Miracle Cure (18 page)

The applause was vigorous, and for a moment, Brian thought the staid staffs of WMH and BHI were going to give Teri a standing ovation.

“Well, she’s a winner,” Phil said, as the crowd rose and began to file out of the dome.

“She is that,” Brian replied, already planning how he was going to get the next two weeks’ worth of Vasclear.

“You going to meet her?”

“Another time, maybe.”

“How about now?”

Brian shook his head.

“Can’t.”

“Well, I think you should reconsider.”

“Why?”

“Because she’s about ten feet behind you and she’s coming right this way. You’re on your own, pal. I’ll watch the master at work from afar.”

Before Brian could respond, Phil was lumbering up the stairs. Brian, standing with a group of others, turned just as Teri Sennstrom arrived. She shook hands with each of them, but hesitated a second longer with Brian, and turned away from the group just enough so that she could speak to him without being overheard. Her eyes met his for a moment.

“Please call me at the Boston Radisson Hotel, room four-eighteen,” she said softly before turning away with a bright smile for an approaching hospital official.

T
HE
R
ADISSON
H
OTEL WAS LOCATED JUST A FEW BLOCKS
from White Memorial. Brian signed out to Phil for an hour and a half, and following Teri Sennstrom’s instructions, took a circuitous route over Beacon Hill, past the State House, and back down to the hotel. He entered it through the main lobby, then took the stairs to the fourth floor and room 418. Teri had insisted that he tell absolutely no one about their meeting, including the friend who was covering for him. She had not backed down when he protested, and had promised him a full explanation for the cloak-and-dagger secrecy. And in the end, Brian told Phil Gianatasio that his therapist had found it necessary to switch his appointment.

It was two-fifteen when Brian reached the Radisson. The day, which had begun for him at six that morning, wasn’t going to end until late the following afternoon. He had Vasclear clinic from four until eight, and then was
scheduled to cover the clinical research ward throughout the night—his first night of being on-call in-hospital since his cardiac fellowship. His responsibilities would include carrying the Code 99 beeper for the entire hospital. Any crash emergency anywhere in BHI or WMH, and he would be part of the team. He would only be on in-house call every tenth night, so he was especially elated. In a hospital as large as White Memorial, it was almost certain there would be action.

He tapped on the door to room 418, and Teri answered in seconds. She was still dressed as she had been at Grand Rounds, although without her suit jacket. Her body was willowy, but her silky blouse highlighted her breasts, which were hardly boyish. Brian felt edgy at being alone in a hotel room with her, but if Teri was the least bit uncomfortable at the situation, she hid it well.

“Come in, come in,” she said, shaking his hand once more. Her fingers, long and fine, were still completely enveloped by his. “I thought you might not have had a chance to eat, so I had them send up some food.” She motioned at a room-service table to one side of the bed, set for two. “You okay with that?”

“If you only knew what I would have eaten at the hospital, you’d never bother with that question.”

Teri Sennstrom didn’t seem to be wearing perfume, but she carried a subtle, fresh, intoxicating scent that smelled to Brian like a spring rain. She took the chair closest to the bedside table, and he settled in across from her, determined to maintain decorum despite having eaten nothing all day but a bagel.

As if reading his mind, Teri took the pressure off by immediately uncovering the food then diving into her salad.

“I’m too nervous to eat for hours before a presentation like that,” she said, not worrying that she hadn’t completely
finished chewing the mouthful, “and too wired to eat for hours afterward.”

“Actually, you looked pretty cool up there.”

“Thanks. I did a lot of theater as an undergraduate at Princeton. Little did I know that acting was going to be more important for my career than all those science courses put together.”

“You like working for the FDA?”

“I always had a thing for mathematics and statistics, as well as for biology. So in a way, the job is perfect for me. But my real moment of truth came on my first day on the wards as a third-year medical student, when an alcoholic with a GI bleed threw up a quart of blood on me. Oops, sorry, I forgot we were eating.”

“I’m about as sensitive to that sort of thing as a yak,” Brian said. “If some alcoholic threw up a quart of blood on me, there’s a good chance I might not even notice. My life’s goal was always to be a football player.”

“Yes,” she said. “I know.”

Brian set his fork down and stared at her.

“A quarterback,” she added. “And a very good one.”

“I don’t think I like this.”

“I guess I wouldn’t, either. Sorry for being so dramatic. Should I get started with some explanations, or would you like to finish lunch first?”

“We’d better do both. I don’t have a great deal of time, and I have very poorly developed curiosity-management skills.”

Teri Sennstrom’s smile enveloped her ocean-green eyes as well as her sensuous mouth.

“Well, as you can probably guess,” she began, “Vasclear is the hottest potato the FDA has had to deal with in many years, if not ever. My boss, Dr. Alexander Baird, is from Missouri—literally and philosophically.”

“The Show-Me State?”

“Exactly. His mandate has been caution and strict adherence to procedure, but now, there’s an enormous amount of pressure on him, political as well as medical, to do the one thing that comes the hardest for him—abandon scientific process. As I said at rounds, Dr. Baird’s agreed to approve the NDA for Vasclear—that’s new-drug application—in about two weeks. But that doesn’t mean he’s giving up on our investigation of the drug. Questions?”

“None yet, other than why I’m here.”

A well-traveled briefcase lay on the bed just to Teri’s left. She snapped it open, took out a single sheet of paper, and set it on the bed beside Brian. He glanced down at it, but didn’t have to pick it up. It was a copy of the MedWatch report he had filed on the defective Ward-Dunlop cardiac catheter.

“Everybody at the FDA knows the pressure Dr. Baird is under. You may have seen on the news the way he was ambushed by Senator Louderman at a public oversight-subcommittee hearing. We’re trying to help him as much as possible. The head of the MedWatch program noticed that you work at Boston Heart Institute, and sent your report over to Dr. Baird, who insisted that I make a point of speaking with you when I came up here.”

“But first he did a little checking up.”

Brian emphasized his point by passing an imaginary football her way. She surprised him by catching it almost in tempo. Her eyes met his and held. Instinctively, he cleared his throat, swallowed against the sudden dryness there, and finally took a sip of Coke. She would never make the cover of anyone’s glamour or beauty magazine, yet there was not one thing about her looks that didn’t excite him.

“I’m afraid the phrase ‘a little checking up’ doesn’t do our efforts justice,” she said. “I hate this sort of thing,
Brian, but once you’ve spent a little time working in Paranoington, D.C., you sort of get used to it.”

She took a manila folder from her briefcase and then opened it up for him. The first thing that caught his eye was a photograph of him blown up from his high school yearbook.

“Lord,” he said as he flipped through the papers.

There was a biography of him that filled three single-spaced sheets, along with numerous photographs and copies of newspaper articles, many of them from the sports pages. There were also his grades from high school, college, and medical school, a detailed credit report, which gave him a C-minus rating, reconnaissance-type photos of Phoebe and the girls, and the police reports, board rulings, and newspaper clippings surrounding his prescribing irregularities.

“There’s an agency in Washington that does this,” she said. “I was as flabbergasted as you are to see how thorough they were. It’s like all they have is an on-off switch. They either do you or they don’t. Aldrich Ames, Brian Holbrook, it doesn’t seem to matter to them. For all I know there’s one of these in someone’s file cabinet with my name on it. You’ve been through quite a lot. I really admire that you’ve made it back.”

Brian looked up at her angrily.

“I’m surprised they don’t have my discharge summary from Fairweather.”

“If that’s the hospital you were in last year, I think they tried.”

“So?”

“One of the articles mentioned that your problems began after you got hurt playing football.”

“It’s not a good sport for anyone with knees.”

“Dr. Baird doesn’t like doing this sort of stuff, Brian. You’ll have to take my word on that. But he’s still very
nervous over the step he’s about to take with Vasclear. Remember, the evaluation of a new drug by the FDA requires an enormous amount of trust in the very company that stands to benefit most by its release. We just don’t have the resources to conduct business any other way. And most of the time, the pharmaceutical companies are ethical. But we have virtually no experience with Newbury Pharmaceuticals, and there
have
been instances with other companies where information was conveniently omitted from reports, or numbers were changed to jack a result up from
probably
to
definitely
effective.”

“Maybe you’d better get to the point.”

“Brian, not everyone sends in a defective-product report the way you did. Most of the medical centers are conducting product research under some sort of profit-sharing agreement with the manufacturers or drug houses.”

“So I’ve been told.”

“Well, it turns out that in fact, one other person, at the university medical center in Wisconsin, encountered the same defect in that product as you did. The FDA is investigating now, but we’ve already come across what we think was a third case. That hasn’t been confirmed yet, but the first of those other patients required surgery to get the catheter piece out, and the other one died. We’re close to issuing an order to stop the use of the catheter until further notice. We can do that fairly easily because it hasn’t been approved for general use yet. You may have helped save I don’t know how many lives.”

“I may have helped lose my job.”

“I doubt it. I seriously do. The woman in Wisconsin who reported the incident is still working at the hospital there. Anyhow, you asked about the point of this meeting between us. Dr. Baird is looking for honest, committed people to help assure him that there’s nothing he doesn’t
know about Vasclear. That report you filed puts you pretty high on his list.”

Brian’s shirt suddenly felt too tight. He loosened his tie and unbuttoned his collar.

“Let me get this straight,” he said. “The head of the FDA wants me to spy on the people who have just hired me when absolutely no one else would, and who don’t even know yet that my MedWatch report may have cost them millions of dollars?”

“Brian, we’re determined to do the right thing with Vasclear. I know you feel you’re being used, but as I said this morning, it’s far easier to keep a drug off the market than it is to pull it once the pharmaceutical reps are brainwashing and courting the practitioners, and the prescriptions are rolling in.”

Brian thought for a time, then said, “Teri, I’m not making any promises. None. But I will tell you that since I started working at BHI, I’ve been especially interested in Vasclear. The woman in the MedWatch report I filed is a Vasclear patient, and I’ve seen dozens in the Vasclear-administration clinic. From what I’ve been able to tell, the drug is precisely as advertised.”

“That’s exactly what we hoped to hear. All Dr. Baird wants is for you to keep your eyes and ears open, as well as your mind. Talk to patients and staff. And if you hear anything, anything at all about this drug, report it to me.” She wrote a number on her business card and passed it over. “That’s my home number in Chevy Chase. I live alone, and I stay up quite late, so you needn’t worry about disturbing anyone no matter what time you call. If you don’t get me, just leave a message on my voice mail at home or the office. I check in with both frequently when I’m away.”

Brian slipped the card into his wallet, wondering how
he might ask if his call had to be limited to business. But he simply wasn’t that slick.

Oh, yeah, Phil, I went up to her hotel room. First she massaged my body with warm oil. Then we made love for a couple of hours. Then we had room service and made love for a few hours more.… I know, I know. Alex Trebek and Joe Montana …

“I’m not guaranteeing I’ll call,” he said.

“I understand. You’ll do what you think is best. Dr. Baird said he may actually be checking in with you himself. This business is that important to him. And please, don’t be intimidated by him. He comes across as being reserved and even a little crusty, but he’s great.”

She stood, straightening her skirt, and set the manila folder back in her briefcase. Their meeting was over. Brian wanted to say something, anything that would prolong his time with her, but nothing in her manner had encouraged him to do so, and he needed to get back to the hospital. He also knew that the divorce and suspension of his medical license had rocked his self-confidence more than he liked to admit. The simple truth was that he just wasn’t ready for a woman like Teri Sennstrom, if he was ready for any woman at all. The First Things First banner from his NA meeting fluttered across his mind. He could almost hear Freeman saying the words. This wasn’t the time to be worrying about his social life.

Teri walked him to the door. As he opened it, he breathed her in one last time.

“Brian, listen,” she said as he was stepping into the corridor. “I’m sorry if you’ve been placed in a difficult position. Dr. Baird wouldn’t let me talk him out of doing this, and I really did try.”