Miracle Cure (30 page)

“I … think you’d better call back when my husband’s here.”

“Okay, but please, just tell me, do you know the cause of death?”

“It was her heart. Now please, call back tomorrow.”

Sylvia’s daughter-in-law had hung up before Brian could ask her another question. But he was asking himself plenty. Was Sylvia hospitalized anywhere before her death? Did she have a cardiological evaluation at any point? A blood count? An autopsy? And perhaps the two biggest questions of all: Was it too late for him just to let
the Vasclear matter drop altogether? Was he even capable of doing that?

“Well, another riveting set of rounds, eh?”

Brian hadn’t even noticed Phil approaching.

“Sorry I kept leaving the group. I had a couple of calls to make.”

“Hey, no problem. You just keep putting in the pacemakers and saving the lives. I’ll take care of the theoretical stuff.”

“You really are a very good teacher, Phil.”

“Aw, pshaw.”

“Seriously. I can tell you really love doing it, too. Not everyone does, you know.”

“Well, the truth is I
do
love it. I love everything about what I’m being paid to do here. That’s why I’m willing to put up with some of the bullshit and the unwritten rules. It goes with the territory. It’s also why I can’t be of any more help to you with this Vasclear thing, and why I’m begging you to be careful.”

“Do you know something I don’t?”

“About what?”

“Nothing, nothing. I’m just a little paranoid and a lot overtired.”

“I can understand both. Bri, if I sound preachy, I apologize. But it’s a fact of life that every place that has more than one person working in it has a set of egos that the lower-downs like you and me have to deal with. In places where those people are doctors, the personalities are just … more sharply defined, that’s all. Once you get used to who has the fragile egos around here and what you have to do to stay on their good side, it really is a decent place.”

“Hey, you don’t have to tell me. I’m the one who was pulled off the medical scrap heap, remember?”

“Yeah. Well, I wanted to thank you for not pushing matters.”

“No problem.”

Brian could see the discomfort in his friend’s face. The decision to remain uninvolved wasn’t an easy one for him.

“Well,” Phil said awkwardly, “see you later.”

He backed off a few steps, then turned and hurried away.

Brian opened his briefcase and took out an envelope on which he had written Phil’s name. Inside it was a copy of the list of the ten Phase One patients. Brian had intended to see if Phil would feel comfortable searching out the records of some of them. Instead, he tore up the copy and dropped the bits in the trash. Phil was officially out of the loop. Now, Brian thought, if he could only be as definitive about himself.

“Dr. Holbrook,” the ward secretary called out, “do you have a second?”

“Sure.”

Brian snapped his briefcase shut and crossed over to her desk.

“Dr. Holbrook, I just noticed this envelope on the corner of my desk had your name on it. I don’t know who left it there or when. I just looked and there it was. I’m sorry.”

“Nonsense. That’s fine, thanks. It looks like nothing important, anyway. Probably fell out of the pile I lugged up from my mailbox.”

He didn’t believe that explanation for a second, but it was the best he could do on the spur of the moment. He took the envelope from her and retreated as nonchalantly as he could manage to the lounge.

The envelope was plain white, and sealed, with
DR. BRIAN HOLBROOK
carefully printed in block letters. Brian tore the envelope open, but even before he unfolded the single sheet, he knew it was trouble.

WHITE MEMORIAL HOSPITAL DIAGNOSTIC LAB
Patient: 1744 SPECIMEN DATE: 10/15

Comments

Patient 1744. Brian’s number. But the date was today’s. He hadn’t even given a urine today, much less one that was positive for the opiate narcotic group—the class of drugs for which he had gotten in trouble. He sat there staring across the tiny lounge at a framed print of Hippocrates pouring something from a clay bowl down a patient’s throat. It felt as if a barbell had been dropped on his chest. According to his agreement with Ernest Pickard, just one positive test confirmed by gas chromatography was it. No excuses, no alibis, no protestations of
innocence, no hiding behind lab error, no second chances.
It
. Termination at BHI. Immediate report to the Board of Registration. Humiliation. Suspension. Forget about doctoring. Forget about unsupervised visits with the kids.
It
.

The clinic where he had his urine testing done had a log book—a hedge against someone blaming the lab or the collection procedure for a missing specimen. Had whoever sent this bogus report also forged his name in the book? Brian wondered why they had picked a day when he hadn’t been ordered to get a test, rather than wait until he had actually gone and simply alter the results. If they could do this with an official report, they could do anything.

Suddenly, he realized his beeper had gone off. The LED displayed
OUTSIDE CALL
. Brian stuffed the bogus report into his pocket and dialed in. The caller was a man with slow, deep, almost guttural speech … and some kind of accent.

“You have the envelope, Dr. Holbrook?”

“Who are you?”

“Today, this is only a warning. A show of our capabilities. If you continue trying to cause trouble with the FDA or anyone else, we will find out about it. I promise you we will. And if we do, the next report will be on a urine sample you dropped off. Your name will be in the log book. The test will be positive, and you will be finished. Have I made myself clear?”

“Who are you?” Brian blurted again.

The caller hung up.

Brian stared at the phone, wondering why he was being given a second chance at all. Surely, with a positive urine, the credibility of anything he had to say would be badly tarnished. It had to be that he had stumbled onto something important and potentially damaging to Vasclear’s squeaky-clean image. Teri had said it any number
of times. Alexander Baird was looking for something, anything, that would offset the incredible hype surrounding the drug, and enable his office to delay its release to an all-too-eager public. The caller and his people wanted Brian quiet and were willing to trade him his career for that absolute silence. Brian tore the report into tiny pieces and sprinkled them into the trash. He was being given one last chance—but by whom?

Numb, bewildered, and distracted, he left the lounge and nearly collided with Ernest Pickard. During the weeks Brian had been on the service, not once had he seen the institute chief on the ward. Yet here he was. Coincidence?

Pickard was dressed immaculately in a blue double-breasted suit. A stethoscope protruded from one pocket, although Brian doubted the man got to use it very much anymore.

“Well, well,” Pickard said, with his usual cheer, moving Brian to a spot far enough away from the workstation counter so they could talk, “how’s the quarterback doing?”

Brian studied the man as hard as he dared, trying to pick up any intonation that this was a follow-up visit to make certain the Vasclear message had gotten through.

“I haven’t taken too bad a hit yet,” he said.

“The reports that have reached me are quite a bit more glowing than that. Well, I dropped by because I wanted to make certain you were all right after the tragedy.”

“Tragedy?”

“Yes. Your father.”

“Oh, yes. Yes. That’s very kind of you, Dr. Pickard. The truth is, I feel like I’m just going through the motions right now.”

Pickard put a hand on his shoulder.

“That’s a perfectly normal reaction. I know it’s hard to keep your concentration. Well, don’t let it get you down too much.”

“I’m trying not to.”

“And for God’s sake, don’t allow yourself to have a relapse. You are still going to your meetings?”

“Absolutely.”

“Excellent. Because you seem to be fitting in quite well here, and I would certainly hate to lose you.”

Without waiting for a response, Pickard patted Brian on the shoulder again, smiled toward the nurses and secretary, who were gathered behind the counter ogling him, and left.

Brian wandered back to the lounge. It was impossible to tell if Pickard knew what was going on with him or not. But one thing was clear. With only four days left until the Vasclear signing ceremony, he was a marked man. He glanced out the door to be certain there was no one about, then called the one person he could completely trust. Thank God, Freeman was in his apartment.

“Freeman, I called to see if there are any meetings around, say, three this afternoon, that you might be able to make.”

“Let me check my trusty meeting-list books. I see nothing in the NA department until this evening, but there’s an AA meeting at eighteen Stiles Street in Brook-line. Four to five. Discussion.”

“Can you meet me there?”

“Hey, if you need me, you got me. Especially at a meeting. That’s in the sponsors’ handbook.”

“Thanks. Well, I need you and the meeting. One other thing. Do you have any idea how to find out who owns and is on the board of directors of a company?”

“No, but I can tell you that between AA and NA there is always someone who knows whatever it is you want to
know, whether it’s business, rap music, home repairs, or neurosurgery. It’s just a matter of trackin’ down the right dude.”

“Could you try?”

“Of course, provided you’re gonna tell me what this is all about.”

“I’m going to tell you, Freeman. I promise.”

“Okay, then. What’s the company?”

“Newbury Pharmaceuticals. I want to know who runs Newbury Pharmaceuticals.”

F
REEMAN
S
HARPE ARRIVED AT THE CHURCH IN
B
ROOKLINE
fifteen minutes after the AA meeting had started, but Brian was there saving a spot for him. They sat together for a time, listening to a lawyer talk about the mistakes he had made in his practice over the years because of his drinking, and the changes that had occurred during the eight years since he had stopped. In addition to doing volunteer work answering the phones once a week at AA central service, he had resigned from his high-powered firm, exchanged his BMW for a Tercel, thrown away his Maalox, and begun doing legal-aid work for the inner-city poor.

The glow off the man’s craggy face lit up the hall.

“Sounds like he’s pretty well got it,” Sharpe leaned over and whispered.

Brian looked up at a stained-glass window.

“Yeah,” he said flatly.

Sharpe sighed.

“Dr. Brian, I think maybe we should go outside and talk.”

“Go outside? Sharpe, you’ve never left in the middle of a meeting in all the time I’ve known you.”

“Well, my special spider sense is tingling and it says that you’re a mess.”

They stopped at the pot for coffee and carried the cups out with them to the street. The late afternoon was cloudy, but warm, and Brian was grateful he had changed into jeans and a T-shirt before leaving the hospital. In silence, they wandered down a block, then across a deserted ball field to a concrete bench. Freeman packed his corncob pipe.

“I’m in trouble,” Brian said.

“Seems like you’ve been in trouble almost since the day you went to work at that place.”

“Renting cars was a lot simpler, I’ll grant you that. Freeman, Jack died in part because I chose not to push him to have surgery. And the main reason, hell, the
only
reason I didn’t was because I had him on Vasclear. Now I’m starting to find some things out about the early patient trials with that drug—things that the drug company never knew or else never told the FDA.”

“Is there something wrong with the drug?”

“I can’t say that for sure. Not now, anyway. But two and a half years ago, they did some preliminary testing on eighteen people. I’ve only located three of those eighteen, but they’re all dead. Two of them had a weird blood test and the kind of symptoms that might have been caused by the drug. The third one I just found out about. She died at her son’s place in upstate New York. I don’t know any of the details. But her hospital record and the record of one of the other patients both look like they’ve been tampered with. Pages are missing.”

“But the drug’s working okay now?”

“Yes. It still doesn’t work for everyone, but it doesn’t seem to harm anyone, either.”

Freeman lit his pipe. The cherry tobacco smoke blended perfectly with the scents of autumn.

“So?” he said.

“Last night I got caught on a video-surveillance camera in the clinic, getting the names of some of the early patients so I could check up on them.”

“Why did you do that?”

“I don’t know. I … I can’t shake the feeling that I didn’t push Jack hard enough about the surgery. I wanted so badly to believe that Vasclear was the answer.”

“A crusade. I just love crusades. All them horses, those little white capes with the red crosses.”

Brian managed a brief laugh.

“You know,” he said, “maybe it is a crusade. But the question is, who am I fighting against? The deeper I get into this thing, the more I think I’m battling against myself—my own arrogance. It almost destroyed my life twice—once when I tore up my knee, and later when I refused to get help for an addiction problem that was eating away my soul. But I thought that after all my work in NA and therapy, I was on top of that part of me, had it under control. Then, all of a sudden, I decide I know what’s best for my father and override the recommendations of his doctor and one of the foremost cardiac surgeons in the world.”