Strong Medicine (6 page)

named Cleophas Moss. He had seated Andrew and Celia at a table overlooking

the sea. A candle stuck in a beer bottle was between them. Directly ahead

were scattered clouds and a near-full moon. "In New Jersey," Celia reminded

Andrew, "it's probably cold and rainy."

"We'll be there soon enough. Tell me some more about you and selling

drugs."

Her first assignment as a detail woman, Celia related, was to Nebraska

where, until then, Felding-Roth had had no sales representation.

"In a way it was good for me. I knew exactly where I stood because I was

starting from nothing. There was no organization, few records, no one to

tell me whom to call on or where."

"Did your friend Sam do that deliberately-as some kind of test?"

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"He may have. I never asked him."

Instead of asking, Celia got down to work. In Omaha she found a small

apartment and with that as a base she drove through the state, city by

city. In each place she tore out the "Physicians & Surgeons" section from

the yellow pages of a phone book, then typed up record sheets and began

making calls. There were 1,500 doctors, she discovered, in her territory;

later she decided to concentrate on 200 whom she estimated were the

biggest prescribers of drugs.

"You were a long way from home," Andrew said, "Were you lonely?"

"Didn't have time. I was too busy."

One early discovery was how difficult it was to get to see doctors. "I'd

spend hours sitting in waiting rooms. Then, when I'd finally get in, a

doctor might give me five minutes, no more. Finally a doctor in North

Platte threw me out of his office, but he did me a big favor at the same

time."

"How?"

Celia tasted some fried grouper and pronounced, "Loaded with

fat! I shouldn't eat it, ' but it's too good to pass up." She put down

her fork and sat back, remembering.

"He was an internist, like you, Andrew. I'd say about forty, and I think

he'd had a bad day. Anyway, I'd just started my sales talk and he stopped

me. 'Young lady,' he said, 'you're trying to talk professional medicine

with me, so let me tell you something. I spent four years in medical

school, another five being an intern and resident, I've been in practice

ten years, and while I don't know everything, I know so much more than

you it isn't funny. What you're trying to tell me, with your inadequate

knowledge, I could read in twenty seconds on an advertising page of any

medical magazine. So get out!' "

Andrew grimaced. "Cruel."

"But good for me," Celia said, "even though I went out feeling like

something scraped off the floor. Because he was right."

"Hadn't the drug company-Felding-Roth-given you any training?"

"Oh, a little. But short and superficial, a series of sales spiels,

mostly. My chemistry background helped, though not much. I simply wasn't

equipped to talk with busy, highly qualified doctors."

"Since you mention it," Andrew said, "that's a reason why some doctors

won't see drug detail men. Apart from having to listen to a

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canned sales pitch, you can get incorrect information that is dangerous.

Some detail men will tell you anything, even mislead you, to get you to

prescribe their product."

"Andrew dear, I want you to do something for me about that. I'll tell you

later."

"Okay-if I can. So what happened after North Platte?"

"I realized two things. First, I must stop thinking. like a salesman and

not do any kind of pushy selling. Second, despite doctors knowing more

than I did, I needed to find out specific things about drugs that they

didn't know, which might be helpful to them. In that way I'd become

useful. Incidentally, while attempting all that, I discovered something

else. Doctors learn a lot about disease, but they're not well informed

about drugs."

"True," Andrew agreed. "What you're taught in medical school about drugs

isn't worth a damn, and in practice it's hard enough to keep up with

medical developments, never mind drugs. So where prescribing is

concerned, it's sometimes trial and error."

"Then there was something else," Celia said. "I realized I must always

tell doctors the exact truth, and never exaggerate, never conceal. And

if I was asked about a competitor's product and it was better than ours,

I'd say so."

"How did you make this big change?"

"For quite a while I had four hours' sleep a night."

Celia described how, after a regular day's work, she would spend evenings

and weekends reading every drug manual she could get her hands on. She

studied each in detail, making notes and memo rizing. If there were

unanswered questions, she sought answers in libraries. She niade a trip

back to Felding-Roth headquarters in New Jersey and badgered former

colleagues on the scientific side to tell her more than the manuals did,

also what was being developed and would be available soon. Before long

her presentations to doctors improved; some doctors asked her to obtain

specific information, which she did. After a while she saw that she was

getting results. Orders for Felding-Roth drugs from her territory

increased.

Andrew said admiringly, "Celia, you're one of a kind. Unique."

She laughed. "And you're prejudiced, though I love it. Anyway, in just

over a year the company tripled its business in Nebraska."

"That's when they brought you in from the outfield?"

"They gave someone else who was newer, a man, the Nebraska territory and

me a more important one in New Jersey."

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"Just think," Andrew said, "if they'd sent you to some other place like

Illinois or California we'd never have met."

"No," she said confidently, "we'd have met. One way or another we were

destined to. 'Wedding is destiny.'"

He finished the quotation. "'And hanging likewise.'"

They both laughed.

"Fancy that!" Celia said, delighted. "A stuffy head-in -textbook

physician who can recite John Heywood."

"The same Heywood, a sixteenth-century writer, who also sang and played

music for Henry the Eighth," Andrew boasted, equally pleased.

They got up from the table and their host called over from his woodbuming

stove, "Dat good fish, you young honeymooners? Erryting okay?"

"Everything's very okay," Celia assured him. "With the fish and the

honeymoon."

Andrew said, amused, "No secrets on a small island." He paid for their

meal with a ten-shilling Bahamian note-a modest sum when translated into

dollars-and waved away change.

Outside, where it was cooler now, and with the sea breeze freshening,

they happily linked arms and walked back up the quiet, winding road.

It was their last day.

As if in keeping with the sadness of departure, the Bahamas weather had

turned gloomy. A stratocumulus overcast was accompanied by morning

showers while a strong northeast wind whipped whitecaps on the sea and

set waves beating heavily onshore.

Andrew and Celia were to leave at midday by Bahamas Airways from Rock

Sound, connecting at Nassau with a northbound Pan Am flight which would

get them to New York that night. They were due in Morristown the

following day where, until they found a suitable house, Andrew's

apartment on South Street would be home. Celia, who had been living in

furnished rooms in Boonton, had already moved out from there, putting

some of her things in storage.

In the honeymoon bungalow which they would leave in less than an hour

Celia was packing, her clothes spread out on the double bed. She called

to Andrew, who was in the bathroom shaving, "It's been so wonderful here.

And this is just the beginning."

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Through the open doorway he answered, "A spectacular beginning! Even so,

I'm ready to get back to work."

"You know something, Andrew? I think you and I thrive on work. We have that

in common, and we're both ambitious. We'll always be that way."

"Uh-huh." He emerged from the bathroom naked, wiping his face with a towel.

"No reason not to stop work once in a while, though. Provided there's a

good reason."

Celia started to say, "Do we have time?" but was unable to finish because

Andrew was kissing her.

Moments later he murmured, "Could you please clear that bed?"

Reaching behind, without looking and with one arm around Andrew, Celia

began to throw clothes on the floor.

"That's better," he said as they lay down where the clothes had been. "This

is what beds are for."

She giggled. "We could be late for our flight."

"Who cares?"

Soon after, she said contentedly, "You're right. Who cares?" And later,

tenderly and happily, "I care and then, "Oh, Andrew, I love you so!"

4

Aboard Pan American Flight 206 to New York were copies of that day's New

York Times. Leafing through the newspaper, Celia observed, "Nothing much

changed while we were away."

A dispatch from Moscow quoted Nikita Khrushchev as challenging the United

States to a "missile-shooting match." A future world war, the Soviet leader

boasted, would be fought on the American continent, and he predicted "the

death of capitalism and the universal triumph of communism."

President Eisenhower, on the other hand, assured Americans that U.S.

defense spending would keep pace with Soviet challenges.

And an investigation into the gangland slaying of Mafia boss

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Albert Anastasia, gunned down while in a barber's chair at New York's

Park-Sheraton Hotel, was continuing, so far without result.

Andrew, too, skimmed the newspaper, then put it away.

It would be a four-hour flight aboard the propeller-driven DC-713 and

dinner was served soon after takeoff. After dinner Andrew reminded his

wife, "You said there was something you wanted me to do. Something about

drug company detail men."

"Yes, there is." Celia Jordan settled back comfortably in her seat, then

reached for Andrew's hand and held it. "it goes back to that talk we had

the day after you used Lotromycin, and your patient recovered. You told

me you were changing your mind about the drug industry, feeling more

favorable, and I said don't change it too much because there are things

which are wrong and which I hope to alter. Remember?"

"How could I forget?" He laughed. "Every detail of that day is engraved

on my soul."

"Good! So let me fill in some background."

Looking sideways at his wife, Andrew marveled again at how much drive and

intelligence was contained in such a small, attractive package. In the

years ahead, he reflected, he would need to stay alert and informed just

to keep up with Celia mentally. Now, he concentrated on listening.

The pharmaceutical industry in 1957, Celia began, was in some ways still

too close to its roots, its early origins.

"We started off, not all that long ago, selling snake oil at country

fairs, and fertility potions, and a pill to cure everything from headache

to cancer. The salesmen who sold those things didn't care what they