The cupboard in Craig Marcus’ small office at The Complex hid a surprisingly well-stocked bar. Marcus was surveying the contents and had just selected a bottle of vodka when Dr. Wilson entered without knocking.
“Hi, Ruth,” he said without looking up. “Cocktail?”
“Please. Double.” Ruth kicked off her shoes and sat down at the table in the corner of the office. “So how long did you stay down in the dungeon with Jason?” she asked.
“About an hour. Did some soul searching.”
“That’s what I intended when I got in your face. So what’s it going to be?”
Marcus filled two glasses with ice and poured in liquor to the rims, then took a swallow from one. “I’m going to take a stand with Porter,” he said. “I just saw him, and he’s not getting better. Might be an ideal time to negotiate.” Marcus refilled his glass, then moved to join Ruth at the table.
“Good for you,” Ruth said. “It’s the right thing to do.” Ruth took a glass from Marcus, and then said, “You’ve checked the jaundice thing out, I presume?”
Marcus nodded. “The blood’s in the lab right now,” he said. “But whatever it is, it hasn’t affected Porter’s temper. Made it worse in fact.”
“What happened?”
“Oh, this lab tech, Denise Dalton—”
“I know her. Cute girl. D-Day,” Ruth said.
“Excuse me?
“That’s her nickname. I’ve heard the nurses use it.”
“Yeah, well anyway, remember when Denise told me to look in on Porter because she was worried about him?”
Ruth nodded.
“When I went to his room, I couldn’t believe how bad he looked. I made the mistake of using my best bedside manner, and he ate me for lunch. I heard he fired Denise after that,” Marcus said.
Ruth recoiled. “Ouch. So much for the brother’s keeper thing, huh?”
Marcus nodded and refilled his glass, then gestured toward Ruth’s tumbler with the bottle. She put her hand over the mouth of the glass. “Thanks, but I’m on call tonight. But leave the bottle where I can find it.” Marcus smiled and nodded, then screwed the lid back on. He looked up when the door to his office opened a crack.
“Dr. Marcus?”
Marcus looked up and recognized the lab tech, a young man who was carrying a computer printout. “Come in,” Marcus said, his hand extended for the papers. “What have you got?”
The tech blushed and nodded toward Dr. Wilson, then handed the papers to Marcus. “Mr. Porter’s blood test results,” he said, and then added, “I’m sorry.”
The tech turned and left the room as Marcus scanned the numbers on the page. “Look at this,” he said to Ruth, pointing at one of the figures. Ruth squinted and followed his finger over to the number. She took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. “Oh, boy,” she said. “And it looks like the latest mutation.”
Marcus put down the printout. “This confirms my physical exam. Thought it might just be cirrhosis, given the way he drinks, or pancreatic cancer, given the way he smokes and eats. But based on this, he’ll be dead in three weeks.”
“Without the cure,” Ruth said.
Marcus sat in silence, nursing his drink.
“Right?” Ruth said again. “That’s without the cure.”
Still nothing.
Finally, Ruth grabbed Marcus’ arm and said, “He doesn’t deserve it, you know. He may be a bastard, but we are still doctors.”
Marcus studied her for several seconds, then sighed and nodded. He turned and reached into a nearby refrigerator, then pulled out a small vial of clear, light yellow liquid. He held it up to the light, shook it, and watched the fluid tumble around inside the glass container. “Yeah, but it’s just not right. He lives, Jenny dies. Let’s pour this down the drain.”
Ruth raised her tumbler and finished her drink. “Do you know for sure that Jenny’s dead?”
“No, but she was in bad shape when we discharged her—”
“When you discharged her. Two wrongs don’t make a right. Now go deal with this,” Ruth said.
—
The irony of the situation was not lost on Marcus as he, with printout in hand, knocked on the door to Phillip Porter’s room.
“Come in!” Porter yelled from inside. Marcus opened the door and found Porter lying in bed, the white pillowcase and sheets in stark contrast against Porter’s yellow skin. The Driver sat in a chair on the other side of the room. Porter, his head on the pillow, did not look up. His eyes were closed, and his hands were extended in front of him, his fingers moving, playing along with the Chopin piano sonata that issued from the speakers in the corners. The room was littered with open cartons of Chinese take-out, and the ripe smell of soy and garlic and ginger hung in the air. Porter opened his eyes and looked at Marcus. “What do you want?”
Marcus stepped forward and extended his hand and the printout. “We got your blood tests back,” he said.
Porter sighed. “And?” he said.
Marcus glanced at the Driver and cleared his throat. “Do you want to ask Walter—” the Driver stared at him “—to step out?”
“Why? I have no secrets from Walter.”
Marcus looked at the Driver, who glared back. “Very well,” Marcus said. He moved to the bedside table and unfolded the papers. “I’m afraid our suspicions have been confirmed. You have the latest variant of Triptovirus L.”
Marcus imagined he could hear Walter sucking wind at the pronouncement and wondered if it was because he felt sorry for Porter or because he thought he’d be out of a job. Then he thought he heard Porter laughing.
Marcus shook his head to clear the sound, but indeed, Porter was laughing, his mouth wide open, his nicotine-stained teeth working up and down.
“Sorry, but what’s so funny?” Marcus said.
Porter reached over to his nightstand and grabbed a cigarette, then motioned to Walter, who jumped to attention and lit it. Porter inhaled and blew smoke toward Marcus. “I always thought it would be cancer that got me, not some damn virus. I made it through the 70’s and 80’s disease-free, and now this.”
“I’m sure the pain has been intense,” Marcus said. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a vial of light yellow liquid, then held it up in front of Porter and shook it. “Perhaps we can do something about that,” he said. He reached into his other pocket and withdrew a syringe and an alcohol prep.
Porter watched, then said, “Your altruistic tendencies will be your undoing. You could just let me suffer.”
Marcus filled the barrel of the syringe with the liquid. “I know,” he said. “But then who’d get my file if you died?” Marcus sat the vial down on the nightstand and tore open the foil wrapper on the swab. He reached out for Porter’s arm. “I understand it feels warm going in,” Marcus said.
Porter pulled his arm back away from Marcus. “What does?” he said.
Marcus stopped, the syringe poised in mid-air, his mouth open. “The cure,” he said.
Porter looked at the syringe, then at the vial on the nightstand. “The cure? The Kramer blood factor? Is that what that is?” He gestured toward the syringe.
Marcus nodded.
Porter stared for another half-second before beginning to laugh. His head fell back on the pillow and he held his stomach. “Oh, this is rich! This is good!” he said. “My stomach hurts!” Porter gasped for air between laughs and looked at the Driver. “He doesn’t know, Walter. He doesn’t know!”
Marcus shifted from foot to foot and retracted the syringe. He opened his mouth to speak, but Porter reached out and grabbed the hypodermic and shook it in Marcus’ face. “This?” Porter said. “This is the cure? Where did you get this?”
“From storage in the nurses’ station.”
Porter threw the syringe hard against the wall, where it exploded in a shower of glass and yellow liquid. “It’s plasma, you idiot! There’s been no true cure from Kramer for two weeks now!”
Marcus took a step back from the bed, then looked first at the stain on the wall, then at Porter.
“His girlfriend has been switching the blood,” Porter said. “Some misguided effort to save his life, I presume.”
Marcus blinked several times. “You mean those patients, Mr. Adams, Mrs. Gunderson—”
“All of them,” Porter interrupted. “They all got a placebo.”
Marcus studied Porter for a moment. “You knew about this?” he said.
“Of course. I confronted Kramer and the girl when I saw the efficacy dropping off. Caught them in the act. Told them to reverse the trend—had his wife talk to him, too. But this, . . .” he said, gesturing to the mess on the floor, “. . . this is the old stuff.”
“Do you know what this means? All the people that have come here for the cure . . . .”
Porter nodded. “Yep. Better call your lawyer.”
Marcus stood and began to walk around the room, one palm resting on the crown of his head, his fingers moving through thinning blond hair. “At least we still have Jason. I mean, we can start producing factor again, at a more reasonable and controlled rate this time. Get some cure for the patients—some for you. It’s not too late. We can refine some new factor for your use.”
Porter considered for a moment. “I suppose that’s better than the alternative,” he said.
Marcus raised an eyebrow.
“Dying,” Porter said. Marcus nodded.
The room remained silent for another minute, and then Porter spoke. “You say we need to get some new factor from Kramer. Walter and I would like to pay him a personal visit to ensure that Mr. Kramer understands the urgency of our need, in light of this new situation.” He took another long drag on the cigarette and exhaled toward the fluorescent lighting. “Plus there’s the issue of his and Ms. Ross’s participation in this fake cure matter. We’ll need to address that problem, too. Isn’t that right, Walter?” The Driver nodded, a cold smile on his lips. Porter coughed spasmodically, then spat into a tissue that he handed to the Driver. “We’ll go down to his room first thing in the morning,” Porter said. “I’m not up to a messy confrontation tonight.” He looked at Marcus and smiled. “You’ll join us, of course.”
Marcus glanced at the Driver and nodded. “Of course,” he said.
“Oh, and by the way,” Porter said. “I received an interesting e-mail from one of your former associates the other day.”
Marcus raised an eyebrow. “Oh? Who?”
“Vincent Samuels.”
“Samuels! What did he want? I haven’t seen him since he threw that little tantrum when he resigned.”
“Seems that he has chosen to disregard our nondisclosure agreement. I heard he visited Paul Carnelli at Amwell Pharmaceuticals trying to sell a vial of the cure.”
“How did you find this out?” Marcus said.
“Carnelli called me. Didn’t want to end up on the wrong end of another lawsuit.”
“And Samuels stole some of the cure?”
“Apparently so. In any event, Carnelli turned him down, so Samuels e-mailed me to see if he could get his old job back. Told me he’d been doing some independent tests on the factor and was close to determining the gene sequence for cloning.”
“He’s full of crap. We’re years away from nailing the genome on the Kramer factor. What did you tell him?”
“I told him no, of course. Although I did express my concern that he had kept some of the factor.” Porter smiled and looked at Walter. The Driver rolled his head back and around in a circle, and his neck snapped and popped. Porter stretched and yawned. “Time for bed, then,” he said. “And we’ll see you in the morning?”
“I can’t wait,” Marcus said, under his breath.