by Penny Reid
When he was very close, I hesitated. I wanted him to leave, but I didn’t want to hit him in the head. So I aimed for his chest, catching him in the stomach at close range with some kind of plaque or award of my father’s.
Out of ammunition, I turned away to avoid him, but he was strong and fast and, as usual, motivated.
His arms came around me from behind and he pulled me against his chest. I stiffened, closing my eyes and promising myself I wouldn’t cry.
“Hey, hey. Calm down.”
“Don’t tell me to calm down.” I thought about elbowing him in the ribs. I dismissed the idea, knowing he might still be sore.
“Okay, okay.” His voice was soft. Carefully soft.
It pissed me off.
“Don’t use that voice with me.”
“What voice?”
“The you-think-I’m-a-crazy-person voice.”
He faltered for a second, then growled in my ear, “Well what the fuck kind of voice do I use when you keep throwing office supplies at my head?”
“This voice is fine. Use this voice.”
“This is my angry voice.”
“Well, this is my angry voice, so I guess they match!”
I heard and felt a low growl vibrate against my back. I felt his exasperated exhale against my neck, before he said, “Can we just—can’t we talk about this later? When we’ve both cooled off?”
“No.” The rage was quickly becoming cold resolve. It slid over me much like my heart had slid to the floor, except this didn’t hurt. It didn’t feel good, but it felt safe.
I couldn’t see him, but I knew he was gritting his teeth and rolling his eyes.
“Kat, you can’t—”
“Fuck off, Dan.”
I felt him flinch, his grip on me loosen, and I seized the opportunity.
Stepping out of his grip, I swiped my underwear from where it was hanging out like a porno pocket square, and searched for my shoes. Finding them on the other side of the conference table, I slipped them on, and moved to the door.
But before I could get it open, he was there, behind me, his big hand holding it closed.
“Where are you going?”
I said nothing. I wouldn’t say a single word. It was always the same, when I was this angry with a person, I couldn’t speak and, honestly, my blind and soundless rage frightened me.
I felt him, the heat of him, hovering. I saw him, his arm, wrist, and hand. The wedding ring was on his third finger. I closed my eyes.
“Talk to me,” he said.
We stood like that for a long time and I felt his struggle, I could hear his ragged breaths. I couldn’t do a single thing about it. It was too late. I was too hurt. My brain had disengaged, retreated, and blanked.
I waited.
In this state, I could wait for hours and never be aware of the time passing.
Eventually, his hand slipped away. Dan took a step back.
I opened the door.
I left.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The Nuremberg Code: A set of research ethics principles for human experimentation set as a result of the subsequent Nuremberg trials (war crimes) at the end of the Second World War.
—NIH.gov
**Dan**
Shell-shocked. That’s what I was.
She’ll calm down, she’ll get over it, she’ll calm down, she’ll get over it . . .
Those were the thoughts on repeat in my head, because she had to. She had to get over it. She had to see reason at some point.
Right?
. . . Right?
Right.
I stared at the cement wall beyond my windshield, sitting in my rental car and wondering how and when I’d arrived at this pathetic, sorry-ass moment.
She loves you.
She didn’t, though.
Not really.
She might, someday, but not yet. It was too soon. I’d given her one fucking orgasm—and it wasn’t even a good orgasm—and now she had all kinds of ideas. She was confused. Confused. People don’t—they didn’t—fall in love this fast. It didn’t happen. It wasn’t possible.
She’ll calm down, she’ll get over it, she’ll calm down, she’ll get over it . . .
I kept seeing her at the exact moment she’d told me she loved me for the first time. Those liquid eyes, drawing me in, wanting me to believe in fairy tales.
I wasn’t talking about after I’d gone down on her, I was talking about when I was eating her out and she’d said it, her gaze locked on mine, her cheeks flushed. The words had spilled out of her and had taken me by surprise, but I shrugged it off. People say all kinds of shit when they’re about to orgasm, made all kinds of promises. Sex made people nuts.
Her I love you had been a figure of speech, that’s it.
Or at least, that’s what I’d told myself until she’d said it again. And again. And again. Like it was a pitchfork and she was chasing me with it.
Except, it wasn’t a pitchfork.
It was a gift.
And what had I done?
Fuck a fucking fuck of fucking ducks.
I bent forward, my forehead coming to the steering wheel. I couldn’t breathe. My eyes hurt. My throat was clogged, tight, dry, the worst.
I mean, I could breathe. But also, I couldn’t. It felt like I couldn’t. It wasn’t the shitty feeling in my chest this time, it was something else.
Maybe Ebola. Maybe cancer. Maybe I was dying. I needed to go see a doctor.
She’ll calm down, she’ll get over it, she’ll calm down, she’ll get over it . . . she has to.
She has to.
My cell rang and I jumped—no lie—a half foot in the air, hitting my head on the visor of the rental car.
“Fuck!” I growled, reaching for the phone in the console without checking the caller ID and bringing it to my ear, “What?”
A pause, then, “Dan?”
I closed my eyes, letting the back of my head fall to the headrest behind me. “Janie.”
“And Quinn,” he chimed in.
“Oh, hey.” I shook my head, trying to shake off my thoughts and the dread, so much dread, making my chest feel like it was full of burning coals. “What’s up?”
“Kat said to call you.”
“She did?” That had me perking up. “When? When did she say to call me?”
“She texted a few hours ago, around four.” I heard a baby in the background, making a fuss all the sudden, and then Janie answer with a soft, cooing sound.
That was before I’d met her for a dinner we hadn’t eaten, before I’d tasted the sweetness of her body, before she’d told me that she loved me and I’d . . . what have I done?
“I’m going to interpret.” This came from Quinn.
“Interpret what?” I was confused, my brain a mess. “The baby?”
“No, jackass. I’m going to interpret for Janie. She’s got her hands full, feeding Desmond. Or trying to feed Desmond.” He added this last part under his breath.
Janie and the baby sounded further away when Quinn spoke next. “It’s about Caravel, and where the profits are coming from.”
“Oh.” I had to mentally crowbar myself into switching gears. “Janie figured it out?”
“She wants to talk to Kat about it in person tomorrow, just in case she has questions.”
That’s right. Tomorrow our friends were coming for a visit. Which meant I needed to fix things between Kat and me before tomorrow.
“Can you give me the short story?”
“Yes.” He paused, likely because Desmond’s cries abruptly stopped; then he said, like he was distracted, “It’s complicated. I didn’t know this, but some drugs can’t have generics. Meaning the company that develops the original name-brand drug has exclusive rights to make, market, and sell the drug for a long time.”
“That makes sense, though. I mean, if I discover a drug, why would I want someone else selling a drug I discovered?” Movement in my rearview mirror snagged my attention, a black SUV pulling
into a parking space behind me. I told myself not to look at it, I was just being paranoid. “What’s in it for a pharmaceutical company if they can’t make money off their discovery? They got to make money somehow.”
“Yes, I agree. That makes sense. So most drugs have an exclusive period, which is called being ‘under patent’ I think, where they can recoup their investment and make money. But once the patent runs out, other companies, laboratories, etcetera, can make generic forms of the drugs. But first, the other companies have to go through the FDA and get approval for the generic version. There’s a lot of hoops to jump through, and it’s expensive for companies to obtain approval for the generic version.”
“So what’s the problem? That seems fair.” My eyes, moving of their own accord, flickered to the SUV. The engine was still running and the lights were on.
“The problem is, there’s not always a big demand for out-of-patent drugs. And that means, some drugs only have one version available and only one company makes it.”
“Let me get this straight.” I paused, moving my attention back to the benign sight of the cement wall, collecting all the pieces of the info Quinn had dropped on me. “Some drugs—even though they’re out-of-patent and anyone can make them if they jump through the hoops of the FDA and spend a bunch of money up front—can only be bought from one company?”
“Exactly.” I could almost see Quinn nodding.
“So, what does this have to do with Kat’s financial reports?”
“Kat was concerned—Janie said Kat was concerned—about the reduction of funding to research and development at Caravel. She’s worried that Caravel hasn’t brought any new drugs to market since Caleb took over as CEO.”
“That’s right. So how is Caravel making money?”
“First, they’re selling their name-brand drugs and devices as normal and expected.”
I waited for him to continue; when he didn’t, I prompted. “Okay. And?”
He made a sound of exasperation. “Caleb has been directing Caravel to acquire the rights to market and sell generics from small companies and laboratories. These are drugs that have been out-of-patent for twenty or thirty years. In a few cases, these drugs have never had a name-brand version, they’ve never been under a patent, they’ve been around for forty or fifty years, sometimes longer. He doesn’t need to go through the expensive hoops from the FDA, that process has already been done by these smaller companies. These aren’t drugs with a high demand, there is no name-brand version. So there’s only one source who makes these drugs. Once he’s acquired the rights, he’s jacking up the prices by five hundred percent or more.”
Five hundred percent? “No shit.”
“Yes. And patients who need these drugs—most are for rare diseases—have no choice but to pay the cost.”
My eyes bugged out. “But if it’s for a rare disease, how can he make so much money from them?”
“Do the math. A rare disease affects less than two hundred and fifty thousand people. Thirty different drugs times two hundred thousand people, each needing one dose daily. One pill that used to be a dollar a dose is now sixteen hundred dollars a dose.”
“Fuck me.” My mouth dropped open. This fucking guy . . . This guy was the devil. “How is someone supposed to pay for that?”
Quinn’s tone was frustrated. “I don’t know. I was too pissed off after Janie explained the reports. I took Desmond for a run in the stroller rather than flying out to Boston and getting arrested for assault.”
I thought for a minute, trying to figure out what he meant, but my head was fuzzy. Eventually, I just asked, “Getting arrested for assault?”
“Yes. For beating the shit out of Caleb Tyson.”
No one could argue with that.
“Okay, well, at least now we know. Kat is going to be pissed.” Immediately, I knew I needed to amend that statement. Kat was already pissed, now she was going to be even more pissed.
“Yeah, and—”
A cry in the background pierced the air; baby Desmond was upset about something.
“Okay, I have to go. See you tomorrow at the hotel.” He sounded tired. I almost felt sorry for him.
“Yeah. See you tomorrow. Bye. And good luck.”
He made a short sound like a chuckle and we ended the call.
As I sat there in the middle of this giant information dump, I navigated to my phone’s recent contacts, finding Kat’s immediately. Next to her name was the picture she’d sent me when I was in Australia weeks ago.
She was smiling.
She looked happy.
She loves you.
I was a fucking idiot.
Scrolling past her picture, I tapped on Stan Willis and brought the phone to my ear.
He answered after two rings. “Boss.”
“Kat with you?”
“Yeah.”
“Where are you?”
“Still at Caravel.”
“What’s she doing? Can she hear you?”
“No. She’s in the executive locker room lounge thing,” he cleared his throat, then added haltingly, “She’s . . . taking a shower . . . I think.”
Of course she is.
Now I was thinking about her in the shower. Great.
“Did she say when she’s heading to the hotel?”
“She didn’t say anything about going home.”
I nodded, a plan forming in my head. “Okay. I’m coming back up. I’ll take over your shift.”
“You’re coming all the way back here?”
“No. I haven’t left. I’m just downstairs in the parking garage.”
“Okay. Bye, boss.”
“Bye.” I hung up, staring at the cement wall again, nodding as my plan came together, resolve replacing the rocks in my stomach.
We’d spent two years—two fucking years—with a misunderstanding between us. I didn’t want to do that again, not even for two hours.
So what am I going to say?
It was a particular place to be, this limbo. It had me asking myself philosophical questions and thinking things like,
What is love?
And, How do you know you’re in love?
And, Why does she think she loves me?
And, If this shitty feeling is love, I’m going to be so pissed.
Because if this shitty feeling was love, if this choking, desperate mix of happiness and pain I felt every time I saw her or thought about her was love, if I’d been in love with her this whole fucking time and I’d been lying to myself and lying to her and wasting time, then I deserved a big, fat fucking punch in the face.
“Crap,” I said, shaking my head at myself.
Worst-case scenario, she wouldn’t speak to me. But at least I’d be close by in case she changed her mind. Best-case scenario, we would talk things out, she’d help me figure out my dysfunction, and we’d end up banging on the couch this time instead of the desk.
Or maybe the shower.
I opened the driver’s side door, shut it, turned, and was punched in the face.
Falling back and down, the wind was knocked out of me, not because the punch was strong, but because I’d been caught unawares.
“Stay down,” a voice ordered.
I coughed, trying to clear my lungs. In the empty parking spot next to my rental car were three sets of boots. I glanced up, squinting at the owner of the boots who had knocked me down.
“Ricky?”
“Stay down, Danny.” This came from a different pair of boots.
I looked over. “John? What the fuck are you guys doing?”
I didn’t get up, giving myself a minute to cough and check my jaw. It was fine. I might end up with a bruise, but no biggie. Like I said, the punch hadn’t been that hard. Given the similarity of Ricky’s build to a brick skyscraper, the fact that my jaw wasn’t broken was a miracle.
He’d definitely pulled his punch.
Someone behind me made a grab for my wrist and I pulled it away, turning and glaring. It was Mark.
“What the fuck you doing, Mark?”
These guys. These were some of my brother’s guys, all sporting neck tattoos that looked just like mine, all good guys.
Actually.
No.
Not good guys.
Criminals.
But, for criminals, not always bad guys. Just sometimes bad.
“You got to come with us,” Ricky said, crossing thick arms over a thicker chest under an even thicker neck.
“I’m not going anywhere with you assholes.”
John, the smallest of the group, sighed. “Come on, Danny. Just, fucking cooperate. We’re tired. We haven’t eaten all fucking day.”
“Your blood sugar levels aren’t my problem.”
Conner, who’d been silent up ’til now, pulled out a cigarette, lit it, and grumbled, “I told you we should have used the taser.”
“But then he would have shit his pants,” John motioned to my pants. “Look at those pants. Those are nice pants.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, “I don’t want to shit these pants. I like these pants. The pockets are deceptively roomy.”
Ricky squatted in front of me, and it was a little like watching a tree bend down. “Danny, you got to come with us. Either we do this the nice way, or we do it the taser-shitting-pants way.”
“Why don’t you just knock me out?” I glared at the four of them, knowing there was no way I’d be able to successfully fight my way out of this flock of dickbirds. Stalling them, hoping someone would see and call the cops, was my best option.
“Seamus said you had a concussion and not to knock you out,” John replied evenly, his attention moving to my torso. “But he said broken ribs were okay.”
“That brother of mine, always so thoughtful. What a fucking prince.”
Ricky smirked.
John smirked.
Conner took a drag from his cigarette, smirking.
But Mark pulled out a taser and sighed. “That’s enough, we got to go. One way or the other, Danny, you’re coming with us.” He flipped it on. It buzzed. Mark lifted his eyebrows as though ready for my answer. “So what’s it going to be?”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Self-Dealing: “The conduct of a trustee, an attorney, a corporate officer, or other fiduciary that consists of taking advantage of his or her position in a transaction and acting for his or her own interests rather than for the interests of the beneficiaries of the trust, the company, or the interests of his or her clients.”
