Miracle Cure (22 page)

As he talked, in spite of himself, Brian’s mind locked on to that perfect fall afternoon. He is having a typically brilliant day—three touchdowns, no interceptions. But now there are four yards to go for the winning score, and time for only one more play. Six seconds … five …

“Time-out,” Brian cries.

He heads toward the sideline, wincing each time his right knee bears weight. Try as he might, he is unable to hide the limp. The instant he took the hit in the second quarter, he knew that something in the knee had stretched or frayed or popped. But he kept going, reminding himself over and over that Coach Holbrook had
once played a quarter of a game on a broken leg. The coach pulls him aside.

“I don’t like the way you’re walking. Can you do one more play?”

“Why would you even ask that?”

“Because I’m your father, that’s why. Okay, if you’re going to stay in, I want you to take a three-step drop and get rid of the ball as quickly as possible. A quick-release pass to Tucker. Two-six-slant-eagle.”

“Coach, Tucker has dropped two passes already. What about faking the pass and letting me run it in—a quarterback draw?”

“I don’t want you putting that leg at risk. Two-six-slant-eagle. Is that clear?”

“Clear.”

Brian walks back to the huddle.

“Loop left, z-out, patch QB draw,” he tells the team. “On two.”

The knee wobbles slightly as he approaches the center. A jagged spear of pain shoots up through the marrow of his thigh. But the leg holds. Brian glances over at his father. Their eyes connect. The coach claps once and gives a thumbs-up sign. It’s time. As always at these moments, everything begins to move in slow motion for Brian. The sound from around the stadium grows faint, then mutes altogether. The position of each of his opponents, their eyes, their stances, their slightest movements, are cataloged in his mind. It is clear they have taken the bait—the deceptive offensive formation that says a pass is on the way. They are badly out of position for the play that is about to be run. The pass Coach wants him to throw might work or it might be dropped. But Brian’s quarterback run is a lock.

“Down … set … hut one … two.”

The ball snaps up into his hands. Brian holds it so his
opponents can see that he is ready to throw. He takes two steps backward. In front of him now, a lane has opened up—a clear path to the goal line so wide that he almost smiles. He hesitates one more fraction of a second and then bolts forward. With the first plant of his right foot, two of the ligaments holding together his upper and lower leg rip apart. The lower leg bends outward at a grotesquely unnatural angle. Pain unlike any he has ever experienced explodes from the knee joint.

Brian begins screaming even before he hits the ground. He gasps and cries out again, then again. He grabs a fistful of turf and jams it into his own mouth, biting down on it with all his might. Even so, he can still hear his agonized groans. Through a sickening haze, he hears his father’s voice calling his name.

“Brian … Brian …”

Embarrassed, Brian suddenly recognized Teri’s voice. Her hand was over his, gripping it tightly.

“Whoa,” he said, shaking his head, then brushing a bit of sweat from his upper lip. “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore, Toto. I sure haven’t gotten lost like that for a while. Did I make any sense?”

“You made perfect sense, Brian. Perfect. Do you think if you had passed like your father wanted you to that you’d have ended up playing pro ball?”

“And not being strung out on painkillers? My father does, and that’s really all that matters. He’s never gotten over it.”

He began drifting again.

The band, not half-bad, had started playing, and was into a slow, rumbling blues.

“You like to dance?” Teri asked, snapping him back.

“You know, that’s the second time this week someone’s asked me that question. You carry foot insurance?”

They joined three other couples near the band. Teri,
very naturally, reached her arms around his neck and set her cheek against his chest. Brian was instantly lost in the sensations of her hair against his face, her body pressed against his, and his hands filling the hollow at the small of her back. He realized, perhaps for the first time, how tense his life had been since the moment of Jack’s chest pain at the Towne Deli—a constant state of red alert. He closed his eyes. They were all still out there waiting for him—the job, the patients, the monitoring, the drug, his father. But gradually, there was only the music and the woman.

They held each other for a time after the music had stopped, then Brian led Teri back to their table as the band launched into an upbeat number showcasing the harmonica player.

“I don’t think I’m ready for dancing to the up-tempo stuff,” he said. “In fact, I don’t think the
world
is ready for that.”

“Nonsense. You’re an athlete. Athletes have a special grace that translates well into any movement.”

“Correction. I’m a cardiologist. And a six-foot-three-inch cardiologist with thirteen-D shoes at that. Could there ever be a more awkward combination?”

“Bah! I’ll be patient with this misplaced modesty for now. But I warn you, with you or without you, I dance.”

“Warning noted.”

“And since you brought up cardiology,” she added, “I really didn’t want to talk business tonight, but I also don’t want to stand in line waiting for my unemployment check—or worse, read headlines proclaiming that a drug that I helped get into early release has wiped out the population equivalent of Iowa. Have you thought about my request?”

Brian sighed.

“Only constantly,” he said. “I wish there were some
way this process could go through Dr. Pickard and Dr. Jessup.”

“That just wouldn’t be wise. Brian, this is not the first time our agency has dealt with a drug or product that was going to make some people very wealthy. And it would hardly be the first time respected researchers had kept information from us. We have no reason to suspect anything is being held back from us as far as Vasclear is concerned, and Pickard and Jessup have spotless reputations, but you know what’s at stake as well as I do.”

Brian flashed on the warning from Jessup following his filing of the MedWatch report, and on the realization that she and Weber had, in fact, lied to him. They had told him flat-out that “not once” in three years had protocol been broken.

“You did say that Jessup and Pickard agreed to the idea of confidential reporting to your agency?”

“Absolutely.”

“Well, okay. I’ll keep my eyes open.” He hesitated, then added, “And I guess I should say that there’s a potentially interesting case I’m looking at right now involving one of the early Vasclear patients.”

“Go on, please.”

“There’s not much to tell, yet. And I would never divulge his name, even to you, without a release.”

“I understand.”

“He’s an older guy I just saw in the Vasclear clinic, one of the first treated with the drug.”

“Phase One?”

“I think so, yes. It looks like he responded well initially, then he regressed. Now, after two years of treatment, he’s quite ill. I haven’t gotten any labs back on him yet, but I think he might have pulmonary hypertension.”

Teri’s eyes brightened with interest.

“Pulmonary hypertension. Has he been on diet pills? Or eating salad oil in Spain recently?”

Brian smiled.

“You know your medical-disaster history. No obvious precipitating factors that I can tell. But I’ve only just started the workup. For the moment, PH remains a long shot.”

“When will you know something?”

“A few more days.”

“And you’ll keep me posted?”

“Provided I can do it in person.”

“I promise.”

“But Teri, there’s one more thing I want to tell you. My father has bad coronary disease. He had a coronary ten years ago and the bypass he had six years ago is failing. I’ve gotten him into the Vasclear study. That’s how much confidence I have in this drug.”

“I hope he was randomized into the beta strength of the drug.”

“Thankfully, he was. Hey, how’d you like to meet him? We live only a few miles from here. Meeting you would brighten Jack up considerably. I guarantee it. You can even watch me administer his Vasclear. I’m giving it to him at home.”

“If you think he’d like it.”

“He’d love it, believe m—”

“What’s the matter?”

“My beeper! I just realized that I don’t have it. I’m never without—Oh, I remember. I changed my pants at the hospital. The beeper’s wrapped up in my bag in the car. I’ll just call and tell him we’re coming.”

“I’ll hit the ladies’ room and meet you back here.”

Brian found the pay phone in the front entryway. After four rings, he heard his own voice on their answering machine.

“Hello, you’ve reached the Holbrooks—”

He hung up, his heart beginning to pound, and waited an interminable twenty seconds for the machine to clear. Then he called again. Same result.

He raced out to the LeBaron and fumbled with the trunk. His beeper was hooked to the belt loop of his pants, inside his overnight bag. The LED displayed a call from home.

“Jesus,” he muttered, racing back to the phone. “Come on … answer.… Answer, dammit!”

Three rings, then the answering machine again.

“Pop, I’m on my way home,” he blurted after the beep. “I’m on my way right now!”

B
RIAN CHARGED BACK INTO THE RESTAURANT JUST AS
Teri returned to their table.

“There’s something wrong,” he said. “There’s no answer at home. Jack would never
not
be there and we had help tonight to boot. And he did try to page me. Dammit. I can’t believe this. The one night I don’t have my beeper.”

He threw two twenties on the table, took Teri’s hand, and hurried her outside.

“Do you want me to follow you home?” she asked.

“No! I mean, maybe you should. Sure.”

Brian sped off with his focus alternating between the road and the rearview mirror. He squealed around the corner of his street expecting to see rescue squad vehicles parked outside the house. But except for the living-room light the place looked deserted. Without waiting for Teri, he raced inside. There was a note taped to the lamp beside
Jack’s chair—a note from the neighbor who was watching him.

Brian handed Teri the note and called the ER at White Memorial. It was several anxious minutes before a resident answered.

“Dr. Holbrook, I’m Stu Meltzer, first-year resident. Your father’s here, but he’s in tough shape. He’s had an extensive anterior MI, and we’re having trouble holding his pressure.”

Extensive anterior MI—a massive coronary involving the muscle of the left ventricle, the major pumping chamber. Next to a rupture of the heart wall, it was just about the worst of all cardiac disasters.

“Damn,” Brian said. “Is he conscious?”

“In and out.”

“Who’s with him?”

“Right now, the on-call team, but I’ve been told Dr. Jessup is on her way in, and Dr. Randa’s just arrived down here.”

“Thank you. Stu, tell my dad I’m on the way in.”

“Will do.”

“And Stu?”

“Yes?”

“Do whatever’s necessary.”

“I understand.”

Brian looked to Teri.

“He’s in big trouble.”

“I heard. You go ahead in. I’ll find my way to the Radisson. Call me as soon as you know anything.”

“I can’t believe this is happening! I just can’t believe it. Oh God, poor Pop.”

As he turned to go, she called his name. Then she reached up, pulled him down to her, and kissed him lightly on the mouth.

“Would it help if I drove you?” she asked.

“No, no. I’ll do okay. If I can, I’ll call you at the hotel as soon as I know how he’s doing.”

“Call later tonight or else first thing in the morning.”

“Okay. Come on. Follow me onto the highway, then you’re on your own. And Teri, thanks for tonight.”

“Thank
you,”
she called out as he raced to the LeBaron. “Be careful driving.”

Brian waited until he heard the engine on Teri’s rental turn over, then peeled away and sped toward 1-93 and Boston. Extensive heart damage, blood pressure dropping, Laj Randa at the bedside … Brian had rolled the dice of his father’s health at three-to-one odds. Now, it was clear, he had lost. The only question remaining was, how badly.

The White Memorial ER was in its usual state of hyperactivity. Brian knew exactly where to go and rushed to room 4 in the back. Nothing he had ever seen or done in medicine fully prepared him for the sight of his father at the center of the most extreme of medical dramas, a cardiac arrest.

“Clear!” Carolyn Jessup cried out.

Brian heard the pop of high-voltage electricity as the paddles discharged their energy into Jack’s body.
Through the crowd of fifteen or so technicians, nurses, and physicians, he saw Jack’s arms flap upward, then drop. The cardiac tracing on the overhead monitor showed several seconds of an absolutely straight line, then fairly well-organized complexes began moving across the screen—very slowly at first, then faster.

“Looks like some kind of nodal rhythm.”

“I’ve got a pulse. I’ve got a pulse.”

“He’s in sinus now. Regular sinus rhythm.”

“Pressure’s seventy.”

“Up the Levophed,” Jessup ordered. “Get an epi drip ready. Forget the cath. As soon as we can, we’re going straight over to the OR at BHI.”

Before Brian could get to the bedside, two of Laj Randa’s surgical fellows charged into the room, bristling with authority.

“Dr. Randa wants an intra-aortic balloon assist put in right now,” one ordered. “He says the heart-lung bypass pump tech is in and we’ll be ready for this man in the OR in fifteen minutes.”

Brian worked his way around rather than through the crowd. Carolyn Jessup glanced up from her work, spotted him, and shook her head. Maybe her expression was neutral, but Brian read his own grim thoughts into it.