by JJ Lamb
Carl gave him the information.
“You said you’re in the New York City office of OCI?”
“That’s correct.”
“Aren’t we somewhat outside your sphere of operations?”
“Normally, but Ms. Goldmich’s complaint was filed here. However, I’ve also relayed the information to our LA office, which handles your region.”
“We’ll take care of everything at our end, Mr. Kreuger, rest assured.”
“Thank you. I appreciate that. I’ll expect your call.” Carl hung up, but he was less than satisfied.
* * *
Ethan’s smartphone vibrated in his pocket. It startled him, even more so when he saw David Zelint’s name in the window. Of late, every time he’d tried to reach the man, all he’d gotten was grief. Ethan allowed it to ring for a few times before answering.
“David! You’re calling me for a change?”
“I call when it’s necessary.”
“What can I do for you?”
“For one thing, you can take care of business, like you’re supposed to do.” David Zelint usually raised his voice and almost shouted when they talked. Now, his tone was low and menacing.
Ethan sat down at his desk and waited for his heart to stop racing.
Bad! This sounds bad.
“What do you mean? I’ve taken care of everything.”
“Really? What about Emma Goldmich? What about Emma Goldmich’s daughter, Tuva? Does any of this jar your memory, Ethan?”
He immediately pictured the woman’s file, remembered that if it hadn’t been for a foul-up, she would have been out of their hair some time ago.
“Yes, I know who you’re talking about.”
“The daughter has filed a complaint with the OCI. Claims she can’t get in touch with her mother. Not by mail, not by telephone. Why is this happening?”
“OCI?”
“Remember them? We’ve had conversations about them before. That’s the FDA’s police force. The F-D-A. Do you get the picture now?”
Ethan’s mouth was frozen. Raw fear roiled in his gut.
“You get this taken care of,” David growled. “Fix it. Now!”
Chapter 31
Emma lay in bed, staring at the ceiling. Every part of her, from the top of her head to the tip of her toes, was hurting. When she tried to move or change positions, it became a rollercoaster of screaming pain. The medicine Delores had given her two hours ago had worn off—they all wore off so quickly now—leaving her breathless.
She pressed her bedside call button once, twice. When nothing happened, she pushed it over and over. She watched her bedside clock lose fifteen minutes before the nurse finally appeared.
“Yes, Emma, what can I do for you?”
“I would like to use my cell phone so I can call my daughter. It’s been three weeks since I’ve spoken to her.”
Delores frowned with annoyance. “I told you, we don’t have cell phone reception here. It’s the mountains.”
“Then I want to call her from the nurses’ station.” Emma could hear the shrill in her voice. “Please! I have a right to talk to my girl.”
Delores made a point of looking at her watch. “Your daughter is probably in bed sound asleep. It’s late in New York. You wouldn’t want to wake her up … would you?”
“Yes! I want to wake her.”
“Well, I can’t let you do that. Besides, the phones are for medical personnel only.” Delores turned around and started to leave.
“Delores, please help me.”
The nurse swung around to face Emma again. “It’s too early to give you more meds for your pain, Emma. And you know that.”
“No, it’s not the pain.” Emma held onto her bedside table, tried to raise herself, but she couldn’t. “Please, Delores! Help me call my daughter. You could do that if you really cared.”
Delores’s face turned a bright red. “We have our rules, Emma. I have to follow instructions.”
“What are those instructions?”
Delores raised her voice. “You know what they are. You can’t use our telephones to call your daughter. Every single day I tell you the same thing. Over and over. I’ve had enough!”
“What did you do with my cell phone?” Emma screamed. “Whether I can use it or not … it’s mine! I want it back!”
Delores stepped to the bed and pounded her fists on the mattress; the violent movement caused Emma stabbing pain, like electrical fingers crawling all over her.
“You listen to me, you … you … Emma! Your cell phone is useless, and that’s not going to change.” Delores thrust her face inches from hers. “Get it! Now don’t ask me again.”
Delores returned to the doorway and swung around to glare at her before she left. “Why don’t you accept it? Your daughter doesn’t give a damn about you.”
Emma bit back the screams that kept welling up inside. Delores would hurt her again if even one of them escaped her lips.
* * *
Ethan sat at his laboratory desk, brought up Emma Goldmich’s file. He remembered how the woman had been scheduled out. Then the arrival of the two new nurses had delayed the finalization.
The patient should have been gone from the equation. She should be dead. Just a brain floating in a glass specimen container.
Then there would be no complaint from David Zelint; no complaints from anyone.
David’s angry face was there every time Ethan closed his eyes, and every time he saw that face, a glob of fear would stick in his throat.
He looked around the room at all the preserved brain specimens. He’d done hundreds of dissections … and to what end?
No conclusions! No supportable theories. All he had was garbage, and brains floating in jars.
He turned back to the computer and in a frenzy he began to review the data and observations he’d carefully documented. He moved to his paper files and compared all his notes, as well. Frustrated, he threw the papers up in the air and let them fly everywhere.
“Where is the pattern?” he screamed at the brains. “Where is the logic, the harmony, the progression of scientific thought?”
He’d had all the advantages of studying living tissue. What did he learn? What definitive information had it given him? Where did it take him?
Nowhere. Only down dark, empty alleys.
He scrolled his computer files, tried to make sense out of his observations. But the more he searched, the more it all turned into gibberish.
He scratched at his arms until there were tracks of blood. Where had he gone wrong?
“I was supposed to be a pioneer,” he said to the specimens. “I was to create new pathways for others to follow, to find new information about the functions of a living brain. I was to create maps for future explorations.”
He’d not succeeded in his quest, had not answered any of the vital questions.
Ethan pulled up the original platform for his personal research, the one he’d used to convince David Zelint that it was worth the money to purchase special equipment for Comstock.
How does AZ-1166 actually affect the functioning of the brain?
Do the fewer nerve cells and synapses in Alzheimer’s patients cause the remaining neurological survivors to morph into superhero status? Become superhero cells by taking on more responsibility? Does AZ-1166 help accomplish that, or do all brain cells try to compensate in the same manner?
Could there actually be brain tissue regeneration?
“I’ve learned nothing!” he shouted at the room.
He jumped up, paced around the lab, scanned the collection of brains that surrounded him. Yes, they were his. He remembered every single one of these subjects.
“You were all willing participants.”
Jar after jar of brain matter seemed to stare back at him.
“You were supposed to be a part of world-shattering discoveries!” he yelled at the jars.
He surveyed every container, each carefully labeled with the name of the donor, the d
ate and time it was received.
Derek Kopek was floating next to Rhonda Jenkins.
He rested a finger on an empty slot on one shelf.
Emma Goldmich should be right here.
Kicking at the remaining research papers on the floor, he returned to his desk chair and brought up a separate file that gave the actual results of AZ-1166. Not the altered one the FDA received.
After testing 1,200 subjects, in 151 neurogenic national centers, it was determined that the spread of Alzheimer’s could be stopped in Stage I participants using a well-tolerated, oral therapy. However, an unacceptably large number of subjects also experienced the acceleration of age-related diseases. A very small percentage even slid back into Alzheimer’s. (Note: See patient's question and answer sheets.)
David had laid out the situation to Ethan when he hired him.
The FDA would never allow them to continue on to Stage IV if the actual percentage of side effects to AZ-1166 participants was reported.
The immediate problem was that it could take years of research to weed out the negative aging results. In that time, some other company might succeed where Zelint had failed. They would be the companies that would reap all the massive profits.
Derek Kopek’s brain stared at him. Some of his blood was still caked on the floor near the head of the autopsy table.
Ethan tried to block out the memories of Derek’s screams and struggles. No matter how much he drugged him, the man stayed wide awake until Ethan finally severed his brain stem to shut him up.
I should never have agreed to hide the truth. Should never have agreed to juggle the numbers of participants with unacceptable side effects, make those statistics disappear.
Ethan continued to pace around the room, wondering all the time why he ever got into this mess.
It's not my fault. I didn’t lay down the rules. I wasn’t even here at the beginning. I didn’t create the pit. It wasn’t my idea to get rid of those subjects.
He collapsed into his desk chair again.
A scapegoat. That’s how he would end up. David would claim he knew nothing about what was going on at Comstock. He would claim that as far as he knew patients were getting all the necessary treatments for their side effects before being discharged.
Ethan laid his head on his desk. He would have to cover his tracks or take the fall, possibly go to prison for the rest of his life. They might even execute him. The thought of that made his stomach drop.
That’s not going to happen!
Ethan started shaking. It was time to prepare for his escape.
He had plenty of money—enough to live in South America for the rest of his life.
Like the Nazis.
Is that the way the scientific community would think of him? He looked around the room at his brain specimens … knew the answer.
He brought up the copies of the real informed consents he’d deleted from all the patients’ charts. The regular consent forms and the question and answer sheets would have to be altered and placed back in their charts.
He quickly read through one of the signed forms. There was hardly a mention of the possible age-related conditions the test drug could cause—heart disease, congestive heart failure, osteoporosis, blindness from cataracts, crippling arthritis, incapacitating strokes.
He then programmed the computer to add all the specific potential side effects to the master consent form and pasted in the paragraph for every study participant, going back to the time the study was launched. It would now look as though each patient had really been informed about AZ-1166.
Almost 1,200 participants. By the time he finished, he was exhausted.
Ethan stood on a wooden chair and disconnected the smoke alarm. He had to burn several bags of letters stored in the corner of the lab—both patient letters that were never mailed; letters to patients that were never delivered. There were very few of the latter.
It had always been in Zelint’s favor that families quickly lost interest in elderly Alzheimer’s patients when they left home. Comstock just made it even easier by eliminating all communications between them.
He scooped up his hand-written laboratory notes that he’d scattered around the lab and started feeding them into a paper shredder.
After emptying the shredded ribbons of paper into a deep lab sink, he set them on fire. When the flames started to die down, he tossed in all of the patient/family letters. The flames roared again.
Soon everything was consumed.
Perspiration ran down his face and his clothes were soaked. He held his shaking hands out in front of him.
If he were to get away, he would have to figure out every possible avenue of discovery.
He was not going to be anyone’s scapegoat.
Chapter 32
This brief encounter with Comstock had been enough of a trial balloon for Gina. She would never do travel nursing again, no matter how much Harry assured her that this wasn’t a typical assignment.
Give it another chance?
No way!
Gina wasn’t cut out for this kind of nursing. She missed the hospital environment, missed the excitement of new concepts floating around her, missed the interchange of ideas with colleagues. And most of all, she missed the friends she’d made at Ridgewood Hospital; it was amazing how a supposedly cold, indifferent institution could turn into a second home. And San Francisco had become a safe haven away from New York … and Dominick.
Harry had a different take on things.
He’d been a travel nurse for too many years to just turn his back on any one job. His flawless record had always been a real plus; he could pick and choose almost any assignment he wanted. Not completing an assignment, especially without giving decent notice? Well, that would really screw things up for him.
She’d allowed him to talk her into staying, but for the only reason that really meant anything—leaving her patients exposed to a danger that she couldn’t even pinpoint would gnaw at her long after she’d gone.
Well, she’d suck it up, do her job, and find a way to protect these patients. Wasn’t that what nurses were supposed to do?
Again, when she arrived on the unit, Delores didn’t bother to give her a patient status or any other kind of report; she silently passed the narcotic keys to Gina and walked away.
She tried to avoid Rocky’s cruel, piercing eyes, eyes that shredded her clothes away, from neck to ankles. The worst thing was not that she felt naked, but that she was really scared of him. In the same way that she was scared of her ex-husband.
She forced herself to stare Rocky down. “Why don’t you get your mind out of the gutter?” she said. “Move your ass and do your job! Get the vitals and start getting everyone ready for breakfast while I put together the pain medications. Can you do that?”
He slowly rose from the desk. Standing, he pretended to enter notes in the computer.
Why doesn’t Ethan toss him? Why do he and that clod, Pete get such special treatment?
She tapped into the computer and brought up the patient census. Someone was missing.
Derek Kopek. He was gone!
She called out to Rocky, who had finally started down the hall. “What happened to Derek Kopek?”
Rocky kept on walking. “He was transferred out.”
Gina tried to bring up the Kopek’s file, but his name and everything about him had been deleted. The same thing had happened to Rhonda Jenkins, Harry’s patient.
She grabbed the phone. “Harry, another patient is gone.”
“What do you mean, gone?”
“I can’t find any sign of him, or of what happened to him. All I got from Rocky was that he was supposedly transferred out.”
“Do you think he died?”
“I think the grim reaper would be a different kind of transfer. Wouldn’t that jerk Rocky just say that’s what happened?”
“How ill was he?”
Gina thought about Derek, pictured him barely able to breathe, yet still smoking. “Very sic
k. Stage IV, CHF.”
“It sounds like he might have died. I’m really sorry, babe.”
She hung up the phone, got back to setting up her treatment tray. When everything was ready, she carried the tray from room to room, spending a few minutes with each patient. Most of them only wanted to talk about the constant pain they were having. Every single patient on the unit had an aura of defeat. It made Gina feel ill.
When she got to Derek’s empty room, she stepped inside. There was nothing to indicate he’d ever been there other than the faint odor of cigarette smoke. She tiptoed through the room, trying to visualize Derek in the last place she’d seen him—sitting in the chair near the window.
What happened to you, Derek?
She walked to the chair, tried to conjure some kind of clue, something ethereal that might have been left behind.
There was nothing.
Gina made her way back toward the nurses’ station. Emma Goldmich was the last to receive her meds. As she walked to the bedside, Emma looked back at her with sunken eyes.
All of these patients are suffering the death throes from every other aging disease.
“Emma, you look exhausted. What’s the matter?”
She turned away. “Nothing.”
“You can talk to me.” She sat down on the edge of the bed, but the movement of the mattress made Emma wince with pain.
Gina lifted up from the bed slowly. “Let’s give you your meds. It will help … at least for a little while.
She gave Emma a shot and gently took her hand. “I know there’s something’s wrong. Please tell me. I promise I’ll try to help.”
“Will you let me use your cell phone to call my daughter?”
“I don’t have it with me, Emma. No sense carrying it around when there’s no reception up here in the mountains.”
Gina could see Emma didn’t believe her. “I’ll go get it from my room, if you want. But you really can’t get a signal … and I’ve tried, believe me!”
Emma shook her head, turned soulful eyes on Gina. “It doesn’t matter. My daughter doesn’t love me anymore.” Tears trickled down her cheeks. “I wish I were dead.”
