Head Case (9 page)

25

June 21 (B.D.)

An Hour Later.

The atrium lobby of the Pharmax building looked like an extraordinarily well-funded art gallery. Along one wall, there was a stunning installation with large stumps of redwood trees jutting out at different levels, each illuminated so that that they almost seemed to move. To reach the elevator bank, you had to pass through a variety of sculptures, each of which I was sure I had seen in an art history textbook at one time or another. A Rodan. A Henry Moore. A low-hanging Calder mobile. Even the guard’s booth looked priceless. There were twisted, colored metal plates interlocking with one another in an elaborate, asymmetrical basket weave, wrapping around to create a cylindrical cocoon that appeared to levitate the guard who stood inside.

He reached down to collect my driver’s license.

“You’re here to see Missy Pander, you said?”

I nodded.

“Hold on.” He tapped something into his computer terminal and picked up a headset. “Yeah, Ms. Pander? I have an Olivia Zack here for you?”

Not two minutes later, I heard Missy’s voice echoing through the atrium. “Olivia!” she called as she emerged from the elevator bank. “She’s fine!” She waved at the guard. “I can vouch for her!”

Missy looked as incongruous in this space as she had at the restaurant. Maybe more so. A space like this demanded serious-looking people dressed in well-tailored, dark clothing. But there she was, all cleavage and curves, charging down the marble floor in 4-inch heels. Why a woman with such a distorted sense of fashion cared so much about how I would be dressed was beyond me at first, but as soon as she whisked me into the cavernous boardroom, with its floor-to-ceiling windows that framed a 180-degree view of lower Manhattan, and buttoned-up executives wearing expensive-looking suits with crisp white shirts, I started to understand. If you wanted to sell an idea around here, appearance mattered. As a sales representative whose job it was to charm physicians, it was important for her to look, well, let’s just say charming. But with me, she was trying to sell something else.

She motioned for me to sit down in a deep leather seat near the head of the table, with my back to the glorious view. The rest of them, the dozen men and three women who had been milling about, quickly followed, tucking themselves into chairs around the glossy, almost reflective black oval. The last to take his place was a large, broad-shouldered man in a dark gray pinstripe suit. He pulled in next to me, at the southernmost end of the table, looked at me sternly and then giving me a nod before turning to a pile of papers his assistant had slipped in front of him. The meeting agenda, I guessed.

“Stanley Novartny,” Missy whispered in my ear. “He’s the senior exec in charge of disease development.”

Disease development?

Stanley Novarnty stacked the papers and, looking satisfied, handed them back to his assistant. “Good afternoon, everyone,” he said in a deep, baritone voice. “As you can see, we have a guest today.” He pointed at me. “Oliva Zack is a PhD candidate at the Leary Institute …” He stopped mid-sentence and looked at Missy. “Missy, before I continue, did you remember to have Olivia sign the confidentiality forms?”

Missy closed her eyes, defeated. “Sorry, I’m new at this, I—”

Without responding to Missy directly or letting her finish her thought, Novartny turned to the assistant sitting behind him and told her to get the proper forms. “Everyone else,” he said, throwing his hands up in mock exasperation, “go get yourself some coffee and be back in five. Except you two,” he said, meaning me and Missy. “You just stay right here. And you, you better be as good as Missy says you are.”

Good at what? I wanted to ask. But I didn’t have a chance. A pile of papers were placed in front of me, and Missy put a pen in my hand. I picked up the top page.

This is to state the any information shared with, attained by, attributed to, provided by, provided to and developed by the undersigned (heretofore, “scientist”), regarding the appropriation of information for the purposes of development, discussion, consideration, or approximation shall be considered the legal property, intellectual and otherwise, of the Pharmax Corporation from this point forward through …

“Just sign it,” Missy said, tapping the space at the bottom where my signature was required, along with the date. “It’s just legal mumbo-jumbo. Sign it and you’ll never have to worry about funding again. Or your Visa bill, for that matter.”

***

“Tape eight,” Stanley Novartny called out once all of his suits had returned to their seats and placed their half-empty coffee cups on the shiny black table. The ceiling lights started to dim and, seemingly out of nowhere, drapes rolled out, covering the majestic windows. A large white screen dropped down in the front of the room and almost immediately, a video began to play.

It opened on a shot of a packed stadium at a college graduation, that ubiquitous march music beating underneath a montage of jubilant students hugging each other, throwing up their mortarboards, and popping champagne. “It just is not how you imagined it would be,” the narration began, and the screen cut to a shot of a pale blond woman sitting in a cubicle, staring blankly at a monitor. “All the studying, the sacrifices, the unpaid internships ...” Cut to a light-skinned black man standing behind a large desk, staring longingly out of his office window. “For what?” Cut to a different cubicle, shot with an Asian woman gently massaging her forehead. “For long, thankless hours. For tasks that often seem pointless, meetings that seem interminable. Work gives you headaches, fatigue, lower back pain. Sound familiar? It doesn’t have to be this way. Like millions of Americans, you might be suffering from Fatico Dystopia, a condition that blocks the ability to find fulfillment in your career, a condition that can make you frustrated by the relentless nature of your work. If you are one of these people, Ziperal Targeted Release might work for you.” The music morphed into an upbeat tune as the video peeled back to reveal a shot of the light-skinned black man in his office, happily filling out a report, then cut to a group of smiling people congregating around the now happy and more rosy-looking blond at a water cooler. Cut to the Asian woman smiling as she flips through a filing cabinet.

The video stopped and the lights went back on. The screen floated back up into the ceiling and the drapes disappeared.

“Well,” said Stanley Novartny, “we don’t have the disclaimers for all the potential side effects up yet. For that we need to complete the studies. Or share them, anyway. But since it’s a drug we already have on market, I don’t think getting government approval for this usage will be much of an issue. Lance Lead, our old friend and former employee over at the FDA, already said he loves the stuff.” Novartny laughed. Everyone else laughed. Novartny looked over at Missy, who was sitting straight as a needle with her manicured hands clasped on the table in front of her, trying to suppress a shit-eating grin.

“I’m not sure if you’re all familiar with Missy Pander,” he began. “Ms. Pander has been working for us as a sales rep, covering most of upper Manhattan. With great success, I might add. The low national numbers on some of our recent sale data are certainly not to be blamed on her. But as of today, we’re taking her off the streets.” He reached around me to give Missy a quick pat on her padded shoulder. “No more pushing sample packs for her. Ms. Pander is being promoted to Deputy Director, Disease Development, because this,” he gestures toward the space where the video screen had just been, “was all her idea.”

The people around the table applauded long enough to be polite, but quickly enough not to interrupt the flow of Stanley Novartny’s speech.

“As you all know, our new omni-targeted antidepressant, Ziperal ER, is not selling as well as we had hoped. The timing couldn’t be worse. Our patent for Smilax is about to expire, and as you know, this building, this,” he swept his hand to show the room, the windows, all of the extremely well-paid people sitting in it, “this is the house that Smilax built. Frank, tell us, as of last week, what percentage of our profit came from Smilax?”

A man at the other end of the table stood up. “Sixty-seven percent. Down from 70 last month.”

“And Candace, tell us, what’s going on with our stock price?”

A few seats down from me, a petite brunette looked up. “Oh, you don’t really want to know,” she said and everybody laughed.

“Exactly,” said Novartny. “So while our”—he held his fingers up in air quotes—“wonder drug Ziperal ER works very effectively as an antidepressant, as Sandy over there can tell you, the market for general antidepressants has reached its saturation point. We need to find a way to re-package the idea of Ziperal. What we need, ladies and gentlemen, is to alter Ziperal, or at least alter the perception of Ziperal, just enough for it to be considered a treatment for a chronic disease for which no other treatment currently exists. We need a chronic disease that affects millions of Americans, one that people can identify with, that people will hear about and say, ‘Hey, that sounds like my problem.’ And then we have to cure it. With Ziperal. We cure it with a drug which physicians are already familiar with, and are already comfortable prescribing, one that most likely already has a ring of familiarity for the patients. So I have to say, when Missy Pander here came to me with the idea for Fatico Dystopia, well, I was extremely pleased.”

The men and women around the table stood up in unison, facing Missy and clapping their outstretched hands. I could see Missy struggling hard not to smile too much; instead she stood up in a half bow, like a Japanese businessman might do, still holding back her grin.

Once everybody had settled back down, they looked expectantly at Novartny, waiting for marching orders on the next steps to take. And waiting, I assume, for a more complete explanation of who I was, what I was doing there, and how I fit into this picture. I was, too. Because as fascinating as this all was, I was just as clueless as they were.

Novartny placed both of his hands on the table and leaned forward in his seat. “This is not going to be easy,” he said, slowly looking around the room for added affect. “But based on the preliminary projections from our market research team, if it’s done right, this campaign could increase our revenue tenfold, if not more. Let me make this very clear. I said tenfold. That would not only save this company, and with it, all of your jobs, my job as well … it could make each one of us sitting in this room—all of you stock-holding department heads—very, very rich.”

After another round applause, this time more robust, a small man stood up at the other end of the table. Of all the people in the room, he was the only one who looked vaguely uncomfortable in his suit.

“Um, sir?” he said so softly that he was almost inaudible down at our end of the table.

Novartny sighed. “Yes, Eugene? What wrench do you want to throw at us now?”

Everybody laughed. “That’s Eugene Throng,” Missy whispered in my ear. “He’s one of our chief scientists. He’s also responsible for handling governmental oversight.” She chuckled softly. “He makes a big deal of it, but really, we all know it’s not a very hard job. The FDA is basically in our pocket.” Then she resumed her pose with her clasped hands on the table.

“Well,” Eugene began to say, his voice a high-pitched squeak one might associate with a cartoon mouse, not an (I’m assuming) highly paid pharmaceutical scientist. “I’m curious to know how we plan to pursue the necessary studies to prove or disprove the efficacy of Ziperal on this, what’s it called, Fatico what?”

“Dystopia,” Novartny said, not without a hint of irritation.

“And, and, it could take months, maybe years to study this properly, possibly not before the patent for Smilax expires, and—”

“Enough.” Novartny raised his palm like a stop sign. “Enough. Look. We’ve done this before. We just did it with crusty eye syndrome and we did it with nose itch. If we’re the ones creating—I mean identifying—the problem, it shouldn’t be too hard to identify the cure. We can alter the recommended dosage, even the formula, if we need to. Call it Ziperal TR. Targeted Release. Give it the shiny happy shine of something new. I’m sure your department can handle this. You’ve done it before.” He waved Eugene back into his seat. “And in this case, Missy Pander could not have made it any easier. As I was saying earlier.” He put his hand on top of my head, like one might in a game of duck, duck, goose. “This is Olivia Zack, a PhD candidate at the Leary Institute. Olivia has done some tremendous work in the area of emotional isolation, identifying the chemical and molecular structures of a range of our moods. She’s agreed to identify a chemical reaction that occurs when a person is frustrated in the work place and link it directly to how Ziperal functions in the brain.”

I had? 

Novartny continued. “It shouldn’t be too hard, as Ziperal Extended Release has already proven to be an effective antidepressant, so whatever it is that she needs to find, I’m sure it’s already working in there.” He taps his forehead. “And I’m sure, Eugene, that you can help assure that she succeeds.”

***

When the meeting was over, after all of the participants came to shake my hand and Novartny’s assistant had loaded me up with Pharmax mugs and pens, Missy took me back to her brand new office to finish filling out the paperwork.

“Missy, I’m not sure about this,” I said, looking out her window into the office building across the street as she took some bobble head dolls and other trinkets out of a cardboard moving box and placed them on her new desk. “Ethics aside, I’m not so sure I’m the one to turn this around for you. Why not just have your own chemists do the work, someone who already worked on Ziperal the first time around?”

Missy laughed. “Sit down, Olivia.”

I did as I was told and pulled up a small gray upholstered chair.

“Look, they’ll do most of the work. You don’t need to worry about it too much. You just need to verify it, give their studies a seal of an unbiased approval. Show that the work has been reviewed favorably by a scientist at the venerable Leary Institute.”

“But I don’t even have my PhD yet, Missy—”

“You will soon enough. Don’t worry. By the time anybody decides to parse through it all—not that anyone ever would, it isn’t in anyone’s interest to do that—you’ll have it. We’ll make sure of it.”

“I don’t know that I can get approval for this from my department head. There are some conflicts of—”