Miracle Cure (27 page)

B
RIAN SIGNED OUT AT FOUR O’CLOCK, CLAIMING EXHAUSTION
and a headache, and battled rush-hour traffic through the Callahan Tunnel to Logan Airport. Teri was waiting for him in one corner of a small bar in the B terminal.

It had been less than twelve hours since they had last made love. But sitting there in her business suit and glasses, hair up, briefcase open, reading a document, she looked light-years from the woman who had straddled him in his bed, crying out softly as she had first one, then another orgasm.

For a few moments, he paused by the doorway of the bar, watching her, aware of the bewildering, paradoxical feelings of connection and detachment, of intimacy and distance. He had touched every millimeter of her body, shared incomparable feelings with her. Yet he did not even know what her apartment looked like. Was this the beginning for them? Were they destined to become the love of one another’s lives?

Thank God it’s a day at a time
, he was thinking. Otherwise the twists and turns would simply be too tight to negotiate.

For Brian, the Vasclear situation was still very much up in the air. But Phil had placed himself unambiguously on the sidelines. The two of them had spoken by phone a few hours after their meeting in his office. Brian had made the call.

“Phil,” he said, “I just wanted you to know that I
haven’t gone racing off half-cocked about this Vasclear thing. And I wanted to tell you how much I appreciated your trusting me and my judgment by sharing what you knew with me the way you did.”

“I’m glad you called to tell me that. The truth is, I’ve been nervous since we spoke, thinking that if I had just kept my mouth shut about the Ford case, you wouldn’t be in danger of upsetting the applecart around here and getting yourself canned. I really do enjoy having you around, pal.”

“Thanks. Believe me, I’m in no mood to be back working behind the counter of Speedy Rent-A-Car, either. But Phil, you shouldn’t feel any responsibility for me no matter what happens. I’ll admit I’m curious about these little chinks in the Vasclear armor, but I assure you I am not about to self-destruct over them. So, stop worrying about me.”

“Okay. Presto change-o. I’m not worried about you.”

“I’m serious. I mean, what do we know, anyway? There were how many cases that received Vasclear during Phase One trials, do you suppose?”

“I’m not certain, but I think I once heard eighteen humans plus the usual array of four-legged subjects.”

“Okay, eighteen. Two out of eighteen may or may not have developed PH. One of those maybes had a single elevated eosinophil count. That’s it. That’s all we know.”

“That’s it,” Phil underscored. “And besides, Weber’s people modified whatever was causing the rashes in patients anyway. If that part of the drug was causing PH as well, it’s been fixed.”

“Exactly.”

“So, you’re going to let things drop?”

Brian hesitated before saying, “Probably.”

“We don’t do
probably
here at Boston Heart,” Phil said. “I want
definitely
. Because Brian, I’m telling you,
we’ve got nothing to gain and I really can’t chance losing everything. I just can’t.”

“Hey, I understand. That’s why I called just now, to tell you that I didn’t even want you doing anything about these PH cases. You’re right. There’s too much at stake.”

“Thank you. Now, I only hope
you’re
listening to what you’re saying.”

“I am, Phil. You take care, now.”

“I will. Listen, there
is
one thing. That monkey you mentioned—the chimp in the animal lab?”

“Four-three-eight-six? What about him?”

“He doesn’t exist.”

“What?”

“And as a matter of fact, that animal keeper, Earl, is gone, too.”

“Tell me.”

“There’s nothing to tell. I went down to tend to my hamsters, and there was a new guy down there. Andrei, I think his name is. Speaks with some kind of accent, Russian, maybe. I asked him about Earl, and he said he had no idea who he was or why he didn’t work there anymore. Then I sort of sauntered past where the primates are kept. There’s one chimp there, but his number’s not four-three-eight-six, and he sure doesn’t seem to have anything wrong with him that I could see. He was jumping all over a swinging tire, and making faces at me like Joanne used to.”

“Did you ask what happened to the other monkey?”

“Hell, no. I’m telling you, Brian, the walls have ears around here, and I am out of the loop.”

“Out of the loop,” Brian echoed.

Teri glanced up and spotted Brian as he approached. Her smile lit up the dim corner. They had agreed that she
would have him paged at the hospital at noon, just to check in. By then, he had decided to share with her what he had learned about Bill Elovitz and Kenneth Ford. She promised to check with her office to review exactly what had been reported on the two Phase One patients, and to fill him in at the airport.

“Hi, there,” she said. “I was wondering if you were going to make it before my flight.”

She rose and kissed him on the mouth, adding that she had thoroughly surveyed the bar patrons and determined she could risk it.

“In that case, risk it again,” he said. “God, you smell good.”

“I smell like Newbury Pharmaceuticals because that’s where I’ve spent most of the day. Here, I ordered your usual. I’m doing chardonnay.”

“How goes everything?”

“Well, I think this is it, actually. I have amassed as much information as I could.”

“And?”

“And I think we’re a go for Saturday. Let the Vasclear games begin.”

“What about those two cases?”

“Well, I checked with my office. The patients from Phase One and Phase Two are identified by initials only. Patient K. F., who I assume was Kenneth Ford, was reported as having died of congestive heart failure. But there was also a note from the team at Boston Heart saying that he was being evaluated for pulmonary hypertension at the time of his death. My people didn’t think much of that one case, especially since there have not been any others.”

“Until now.”

“Without divulging your name, I actually mentioned your second man—the poor fellow who was killed in the
holdup—to Dr. Baird. He thought your findings were as consistent with congestive heart failure as they were with pulmonary hypertension. And before he came to take over the FDA, he was a professor of medicine. But even if it was PH, there’s no easy way to connect it to Vasclear. Besides, these men were part of Phase One studies. The chemical process used to make the drug was modified before Phase Two. Since then, nothing. Dr. Baird doesn’t feel we have any cause for concern or alarm. And the truth is, neither do I.”

Brian shrugged and took her hand.

“Hey, fine with me,” he said. “I was just doing what I promised to do—keep my eyes and ears open and report to you.”

“And I hope you know how grateful I am. Brian, I’m finally excited about Vasclear. After all this work, I think this drug is the real deal. I think it’s going to save lives—many, many lives.”

Memories of his father made it hard for Brian to share her enthusiasm.

“In that case, I’m excited, too,” he said. “I’m also glad your part in this is coming to an end.”

“I guess in a way it is. But we have a very active postmarketing surveillance program. If any problems crop up with the drug, we’ll be on top of them. And one really good thing about Vasclear getting approved is that I’ll have more time free to spend with you. In fact, I have a couple of weeks of vacation coming to me. How about we go someplace?”

“Unfortunately, I’m a newcomer at BHI. I don’t get any vacation for six months, and by agreement with Dr. Pickard, I can’t be away from my periodic random drug tests for a year, which means no travel away from Boston.”

“So, I’ll come up. I’d love to meet your girls.”

“Now you’re talking.”

“Two weeks from now I should be able to get away. Maybe you could fly down for a weekend before that.”

“Maybe I could.”

Teri checked her watch.

“Meanwhile, I’ll be pretty tied up with the pomp and ceremony. But I’ll be up again in five days. Let’s plan to speak every day until then. If we miss connections, I’ll page you. You can leave messages for me at home or at the office.”

Brian took her in his arms.

“I really loved last night,” he said. “And I hope it’s the start of something very special.”

“It is,” Teri whispered, her lips brushing his ear. “Believe me, Brian. I know now why I’ve been ignoring the phone and keeping to myself for so many months. I’ve been waiting for you.”

Brian ransomed the LeBaron from the airport parking garage and began the drive home to Reading. His thoughts were only of Teri Sennstrom—her voice, her poise, the scent of her hair, the feel of her waist, her body pressing against his. They had kissed good-bye in the bar, deciding it was still too chancy to walk together through the terminal to the security checkpoint. After Vasclear had been released to the world, there would be no problem in their going public. But for now, it was better for both of them to be discreet.

Teri was right, he thought, as he headed north on 1A. It was over. Despite his suspicions regarding Ford and Elovitz, Vasclear had proven to be incredibly effective and squeaky-clean in a reasonably sized, carefully controlled double-blind study. There was nothing he could do about Jack’s failure to respond to the drug. Of every million
patients worldwide who would be treated once the Hippodome ceremony was over, two hundred and fifty thousand weren’t going to respond to Vasclear, either. Two hundred and fifty thousand total treatment failures. And at this point, from all anyone could determine, there was nothing more than the fickle finger of fate at work deciding who was going to be cured by the drug and who was not. A lethal combination of factors unknown plus plain old-fashioned lousy luck—that’s what had conspired to bring Jack Holbrook down. There was nothing more Brian could have done.

It was time to let the whole business rest. Phil had said it perfectly. They had nothing to gain and everything to lose by infuriating the powers that be at Boston Heart over this one.

Time to let the whole business rest
. The words were still reverberating in Brian’s head when he reached Bell Circle, the rotary off of which one of the exits led to the highway home. Before he even fully realized what he was doing, he had sped past the turnoff, gone completely around the rotary, and was heading south on 1A, back toward the city—more specifically, back toward Boston City Hospital.

The secret of moving freely about a hospital was simple: Look and act like you belong wherever it is that you are. In a huge hospital like Boston City, with its many buildings, enormous international faculty, inner-city patient population, and chronically overworked staff, the task was easy.

Brian’s neat appearance, clinic coat, stethoscope, and plastic ID card got him into the record room, where he soon had the librarian helping in his search for the record of Kenneth Ford, deceased. It took considerably longer to get a security officer to come and lead him into the dusty
bowels of the hospital to the locked storage room where the so-called inactive records were kept.

Not surprisingly, the carefully numbered cardboard file cartons, like the records inside them, seemed to be in no consistent order. After ten minutes of standing around, the guard became impatient and left, instructing Brian to lock up after himself when he was finished.

We Respect Patient Confidentiality. The signs were up in every elevator in every hospital Brian had ever known. Yet here he was, armed with only his clean-cut looks, a plastic ID from another hospital, and some of the accouterments of a physician, alone with thousands of medical records.

It took nearly forty-five minutes and half a dozen cartons to find the file on Kenneth Ford. And for a time, Brian had wondered if it would be among the missing, like the White Memorial labwork and chimp 4386.

Kenneth Ford had been admitted to Boston City Hospital on August 3, two years before, and had died on the sixth. Admission diagnosis: congestive heart failure, severe. Discharge diagnosis: same. His EKG showed changes consistent with both cardiac and pulmonary disease, and his chest X ray showed too much fluid in his lungs to make possible a diagnosis as subtle as pulmonary hypertension.

Brian felt a strangely pleasing tension as he turned to the hematology section of the lab reports.

Brian tore the page out and folded it in his pocket. He would leave Phil out of this from now on; it wasn’t fair to involve him. He would have to be extremely careful and tread softly. But Jack was dead, and directly or indirectly, Brian’s treatment choice of Vasclear had helped kill him. No matter what, there was no way he could let the matter rest until some gnawing questions were answered.

Oprah:
Do you believe in miracles? Today we’re devoting this program to people who have had their lives saved by so-called miracle cures. But before we begin with our very special miracle-cure guests, I would like to introduce to you Mr. Al Morgenfeld, a man with a history of two heart attacks and severe coronary artery disease, who is living life as what is known as a cardiac cripple. Also with Mr. Morgenfeld is his wife, Julia, and his cardiologist, Dr. Susan Norman, who has promised Mr. Morgenfeld he will be on the new wonder drug Vasclear the very day it is released for general use … which could be as soon as next week.

B
RIAN STOOD AT THE REAR OF THE SMALL CROWD IN THE
Vasclear-clinic waiting room and watched the initial portion
of the TV program that everyone at the hospital had been anticipating. Patients and staff alike cheered and applauded at the mention of the drug that had brought them all together. Lucy Kendall, resplendent in pink cashmere, had positioned herself just to Brian’s left and a half-step behind him, and continued her assault on his arm and back with her breast.