MANHATTAN – AUGUST
‘Jonathan, please don’t make me ask you again,’ pleaded Sandra Phillips.
Six-year-old Jonathan hung his head. ‘Sorry, Mom,’ he said, as he scooped three more pieces of chocolate-flavoured breakfast cereal onto his spoon.
‘Peter. Suzy has basketball practice at three. I’ll collect her at four. Can you pick up Jonathan from daycare at three? You could leave him at Grandma’s for a few hours and pick him up on your way home.’
Dr Peter Phillips hesitated. ‘Yeah, sure,’ he stammered, ‘I’ll get someone to cover for me at the clinic.’ Shit. He’d been hoping to play nine holes after work. Better play ball for now, though. Sandra’s been giving me a real hard time recently.
‘Suzy, quickly please, honey, go put your lunch in your bag.’ Suzy was kneeling on the floor, singing to an audience of her dolls.
‘I’m gonna be like Adele, Mom,’ she said.
‘Course you are, honey, but you’re gonna miss your ride.’
‘Okay, Mom,’ said her eight-year-old, leaping up enthusiastically.
Suzy is the only female in this house who remembers how to smile, her father thought grimly.
‘Peter, can you please clean that damn fish tank tonight; it’s stinking the place out.’
‘Yeah, sure, no problem.’
‘Jonathan,’ Sandra snapped, ‘for God’s sake stop banging that spoon – Mom’s got a headache.’
Jonathan reluctantly ceased his campaign to squash an invasion of chocolate-coated space invaders, before they overtook his army’s base on the left-hand side of the bowl.
The atmosphere at the breakfast table was tense and strained. Just like our marriage, Peter thought. The alarm had woken him at 7 a.m. as usual. Lying in bed, he watched Sandra’s chest rise and fall slowly and admired her long blonde hair, which flowed over the whole pillow. Even in sleep, her face was tense. But, as he watched his wife of eleven years, he became aroused. He put his arm around her waist, snuggled closer and began gently kissing her neck. Sandra woke immediately and glanced at her watch.
‘Christ, Peter, no way, it’s nearly ten past.’ She removed his arm, swung her legs out of the bed and went out into the hall calling, ‘Suzy, Jonathan, c’mon guys, rise and shine!’
Peter dropped his head back onto his pillow. So much for that – not even a good morning. Both he and Sandra could sense that their marriage was in trouble – drowning in a sea of pressure and stress. They seemed to have no time for each other, or for themselves, for that matter. No matter what he did, he couldn’t make Sandra happy. Without saying it, they both knew they were keeping things going for the sake of the kids, and hoping that life would improve. Now, for the rest of the day, he had a clinic full of demanding patients to look forward to.
‘Hey, Dad, don’t forget your briefcase,’ said Suzy, struggling to lift it up to him as he reached the door. He hugged his daughter and, as he pecked Sandra on the cheek with a ‘Have a great day’, he remembered the brochure he had meant to show her last night.
‘Hey, honey, look at this,’ he said as he took the glossy four-page brochure from his briefcase.
‘Not now, Peter, you’ll be late.’
‘But this looks great, something to look forward to. Yamoura Pharmaceuticals are holding a convention in Tokyo, to coincide with the Olympics.’ He pointed at the cover picture of passengers sunbathing by a pool, on the top deck of a luxury liner. ‘All the way back on a cruise ship,’ he added. ‘And if it’s anything like the way they looked after us at the Ryder Cup . . .’ He trailed off, watching her face. Sandra had loved that trip.
She flipped open the brochure with its pictures of sandy beaches around an itinerary which included two ‘medical conventions’. She spotted the quirky Tokyo Olympics logo, Tokyo 2020.
‘Peter, for chrissakes. I can’t think past the smell of the fish tank and what we’re having for dinner tonight – let alone 2020!’ She tossed the brochure on the hall table.
Sorry for trying.
‘Have a nice day, guys,’ she said, as she bent to kiss the top of Jonathan’s head. ‘See you this evening.’
Peter left the brochure where it was. Maybe she’d look at it later. Anyway, there were plenty more at the clinic. Bob Sanders had dropped some in with the research reports on the new cephalosporin product he was pushing. What was the rebranded name? SuperVerve – Yeah, that was it. Jeez, I could do with a little verve in my life right now.
*
Peter Phillips dropped Jonathan at daycare, leaving him with a giant hug and a high five, and arrived at the clinic on the corner of Second Avenue and East 23rd Street, just before nine. He made his way to his office through the packed waiting room, waving a greeting to Elaine on reception as he passed. ‘Two minutes,’ he mouthed, holding up two fingers in a peace sign.
Elaine nodded. She knew to give him a couple of minutes to gather his thoughts before unleashing a stream of patients on him.
He sat into his chair and booted up his Dell. Thirty-eight emails. The first was from Eamonn Holmes, one of his partners at the clinic, sent to all the doctors at the practice and suggesting that they read the new research results on SuperVerve on the attached PDF, which had been sent in by Bob Sanders. Peter double-clicked and the SuperVerve logo burst onto his screen. Young, old, middle-aged, black, white, mixed race; they were all smiling. Peter sighed and closed it down. He’d read it later. Elaine tapped at the door and ushered in all two hundred and twenty pounds of Mrs Walton.
The doctor smiled as he stood up. ‘Good morning, Mrs Walton.’
‘Not much good about it from my point of view, doc,’ she replied grumpily.
‘Oh dear, what’s the problem today, Mrs Walton?’
‘It’s my stomach, doctor, as usual,’ she grimaced. ‘I keep getting these cramps every couple of days. Then I get the runs. Then I’m okay for a day. Then it starts again. And I’ve got these aches and pains in my joints.’
Peter Phillips nodded. ‘Yes, this really does seem to be going on too long.’ Secretly, he suspected that Mrs Walton’s staple diet of pizzas, chocolate ice cream and a daily bottle of white wine was the source of the problem.
‘You gotta help me, doc – is there anything I can take?’
‘Well, Mrs Walton, I think you may have a touch of colitis. It’s an inflammation in your intestines. There is this new medicine for intestinal problems, which has been getting some great feedback. It’s very good for settling the system and, apparently, it can also help you lose a little weight.’
Mrs Walton’s eyes lit up. ‘Sounds great, doc.’
‘It’s called SuperVerve. I’ll write you a script for a ten-day supply and let’s see how you get on. It’s got an antibiotic in it, so make sure you finish the course.’
‘I will, doctor, don’t worry.’ She smiled as if she was feeling better already.
Peter wondered about a routine examination of Mrs Walton’s stomach, then rapidly dismissed the thought. The waiting room was packed.
‘There. I hope you feel better soon, Mrs Walton,’ he said as he signed the prescription, ‘and remember to try and keep to a nicely balanced diet.’
‘I’ll try, doc,’ said Mrs Walton as she took the script gratefully and headed out the door. She stopped in the lobby at the new AppleDay Pharmacy touchscreen kiosk.
‘Good morning, how may I help you today?’ asked the pharmacist who appeared on the screen.
‘I have a prescription here, for SuperVerve.’
‘Great. Just scan in your script and select your nearest AppleDay store and we’ll have that ready for you in just a few minutes.’
‘Oh, thank you.’
‘You’re welcome. Have a nice day, and thank you for shopping with AppleDay.’
In his office, Dr Peter Phillips glanced at the list of patients lined up on his monitor. Next up was Mr Williams. Seventy years old and fifty of those spent suffering episodes of bronchitis, strep throats and headaches. Sounds like another candidate for SuperVerve.
*
THAT NIGHT
Ibrahim Fallah flicked on the light in the garage at the back of the library. It had a loading door onto the back alleyway. This was where they took delivery of books, shelving, furniture or whatever. Scattered around the place were a few shelving units, a pile of broken chairs and some crates. In the middle of the garage were the white Toyota van and his brown Nissan. He climbed up into the van’s driver’s seat and pressed the button on his remote. The garage door slid open. He started the engine, reversed carefully out into the alley and two minutes later he was heading north on Hudson Street for the Bronx. It was almost midnight. He glanced in his rear-view mirror. He had left a corridor down through the back of the van so that he could use every single mirror. Keep every option open, take no chances. The rest of the van was stacked with brown cardboard boxes, each about the size of a shoebox. Each box contained one thousand SuperVerve cephalosporin tablets.
He had planned his route carefully. He took Fifth Avenue, south, as far as East 20th Street. He turned left and continued east until he was in the less familiar territory of the housing projects at Bedford and Stuyvesant, or ‘Bedsty’, as locals call it. He knew he would find what he wanted there. He turned right and passed the Stuyvesant Oval. This was starting to look the part. He was now surrounded by rundown apartment blocks, beat-up cars and boarded-up storefronts. There was a group of black males on every street corner. He passed another group of youths in their trademark hoodies, low-slung jeans and sneakers, who stood menacingly on the corner of One Gun Street.
Allah be saved, he thought, what had happened here to deserve that name?
He knew that the drivers of most vehicles moving around here at night were buying drugs. Most of the kids hanging around were both suppliers and addicts. The street got darker. Most of the street lamps were broken. He pulled into the kerb, slid his hand under his seat and grasped a wire handle. He pulled it slowly and heard a click and a thump behind him, as the trapdoor in the floor of the van opened and one box of cephalosporin tablets dropped into the gutter. As an engineer, it had taken him just six hours in the library’s garage to rig that little apparatus. He checked his mirror and pulled back out on to the street. He dropped another box outside a vagrants’ hostel near Williams Bridge and by 1 a.m. he had dropped twenty boxes around the Bronx. Like dropping goldfish into a piranha pool. He had to remember the approximate locations for his drops because his orders were to repeat the process as often as possible, in the same locations. He had been assured that the tablets were just regular medication. If the police stopped him he had appropriate documentation to confirm that he did part-time delivery work for Yamoura Pharmaceuticals. If the police were suspicious enough to test the tablets, they would turn out to be perfectly normal. So, he was untouchable. He didn’t even need to carry any weapons.
He lifted a can of Diet Coke from the holder and took a swig, then headed south again for Queens, where he would drop another twenty boxes. The lucky finders wouldn’t be sure what they had come across, but tablets had a value in these neighbourhoods. The SuperVerve branding would quickly be connected with the advertising. He turned on the radio, which was tuned to XM FM, just in time to catch the end of an advert for the new drug – ‘SuperVerve – Putting the verve back into your life.’
He turned left again and headed for Harlem. The familiar radio jingle for ‘XM FM – Traffic and Weather for the Tri-State area’ pulsed around the van. The 2 a.m. headlines told him that nine Muslim doctors working in the National Health Service in England had been arrested in connection with two failed car bomb attacks in London and one at Glasgow airport. A Jeep packed with explosives had been set on fire and driven by one doctor into the main entrance to the airport. The bomb hadn’t detonated. The two occupants of the Jeep had been badly burned and several people injured. It was being speculated that the strike was a ‘copycat’ version of a similar attack by a group of doctors in 2007. That, too, had failed.
Bad luck, my brothers, thought Ibrahim Fallah. You didn’t do your preparation properly.
*
MANHATTAN – AUGUST, TWO WEEKS LATER
‘Jonathan, Suzy, everyone – come on, guys, keep together,’ called Sandra Phillips as she ushered the excited group of kids along the sidewalk on Bridge Street. It was a beautiful sunny Saturday afternoon. It was Suzy’s ninth birthday. Sandra had taken ten of Suzy’s pals, plus a couple of Jonathan’s, on a trip aboard the Navy’s battle cruiser, The Steadfast, which was moored for the week near the Brooklyn Bridge. After that, she’d let them run around for a while in Battery Park and she shushed them just long enough to say a prayer at the World Trade Center Memorial Fountain before going for some food.
‘C’mon guys, keep up.’ Goddamn it, where was Peter? Him and his damned golf. He was supposed to meet them off the ship. He’d better be at the restaurant. She was taking the group of kids for a meal before they went to see the latest animated film, at the cinema on the corner nearest Store Street. That was what Suzy had said she wanted and that was what her princess would get. Karen Patel, her closest pal from among the moms at Jonathan’s daycare, had come along to help out. The chilled air inside BurgerFantastic was a welcome relief. The place was packed.
‘Over there, ma’am.’ The friendly manager pointed to a couple of free tables in the corner.
‘Sandra! Suzy! Hi, guys.’ Peter came rushing in, sweat pouring from his brow. ‘Just made it, sorry, nearly late. How was the ship? High fives all round. Right, guys, let’s get stuck into some burgers and fries!’