Something's Come Up (10 page)

“The research company was called L.G. Greene Laboratories. They’re one hundred percent privately funded, which is funding that works on a number of levels. For one, they were making incredible advances in stem cell research while the government blocked funding on it to discuss the moral implications of such research. So, even without government funds, Greene had enough money to keep up the research. Meanwhile, they were busy saving thousands of lives. Easily. Let’s talk about morals …” Pace clenched his teeth and took a deep breath.

I made a mental note to talk to Cedric about stem cell research. I was dying to hear his thoughts on the matter. “Okay, so how did you get involved in the high-risk research?”

“I paid attention. I’ve always been able to think clearly, and for them it’s good to have fresh eyes on research. I got a perfect score on my MCATs, my dad had earned the company millions of dollars over his career there, thanks to his research, and, most importantly, I was interested. L-6, the name of the group at Greene that was working on advances in the high-risk neuroblastoma, was on the brink of something huge. They were close to announcing a treatment that seemed to override all heterogeneity and wipe all traces of neuroblastoma from the body.”

“A
cure
?” I lunged forward, gripping his shoulder.

“Well,” he grinned, “that c-word is only really used in hypothetical discourse. You can’t go throwing it around until it’s been eradicated for a generation. But, yeah, basically. And since I was new in medical school, I was interested in looking through their old journals, which they let me do, because I wanted to see the trial and error.”

“Shitty to have errors when it’s people’s lives, isn’t it?”

He shrugged and half-nodded. “But when your child is dying, and a treatment has proven not to make things worse, you’ll try anything.”

“I still don’t see how this leads to you leaving medical school.”

He chuckled. “I’m getting there. Stop interrupting.”

I flashed the finger, but he kept going.

“L-6 had developed this injectable drug that, they touted in their conclusion documents, cured high-risk neuroblastoma.”

I put my hand up. “Wait. I thought you said they couldn’t use the word
cure
.”

“That’s why I was interested.”

“So…”

“So I nosed around. With proper clearance, of course. The active drug has a complicated, ridiculous name that in the lab the abbreviated to
Trivoxin
. In paper after paper, the addition of Trivoxin to intravenous medications proved nearly fatal to lab mice. When they changed course, injecting the medication right
into
the adrenal glands once a day for thirty days, at the end of seven days there was
no
sign of cancer left in the body. They divided the mice up after that, some receiving no continuing injections, and the others at various intervals.”

“How many continued injections were needed?”

“According to the papers? None.”

“None?”’

“None. For weeks I lost myself in the research library, baffled and excited by this research. In the meantime, Greene was starting their small clinical trials.”

“They didn’t need, like, FDA approval, or whatever?”

“You need FDA approval before a drug is allowed on the open market. The FDA will often come and assist research companies in clinical trials that people can volunteer for. But most private companies will do their own small scale trials before involving the FDA, since it’s such a fucking process and you have to make sure all of your political ducks are in a row to ensure they’ll even allow the test.”

“So what happened?”

He looked me straight in the eyes and I couldn’t have looked away if I wanted to. “The drug worked.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“Nope. The youngest child in the study was a three month old with high-risk neuroblastoma. He’s five now, and has had clean cancer screens every three months since his last injection of Trivoxin. The oldest in that particular trial was a five year old who had the same outcome. Five years, clean screens. Cancer survival rates stop being recorded after five years. When they reach that milestone, they’ve
survived.
”

I swallowed hard. “Why isn’t this taking up every news story on the fucking planet?” My stomach churned at the question.

Pace closed his eyes again, and took another deep breath. “After the small clinical trials seemed to be working, Greene began the FDA process. The FDA researchers came in and looked at the studies, the research, the paperwork, the drugs—all of it. The next day when I came in, the L-6 group was disbanded and the Trivoxin studies were all canceled. Done.”

“What the fuck?”

“There was a group of twenty kids—ten infants and ten kids over the age of one—right in the middle of their treatment cycle when the FDA shut down the study.”

My breath was more ragged than when we’d used the crop. “Why? What the fuck? Were there…like…toxicity issues or something?” I didn’t even know if
toxicity
was an appropriate term to use in this instance, but it felt right.

Pace remained silent, looking down the length of his legs and off into the distance.

“Pace,” I nudged him, “why did they shut down the study?”

He covered his mouth for second, rage and sorrow creeping into his eyes. “Because,” he sighed, “sick kids turn more of a profit than healthy kids do.”

“Wha—” I cut myself off, allowing time for his words to sink into my brain. “Y-you’re saying the FDA knew this was a cure and shut it down at the interest of the health care industry?”

“Sort of. What I’m saying is one of the researchers sent to approve the clinical trial…that would lead to FDA approval, has a lot of money…like close to a billion dollars…invested in a competing research laboratory.” His tone was stormy. Resolved.

“Is that even legal? For people to be in government agencies when they have ties to corporations like that, I mean?”

Pace laughed. “Oral sex is illegal in Indiana, but I’ve been with some girls from Purdue who could—”

“Yeah, yeah. Get to the point.” I waved him on, uninterested in tales from the sexual crypt.

Although the timing was inappropriate, his authority was turning me on.

“Why didn’t
Greene
go to the media? Or parents, for that matter?” I raged. “A story like this is the only matchstick the media would need to blow the FDA and Greene wide the fuck open.”

Pace shook his head. “The lab was paid off. Hush money exists, you know. But, more crippling was that they were threatened with miles of red tape for all of their other research if they allowed this one to continue. This wasn’t the FDA as an entity, mind you. It was this one researcher, and whoever she was connected with.”

“
She?
”

Pace chuckled dryly. “I know, just when you needed another reason to hate rich white dudes, I go change it up on you.”

“Hey,” I grinned, “I didn’t mention the skin color.”

“Oh, so you thought it was a rich black guy?” He playfully slapped my thigh.

“Fuck off! What about the families? They just had to go home? No more medicine? Why didn’t someone just bring the injections to their home?”

“The researcher who did whatever it was she did to stop the trial planted people at Greene that day and they’ve never left. All the Trivoxin was destroyed, they said, and they were guarded against making more.”

“What do you mean,
they said
?”

“Do you think anyone would blindly destroy a cancer cure? Especially one for children? Greene didn’t destroy it, and no one else has it.”

“So they’re just sitting on it?”

He looked frustrated. “They can’t continue to spend billions of dollars producing a drug that won’t make it to the market. They can’t sell it to the families because it’s too expensive without FDA approval. They can’t just give it to them because then the company would go bankrupt.”

“So…you’re suing the FDA?”

He laughed. “Fuck no. I’d get further trying to pass for a short white guy. I’m going after the researcher and anyone associated with her.”

My mouth hung open. “What’d your dad say?”

“‘Keep your nose clean, son, and keep doing the good you know you can do.’ So I left. I left Greene and I left medical school.”

I slid off the bed and got one of Pace’s button down shirts. “Won’t they just try to shut you up?”

“They don’t know I exist. A second-year med student has no business in a project like that. My name wasn’t on anything and I was made scarce in the offices in the basement when the FDA descended. I have no gag order.”

“Why not just make a lot of noise now?”

Pace stood and pulled a t-shirt over his head. “Because. I intend to win. Not to just expose the FDA’s lack of background checking in its researchers, but, more importantly, to get Trivoxin in the hands of those who need it.”

“What happened to the kids in the halted study?”

He closed his eyes as he spoke. “Seven are dead, the other thirteen are in various stages of decline, but all lived longer than they would have without the medication. All twenty of them were high-risk.”

Goosebumps covered my skin. “Who knows about your plans?”

“No one. I convinced my parents, and even my brother, that medical school was exhausting and not lucrative. My parents are less concerned with my motives now that Adrian is considering law school, too. I need to get a degree, get money, and storm the Supreme Court. It’s going to take some tactical preparation, Red.”

I paused for a long moment while I figured out how to phrase my next question. After I came up with no smooth was to finesse my vocabulary, I abandoned the attempt. “Why the fuck are you telling me this?”

“I trust you.”

I literally took a step back. The weight of the last half hour crushed me as I collected my clothes. “I don’t need your trust.”

“Where the hell are you going?” He sounded like a parent, or a pissed off husband.

“I need air.”

Pace raced around the bed and grabbed my shoulders. “Steph. Breathe. It’s okay.”

I held out my hands. “You’re not even going to tell me not to tell anyone?”

“That’s…kind of what trust is…isn’t it?”

“I really wouldn’t know. I—”

“Look,” he cut me off,” I don’t trust easily. No one’s ever hurt me or anything dramatic like that, I just have high expectations. You meet every single one.”

Needing a break from the heavy, I smirked. “So what? You’re going to be like Erin Brockovich or something?”

He stepped back and I followed because he was pulling my shirt, slowly unbuttoning it as he spoke. “Nope,” he said with his trademark broad grin, “I’m going to be like Pace Turner and save a shitload of lives.”

“You could have done that by being a doctor, you know.”

He shook his head. “It’s not the same. There are many more lives at stake here than I could have hoped to affect if I slaved in a surgical ward for thirty years.”

I followed him straight to the bed, turned on by the authority Pace carried himself with. It was there from the first day, and wasn’t just a show.

“I won’t tell anyone,” I whispered in between kisses.

He moaned into my neck. “I know.”

L
ess than twenty minutes after our unscheduled stop, I pulled the car into the parking lot of Finnegan’s.

“Well,” Steph’s eyebrows lifted comically, “let’s collect the lush, shall we?”

“Be nice,” I warned sarcastically.

She flashed me the finger and reached for her door handle. She paused, then crossed her arms, sitting back and waiting for me to open the door for her.

She’d only met Adrian once before, shortly after her little run-in with my parents, so let’s just say he had enough ammunition to ride her ass that whole night. And not in the same way I did, fortunately. I never did like to share. They’d sparred for two or three hours, but, naturally, she outwitted him, and her victory seemed to work in my favor in the bedroom later that night.

“There’s his car.” I pointed to his black Audi. “That’s the good news.”

“Huh…an A8. Nice.” Steph twisted her lips into a satirical grin that made me want to spank her on the spot. “Little brother pulling in more green than you? Or does he just have a thing for going fast?”

No,
that
made me want to spank her.

I clicked my tongue against my teeth and grabbed her hand, leading her to the door. “He lives like four floors below me, makes half as much, and spent twice as much as I did on his car. The only thing he’s
ever
had more of is asinine priorities.”

She pursed her lips like she was going to whistle. “Easy, killer. I didn’t mean to challenge your virility.”

“Yes you did.” I let go of her hand and gave her a small tap on the ass.

I held the door for her as she walked in, turning to speak over her shoulder. “Save that shit for later.”

Not spotting Adrian during my first visual pass, I approached the bar. A young hottie with the name
Marley
stitched into her shirt spun around the bar in an organized fury.

“What can I get you?” she asked, eyeing me like she was trying to figure out if we knew each other.