Syndrome by Thomas Hoover (best ereader for pdf txt) 📕
"You picked a funny time to call."
Is that all she has to say? Four and a half frigging years she shuts me out of her life, blaming me, and then...
"Well, Ally, I figured there's gotta be a statute of limitations on being accused of something I didn't do. So I decided to take a flier that maybe four years and change was in the ballpark."
"Grant, do you know what time it is? This is Sunday and--"
"Hey, this is the hour you do your Sunday run, right? If memory serves. So I thought I might drive down and keep you company."
He didn't want to let her know that he was already there. That would seem presumptuous and probably tick her off even more. But by God he had to get to her.
Again there was a long pause. Like she was trying to collect and marshal her anger.
"You want to come to see me? Now? That's a heck of a--"
"Look, there's something really important I need to talk to you about. It's actua
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“After the fact, it’s nice to know that there were parts of your life that you didn’t see fit to share with me.” She sniffed.
“Maybe someday.”
“It’s a little late for that,” she declared, hurt lingering in her voice. “Look, Stone, I don’t know what you know that’s got Bartlett so upset, but he’s not the best guy in the world to piss off. He stormed in here, fit to be tied, personally demanding to know how the hell did you have proprietary information about the Gerex Corporation’s clinical trials. He already seemed to know who you were. Now I realize there’s more to the story, somewhere back there in time.”
“And what did you tell him?”
“I was completely blindsided for which I thank you. I told him I didn’t know anything about your sources, but I wouldn’t reveal them even if I did. He’s our landlord but that doesn’t give him subpoena power. He doesn’t have the right to barge in here and try to intimidate the Sentinel’s staff. We’re current on the rent.”
Stone felt a tinge of nostalgia. Sometimes her gold-plated bitchiness was the very thing he admired most about her.
“Well, thanks for sticking up for me. Maybe I’ve got him upset enough that he’ll come around eventually and decide it’s better to have me inside the tent, where I can be monitored.”
She snorted at the improbability of that.
“No, Stone, as usual you’re an idiot idealist and dreamer. I’ll tell you exactly what’s going to happen. Bartlett is most likely on his cell phone right now, as we speak, threatening the Family, trying to get you fired. He’s saying you’re stealing proprietary information somehow and he’s going to sue the Sentinel for our last dime if we print a syllable of anything you write about him. That’s his next move, Stone. I expect my phone to ring in approximately fourteen and a half minutes. Their attorneys are going to tell me to tell Jay to get you under control. That’s what’s going to happen. The Family does not want Winston Bartlett pissed off. Especially by the likes of you, somebody who’s always writing muckraking articles that make them real nervous. Does anything I’ve said have the ring of logic to you? Or are you living in some never-never land where the facts don’t fucking penetrate?”
Hey, he thought, that’s pretty good. Jane is in DEFCON 1 mode today.
“Depends on what you look at, the doughnut or the hole. That is, the stick approach or the carrot. I’m betting he’s going to split the difference and try a little of both. He’s going to cool off and then offer me a few crumbs as an inducement to go away.”
“God, you’re so naive.” She laughed in derision. “Winston Bartlett is not accustomed to having to ask anybody for anything. So the fact he came up here this morning to try to get you to back off on whatever it is you’re doing must mean you’ve really got him psyched.” She stared at him. “What is it, Stone? Tell me. What do you have on him?”
“Right now I’m more interested in what he thinks I might have. And the truth is, I don’t really know. But it must be something pretty big.”
“Stone, why is it so hard to hate you? You can make a person’s life miserable and that stupid person will still root for you. God, I don’t know what it was about you.” She paused a moment as though thinking. “Maybe you’re just too honest. Or just too sincere. Maybe that’s what it was.”
“Don’t try to butter me up. I know my weaknesses. But dammit, Jane, I’m this close to the story of the century. And the paranoid zillionaire who was in here just now yelling at me is trying to freeze me out”
“Well, please don’t involve me in this anymore, Stone. You’ve just provided me with a week’s worth of unnecessary shit. From now on, any communicating you want to do with Gerex’s attorneys is going to have to be done by someone else. Trust me when I tell you I do not need this in my life.”
“Sweetie, wait till you see what I’m on the track of. What the Gerex Corporation is doing at a small clinic out in New Jersey is going to change everything we know about medicine. And it’s going to blow wide open the second they finally let the press in on what’s happening at the clinical trials they’re now winding up for the NIH. When they finally hold that big press briefing, I want to have a manuscript already in copyediting. I want to be first.”
“Then why is he so worked up over your question?” she mused. “About somebody being dropped from the clinical trials?” She paused “Incidentally, I can do without being called ‘sweetie’ by a man I’m no longer screwing.”
“Sorry about that.” He winced. It did just sort of slip out in this orgy of intimacy. “But what I think Bartlett desperately doesn’t want me to find out is the reason that patient was dropped. And he’s afraid I’m getting close. Unfortunately, I’m not, and I just took my best shot at prying the information out of him and-you’re probably right-blew it.” He was turning to leave. “But I’m, by God going to find out somehow. Just see if you can keep me from getting fired for a little while longer. If I’m still working for the Sentinel three months from now, you may get honorable mention in my Pulitzer acceptance.”
It was bluff talk. But he believed it with every fiber of his body. You’ve gotta believe, right?
Come on, Ally, get lucky. Find out who that mystery patient was. The way things look now, you ‘re the only shot I’ve got left.
Tuesday, April 7
8:13 P.M.
What a day! When Ally finally settled onto her couch, after giving Knickers a long walk, she was exhausted. She leaned back and kicked off her shoes. There had been a few moments of tightness in her chest-maybe it was psychological, anxiety-induced-but that was gone now. She thought about calling New Jersey to ask how Nina was doing, but she doubted they would tell her anything.
She’d spent the latter part of the afternoon getting yet another heart exam. After driving to northern New Jersey and back, she’d had a formal (and exhausting) stress test for her heart at the New York University Faculty Practice. God, she was sick of examining rooms and those blue paper shifts you put on backwards, as though it was okay for doctors and nurses to see your bare ass. Then she put on shorts and sneakers and an Israeli physician stuck wired suction cups all over her chest and put her on a treadmill for seventeen minutes, boosting her pulse to over 150, which was as high as he dared to go. Then he called Van de Vliet, faxed him the charts, and they reviewed the squiggly lines for another ten minutes. Finally she had a high-speed CT scan, whose results were then sent directly to Karl Van de Vliet’s lab computer.
The bottom line was, the damaged valve in her aortic ventricle was deteriorating even more rapidly than her regular physician, Dr. Ekelman, had thought, but her heart was still strong enough for the procedure.
She wondered if she had gone this far because she was letting hope outweigh a sober evaluation of the risks. Was this the sign of complete desperation? Whatever she decided, tomorrow was the day, D day, decision day.
She thought again about her mom, who had been bubbling with hope when she looked in on her. Nina hadn’t even been formally checked in, but already she seemed transformed. It was enough for her just to entertain the possibility that her mind could be renewed. That in itself was sufficient to convince Ally to sign the consent agreement for Van de Vliet to go forward with her procedure. He even offered to provide a car service to take Maria home to the Bronx after Nina was settled and resting.
In her own case, the special injections for her heart, she was far less sure what she thought. The part that bothered her most was having to give herself entirely over to a person she scarcely knew. It was the kind of ultimate surrender that she abhorred.
While Knickers rummaged behind the couch for the remnants of her rawhide chew toy, Ally momentarily considered calling Grant. She couldn’t think of a reason why except that he was the only coherent immediate family she had left and this felt like a moment for pulling together. God, she missed Steve. Sometimes she felt so alone.
Then she considered calling Stone Aimes, but she decided that would seem pushy. The truth was, she’d enjoyed talking to him and she’d been surprised at how comfortable she’d felt. Looking back over the elapsed years, she couldn’t remember exactly why they split up. There must have been a good reason, but now she could only recall the good times. A picnic in Central Park, or the time they took the Staten Island ferry at night just to see the inspiring downtown skyline.
With those jumbled thoughts cluttering her mind, she finally got around to remembering she hadn’t checked her phone machine. She got up off the couch and went into the bedroom.
There were three calls and at first she thought she was too exhausted to check them.
But no, that was irresponsible. She was running a business…
“Hi, Ally, it’s me.” The voice was Jennifer’s. “No emergency, but call when you get in and let me know how it went, okay?”
Not tonight. There was too much to explain and she was too tired. She went to the second message.
“Hi, it’s me again. I need you to look over the Jameson design, that Italian-marble bath. They’re having trouble getting the ocher. Some kind of strike at the quarry. What can they substitute? But remember, it’s got to be absurdly overpriced or they’ll assume it’s crap. If I don’t hear back from you, I’ll fax you some stuff in the morning.”
Okay, she thought, these rich clients love to show off. I’ll get them what they should have ordered in the first place, knowing them. Stone from the quarry near Agra, where they got the marble for the Taj Mahal. That ought to be ostentatious enough. It’ll take an extra couple of months, but that will impress them even more.
As she considered going to the third message, she had a feeling of misgiving, though in truth there were several people she wouldn’t mind hearing from.
Or maybe the Dorian Institute had called about Nina. Maybe she’d freaked. This whole thing was happening way too fast. In any case, she didn’t really want to talk to anybody right now. What she really wanted to do was sit and think, maybe run the whole thing by Stone and get his take.
She decided to check out the third message.
“Hi, it’s your intrepid reporter, just checking in to see how it went today. It’s just after eight, and I’m at home. I may not be able to afford this place much longer, given all the excitement I’ve had today, so call me while I still have an apartment and a phone.”
She felt a ripple of excitement and the feeling pleased her. Maybe she did have someone stable and rational in her corner, someone who understood the risks and possible rewards of going forward with the procedure.
She’d put his number in her Palm, which was in her bag, and she went back to the living room, poured herself a glass of wine, and then
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