Bad Medicine (35 page)

"Really. How many patients?"

"Thirty-three."

Molly admitted surprise. "Only thirty-three?"

"That's not unusual for a drug. We've tested quite a few here, you know."

"Of course. I guess... I don't know. I never paid much attention to this stage of the process. I thought trials involved hundreds. At least."

"No. Just a good cross section at each stage of the process."

"And we've had that."

"Of course. I'm sure if you were more familiar with the process, you'd understand how it works."

Molly kept a straight face with effort. "Of course. Have you seen any... uh, side effects? Any kind of contraindications, like drug interactions?"

"Why do you ask?"

"So I'm prepared."

"Then, no. None at all. It's a wonderfully safe drug. Easily administered, monitored, and controlled. The results are incredible. I don't think I've ever worked with a more exciting drug in my fifteen years here."

"And you think we can safely give it in the ER."

For the first time since Molly had sat down, Ms. Harlow smiled. "If it's prescribed correctly, my unit will be out of business in six months."

"And you can't tell me—besides Mr. Betelman, of course—who else is taking part in the program."

"Of course not."

* * *

"I have no idea what's going on in the trial," Gene said.

Molly couldn't believe her luck. Just as she'd been heading back to the ER to try some other tack, she'd stepped into the elevator to find Gene standing there before her, bright-eyed, smiling. Molly had spent the elevator ride asking about the conference—tolerable—and the island of Grand Cayman, where it had been held—incredible. Gene had asked how Molly's injuries were, and she had lied and told him they were more colorful than sore. By the time they'd reached the main lobby level, she'd managed to work her way around to the real question on her mind.

"But you're in charge of it, aren't you?"

Gene got that impish grin of his and steered Molly to one side so they could talk. "God, no. I've got the residents, the curriculum, and the budget, which I'm up to my ears in right now. Not to mention Mary Mother of God, who just tried to bite the ears off one of the techs. Bart Banerjee's the one you want to talk to. Why? What did you need to know?"

"We put the duckman on it, remember?"

"Sure I do. You want to find out how he's doing?"

Molly shrugged, matched Gene's stance with hands in lab coat pockets. "Yeah. I also think I may have had a suicide victim who might have gotten hold of some. I'm trying to figure out how."

Gene's smile died into surprise. "Not from here," he assured her. "I'll guarantee it. Bart's tighter than a fifty-year-old virgin about that stuff. You sure it was synapsapine?"

"I think so."

"Okay, then. Let me talk to Bart. Have him call you with any info. If there's anybody on earth I trust to be discreet about this stuff, it's you, Molly Malone."

When Gene smiled, Molly smiled back. "Thanks, Gene."

The problem was, Molly didn't know Bart Banerjee well enough to know if she trusted
him.
So the minute she hit the ER, she hedged her bets.

* * *

"So, what I needed to know," she said on the phone to the pharmacy supervisor, "is whether he's in this drug trial."

"You say he came in OD'd," the man said.

"Out like a light." Well, it was true, if you took things literally. "His name's VanAck. Peter."

Since a direct request for information hadn't worked on Ms. Harlow, Molly decided to try and pull a scam she'd learned from watching "The Rockford Files." Give the pharmacy supervisor a sort of close resemblance to the truth that would make it easier for him to release her info. She was also doing this one over the phone. Given the right tone of urgency to the call, people in hospitals tended to give information over the phone they wouldn't in person. Help out a little more, assume that the request was an official one.

"No," the supervisor said, coming back on the line. "There's no VanAck here. Are you sure he had Transcend on him?"

"That's what the psych resident says. Real pretty-blue stuff. How do you think he got it if he isn't in the study?"

"Well, he shouldn't be able to. This kind of thing is all very strictly controlled."

"Well, that's what I thought. Who could have given it to him without letting you know?"

"No one. I'm the only person in the pharmacy with the authority to release Transcend while it's under testing. I receive the written orders and the parameters, deliver the medication to either the floor or the clinic, and collect the follow-up data from them for the drug company and the FDA. I have to account for every pill I get from the company, every order given, and every patient who takes it. Dosages, treatments, results, side effects, possible contraindications. It's all in my records."

Gene had forgotten to mention that the pharmacologist was even tighter than Banerjee. "No kidding. You had many suicides on this stuff?"

"None. Not one. The test group has shown wonderful response."

"Problems interacting with other drugs, maybe."

"Absolutely not. Transcend is amazingly benign for a major antidepressant group like that."

"Really? This is the first time I've set eyes on it. It's really that good?"

"Better. Look, I still can't imagine that this could really be Transcend. Why don't you send me down a sample?"

"Oh, I don't think you want me to," Molly quickly demurred. "I mean, we're talking stomach contents here."

So she knew that at least one of the victims had never been on the program. She knew that Transcend was looking like the greatest medical breakthrough since antibiotics, and that nobody, but nobody, committed suicide on Transcend.

Now she had to find out just which of those statements was false.

* * *

By the time Molly's shift officially started, the tides of insanity were at full flood. There was a screamer in room three, two howlers in cubicles one and five, and about half a dozen criers down in the kiddy lane. The Bedlam Concerto in E-Flat. Molly winced at what the sound did to her head at the same time she thought how much better it sounded than the cries of "Ms. Burke! Just one question, Ms. Burke!" She enjoyed it as long as it took to get report from day shift and realize she'd inherited both howlers and an incoming biter.

Chicken Soup was, indeed, working the shift. Molly could see his unkempt figure at the other end of the hallway, where three nurses and a tech circled him like agitated satellites trying to affect his much-slower orbit. She wanted to talk to him, too, but there was time for that. Right now she had howlers to quiet.

She caught up with Lance about the same time the cops turfed in a John Doe with DTs. A probable street guy from the looks of his clothes, the patient was simply tagged Mr. E for being the fifth unidentified person of the day, scooped up by a passing patrol car for throwing himself spread-eagled on top of moving cars and demanding compensation for going on his way. The cops had shown great humor about the whole thing until their subject had decorated the back of their unit with various bodily fluids while demanding Demerol for his back pain. For that, they had decided a round of punitive emergency medicine was the best course. At which point, the John Doe had become Molly's problem.

"I gotta get away from them!" he was screaming at the top of his lungs as Molly and Lorenzo struggled to get him undressed while Lance Frost stood at the counter writing notes. Even tied down, Mr. E managed an impressive range of motion. "They gonna eat my eyes, man, can't you see? I gotta get away before they get me like her. She got no eyes, she got no eyes!"

Lorenzo took a considered look at the still-technicolor aspect of Molly's face and grinned. "Nah," he demurred in a calm voice as he pushed the drunk back onto the cart with alacrity. "Hers was the last eyes they wanted. Tasted so bad, they decided now they's goin' for balls."

That damn near propelled the patient right off the cart, which cost Molly some seconds when he bumped into her sore side. "Thanks, Lorenzo."

Lorenzo just gave her a grin. "Hey, my man, hey, your stuff is safe. We got the protection in the walls."

"Thank you, brother," Mr. E answered, rolling over into a fetal position. "Lord bless you for protectin' me."

"So, Lance," Molly said in continuation of the talk they'd been having. "You're sold on Argon as an investment."

"Sold?" he countered with a big shit-eating grin. "Are you kidding? The stock price has gone up four points this week alone on the leaks about how good this new stuff is going to be. It's going to pull Argon's ass out of the fire."

Molly yanked up on sleeves and held her nose. "Why was its ass in the fire?"

Finishing his work with a scrawled signature, Lance replaced his pen. "Usual stuff. Health care reform, earlier drugs going out of patent protection, that kind of thing. Transcend isn't just gonna save the ranch, it's gonna turn it into a spa. And this little piggy has his toes right in the whirlpool."

"Transcend is that good."

"Honey, it's going to be the number one-prescribed medication. Just like Prozac before it and Valium before that. Palliatives for the masses is good business, and this is the best. I mean, shit. Prozac's probably an $800 million a year industry, and this stuff is going to make it obsolete."

Molly tried her best not to react. Eight hundred million on one drug. Quite a healthy number. Certainly enough to make a company worry if something went wrong.

"You want to invest, you'd better do it before that stuff hits the market," Lance said. "I can introduce you to the person I use, if you want."

"Oh, thanks. I have somebody."

At his end of the patient, Lorenzo was having trouble getting soggy pants over soggier hips. "A little help here?" he asked. "Now that 'Wall Street Week' is wrapping up?"

Still glowing over the fortune he intended to make, Lance delayed peeling his gloves long enough to add a pair of hands to the effort. "Hey there, son!" he yelled in Mr. E's ear. "What's your name?"

Mr. E mumbled something unintelligible and rolled into a tighter ball.

Lance scowled mightily. He yanked and Lorenzo tugged, and like a stuck shade, all three layers of pants suddenly came loose.

Just as that happened with an odd sucking sound, a surprise popped out from between the patient's saggy cheeks. The pants slid south and a baggie flew west. The minute it hit the floor, Molly saw that it contained a couple of chunks of dirty-looking rock. She looked up to find both of the men looking down at the same sight. All three looked back at the soundly sleeping visage of Mr. E, who seemed totally unaware that he'd hatched anything important.

Lorenzo started laughing, then Lance, then Molly. Lorenzo pointed to the evidence on the floor.

"I always wondered where crack cocaine came from," he said.

Molly laughed harder, grabbing her side.

"Molly," one of the techs said, leaning in the door. "Call on line two."

Bent over double from where her rib was protesting the laughter, Molly waved the tech back out. "Damn it, Lorenzo, warn me when you're going to do that."

"No wonder he drinks," Lance agreed. "He smoked that stuff after hidin' it there, the smell alone'd stone kill him."

Molly headed for the door, wiping at her eyes and thinking that it was a nice change to be tearing up from laughter. "I wonder how long it's been there."

"Actually," Lorenzo was saying as Molly headed outside, "I don't think it's rock at all. I think it was plain coke that just petrified."

Molly picked up the phone still chuckling. "This is Burke."

"Why didn't you say something to Kevin?"

Molly's breath whooshed out of her lungs like a bellow, and she sat hard on a chair. "Winnie?"

"You didn't say anything. Why?"

Molly closed her eyes. Closed out the rest of the ER so she could concentrate on one trauma at a time.

She was too tired for this. Too tired for anything but laughing at the ridiculous things that could go on in an ER. She was past caring, she was certain of it. And yet, she couldn't quite hang up the phone and just walk away.

Molly never figured Winnie for a coward. Even so, the medical examiner had waited until Molly was in the ER to get hold of her. She'd waited for Molly to be in a place where she couldn't react, couldn't assimilate. She hadn't had the balls to face her.

Molly sucked the air back into her lungs and tried to make some sense. "I wanted the chance for you and me to talk first."

"So, talk."

"I think you have this backward," Molly suggested, her voice dry with disappointment. "I'm not the one with anything to say."

For a long moment, there was just silence on the other end. Molly wondered what was in Winnie's eyes as she looked back to the night her best friend had died.

"I didn't think about it," Winnie finally said, her voice as hushed as her office. "I just picked it up. I couldn't bear the sight of the thing. I couldn't give it away to strangers who didn't even know her so they could make judgments."