Side Effects (23 page)

"I don't know what to say. If speed is essential in solving this problem, as we both think it is, then the route to go is the company. I'm sure of that." He paused. "Tell you what. Let's give them this coming week to straighten out matters to our satisfaction. If they haven't done so by Friday, we call in the FDA. Sound fair?" Kate hesitated, but then nodded. "Yes," she said finally. "It sounds fair and it sounds right. Do you want to call them?" Zimmermann shrugged. "Sure," he said, "I'll do it first thing tomorrow. They'll probably be contacting you by the end of the day."

"The sooner the better. Meanwhile, do you think you could talk to some of your Omnicenter patients and get me a list of women who would be willing to be contacted by me about having their medications analyzed?"

"I certainly can try."

"Excellent. It's about time things started moving in a positive direction. You know, there's not much good I can say about all that's been happening, except that I'm glad our relationship has moved out of the doctor-patient and doctor-doctor cubbyholes into the person-person. Right now I'm the one who needs the help, but please know that if it's ever you, you've got a friend you can count on." Zimmermann smiled a Gary Grant smile. "That kind of friend is hard to come by," he said. "Thank you."

"Thank you. Except for Tom Engleson, I've felt pretty much alone in all this. Now we're a team." She
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motioned the waitress over.

"Coffee?" the woman asked.

"None for me, thanks. Bill?" Zimmermann shook his head. "In that case could I have the check, please?"

"Nonsense," Zimmermann said, "I won't ..."--the reproving look in Kate's eyes stopped him in mid sentence--"... allow you to do this too many times without reciprocating." Kate beamed at the man's insight. "Deal," she said, smiling broadly.

"Deal," Zimmermann echoed.

The two shook hands warmly and, after Kate had settled their bill, walked together into the winter night. Numb with exhaustion, John Ferguson squinted at the luminescent green print on the screen of his word processor. His back ached from hunching over the keyboard for the better part of two full days. His hands, feeling the effects of his disease more acutely than at any time in months, groped for words one careful letter at a time. It had been an agonizing effort, condensing forty years of complex research into thirty pages or so of scholarly dissertation, but a sentence at a time, a word at a time, he was making progress.

To one side of his desk were a dozen internationally read medical journals. Ferguson had given thought to submitting his completed manuscript to all of them, but then had reconsidered. The honor of publishing his work would go only to The New England Journal of Medicine, most prestigious and widely read of them all.

The New England Journal of Medicine. Ferguson tapped out a recall code, and in seconds, the title page of his article was displayed on the screen.

A Synthetic Estrogen Congener and

Antifertility Hormone

John N. Ferguson, MD

It would almost certainly be the first time in the long, distinguished publication of the journal that an entire issue would be devoted to a single article. But they would agree to do that or find the historic studies and comment in Lancet or The American Journal of Medicine. Ferguson smiled. Once The New England Journals editors had reviewed his data and his slides, he doubted there would be much resistance to honoring his request. For a time he studied the page. Then, electronically, he erased the name of the author. There might be trouble for him down the road for what he was about to do, but he suspected not. He was too old and too sick even for the fanatic Simon Weisenthal to bother with. With a deliberateness that helped him savor the act, he typed Wilhelm W. Becker, MD, Phd where Ferguson's name had been. Perhaps, he thought with a smile, some sort of brief funeral was in order for Ferguson. He had, after all, died twice--once in Bataan, forty years ago, and a second time this night. With the consummate discipline that had marked his life, Willi Becker cut short the pleasurable interlude and advanced the text to the spot at which he had left off.

Because of a pathologist named Bennett, Cyrus Redding had picked up the scent of his work at the Omnicenter.

Knowing the man as well as Becker did, he felt certain the tycoon would now track the matter relentlessly. There was still time to put the work on paper and mail it off, but no way of knowing how much. He had to push. He had to fight the fatigue and the aching in his muscles and push, at least for another hour or two. The onset of his scientific immortality was at hand. Furtively, he glanced at the small bottle of amphetamines on the table. It had been only three hours. Much too soon, especially with the irregular heartbeats he had been having. Still, he needed to push. It would only be a few more days, perhaps less. Barely able to grip the top of the small vial, Becker set one of the black, coated tablets on his tongue, and swallowed it without water. In minutes, the warm rush would begin, and he would have the drive, however artificial and short lived, to overcome the inertia of his myasthenia.

"You really shouldn't take those, you know, father.

Especially with your cardiac history."

Becker spun around to face his son, cursing the diminution in his hearing that enabled such surprises. "I
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take them because I need them," he said sharply. "What are you doing sneaking up on me like that?

What do you think doorbells are for?"

"Such a greeting. And here I have driven out of my way to stop by and be certain you are all right." Three blocks, Becker thought. Some hardship. "You startled me. That's all. I'm sorry for reacting the way I did."

"In that case, father, it is I who should be sorry."

Was there sarcasm in his son's voice? It bothered Becker that he had never been able to read the man. Theirs was a relationship based on filial obligation and respect, but little if any love. For the greater portion of his son's years, they had lived apart: Becker in a small cottage on the hospital grounds where he worked, and his wife and son in an apartment twenty miles away. It was as necessary an arrangement as it was painful. Becker and his wife had tried for years to make their son understand that.

**Sj -aav.

There were those, they tried to explain, who would arrest Becker in a moment on a series of unjust charges, put him in prison, and possibly even put him to death. In the hysteria following the war, he had been marked simply because he was German, nothing more than that. For their own safety, it was necessary for the boy and his mother to keep their address and even their name separate from his. Although Becker would provide for them and would visit as much as he could, no one would ever know his true relationship to the woman, Anna Zimmermann, and the boy, William.

"So," Becker said. "Now that we have apologized profusely to one another, come in, sit down, pour yourself a drink."

William Zimmermann nodded his thanks, poured an inch of Wild Turkey into a heavy glass, and settled into an easy chair opposite his father.

"I see you've started putting your data together," he said. "Why now?"

"Well, I ... no special reason, really. It would seem that the modifications I made have greatly, if not completely, eliminated the bleeding problems we were experiencing with the Estronate. So what else is there to wait for?"

"Which journal will you approach?"

"I think The New England Journal of Medicine. I plan to submit the data and discussion but to withhold several key steps in the synthesis until a commission of the journal's choosing can take charge of my formulas and decide how society can best benefit from them."

"Sounds fine to me," Zimmermann said. "With all that's been happening this last week, the sooner I see the last of Estronate Two-fifty, the better."

"Have any further bleeding cases turned up?"

Zimmermann shook his head. "Just the Sandier woman I told you about. The one who's the friend of Dr. Bennett's.

She was treated over eighteen months ago, in the July/ August group, the last group to receive the unmodified Estronate."

"How is she doing?"

"I think she is going to end up like the other two."

"Couldn't you find some way of suggesting that they try a course of massive doses of delta amino caproic acid and nicotinic acid on her?"

"Not without risking a lot of questions I'd rather not answer. I mean I am a gynecologist, not a hematologist.

Besides, you told me that that therapy was only sixty percent effective in such advanced states." De cker shrugged. "Sixty percent is sixty percent."

"And my career is my career. No, father, I have far too much to lose. I am afraid Mrs. Sandier will just have to make it on her own."

"Perhaps you are right," Becker said.

The men shook hands formally, and William Zimmermann let himself out. Twelve miles away, on the fourth floor of the Berenson Building of Metropolitan Hospital of Boston, in Room 421, Ellen Sandler's nose had again begun to bleed.

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Monday 17 December

"Now, Suzy, promise Daddy that you will mind what Mommy tells you and that you will never, never do that to the cat again ... Good ... I have to go now, sugar. You better get ready for your piano lesson ... I know what I said, but my work here isn't done yet, and I have to stay until it's finished ... I don't know. Two, maybe three more days ... Suzy, stop that. You're not a baby. I love you very much and I'll see you very soon. Now, tell Daddy you love him and go practice that new piece of yours ... Suzy? ..."

"Damn." Arlen Paquette slammed the receiver down.

He had protested to Redding the futility of remaining in Boston over the weekend, but the man had insisted he stay close to the situation and the Omnicenter. As usual, events had proven Redding right. Paquette stuffed some notes in his briefcase and pulled on his suitcoat. Right for Redding Pharmaceuticals, but not for Suzy Paquette, who was justifiably smarting over her father's absence from her school track meet earlier in the day. How could he explain to a seven-year-old that the very thing that was keeping him away from home was also the sole reason she could attend a school like Hightower Academy? He straightened his tie and combed his thinning hair with his fingers. How could he explain it to her when he was having trouble

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justifying it to himself? Still, for what he and his family were gaining from his association with Redding, the dues were not excessive. He glanced down at the photographs of Kate Bennett piled on the coffee table. At least, he thought, not yet.

The cab ride from the Ritz to Metropolitan Hospital took fifteen minutes. Paquette entered the main lobby through newly installed gliding electronic doors and headed directly for Norton Reese's office, half expecting to have the woman whose life and face he had studied in such detail stroll out from a side corridor and bump into him.

"Arlen, it's good to see you. You're looking well."

Norton Reese maneuvered free of his desk chair and met Paquette halfway with an ill-defined handshake. Theirs was more an unspoken truce than a relationship, and no amount of time would compensate for the lack of trust and respect each bore the other. However, Paquette was the envoy of Cyrus Redding and the several millions of Redding dollars that had sparked Reese's rise to prominence. Although it was Reese's court, it was the younger man's ball.

"You're looking fit yourself, Norton," Paquette replied.

"Our mutual friend sends his respects and regards."

"Did you tell him about our speed freak outfielder and the letters to the press and TV?"

"I did. I even sent a packet of the articles and editorials to him by messenger. He commends your ingenuity.

So, incidentally, do I." Try as he might, he could put no emotion behind the compliment. Still, Reese's moon face bunched in a grin. "It's been beautiful, Arlen," he gushed. "Just beautiful. I tell you, ever since that story broke, Kathryn Bennett, MD, has been racing all over trying to stick her fingers in the holes that are popping open in her reputation. By now I doubt if she would know whether she had lost a horse or found a rope."

"You did fine, Norton. Just fine. Only, for our purposes, not enough."

"What?" Reese began to shift uneasily. "A diversion.

That's what Horner asked me for, and by God, that's what I laid on that woman. A goddamn avalanche of diversion."

"You did fine, Norton. I just told you that."

"Why, she's had so much negative publicity it's a wonder she hasn't quit or been fired by the medical school."

Reese chattered on as if he hadn't heard a word. "In fact, I hear the Medical School Ethics Committee is planning some kind of an inquiry."

Paquette silenced him with raised hands. "Easy, Norton, please," he said evenly. "I'm going to say it one more time. What you did, the letter and all, was exactly what we asked of you. Our mutual friend is pleased. He asked that I convey to you the Ashburton Foundation's intention to endow the cardiac
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surgical residency you wrote him about."

"Well, then, why was what I did not enough?" Reese realized that in his haste to defend himself, he had forgotten to acknowledge Redding's generosity. Before he could remedy the oversight, Paquette spoke.

"I'll convey your thanks when I return to Darlington," he said, a note of irritation in his words. "Norton, do you know what has been going on here?"

"Not ... not exactly," he said, nonplussed.

Paquette nodded indulgently. "Dr. Bennett, in her search to identify the cause of an unusual bleeding problem in several women, has zeroed in on the Omnicenter.