Robin Cook - Mindbend

Adam opened the sample packages while he lifted the lid of the toilet with his foot.

“Give me my medicine!” yelled Jennifer, realizing what he was doing.

Adam dumped the contents of the first bottle into the toilet.

Desperately, Jennifer snatched a bottle from Adam’s hand and ran into the bedroom. Stunned, Adam hesitated, then ran after her. For a minute they stood face to face. Then Jennifer dashed back into the bathroom and tried to lock the door. But she wasn’t fast enough. Adam got his foot beyond the door, and a brief shoving match ensued. Slowly the door inched open until Jennifer gave way. She backed up against the shower stall, hiding the bottle behind her.

“Give me the pregdolen,” ordered Adam.

Jennifer shook her head. Her breath was coming in short gasps.

“OK!” snapped Adam as he reached out and roughly pulled her hands from behind her back.

“No!” shouted Jennifer.

One by one he peeled back her fingers, took the bottle, and emptied it into the toilet. Jennifer began pounding his back. To protect himself, Adam threw up his right hand, accidentally hitting the side of her head. The blow sent her reeling against the wall, momentarily stunned.

Adam dumped the remaining samples into the bowl and flushed them away. Then he turned to apologize to Jennifer, but she was so furious she wouldn’t listen.

“You’re not my doctor,” she screamed. “I’m tired of being sick every day, and if he gives me medication to feel better, I’m going to take it.”

She tore into the bedroom and pulled her suitcase down from the top of the closet.

“Jennifer, what are you doing?” asked Adam, though it was pretty clear what she had in mind. Jennifer didn’t answer but began rolling up clothes and throwing them into the case.

“Jennifer, we can have disagreements without your running away,” said Adam.

Jennifer turned to face him, her cheeks flushed.

“I’m going home. I’m tired, I don’t feel well, and I can’t stand this bickering.”

“Jennifer, I love you. The only reason I took those pills away is to protect our child.”

“I don’t care why you did it. I have to get away for a few days.” She picked up the phone and Adam listened while she called her father and made arrangements to take a cab to his office so he could drive her home.

“Jennifer, please don’t do this,” he begged as she went back to her packing, but she refused to look at him while she closed the case, picked up her purse, and stalked out of the apartment.

Alone, it took Adam a few minutes to believe she had actually gone. Dazed, he wandered into the living room and sat down at the computer. Turning it on, he connected with the Arolen mainframe and tried to call up Vandermer’s file. He intended to see if Dr. Vandermer’s prescribing habits had changed, but the screen remained blank save for the stark message: “Transferred to Julian Clinic.”

Shocked, Adam wondered if any other files had been erased from the computer. He pulled the printout McGuire had given him and then asked the machine to relist the doctors in his assigned territory. Not only had the computer dropped Vandermer’s file, but six other doctors had been taken off the list.

Frantically, Adam began calling up each of the expunged doctors’ names. None of them had files! Four had entries like Dr. Smyth’s-“Refresher course scheduled…”-suggesting that if a doctor went on an Arolen cruise, he didn’t have to be detailed any longer. Two had entries like Vandermer’s: “Transferred to Julian Clinic.” Adam wondered if the Cruise Conferences pitched the Julian Clinic as well as Arolen products.

More confused than ever, Adam asked the computer to list all the physicians on staff at the Julian Clinic. Dutifully the dot-matrix printer sprang to life and spewed out a sizable roster. Adam ran his eyes over the list of names and stopped short at an entry halfway down the sheet: Dr. Thayer Norton! What the hell was Norton doing at the Julian Clinic? He was chief of Internal Medicine at the university.

Slowly Adam typed Thayer Norton’s name into the computer and requested his file. All he got was “Transferred to Julian Clinic”!

The idea that the old battle-ax would give up his coveted medical chair at the university was unthinkable. Adam wondered if Norton had recently taken a Conference Cruise.

Going back to the computer, Adam tried to access statistical data about the Julian. He discovered that of the six doctors who had transferred, four were OB-GYN specialists. Maybe that proved something. For another half hour Adam fed questions into the computer, but most of his requests were returned with the message that his access code was not recognized for the material he was requesting. Switching tactics, he asked for the number of times amniocentesis was done at the Julian in the previous calendar year. He got the number: 7,112. When he asked how many had shown an abnormality in the fetus, the computer again refused his access code. Adam finally asked how many therapeutic abortions had been performed during that time period: 1,217.

Totally mystified, Adam turned off the computer and went to bed, where he spent the night confronting an outraged Jennifer in his dreams.

The next morning Adam was so upset to wake up and find Jennifer’s side of the bed empty, that he left the apartment without even bothering to have a cup of coffee. By eight-thirty he was pacing restlessly outside GYN Associates, waiting for the office to open. The moment he saw Christine he began pressing the bell.

“Hello, Adam Schonberg.”

Adam thought it was propitious that she’d remembered his name. He adjusted his dark blue knit tie and said with the sincerest smile he could muster, “I was in the neighborhood so I thought I’d drop by and get an update on DJ’s batting average.”

“He’s doing terrific,” said Christine. “Better than even I anticipated. In fact, last Friday…”

Adam tuned out as he tried to organize his thoughts. When Christine paused for breath, he said, “What are the chances that you can get me in to see Dr. Vandermer?”

“Dr. Vandermer is at the Julian Clinic,” she said.

“He’s gone already?”

“Yup. The whole office is a disaster. Yesterday was his last day here, even though he has hundreds of patients scheduled for the next six months. I’ll be on the phone from now until Christmas.”

“So it wasn’t expected?” asked Adam.

“Hardly,” said Christine. “He came back from his cruise and told Dr. Stens and Dr. Baumgarten that he was leaving. He said he’d had it with private practice.”

That was exactly what Percy had said about Foley, thought Adam, as Christine turned away to answer the phone.

“What a mess,” she said once she’d hung up. “And all the patients are mad at me.”

“Did Dr. Vandermer behave strangely when he got back from the cruise?” asked Adam.

“I’ll say,” laughed Christine. “Nothing we did was good enough for him. He drove us all crazy, though in some ways he was a lot more considerate. Before, he’d always been pretty abrupt.”

Remembering his own meeting with the doctor, Adam felt that “abrupt” was a generous description of the man’s manner.

“The strangest thing about the affair,” continued Christine, “is that Dr. Vandermer’s partner, Dr. Foley, did the very same thing. And at the time it made Dr. Vandermer furious. But it wasn’t so bad when Dr. Foley left because there were four doctors to take up the slack. Now there are only two because poor Dr. Smyth is still in the hospital with his weird disease.”

“What kind of disease?” asked Adam.

“I don’t know the name,” she said. “It’s some kind of trouble with his nerves. I remember when it started.” She lowered her voice as if what she was saying were a secret. “One moment he was normal, the next he was making strange faces. It was grotesque. And very embarrassing.”