Michael Palmer - Side Effects

"I certainly can try."

"Excellent. It's about time things started moving in a positive direction. You know, there's not much good I can say about all that's been happening, except that I'm glad our relationship has moved out of the doctor-patient and doctor-doctor cubbyholes into the person-person.

Right now I'm the one who needs the help, but please know that if it's ever you, you've got a friend you can count on."

Zimmermann smiled a Cary Grant smile. "That kind of friend is hard to come by, " he said. "Thank you."

"Thank you. Except for Tom Engleson, I've felt pretty much alone in all this. Now we're a team." She motioned the waitress over. "Coffee? " the woman asked. "None for me, thanks. Bill? " Zimmermann shook his head.

"In that case could I have the check, please?"

"Nonsense, " Zimmermann said, "I won't… "-the reproving look in Kate's eyes stopped him in mid-sentence-"… allow you to do this too many times without reciprocating."

Kate beamed at the man's insight. "Deal, " she said, smiling broadly.

"Deal, " Zimmermann echoed. The two shook hands warmly and, after Kate had settled their bill, walked together into the winter night. Numb with exhaustion, John Ferguson squinted at the luminescent green print on the screen of his word processor. His back ached from hunching over the keyboard for the better part of two full days. His hands, feeling the effects of his disease more acutely than at any time in months, groped for words one careful letter at a time. It had been an agonizing effort, condensing forty years of complex research into thirty pages or so of scholarly dissertation, but a sentence at a time, a word at a time, he was making progress. To one side of his desk were a dozen internationally read medical journals. Ferguson had given thought to submitting his completed manuscript to all of them, but then had reconsidered. The honor of publishing his work would go only to The New England Journal of Medicine, most prestigious and widely read of them all. The New England Journal of Medicine. Ferguson tapped out a recall code, and in seconds, the title page of his article was displayed on the screen. STUDIES IN ESTRONATE 250 A Synthetic Estrogen Congener and Antifertility Hormone John N. Ferguson, MD It would almost certainly be the first time in the long, distinguished publication of the journal that an entire issue would be devoted to a single article. But they would agree to do that or find the historic studies and comment in Lancet or The American Journal of Medicine. Ferguson smiled. Once The New England Journal's editors had reviewed his data and his slides, he doubted there would be much resistance to honoring his request. For a time he studied the page. Then, electronically, he erased the name of the author. There might be trouble for him down the road for what he was about to do, but he suspected not. He was too old and too sick even for the fanatic Simon Weisenthal to bother with. With a deliberateness that helped him savor the act, he typed Wilhelm W. Becker, MD, Phd where Ferguson's name had been. Perhaps, he thought with a smile, some sort of brief funeral was in order for Ferguson. He had, after all, died twice-once in Bataan, forty years ago, and a second time this night.

With the consummate discipline that had marked his life, Willi Becker cut short the pleasurable interlude and advanced the text to the spot at which he had left off. Because of a pathologist named Bennett, Cyrus Redding had picked up the scent of his work at the Omnicenter. Knowing the man as well as Becker did, he felt certain the tycoon would now track the matter relentlessly. There was still time to put the work on paper and mail it off, but no way of knowing how much. He had to push.

He had to fight the fatigue and the aching in his muscles and push, at least for another hour or two. The onset of his scientific immortality was at hand. Furtively, he glanced at the small bottle of amphetamines on the table. It had been only three hours. Much too soon, especially with the irregular heartbeats he had been having. Still, he needed to push. It would only be a few more days, perhaps less. Barely able to grip the top of the small vial, Becker set one of the black, coated tablets on his tongue, and swallowed it without water. In minutes, the warm rush would begin, and he would have the drive, however artificial and short lived, to overcome the inertia of his myasthenia. "You really shouldn't take those, you know, father. Especially with your cardiac history."

Becker spun around to face his son, cursing the diminution in his hearing that enabled such surprises. "I take them because I need them," he said sharply. "What are you doing sneaking up on me like that? What do you think doorbells are for?"

"Such a greeting. And here I have driven out of my way to stop by and be certain you are all right."

Three blocks, Becker thought. Some hardship. "You startled me. That's all. I'm sorry for reacting the way I did."

"In that case, father, it is I who should be sorry."

Was there sarcasm in his son's voice? It bothered Becker that he had never been able to read the man. Theirs was a relationship based on filial obligation and respect, but little if any love. For the greater portion of his son's years, they had lived apart, Becker in a small cottage on the hospital grounds where he worked, and his wife and son in an apartment twenty miles away. It was as necessary an arrangement as it was painful. Becker and his wife had tried for years to make their son understand that. There were those, they tried to explain, who would arrest Becker in a moment on a series of unjust charges, put him in prison, and possibly even put him to death. In the hysteria following the war, he had been marked simply because he was German, nothing more than that. For their own safety, it was necessary for the boy and his mother to keep their address and even their name separate from his.

Although Becker would provide for them and would visit as much as he could, no one would ever know his true relationship to the woman, Anna Zimmermann, and the boy, William. "So, " Becker said. "Now that we have apologized profusely to one another, come in, sit down, pour yourself a drink."

William Zimmermann nodded his thanks, poured an inch of Wild Turkey into a heavy glass, and settled into an easy chair opposite his father. "I see you've started putting your data together, " he said. "Why now?"

"Well, I… no special reason, really. It would seem that the modifications I made have greatly, if not completely, eliminated the bleeding problems we were experiencing with the Estronate. So what else is there to wait for?"

"Which journal will you approach?"

"I think The New England Journal of Medicine. I plan to submit the data and discussion but to withhold several key steps in the synthesis until a commission of the journal's choosing can take charge of my formulas and decide how society can best benefit from them."

"Sounds fine to me, " Zimmermann said. "With all that's been happening this last week, the sooner I see the last of Estronate Two-fifty, the better."

"Have any further bleeding cases turned up?"

Zimmermann shook his head. "Just the Sandler woman I told you about. The one who's the friend of Dr. Bennett's. She was treated over eighteen months ago, in the July/August group, the last group to receive the unmodified Estronate."

"How is she doing?"

"I think she is going to end up like the other two."

"Couldn't you find some way of suggesting that they try a course of massive doses of delta amino caproic acid and nicotinic acid on her?"

"Not without risking a lot of questions I'd rather not answer. I mean I am a gynecologist, not a hematologist. Besides, you told me that that therapy was only sixty percent effective in such advanced states."

Becker shrugged. "Sixty percent is sixty percent."