Megan's Cure (22 page)

Chapter 42

LEE SLOWED HIS step and tiptoed as he entered his grandmother’s hospital room.
 
If she was sleeping, he didn’t want to wake her.
 
It had been almost a week since his last visit – before he flew out to find Walter Novak and determine whether the scientist offered any alternatives to the cancer medications that were failing to halt the march of her illness.
 
He prepared himself in case she appeared even weaker and more emaciated than he remembered.

He stopped just inside the door.
 
He saw an old Chinese man sitting in the chair next to the hospital bed.
 
His right hand rested on the bed.
 
He spoke in a low voice to his grandmother, but her eyes were closed and she looked as if she was sleeping.

After a few seconds, Lee moved to his right and cleared his throat.
 

Master Chu turned slowly in his chair, saw Lee behind him and gave him a small nod.

Lee had known Chu for several years, ever since the elderly man had called him over during one of his early morning runs through Chinatown and had introduced him to tai chi, the martial art that focuses on slow controlled movements and balance.
 
They had become friends and Lee had incorporated Chu’s training into his weekly workout regimen.
 
To Lee’s surprise, Chu and his grandmother – both well into their 80s – had become fast friends after he introduced them and had married 18 months earlier.

Chu stood and moved to the foot of the bed next to Lee.

“She sleep,” he murmured.
 

“How is she?” asked Lee.
 
Chu shrugged.

“Same,” he said.
 
“Sleep a lot.
 
Wake up for meals.
 
Not eat much.
 
I try to help her.”

Lee nodded.
 
He had witnessed the meals shared by the pair.
 
Invariably, Chu ended up consuming most of the meal as he tried to encourage his wife to eat more herself by setting a good example.
 
Lee concluded that Chu at least was benefitting from the steady flow of hospital food.
 
Whenever he could, the reporter added some extra dishes he thought Chu would enjoy when he filled out forms for the next day’s fare.

“What were you talking to her about?” asked Lee.

“Just telling stories,” said Chu.
 
“Old stories.
 
Ones I remember…growing up.
 
Maybe she know them, too.
 
Old memories best.”

Lee nodded his head.
 
They both watched his grandmother as she slept, her breathing barely causing any movement in her tiny bent form.

He heard footsteps entering the room and turned to see Dr. Choy sweep in.
 
Her lab coat was open and she wore a purple dress cinched in folds in the middle that displayed a hint of cleavage and an athlete’s tanned legs from the lower thigh down.

She nodded at Lee, smiled at Chu and stepped to the head of the bed.
 
She watched his grandmother for a moment and checked a few of the machines before turning back.
 
On her way out, Choy beckoned Lee with her right forefinger and he followed.

“Wow.
 
You’ve certainly been busy,” she said, facing him in the hallway.

“I found Novak,” he said.
 
“And got the story of his drug, Roxaten.”

“So I’ve read,” said Choy.
 
“It’s created quite a stir.
 
And not just in the exciting world of oncology.
 
Although my colleagues are also quite appalled at what he’s done.”

Lee shrugged.

Since the media scrum outside of Novak’s home, the circus had continued unabated.
 
Merrick & Merrick had released a stream of damaging disclosures about Novak.
 
The climax was a blistering press release announcing Novak’s termination and accusing him of conducting medical experiments on unsuspecting children from poor families in the South.
 
Bloggers eager to jump on any controversy were comparing him to Josef Mengele, the notorious Nazi physician who performed medical experiments on children at the concentration camps.

“Well,” said Lee.
 
“Novak is in the middle of a…of a…”

“Shit storm?” said Choy.

Lee laughed.
 
Her precise Hong Kong accent made the vulgarity sound almost polite.

“Well, I guess that’s one way to put it,” he said.
 
“And listen.
 
I’ve spent a lot of time with Novak now.
 
I know I’m not a doctor…or a scientist…”

“But you want to give Roxaten a try,” Choy interrupted him.

 
“Yeah,” he said, nodding.

“Because you’re desperate,” said Choy.
 
“You want to save her.
 
You think it’s her only chance.”

Lee just nodded his head silently.
 

“Five minutes,” he finally said.
 
“I’d just like five minutes alone with her.”

Choy looked at him closely.
 
He might have been a lab specimen she was closely studying.
 

What he wanted to say to Choy was:
 
“Please, don’t fight me on this.
 
It’s something I need to do for her.
 
At least give her a chance.”
 

But he didn’t.
 
Instead, he put his hands in the pockets of his windbreaker and remained silent, returning her stare.
 
He’d decided to ignore any trouble this might create for him – giving his grandmother the unapproved Roxaten.
 
He’d accept whatever happened.
 
But he knew Choy, as a licensed doctor, could be severely punished.
 
The medicine had even been withdrawn from trials.
 
He would try to deflect any fallout away from her.
 
But he didn’t want to ask for her help.
 
It would just make her more complicit.
 
The less said, the better.

Finally, Choy turned and walked into the hospital room.
 
She asked Master Chu to come out and join her in Choy’s office so she could update him on his wife’s status.
 
After they left, Lee walked into the hospital room.
 
He stood on his grandmother’s left side next to the stand that held the bag of intravenous fluid that was slowly dripping through a long tube into a vein on the back of her hand.
 

Several years earlier – after his mother had died followed a few months later by his grandfather
 
– Lee’s grandmother had sent the message to him that she wanted to meet.
 
He had been prepared to be angry at her for the decades of family exile that he and his mother had endured when, as a young woman, she had taken a non-Chinese husband in open defiance of her father.
 

Instead, Lee quickly realized that his grandmother had been caught between the stubborn, unbending wills of Lee’s mother and grandfather.
 
The family schism had hurt her as much as anyone.
 
She showed him the scrapbooks she had kept of Lee’s mother growing up – the achievements and milestones of childhood.
 
She had hidden them from Lee’s grandfather.
 
And she had also secretly saved articles her relatives sent her of newspaper stories Lee had written earlier in his career.
 

He came to view her as a fellow survivor of a family war.
 
And his grandmother became his silver lining – a new piece of family to help fill the huge void left with his mother’s passing.
 
He had treasured her ever since.

He pulled the vial of Roxaten out of his windbreaker pocket along with the hypodermic syringe that Novak had given him and showed him how to use.
 
This was after the scientist had reviewed the medical files for Lee’s grandmother and confirmed that her type of leukemia was one his research had identified as having the C Factor mutation that Roxaten would target.

Lee uncapped the syringe, inserted the needle into the vial and pulled back the plunger until the vial was half empty.
 
He found the medical port of the IV bag and inserted the needle into the end of the short tube.
 
He depressed the plunger steadily until the hypodermic was empty.
 
He massaged the half-empty bag a few seconds to disperse the medicine.
 
Then he capped the syringe and put it back into his pocket.

He stood watching his grandmother’s slow breathing and the equally slow, steady dripping of the IV solution dropping from the bag into the clear tube that led to her hand.
 

After a few minutes, Lee heard Choy and Master Chu reenter the room.
 
Chu resumed his position on the other side of the hospital bed.

Choy stood next to Lee.
 
After a moment, she put her hand into his.
 
He kept his eyes on his grandmother but smiled as he ran his thumb along the back of Choy’s hand. They both listened to Chu murmur in the sing song cadence of Cantonese as he told another story from his youth.
 
Lee watched his grandmother’s face twitch into the barest trace of a smile.
 

In his head, an internal countdown began.
 
Tomorrow would be Day One.
 
He had 10 days to somehow get inside Merrick & Merrick and get more vials of Roxaten.

Chapter 43

ONCE EDWIN MERRICK made clear his ultimate goal of demolishing Walter Novak’s standing in the scientific community, several of his prominent lawyer friends highly recommended local attorney Henry Roth and his law firm for the job.

After six years as a prosecutor, Roth had joined George Weiler’s 12-lawyer law firm with the tacit understanding that the 60-year-old Weiler would retire within five years and leave Roth free to remake the litigation boutique in his own image.

Weiler had happily held up his end of the bargain, retiring to tend his money-losing vineyard outside of Healdsburg.
 
Meanwhile, Roth doubled the size of the firm, changed the name to Weiler & Roth and gave it a cultural makeover.
 
From gentlemanly and collegial, Roth sharpened the firm’s edges and instilled in his troops a love of combat.
 
Like him, most of the attorneys were thin and wore black.

Roth entered Edwin Merrick’s office at 8 a.m. the day after the Review of Medicine’s article had run.
 
He wore an impeccable dark business suit, carried a sleek Italian leather briefcase and had his black hair slicked back.
 
He was a lithe 6-footer who ran at least six half marathons every year, placing well in his age group.
 
Merrick & Merrick’s general counsel had already given Roth a thorough memo on Novak and Roxaten.
 
Roth’s firm had spent a busy day researching relevant law and finding every relevant piece of information available online as well.
 
Troy Axmann was waiting along with the Merrick CEO.

“I’ve been a manager for more than 30 years,” Merrick told Roth.
 
“I believe that proper incentives are crucial to getting the results you want.
 
The rest is talk.

“For example, I can tell you that our goal is to destroy Walter Novak professionally and personally.
 
In three months, I want his name to have the same meaning in scientific circles as Charles Ponzi’s does in the financial world.
 
I want his sole aspiration in life to be never to hear the name ‘Roxaten’ again or set foot in a laboratory.

“But to really get the point across to you,” continued Merrick.
 
“I can tell you that I will pay your law firm a $250,000 bonus if Novak declares personal bankruptcy in the next 90 days.
 
The same amount applies if he spends a month in jail or you send him back to a psychiatric facility.
 
The trifecta is worth $1 million which I’ll gladly pay.”

Roth flashed a bemused smile.

“I believe I get the point,” he said.
 
“You don’t really care about the ultimate outcome of these cases then.”

“Correct,” said Merrick.
 
“It’s irrelevant what a judge decides in a year or two.
 
I want unrelenting pressure and public humiliation, whether it’s through the courts, the media or even personal friends if he has any.
 
Troy will coordinate our side – press releases, scientists’ statements about the improper testing and whatnot.
 
I want you both to squeeze this guy until his head pops.”

The campaign against Walter Novak reached a fevered pitch the next day.
 
It began with a morning press conference that Troy Axmann organized.
 
It featured six luminaries in the biological sciences, including two Nobel laureates.

“This type of unauthorized experimentation conducted by Walter Novak is reprehensible,” said the chairman of the West Texas State University biology department who was also on an annual retainer from a major drug company that paid him more than $100,000 each year.
 
“It smacks of exploitation of minorities and poor refugees who don’t understand the language or the law.
 
Anyone involved is a disgrace to the scientific community.”

Merrick & Merrick’s employment-related lawsuit filed later in the day didn’t stop at the more or less routine allegations that Novak was improperly using the company’s trade secrets and intellectual property.
 
The Weil Roth lawyers accused Novak of stealing computers, lab equipment and medicines that belonged to Merrick.

Henry Roth used his old law enforcements contacts to get the San Francisco County Sheriff to initiate a criminal investigation into the theft charges against Novak.
 
He had one of the most conservative Superior Court judge in San Francisco rubberstamp a search warrant.
 
The 5 p.m. news shows featured live video feeds of sheriff deputies carrying boxes of files and computers out of Novak’s home.
 
The two-story home with its gingerbread details was festooned in enough yellow crime-scene tape to qualify as public art.

A second lawsuit was filed in Delaware where Merrick & Merrick was incorporated.
 
It asked the court to reverse the sale of Novak’s Medvak company to the pharmaceutical giant on the grounds that Novak had failed to disclose problems with Roxaten, including harmful side effects and flaws in the drug’s patents.

But the key to the Delaware lawsuit was the judge’s agreement to immediately freeze all of Novak’s assets so he couldn’t move or hide any proceeds from the Medvak sale.
 
Unless his own attorneys could reverse the initial order, the move would force Novak to live on the cash in his pockets and his credit cards, at least until those maxed out.