Read Megan's Cure Online

Authors: Robert B. Lowe

Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Mystery, #Thrillers & Suspense, #Medical, #Thrillers

Megan's Cure (25 page)

BOOK: Megan's Cure
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Chapter 48

 
 

IT TOOK THREE hours for the paralyzing poison to work through his system enough for Enzo Lee to resume breathing on his own.
 
It happened quickly.
 
He could feel himself trying to breathe for himself.
 
Three or four tries and it was back.
 
They switched off the automatic ventilator they had put him on then pulled the plastic tubing out of his throat.
 

 

His eyes opened fully.
 
He was staring at the ceiling of the hospital room enjoying for the moment being able see again and breath on his own.
 
Lee knew that in a few minutes he would take it for granted – being able to breathe again.
 
But for now, he luxuriated each time he deeply inhaled.
 
One.
 
Two.
 
Three.
 
Four.
 
Ahhh.
 
Breath.
 
Life.

 

 
He looked gratefully over at the nurse smiling at him who was the same one who had held the breathing bulb in her hands.
 
He was thinking 5 pounds of Godiva chocolate might just begin to express his gratitude.

 

“Thank you,” he croaked through a throat that was dry and sore.
 
She smiled back.

 

“You’re welcome,” she said.
 
“You’ve given me a great story.
 
Top Ten.
 
And a full recovery to boot.
 
That’s a good day for me.”

 

“Makes two of us,” said Lee.
 
She handed him a plastic cup with water and Lee drank it gratefully.
 
He put the cup down on the table to his side and looked down at the foot of his bed where he saw Bobbie Connors and Ming Wah Choy standing on either side.

 

Lee lifted his hand up and gave them a weak wave.

 

“Your fan club is here,” said Connors.
 
Choy gave her a quick smile.

 

“And how is Megan?” asked Lee.

 

“The little girl is fine,” said Connors.
 
“Aside from worrying about you.”
 

 

“They called your grandmother,” said Choy.
 
“I came to let her know how you’re doing.
 
And I see you’re doing very well.
 
Your doctors think you’ll be fine.
 
Apparently, your oxygen levels stayed at a safe level throughout.
 
They watched it very closely.”

 

“Right,” said Lee.
 
“They were all over it.
 
I could hear it all.
 
It was an amazing feeling.
 
Totally conscious but helpless.
 
I kept thinking of those stories of people being buried alive.
 
You know.
 
Inside the coffin while the dirt is piled on top.”

 

“Well, a little better outcome,” said Choy. “I’m glad you’re fine.
 
I’ve got to get back.
 
I have
my
patients to take care of.
 
I’ll tell your grandmother you’re fine.”
 
She grabbed Lee’s right toe through the hospital blanket and gave him a squeeze before walking out.

 

Connors watched Choy leave.
 
She turned back to Lee and raised her right eyebrow.
 

 

“Cute,” she said.
 
“And she wasn’t that cool when she came in and saw you livin’ through a tube.” Connors raised her left eyebrow in question.

 

Lee was quiet for a moment.

 

“Getting complicated,” he finally murmured.

 

“Life is, ain’t it?” said Connors.
 
The two friends stared at each other for another couple of seconds.

 

“All right,” said Lee.
 
“Am I going to have to ask you 20 questions or are you going to tell me what the
hell
is going on?”

 

 
“Okay,” said Connors.
 
“Here’s
my
story.
 
We got the guy…the one who put you to sleep. But he took out Mendoza…our guy who was standing guard.
 
He wasn’t as lucky as you.
 
They got to him too late.
 
Couldn’t revive him.

 

“So I’m asking
you
what the
hell
is going on,” she added.
 
“I need to know everything.
 
They take down one of our guys and…well…now it’s war.
 
I am
going
to find out who is responsible for this.
 
And when I do…let’s just put it this way.
 
They gonna be in a universe of pain.”

 
 

* * *

 

Gray Axmann was eight over par, a lousy round for him.
 
He usually didn’t make excuses.
 
He always felt that a golfer who made excuses was deluding himself.
 
He just wasn’t as good as he thought…or hoped…he was.

 

 
This time, though, his thoughts had been far away from the game and he was neglecting the other member of his twosome as well – the majority owner of the largest casino in South Korea who was a potential whale of a client.
 

 

 
He knew that around the time they had made the clubhouse turn, his lawyer was scheduled to meet the man on his payroll who had been arrested overnight in the lobby of the University of San Francisco Medical Center with a ring full of poison on his left middle finger.
 
Axmann had been waiting for the past 90 minutes for the call that would tell him the outcome of that meeting.

 

The call came just after he teed off on the 17th hole, lacing his drive down the right side.
 
He watched it gain altitude slowly like a fighter jet lifting off the tarmac.
 
Then it drew left just before it descended, hit the fairway and rolled another 30 yards.
 
A perfect drive.

 

“He won’t see me,” said the lawyer.
 
“The son of a bitch won’t even see me.
 
He’s insisting that he get a public defender.
 
A goddamn public defender.
 
Can you believe it?”

 

Gray Axmann believed it so completely that he immediately climbed into his golf cart and drove to his car in the parking lot, leaving the cart there in the late afternoon sun.
 
He abandoned on the 17th hole both his ball nestled dead center in the fairway 280 yards from the tee box and the prospective client from South Korea.

 

When your business is helping casino interests solve their most sensitive problems, your transformation from a valuable asset to a dangerous liability can occur in an instant.
 
The sudden attention that Walter Novak and Roxaten were receiving was bad enough.
 
The failed attempt to kill Megan Kim was a disaster.
 
The assailant’s refusal to meet with Axmann’s attorney was a red flag that he was ready to flip and cut a deal with the authorities.
 
Axmann had tried to shield his identity from the man who seemed able to slip in and out of the hospital rooms of patients in the Roxaten trial like he was death himself.
 
Axmann never gave his real name.
 
He used temporary, prepaid cell phones.
 
He routed money through impenetrable entities.
 
But had he slipped up somehow?

 

Gray Axmann had a little time.
 
The people who employed him were busy running their empires.
 
They didn’t spend time reading medical journal blogs or paying attention to local crimes in San Francisco. But they weren’t dumb.
 
If he couldn’t put out the fires quickly, they would soon know that he was in serious trouble.
 
And a man in serious trouble who had handled their most delicate security matters for years made him a threat.
 
They were accustomed to eliminating threats.
 
Now he needed to figure a way out of this mess and do it fast.

 

Chapter 49

 
 

WHEN BERNARD WINTHROP, a long-time professional acquaintance at the National Institutes of Health, called Miriam Pastor to talk about Roxaten and Walter Novak, she was intrigued.
 
At 64, the petite feisty researcher had recently retired after a long career at GenenMed where she had shepherded a long parade of medications through the lengthy FDA approval process.

 

In her semi-retirement, Pastor had taken a research fellow position at the University of San Francisco Medical Center.
 
A highly respected microbiologist, her grants from government and foundation sources more than paid for the cost of her research.
 
The university had the potential upside of prestige from any work that Pastor might publish since it would be under its auspices.
 
The arrangement let Pastor do whatever she wanted.

 

She would have been interested in the science of Roxaten alone – the potential of a broad-based cancer treatment plus a possible general vaccine.
 
Pastor knew it could revolutionize cancer treatment if it really worked.
 

 

But the real bonus was Winthrop’s off-hand comment relaying Novak’s allegations that Merrick & Merrick was suppressing – and perhaps even sabotaging – the Roxaten research.
 

 

The allegation didn’t surprise Pastor.
 
She knew that when the drug companies encountered a tradeoff between increased profits and improved public health, profits won out more often than not.
 
She had been in boardrooms when executives negotiated “pay for delay” deals.
 
They wrote checks to the generic drug manufacturers so a popular medicine could continue to be sold at $10 a pill rather than the 50-cent price competition would bring.
 
It worked well for everyone except consumers.

 

Everyone in the industry knew that drug companies bought companies with drugs that might compete with their best selling products when they could, even if just to bury the possible competitor.
 
And the manipulation of the patent system to gain an extra year or two of protection for a hot-selling medicine was legendary.

 

Just that week, Pastor had heard how a major drug company was trying to stop European doctors from using a cancer drug that had astonishing results keeping elderly patients from going blind.
 
The small amounts used – mere drops – were too cheap.
 
The drug company wanted to force doctors to buy a repackaged form of the drug at many times the cost.
 

 

So the prospect of a fight like this one spilling into the open was enticing.
 
She hadn’t seen this in a while – a public, no-holds-barred clash of scientists, doctors, egos and Big Pharma corporate interests.
 
Profits vs. health.
 
And Winthrop was offering her a ring-side seat.
 
Was she in?
 
Of course.

 

Pastor agreed to coordinate the samples and tests during Megan Kim’s stay at the medical center.
 
With the physicians at the hospital, she would make sure that they got all the blood, tissue, marrow, lymph node material and anything else they might need.
 
Then, she would ensure that Megan was screened, scanned and tested in every way possible to determine if any hint of malignancy remained in her body.
 

 

The key work would be the analysis of Megan’s resistance to the cancer that had once run rampant through her blood and whether that resistance extended to other types of cancer as well. This would let her assess Roxaten’s potential as a broad-based cure.
 
It also would tell her the likelihood that Novak had actually found a general vaccine that would dramatically reduce cancer risk.
 

 

Pastor would give Bernard Winthrop and the NIH her assessment of Roxaten and Novak’s research.
 
And she would suggest the next steps for the drug – including whether it deserved a place in national health policy or should be left in the hands of private industry.

 

The call from a partner at the Weil Roth law firm came after the third day of getting samples and tests from Megan Kim.
 
With the barest of introductions, the lawyer launched full bore into threat mode on behalf of Merrick & Merrick.

 

Pastor was interfering with the drug giant’s contractual relationships.
 
She was gaining access to Merrick’s confidential information and misusing the company’s trade secrets.
 
What right did Pastor think she had studying the effects of Roxaten when the drug was the property of Merrick, protected by patents and Merrick was developing and testing the drug in accordance with FDA regulations?
 
Did Pastor want to wind up in court to fight a cease and desist order?

 

Pastor waited until the attorney had a chance to wind down, finally exhausting his litany of threats.

 

“Megan Kim and her mother have given us their written permission to perform the tests and take the samples we’re taking,” she told the lawyer.
 
“The last time I looked, people still owned their bodies and everything that’s inside of them.

 

“As far as I know, independent study of drugs and their effectiveness is legal and not patent infringing so long as I’m not making money from actually selling it. I have no intention of doing that.
 
Look at any medical journal.
 
Half the articles are reports of independent studies of drugs owned by Merrick and other drug companies.

 

“You come after me and I will call a press conference and say that Merrick is trying to intimidate me and suppress independent research into Roxaten,” she continued.
 
“I will support everything Walter Novak is saying.
 
If you want that, go ahead.”

 

She hung up the phone without waiting for a reply.
 
After a moment, Pastor suddenly punched the air with her right fist, putting all of her 110 lbs. into it.

 

“Hah!” she said.
 
She couldn’t resist a satisfied smile.
 
The only thing more exhilarating than witnessing a good fight was being in one.

 
BOOK: Megan's Cure
12.55Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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