well — and her eyes were bright and clear and fully, gloriously alive.

Six months of world-class targeted therapy, funded start to finish by the Canadian settlement, had done what two doctor’s visits in eleven months could never have done.

Her cancer was in complete remission.