Miracle Cure (7 page)

Jessup smiled at him enigmatically.

“Actually,” she said, “there
is
a reason for me to wait around. Come back into the lab.”

Brian followed her back into the cath lab, where Jack had been transferred from the table to his gurney.

“How’re you doing, Pop?”

“That wasn’t much fun, if that’s what you mean. What was that guy—some sort of Arab?”

“Indian. He doesn’t have much of a bedside manner.”

Carolyn Jessup cut in, speaking to the staff.

“If all of you could repair to the dressing rooms for a couple of minutes, I’d like to speak to these two gentlemen alone. Thank you.” She waited until the doors had closed, then took a plain white envelope out of her pocket and handed it to Jack. “Dr. Pickard, the chief of this hospital, had this brought to me just before I came down here. It was delivered to his office late this morning. He sends his regrets that he can’t be here to do this personally. But I’m glad I’m here in his place. Go ahead, Jack, open it.”

His hands a bit shaky, Jack tore open the envelope and extracted a small, wallet-sized card. He stared at it for half a minute at least, then said softly, “Oh, my God.” He looked up at Jessup. “This is for real?” She nodded. “Carolyn, this is going to do more for me than any operation or any pill ever could.… Here, son.”

He passed the card through the side rail of his gurney. It wasn’t until Brian had it in his grasp that he realized what it was.

Brian’s name and address followed. There was an addendum printed at the bottom that the license was provisional, but that made no difference. Brian stared at the card, afraid that if he tried to speak he’d end up crying.

“You start here as a postdoc fellow next Monday,” Jessup said. “Tuesday morning you’ll be assisting me here
in the cath lab. Pass that test and you’ll be doing caths by yourself within the month. Just promise us all one thing.”

“Anything,” Brian said. “Anything at all.”

“Promise us you won’t show up the faculty with any more diagnoses like that thyroid storm.”

Angus “Mac” MacLanahan had always prided himself on having a good attitude about life. As a machinist in Glasgow, then later, after immigrating to the States, as a mechanic fixing the upper crust’s Jaguars, he had always been upbeat—content with his lot, but willing and anxious to do what he could to improve it. Now, every step was an effort as he trudged up the hill from the clinic to an empty apartment, battling the consuming sadness that came from no longer being healthy.

It had been great for him for a long time. He was a gentle bull, known for his strength and stamina. They had made him chief mechanic at Back Bay Jag. He had an angel of a wife and three terrific kids. Then Mary had gotten the bad news about the lump in her breast, and everything seemed to go sour—her surgery, the doctors appointments, the horrible, poisonous chemotherapy, and still, ultimately, the bone pain, weight loss, and at last, the merciful end.

It wasn’t six months after Mary’s death that Mac had his first episode of chest pain. He was working under a hood when the pain hit—an ill-defined burning pressure that started beneath his breastbone, but seemed to be everywhere in the top half of his body at once—his shoulders, his neck, his jaws, his ears. Deep down inside, he knew it was his ticker. But his mind wouldn’t accept it. He simply got a glass of water, sat down, wiped the sweat from his forehead and face, and breathed slowly until the pain let up.

He told no one about the episode—not his sons, not his coworkers, not his doctor. And for a couple of months, he paced himself and took a break the moment he sensed the fearsome ache coming on. But finally, his tongue loosened by a pint or two at The Tartan, he made the mistake of mentioning the symptoms to his friend, Marty Anderson. The very next day, with Marty at his side, he was at his doctor’s office.

Now, two years later, he wondered whether or not he should have just said the hell with it and let them cut on him.

The walk to his apartment was just five blocks, but Mac was only at the 7-Eleven store and he had already had to stop three times. The doctor at the clinic, a woman who looked to be in her teens, had brought in a dietician to go over the low-salt diet for the umpteenth time, and had bumped up the fluid pills to two twice a day. Mac reminded her that he already kept a bottle by the bed to pee in the three or four times he had to go each night, but the doctor just laughed and assured him that the ankle swelling and shortness of breath would be better if he would eat fewer chips and drink less beer.

“Why not just give me the black pill,” Mac had responded, only half in jest.

He shuffled into the 7-Eleven and picked up some milk, ketchup, a package of vanilla sandwich cookies, and a small bag of Doritos. The effort left him panting.

“You all right?” the man behind the cash register asked.

“I’m okay,” Mac managed. “Just a little … winded is all.”

“You sure?”

“I’ll be fine in … just a minute.… Here.”

He paid the clerk and forced himself to stop leaning on the glass countertop. Then he shuffled from the store.

“You sure you don’t want me to call someone?” the man called after him.

A block and a half
, Mac told himself. He was hardly at his best, but hell, he could walk on broken glass for a block and a half if he had to. If he didn’t improve soon, though, he was going to have to make some decisions about living alone. But a home was unthinkable, and he had no desire to become a burden to either of his kids. Maybe Dr. Babyface was right, he told himself. Maybe the change in fluid medicine would help.

His feet ached by the time he reached his building. All he could think of was getting his shoes and socks off and getting into the recliner. The last obstacle between him, a glass of milk, some cookies, and the ball game was a single flight of stairs. He unlocked the front door and the inside security door. Clutching the plastic bag of groceries with one hand and the banister with the other, he ascended step by step.

Finally, at the second landing, he leaned against his apartment door, gulping air as he fumbled with the key. The apartment, as always, was pitch black. Not once that he was aware of had he left a light burning unnecessarily. As he stepped inside, he became aware of the distinct odor of gas. The pilot in the stove must have gone out, he thought as he closed the door behind him. He’d get a window open right away and then fix the damn thing. He threw the living-room light switch by the door, but he would never see the spark that resulted from the slightly widened gap in the contacts.

The gas-laden atmosphere instantly turned the neat apartment into an inferno. Mac MacLanahan’s eardrums imploded moments before his eyes melted and his clothes burned away. By the time his body slammed into the wall by the door, his skin and the lining of his lungs were
charred. And by the time the wall began burning on its own, the last of his consciousness had begun to fade.

Brian left the hospital at five and walked to the Methodist church in the South End. When he had first returned from the Fairweather Treatment Center in Greenville, North Carolina, fifteen months ago, he had been too self-conscious to go to NA or AA meetings anyplace where he was likely to run into an ex-patient. He preferred the anonymity of Boston.

During a coffee break at his third or fourth meeting, this one in the Methodist church basement, a slightly built black man had approached him. He wore tortoiseshell spectacles with tinted lenses, and would have looked professorial except for the letter F in thick scar tissue over his wiry deltoid, and homemade blue tattoos on the bases of his fingers that read HARD LUCK when he balled his hands into fists.

“You know,” Freeman Sharpe said that night, in his mellow baritone, “this isn’t Acne Anonymous. This disease we’re doing battle with is lethal. It’s cunning, powerful, and above all, patient. You persist in sitting on your hands in the last row and keeping to yourself at the break, and sooner or later, probably sooner, you’re gonna crash.”

It was then Sharpe had volunteered to be Brian’s sponsor, helping him to meet people and guiding him through the ins and outs, the dos and don’ts of recovery. Even now they still spoke on the phone nearly every day. Whatever Brian’s problem, Freeman had a reasonable solution. Whatever his question, there was an answer.

Tonight, though, Brian felt his question was perplexing enough to test even Sharpe.

He had no more Aphrodite, no more Speedy Rent-A-Car, no more Darryl, decent money about to come in, and
he was three days from being back taking care of patients. It was all there—all of it. Why, then, was he feeling so ill at ease?

Brian’s inexplicable apprehension began to lift as soon as he set foot in the grungy church basement. Although most of the support groups he attended were Narcotics Anonymous, he had no problems going to AA meetings, either. A drug is a drug, he had been taught at Fairweather, and the decision to stay away from mood-altering substances had to include alcohol.

Freeman Sharpe waved to him from across the room and greeted him with a handshake, a hug, and the appraising eye Brian had come to expect.

“Pardon me for saying it, young Holbrook,” Freeman said, “but you don’t look like a man who’s just had the weight of the world lifted from his shoulders.”

“That obvious, huh?”

“That obvious.”

“I think I’m frightened.”

“Of what?”

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t believe that. Why don’t you take a stab at it?”

“Well, Boston Heart Institute is like the top of the line.”

“So?”

“With my history, people will be watching me very closely.”

“So?”

“I … I don’t want to screw up.”

Freeman cleaned his glasses with a tissue, then tightened his fists and stared down at his HARD LUCK tattoos.

“I see,” he said.

People were settling in for the start of the Friday meeting, so Freeman led Brian outside into the cool late-summer
air. Brian’s misgivings about starting at BHI had to connect with an important lesson for Sharpe to insist that he miss part of a meeting.

“Okay,” Freeman said, leaning against the building and crossing his arms, but never taking his eyes from Brian’s, “you’re afraid of screwing up at mighty Boston Heart Institute. Tell me, exactly who was it that hired you for this job?”

“Pickard. Ernest Pickard. He’s the director.”

Brian already sensed what was coming, but he was grateful that Freeman was going to lead him there.

“The director … and he hired you.”

“Right.”

“He went over your papers, your resumé, and your test scores and such?”

“Yes.”

“And he checked your references?”

“He did.”

“And he still decided to hire you?”

“He did.”

“Is he an intelligent man?”

“Very.”

“So, the way I see it—correct me if I’m wrong—is that you’re not the one responsible for bringing you on board at the hospital. A very intelligent man, who knows what the job’s all about, and who knows how to evaluate medical talent, and who went over all your stuff, determined you could do the job.”

“I guess so.”

“So, what’m I driving at?”

Sharpe, arms still folded, peered up at him. The man was a master at knowing when it was time for an answer and when it was time for a question.

“My only job is to do my best,” Brian responded, not
daring to allow a singsong, this-is-child’s-stuff insinuation into his tone.

“Not to
be
the best. By now, I hope you’ve realized that all that be-the-best shit has to go. ’Cause if screwin’ up on this job is the best you can do, that’s not your problem, my man, it’s Ernest Pickard’s. He picked you.”

D
R
. A
LEXANDER
B
AIRD GLANCED OVER HIS SHOULDER AT
the cameramen and reporters crowding the press section of the hearing room. Immediately, two flashbulbs popped off. Then another. The Senate Committee for Government Affairs’ Subcommittee for Oversight of Government Management was in a five-minute recess. Baird, the Food and Drug Administration commissioner, was wishing he had emptied his bladder before entering the hall. The notion of plowing back through the milling crowd to the men’s room held absolutely no appeal.

It was the oversight subcommittee’s mandate to determine that the FDA was carrying out its functions in a proper fashion. Of course, “proper” had a distinctly political flavor. Over the two or three days before he was to appear at this gathering, Baird had heard rumblings from his staff that there was more than the usual amount of interest in the session. No one seemed to know why. Now,
after three-quarters of an hour of fielding softball questions on a variety of subjects, Baird still had no explanation for the inordinate amount of media attention and observers.

“Teri, I can’t shake the feeling they all know something I don’t,” he whispered, glancing up at the paneled dais that enabled the subcommittee members to loom above the witnesses.

Dr. Teri Sennstrom, group leader for cardiovascular drugs, poured a glass of ice water, which her boss declined.

“That makes two of us,” she said. “The Little Bighorn’s mighty pretty this time of year, don’t you think, General Custer?”

“Very funny.”

“Very serious. I smell an ambush, but I just can’t figure out where it’s going to be coming from.”

Over the ten months that he had been FDA commissioner, Baird had come to rely heavily on Teri’s opinion. She was thirty-six, the same age as his daughter. But unlike Margaret, who had bounced through graduate schools in education and business and still didn’t know what she wanted to do with her life, Teri, who had already been with the agency three years when Baird took over, was as focused and resourceful as she was loyal. Deputy director positions in the FDA didn’t open up that often, but when the next one did, Teri Sennstrom would be high on his list of candidates. Today, she sat at Baird’s right hand as his clinical adviser. To his left was the FDA attorney, a hawk-nosed veteran of the political wars named Barry Weisman.