A Fierce Radiance (48 page)

“Charlie is alive and getting better. That’s all I care about. Believe me.” This was a situation Rutherford forced himself to view in black and white.

Jamie wasn’t listening. “You’ve got to go back and have your scientists search for impurities,” Jamie said. “The side effect could very
well be the result of impurities. Lind told me he needed to raise the dose. The higher dose could have been too much for a child. A contaminant.” Jamie’s thoughts, and his words, were jumping from here to there and back as he tried to cover the suspicions gnawing at him and threatening to overpower him. He hadn’t gotten enough sleep in weeks. In months. He was losing control of himself. “The medication itself may be fine. You’ve got to test for contaminants. How will you test it, though, without imperiling other children? That’s the question you have to answer first. On the other hand, this medication might be a dead end. You have got to accept the fact that it might be a dead end. But you have to test it first.”

Jamie talked on and on, barely able himself to follow the logic of his words. He was trying to stop himself from saying other words, words that couldn’t be taken back, words like, someone in your employ murdered my sister. And, for what? For a medication that makes you a fortune? A medication that causes children to go deaf?

“We’re working on it,” Rutherford said slowly. He stopped, thinking. He was worried about Stanton. The man must be under a great deal of stress. Maybe he was still suffering pain from his wounds in North Africa. Psychological pain wounded just as much. What horrors had Stanton seen? Rutherford wanted to find a means to soothe him. “Believe me, we’re working on it.” Stanton must be terribly pressed, about a million things, to think they weren’t. Maybe there was some bad news from the front. Some secret penicillin test that Stanton couldn’t talk about, and it had gone very badly. No matter the cause, Rutherford had to help Stanton get back on track. Probably he needed a drink. And not coffee.

“Maybe this side effect presents itself only in children. Next time, find a patient who’s older. Elderly, even,” Stanton was saying.

But no, Rutherford realized as Stanton talked on obsessively, the problem really was that he hadn’t seen Charlie yet. He didn’t know how well the boy was doing. That explained everything. The gift of
Charlie’s life: that was the only thing that mattered. The deafness didn’t count. Any parent would agree.

Rutherford broke into Stanton’s barrage of words. “Listen to me,” he said sharply. “Listen.” Rutherford closed his eyes to focus his words, as if better-focused words would make Stanton hear and understand him better. “Listen to me.” Finally he had Stanton’s attention. “This medication saved my grandson’s life. When I was in that hospital room, those nights, I thought I’d lost him. I didn’t know how I’d walk out of that hospital without him. I felt like an old, old man. Like my life was over. I was ready to die. Then all of a sudden the boy’s sitting up in bed asking for doughnuts. Now he’s upstairs having drawing lessons. Nothing stops him. Nothing.”

Rutherford opened his eyes and his eyes filled with tears. He tried to stop the tears, but he couldn’t. Tears were pouring down his cheeks. “It was a miracle. A miracle, Dr. Stanton.” He couldn’t stop weeping. He and Stanton were both struggling to function, right at the edge. He turned away from Stanton. He pressed his palms against his eyes. He breathed deeply. He had to get a grip on himself. He had to talk about something else, get himself back in control. Get himself back to business. Yes, business. Again he took a deep breath. Slowly his sense of self-possession returned. He was coping, yes, he was.

“I’ll tell you something, Stanton.” He took out his handkerchief, blew his nose, pretended he had a cold. “Claire doesn’t know this yet. But once the drug is ready and we’re marketing it, I’m going to turn over 50 percent of the profits to a foundation. Name it after Charlie. A medical foundation. Like the Rockefeller Institute, only smaller. Although who knows what could happen, once this medication takes off. Maybe we could create a foundation to compete with the big guns.”

In Rutherford’s still-damp eyes, Jamie saw a glint at the prospect.

“You’ll be on the board of directors, I’m hoping. I’m asking. Begging you. Help me with this. I’ll need your help, figuring out how to distribute the money, what diseases to target. I’m doing this as a gift
for Claire. To make up for, well, to make up for things in the past, a lot of things, even though some of them couldn’t be helped.”

Stanton stared at him. Rutherford was virtually confessing to him: he wanted to be just like Rockefeller and Carnegie and all the rest. Do whatever it takes, wresting what you want from the world, then redeem your conscience by giving back a half that still leaves half behind, still leaving you a millionaire many times over.

“You should go upstairs and visit my grandson. You’ll get a happy surprise, I can assure you. He’s doing great. No feeling sorry for himself, not that boy. He’s like his mother, and his grandfather: not just making the best of whatever comes his way, but bending it to his own will. I’m proud of him.”

“Let me ask you something,” Jamie said. “Where did the medication come from?”

“What do you mean?” Rutherford was puzzled by the non sequitur.

“The question is simple enough. Your prized product, isn’t it? Guaranteed of success, no matter what the side effects? Ceruleamycin, that’s what you’re calling it, right?”

Jamie watched Rutherford staring at him in confusion. Was it possible that Rutherford had no idea of where the medication came from? Jamie wondered. “You must know where it came from. That’s the sort of fact a man like you would know without having to look it up.”

“Where it came from? It came from the lab.”

“Before it was in the lab. What was its history before it was in the lab?”

“I suppose there are records that say. I can ask someone to investigate.” The Harvard Club. Water buffaloes staring at him. A decrepit stuffed elephant. Nick Catalano, offering Rutherford the discovery of a lifetime—from Syracuse, the city of his birth. None of this was James Stanton’s business.

“Where was it collected?”

“There must be two thousand soil samples in that lab.”

“Two thousand samples—but this is the one that works. Maybe the only one that works. Is it from Central Park? From Claire’s backyard? Or maybe it’s from my sister’s lab. From a sample she collected when she was visiting our childhood home.”

“You know very well that these substances can come from anywhere. You can find the same thing in a million different places.”

“I happen to know that Ceruleamycin has the same chemical structure as a substance my sister was working on before she died.”

“That doesn’t mean a thing. Somebody else could have discovered it, too.”

Jamie knew this was true. But he was compelled to push on: “My sister wasn’t suicidal, and she wasn’t the sort of person who has accidents.”

Slowly Rutherford said, “Anyone can have an accident.” He paused. He thought back. The coroner had ruled that Tia Stanton had an accident. Rutherford recalled speculation about suicide, but the ruling was accidental death. “Your sister’s death was a tragedy,” he said. “But an accident.” Was Stanton denying the report? If he didn’t believe it, why hadn’t he challenged the report months ago?

Rutherford put himself back to last summer. He’d had a dozen irons in the fire, a finger in every pie, as he always said, and he wasn’t missing dessert, not ever. And the pie that excited him most then was the same one that excited him the most now: antibacterials from soil. His staff was collecting samples from around the world. Nick Catalano was selling, Rutherford was buying. Privately, to be sure, but so what?

Slowly Rutherford put the facts together for a theory. He had a rule to live by: always remember, in your secret heart, that two plus two equals four. Even when businessmen, politicians, and adulterous husbands all around you add two plus two and proclaim they’re getting five. True enough, you too might, now and then, find yourself
publicly proclaiming that two and two makes five. But you could allow yourself that luxury only if, in your heart of hearts, you recognized and accepted the truth. Had Nick Catalano murdered Tia Stanton for this medication? Was there proof? Rutherford put Stanton off. “Accidents can happen. Anywhere. Without warning. That’s what makes it an accident.”

Jamie could hold back no longer. Within himself he’d lost the battle of resistance, and now that the barricades were down, he couldn’t control the force within him. “Your people killed my sister,” he shouted in anger. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d shouted in anger.

“Of course ‘my people’ didn’t kill your sister!” Rutherford couldn’t help shouting, too, even though he knew, and warned himself, that generally a voice so quick to express anger was masking guilt. “That’s ridiculous!” He couldn’t stop himself from shouting because this was more than business. What Stanton was saying would ruin everything he’d built, including and especially his newfound relationship with Claire. He would never allow his bond with Claire to be broken. Nothing would be allowed to come between them now.

“Then tell me where the medication came from.” Jamie’s family, gone. His sister’s legacy, her greatest accomplishment, gone. And for what? For a millionaire to become even richer and then give half the money away, as if that would make everything better? As if that would bring Tia back? What was the use of her life? Of any of their lives? His parents, dead of influenza, his sister, his patients, young men in the military forces of every nation, dead. This was the only meaning he could grasp at: his sister had discovered a substance that could ease the anguish of others, and it had been stolen from her. “It’s a simple question. Give me a simple answer.”

“You need to go home and get some sleep,” Rutherford said, struggling to make his voice calm. “Take Claire out for lunch and then go home and get some sleep.”

The months of frustration, the months and years of rigorous self-
discipline—all Jamie’s facades crumbled. He didn’t have the strength to hold himself in check. “Did you hire someone? Or were you just waiting with the fee after it was over? Who was it that you paid?”

“This is my business, let me deal with it.” He should have seen this coming, Rutherford chastised himself. He should have thought of this possibility long ago. He’d let his enthusiasm carry him away.

“That’s your justification?”

“Stop! Be quiet! Don’t shout.”

They turned. Claire stood on the stairs, gripping the handrail. She was distraught, eyes bleary from crying, hair wild. “You’ll upset Charlie with your fighting.” The sun was pouring through the stained glass window at the landing behind her. It glinted off the gold leaf on the Renaissance paintings of the Holy Family along the wall. “What’s he supposed to think when he hears you two like this?”

The men were struck silent by her mistake. For a long moment, they said nothing. They had to be delicate now. How fragile she was. How would she react when she realized what she’d said? Jamie wanted to console her. He took three steps toward her, but he couldn’t take the ten more that would get him to the staircase and into her arms.

“Sweetheart,” Rutherford said. “We’re sorry. We didn’t mean to raise our voices.” How much had she heard? “Of course we have to stay calm for Charlie’s sake.” He wouldn’t correct her. Never. “We forgot. We’ll be more careful from now on. We won’t upset Charlie, not ever.”

“What were you arguing about?” she asked.

Okay, maybe she didn’t hear much or even anything, Rutherford hoped. Maybe she heard the tone without registering the words. He had to be steady now. “Business, the war, so many problems we’re trying to deal with.”

Jamie studied this woman, the love of his life, standing before him. He felt her anguish. Ten steps, to reach her. He pictured his sister in his memory, saw her happy, laughing at some joke in the lab. Saw her
body laid out in the morgue, a different kind of lab. He watched himself, as if he were separate from himself, identifying her body. Her face was perfect, her body broken.

Here was his terrible dilemma: to deny his own family and a possible ugly truth in order to be with Claire, or to ask Claire to credit a possible ugly truth and deny her family to be with him. “Your father ordered my sister’s death, did you know?”

“What?” she asked blankly.

“If he didn’t directly order it, he set up the circumstances that led to it. Created an atmosphere that condoned it. And he’s going to profit from it. Hugely.”

“I don’t understand.” Frowning, she looked from one to the other.

“What do you mean? That doesn’t make sense.”

“Ask him to explain it to you.”

She glanced at her father but said nothing.

“Go ahead, Claire. Ask him.” He regretted this as soon as he said it—his baiting of her. How could he do this, to the woman he loved? But how could he take it back?

Father and daughter looked at each other. Claire’s beloved face, filled with confusion. She was innocent. Of that Jamie had no doubt. He’d wounded an innocent.

Jamie couldn’t tolerate her pain. Without conscious thought, he turned and walked to the elevator. Pressed the call button. The elevator seemed to take an hour to arrive. He sensed Claire staring at his back. Finally the elevator door opened. He stepped in. He greeted the elevator operator. He was lost. He didn’t know where he would go or what he would do, once the elevator reached the ground floor. He didn’t turn around to see his almost-family watch him go.

A
fter Jamie left, after the elevator door closed behind him, Claire didn’t move. She stared at the elevator door. What had just happened? She couldn’t understand. What had he been talking about?
She’d seen him, she’d heard his words, but she couldn’t figure out what he’d meant. She sat down on the stairs and wrapped her arms around her legs. She rested her head upon her knees.

Now her father was beside her, easing himself, with a sigh at the effort, to sit on the staircase, one step down from her. She was concerned for her father. He needed to get some exercise, if he was so stiff that he could barely manage to lower himself to the steps. When he was ready to get up, she’d offer him her arm to help him, offer it in some imperceptible way, so he wouldn’t realize that she’d noticed his weakness.