Loved In Pieces (38 page)

“Shit!” I exclaimed and ran to my bathroom. I had completely forgotten to take my medication. I
was
so stressed that I completely spaced it. I realized that I better clue in my frightened boyfriend.

“It’s my condition. I totally spaced my medicine! Please help me search my things for two prescription bottles of medicine.
My assistant
would have packed them with my things the night I left San Diego.”

We were both opening every bag in my closet and every drawer in the bathroom. I checked my room. Nothing.

“Damn. I bet he missed the stuff in the medicine cabinet. Help me think. How can I get a refill? I usually call the RX number on the bottles.”

“Call the doctor,” he replied simply.

“It’
s Dr. Mark. I don’t know his last name, that’s also on the bottles.”

“How long have you been taking the medicine?”

“Years. I’m supposed to take it for managing the cysts that grow too large in my ovaries, so they don’t burst. When I get low, I just call the phone number on the bottles, key in the RX numbers and confirm my credit card and address. Then I get the
new
prescription bottles in the mail a
week
later.”

He added, “Your mom knows the doctor’s name, right? Just call her.”

I dialed her number. He
r
cell was off and went straight into voicemail. “I know
they are
behind schedule. They’
re probably working today.”

“When is the last time you saw the doctor?”

“I first went to him
after
I turned 14
, after we wrapped
Left to Die
. I saw him probably every six months thereafter.”

He interrupted, “So you saw him seven months ago?”

“Yeah. At the medical center by UCLA.”

“If we went there, could yo
u remember which office was his?
”

“Yeah, totally. Good thinking!”

“Well, I guess we know what adventure we are having this morning.” He smiled, relieved that I didn’t think he was a slut and that I wasn’t. “We’ll get the doctor’s name off the door, look him up and you can call his office for a refill. I’ll call my mom and figure out the plan for later this morning or this afternoon.”

We left in a hurry, without showering, and parked at UCLA within fifteen minutes
after
leaving the house.
It was so easy to find the doctor’s office. I d
id
have a great memory even though I
was
feeling insecure because I c
ouldn
’t remember the name of the drugs I’ve been taking for four years.

We figured the office would be closed
when we arrived
. I was sure that
we were at
the right office, but I didn’t recognize the names
on the door
. Manuel pushed the latch to the door anyway. I was surprised that it was open.

We went inside
,
but no one was at the reception desk. I opened the door from the reception area to the offices and walked down the short hallway to find someone to help me. There was a man going through a file cabinet in the last office
. F
ile folders were everywhere. He looked frustrated.

“Excuse me. I don’t want to frighten you. I lost my medicine and need to get a refill and couldn’t remember Dr. Mark’s last name so we came down here. His name wasn’t on the door.”

The man was surprised, but relaxed. He was
Dad
’s age, maybe older, fifty
,
tops. He was very handsome
,
tall
er than Manuel
, probably 6’2”
or more
. He had a weekend runner’s body
—
strong, lank
,
but not too thin. He had brown hair and
steel gray
eyes and a kind smile.

I had not been in th
e
back office before. The office didn’t seem to
match
him. The desk and office hutch on the back wall were made of elegantly carved mahogany, something I’ve seen in my lawyer
’
s office but never in a doctor’s office. Framed
,
signed photos of a man with celebrities covered the walls. I recognized the entertainers and the man
. H
e
was my doctor.

“Was it Dr. Mark Rugers?” He asked
with a
French
accent just like Renee Dupree’s
.

“Yes!” I recalled. I pointed to one of the photos. “That’s him.”

“Mark
disappeared
, I’m afraid. He left a lot of unanswered questions behind. I flew down here from Northern California to try to make sense of this mess. I’m a doctor, perhaps I can help you. What type of chemo were you taking?”

“What? Chemo? I don’t have cancer. I have polycystic ovarian syndrome. One drug I take is to make sure the cysts don’t enlarge to prevent a rupture. The other drug enhances my immune system so I don’t get sick.”

The man stared at me, so I quickly added, “I’m here in person because I don’t know the name of the medication. I left my pills on a trip in March and forgot a
bout taking them
. It’
s kind of a hard cycle to remember. The med for POS is taken in cycles: 2 weeks on, 1 week off for 6 months. Then I get a new prescription and start the cycle over. I should
start a new cycle tomorrow, May 1
st
.
I’ve been on the medicine for several years, since I’ve been fourteen. You’d think I’d r
emember the drug’s name but it’
s quite a mouthful,
” I smiled
awkwardly
. He probably
thought
I was
a total moron.

“How old are you? You look young, fourteen or fifteen.”

Weird. Someone d
id
n’t recognize me. It
was
kind of a cool feeling, a freeing feeling.

“
I just turned eighteen in April, a few weeks ago
.”

“But your doctor was Mark? He’
s
an oncologist.”

“Yes, I’m sure Mark was my doctor. But I n
ever had cancer or chemo
.”

He paused, thinking. “For the cysts, were you taking
progesterone, metformin, clomiphene citrate, clomid
?”

“None of them are familiar. I think it started with an X,” I recalled.

He looked at me bewildered. I was sure he thought I was intellectually vacant. “Is it possible you were taking
Xrysinib
?”

“Yes!” I exclaimed. “
That’s
the name. We called it x-nib. The other drug was for my immune system.”

His face fell. He stared at me with his hand on the file cabinet drawer, as if the drawer was keeping him from collapsing. He was silent.

Manuel interrupted
my thoughts,
“What is
Xrysinib
?”

The man
answered slowly, as if his mind was working on two tracks. One track was answering, the other track was
panicking. “A chemotherapy
drug
. It’
s a cancer treatment I developed over
fifteen
years ago for the treatment of cancer in adults with a particular type of leukemia. It was FDA approved for adults and has been avai
lable for the last 7 years. It’
s extremely effective in preventing the action of a protein within the cancer cells. Do you mind if we sit down?”

I moved a file off of the chair next to me and put it on the office desk. Manuel did the
same. We all sat down.

He continued, “Since it was so successful in adults, we made it available on a trial case basis to adolescents. We had
six
case studies, including my son who inherited my family’s predisposition for developing leukemia, both my dad and brother died from it. We found that in adolescents
Xrysinib
had a side effect of essentially stopping the aging process. We have isolated the targeted cells but have yet to determine how it altered the pituitary gland, damaged the hypothalamus, or both.” He stopped and wrote some notes down on his paper.

He continued, “Clearly,
x
-nib stopped aging in adults
—
that answers the Hollywood connection. We just haven’t focused on that. I never thought about autopsying the adult glands. We need to look at tissue damage in the pituitary gland and hypothalamus of the adults who became victim to secondary malignancies.”

Manuel interrupted, “So what does this mean?”

The doctor broke his thoughts. He looked up, “I’m so sorry, but for four years now no children were to be given this drug. I honestly don’t know how it has affected her but I can tell you that she should not be able to sit right here after taking chemo for four years. Her immune system should be toast, to speak bluntly.”

“I’m calling the police.” Manuel fumbled with his cell phone.

I didn’t understand Manuel’s reaction. My head was spinning. What crime did Manuel see? I knew there was something wrong with me. I have been going to Dr. Mark for the last four years, never understanding why I didn’t have a period.
My periods started when I was
twelve.
I had painful periods, horrible cramping when I was on set
. Mom
was concerned because I had ve
ry large breasts for a thirteen-year-
old
and was worried about future breast cancer since my grandma died from it.
Once
,
I was worried about not menstruating and looked up polycystic
ovarian syndrome. I didn’t really have the symptoms when I was thirteen. Last year, my migraines were so bad that I told Mark I’d rather have the painful periods, they lasted only one to two days per month but the headaches were daily. He reduced my dosage of
x
-nib and the immun
ity enhancer and I felt relief
but still needed Excedrin. Most importantly, I was always aware that I wasn’t looking older. Every day I looked in the mirror, I saw the same person as the girl in the picture with Grandma May at fifteen years old.  So the crime must be that I never did have POS. Mark intentionally gave me the meds to stop my aging, which mean
t
Mom
was behind this. They wanted me
to be forever young-
looking. They wanted me to be Muse. Holy shit! That bitch! That psycho doctor!

The doctor addressed Manuel,
“You can do that and have every right to, but if you do, the local police will confisc
ate everything in this room. Then
I won’t be able to help her. I
am
working with the FBI.”

Manuel hung up, furious. “Well, what the hell are we going to do? Shit! She didn’t even have cancer. She took a drug for four years, forgets to take it, and
you’re
telling us that she wasn’t supposed to be on it and the reason why she looks so young is because she’s not aging!”

The doctor responded, “I don’t know what happened. What I do know is that Mark
is missing
, a bunch of powerful people in Hollywood knew him, some high-profile people are dying and pointing fingers here, and there might be a connection with
Xrysinib
. I’m here on behalf of my company and the FBI to figure out what Mark was up t
o. Now I see this pretty
girl took the drug, too. Ten minutes ago, I was looking for a needle in a haystack in here. We now have evidence that Mark was prescribing this medicine to stop the aging of non-cancer patients. With the Hollywood connection, it looks like he was selling the serum to eternal youth
. 

“
B
ut
x
-nib is carcinogenic,
a very aggressive
th
erapy, a last resort
.
Some chemotherapies
are safe.
X
-nib is not.
Over-
treatment
causes
the growth of tumors, what we
call secondary malignancy. It’
s the assumed risk of primary treatment
—
that the chemo or radiation treatment will cure the existing problem but cause other tumors down the road.”

Manuel gasped, “Great. So she probably now
has
cancer?”

The doctor nodded. “We know
x
-nib affected the pituitary gland but we don’t want to remove the gland from the patients if we can help it. So it has been very difficult to isolate the damage. We are only now studying the pituitary gland and hypothalamus from the autopsy of CSY
2
, the
second
adolescent trial.  Now I just realized we should be autopsying the adults as well. When we first saw that the adolescent case studies didn’t age, we expected to find hypopituitarism to explain the deficiency in the gland to produce growth hormone, but
only one adolescent
had
a non-functioning pituitary gland tumor.
I’m
working to find a way to reverse
x
-nib’s effect on the gland, or possibly on the hypothalamus, to help the kids
and my son
live normal lives.”