Michael Palmer - Side Effects

"Good." Thank you, my friend. Thank you for making it a little easier.

"Sandy's back. He flew in late last night and then moved into the house to look after the girls."

Kate motioned to a vase of flowers by the window. "From him?"

"Uh-huh."

"So?"

Ellen shrugged. "No significance. He's still on his way out, I think."

"I hope not."

"Are you what?"

"On my way out."

"Jesus, Sandler, of course not."

Ellen took her hand. "Don't let me die, Katey, okay?"

"Count on it, " Kate said, having to work to keep from breaking down in front of her friend. Silently, she vowed to place her efforts on Ellen's behalf ahead of every other task, every other pressure in her life.

Somewhere, there was an answer, and somehow she would find it. "Listen, I've got to go and get ready for some biopsies. I'll check on your lab tests and speak with you later this afternoon. Okay?"

"Okay." The word was spiritless. "Anything I can bring you?"

"A cure?" Kate smiled weakly. "Coming right up, " she said. The flowers, in a metallic gray box with a red bow, were on her desk when Kate returned from the Berenson Building. First a huge bouquet for Ellen from Sandy and now flowers from Jared. The former Dartmouth roommates had come through in the clutch. "I knew you guys must have learned something at that school besides how to tap a keg, " she said, excitedly opening the box. They were long-stem roses, eleven red and one yellow-the red for love and the yellow for friendship, she had once been told. She scurried about her office, opening and closing doors and drawers until she found a heavy, green-glass vase. It was not until the roses were arranged to her satisfaction and set on the corner of her desk that she remembered the card taped to the box. It would say something at once both witty and tender. That was Jared's style-his way. "To a not so unexceptional pathologist, from a not so secret admirer. Tom."

Kate groaned and sank to her desk chair, feeling angry and a little foolish. Try as she might, she could not dispel the irrational reaction that Jared had somehow let her down. Call Tom. She wrote the reminder on a scrap of paper and taped it in a high-visibility spot on the shade of her desk lamp. Still, she knew from experience that even a location only inches from her eyes gave her at best only a fifty-fifty chance of remembering. Perhaps now was the time to call. It was almost nine. If Tom wasn't in the OR, a page would reach him. Things were beginning to get out of hand, and at this point, meeting Tom for a drink hardly seemed fair. Kate was reaching for the phone when it rang. "Hello. Kate Bennett, " she said. "Dr. Bennett, how do you do? My name is Arlen Paquette, Doctor Arlen Paquette, if you count a Phd in chemistry. I'm the director of product safety for Redding Pharmaceuticals. If this is an inopportune time for you, please tell me. If it is not, I would like to speak with you for a few minutes about the report Dr. William Zimmermann phoned in to us yesterday."

"I have a few minutes, " Kate said, retaping the Tom note to her lampshade. "Fine. Thank you. Dr. Bennett, I spent a fair amount of time taking information from Dr. Zimmermann. However, since you seem to have done most of the legwork, as it were, I had hoped you might go over exactly what it was that led you to the conclusion there was a problem with one of our Redding generics."

"I'd be happy to, Dr. Paquette."

It was obvious from the few questions Paquette asked during her three-minute summary that Zimmermann's account to him had been a complete one and, further, that the director of product safety had studied the data well. "So, " the caller said when she had finished, "as I see it, your initial suspicions of trouble at the Omnicenter were based on a coincidence of symptoms in three patients of the thousands treated there. Correct?"

"Not exactly, " Kate said, suddenly perturbed by the tone of the man's voice. "Please, " he said, "bear with me a moment longer. You then decided to focus your investigation on the pharmaceuticals provided for the Omnicenter by my company, and…"

"Dr. Paquette, I don't think it's at all fair to suggest that I jumped to the conclusion that the drugs were at fault. Even now I am not at all sure that is the case. However, of all the factors I checked-sterilization techniques, microbiology, and all others common to my three patients — the contaminated vitamins were the only finding out of the ordinary."

"Ah, yes, " Paquette said. "The vitamins. Several dozen samples analyzed, yet only one containing a painkiller. Correct?"

"Dr. Paquette, " Kate said somewhat angrily, "I have a busy schedule today, and I've told you about all there is to tell. You are sounding more and more like a lawyer and less and less like a man concerned with correcting a problem in his company's product. Now, I don't know whether Dr. Zimmermann told you or not, but I feel that the need to get to the bottom of all this is urgent, critical. A woman who happens to be a dear friend of mine is in the hospital right now, with her life quite possibly at stake, and for all I know, there may be others. I shall give you two more days to come up with a satisfactory explanation. If you don't have one, I am going to get the chemist from the state toxicology lab, and together we will march straight down to the FDA."

"By chemist, I assume you mean Mr. Ian Toole?"

"Yes, that's exactly who I mean."

"Well, Doctor, I'm a little confused. You see, I have in front of me a notarized letter, copies of which I have just put in the mail to you and Dr. Zimmermann. It is a letter from Mr. Ian Toole stating categorically that in none of his investigations on your behalf did he find any contamination in any product dispensed at the Omnicenter."

"What? " Kate's incredulity was almost instantly replaced by a numbing fear. "That's not true, " she said weakly. "Shall I read you the letter?"

"You bought him off."

"I beg your pardon."

"I gave you the courtesy of reporting this to your comapny instead of going to the FDA, and you bought off my chemist."

"Dr. Bennett, I would caution you against carelessly tossing accusations about, " Paquette said. "The statement in front of me is, as I have said, notarized."

"We'll see about that, " she said with little force. The vitamins she had sent to Toole were all she had. In a corner of her mind, she wondered if Arlen Paquette knew that. "I would like to confirm my company's sincere desire to correct any shortcomings in its products, and to thank you for allowing us to investigate the situation at your hospital." Paquette sounded as if he was reading the statement from a card. "You may think this is the end of things, Dr. Paquette, " Kate said, "but you don't know me. Please be prepared to hear from the FDA."

"We each must do what we must do, Doctor."

Kate had begun to seethe. "Furthermore, you had better hope that whatever you paid Ian Toole was enough, because that man is going to be made to visit a certain hospital bed to see first hand the woman he may be helping to kill." She slammed the receiver to its cradle. + Seated in his suite at the Ritz, Arlen Paquette hung up gently. He was shaking.

You don't know me. Paquette snorted at the irony of Kate Bennett's words, splashed some scotch over two ice cubes, drank it before it had begun to chill, and then set the glass down on the photographs of the woman he had just helped nail to a cross of incompetence, mental imbalance, and dishonesty. Cyrus Redding had decreed that she be discredited, and discredited she would be. Kate Bennett had only herself and a few shaky allies. Cyrus Redding had an unlimited supply of Norton Reeses, Winfield Samuelses, Ian Tooles, and, yes, Arlen Paquettes. He glanced down at the pad where he had written the words he had rehearsed and then used when talking to the woman, and he wondered if he could have come off so self-assured in a face-to-face confrontation. Doubtful, he acknowledged. Extremely doubtful. Their conversation had lasted just a few minutes, with all of the surprises coming from his end. Yet here he was, soaked with sweat and still trembling. He'd take a dozen in-person encounters with Norton Reese over the one phone call he had just finished. Water. That was it, he needed some water. No more goddamn scotch. He snatched his empty glass from the coffee table. Beneath it was one of the five-by-seven blowups of Kate Bennett, this one of her bundled in a sweatsuit, scarf, and watch cap, jogging with her dog along a snowbanked road. Paquette turned and unsteadily made his way to the bathroom. "You bastard, " he said to the thin, drawn face staring at him from the mirror. "You weak little fucking bastard."