Death Spiral (26 page)

“Dr. Glass!” I shout.

He keeps walking.

“Dr. Glass!” I shout again. When he still doesn't stop, I fling off Anj's clogs and start to run. I bump into a woman and knock a stack of papers from her hands as I weave through a web of people gathered outside one of the conference rooms.

“What the—” she calls after me, but I don't stop moving.

“Dr. Glass,” I say a third time when I reach his side.

He whirls around and our eyes meet. There's a second of nonrecognition, and then his face pinches and his jaw sets into a hard, wolfish line. Before I can say or do anything, he pushes open a door and yanks me into a stale smelling, closet-sized room with a mop sticking out of a bucket of dirty water in the middle of the floor.

He closes the door behind him and shoots me a blazing look. “It was you, wasn't it?” he snarls. “You made those slides.”

I reach into the deep front pocket of Anj's skirt for Mom's lighter. Of course it's not there. Faye Fuentes does not carry a lighter. Faye Fuentes does, however, carry a phone, and unless it's out of charge, the video is still on, and everything we say is being recoded.

“Yeah,” I say, trying to keep my voice steady. “It was me, and you're so busted.”

Glass takes a step toward me. I lift my right foot, aiming to maim, forgetting for a second that I'm shoeless and can do what—poke him with my toe? He stops, inches from my chest. His breath is hot and dangerous on my face.

“I don't have much time, so I'm going to keep this simple,” he says, a vein in his forehead pulsing. “I'll make you a deal. You tell the journalists what you did was a stunt. That you were confused. That you wanted to blame someone for your mother's death. I publicly forgive you, and I make you a very rich young lady.”

“You've got to be kidding,” I snap, thinking I'd like to gouge his eyes out.

“Not at all. I know about you. You're smart, but you don't have a penny to your name. You'd like to go to college, but you can't afford the stamp for the application.” He eyes dart wildly around the room, then land back on me. “How does a million sound?”

A stomach sick taste of bile and disgust burns my chest and rises in my throat. I want to tell him where he can shove his million, tell him that I wouldn't be bought off before and I won't be bought off now—but I run my fingers over my phone and play along.

“You're lying. You don't have that kind of money. No way one cash-strapped meth clinic can make that much.”

“It's not just one clinic,” he says. “RNA 120 is a front.”

“A front for what?”

“To test my vector.”

Everything inside me clenches. “PL44. Why did you need to test it?”

I hear footsteps outside the room. Voices. Some language I don't recognize. Glass glances at the door. White-knuckles the greasy doorknob. “Look, we don't have much time. I'm sorry about your mother, but she was a junkie. She would've died anyway.”

I dig my fingernails into my palms until I can speak without screaming. “I said
why did you need to test it
? If you want me to cooperate, I need to know what I'm getting into.”

“So I know how much people need in order to get sick, I give them IPF and they need the cure. My cure. It's that simple.” His words spill out fast and breathless. “You have no idea how many ways I can make money from this vector. All the manufacturers I have access to. Drugs. Vaccines. A whole population of people with IPF needing treatment. The clinical trial was just the test phase. Now that I understand the dosing, the vector won't kill anyone else. It will just make them sick enough to need the medicine. It will be like getting the flu, only a little worse.”

Drugs? Vaccines? A whole population of people with IPF?
My stomach buckles, but I keep my game face on. “Sounds big.”

“So do we have a deal?” he asks, sweating through every one of his Botoxed pores. When I don't say anything, he pulls a handkerchief from his pocket, wipes his forehead, and says, “Fine. Make it two million.”

He reaches out to seal the deal.

I lift my hand out of my skirt pocket, but I don't go for a handshake. “As if, you asshole. I wouldn't make a deal with you for all the money in the world.” I hold out my phone for him to see. “Did you know these things come with audio recording these days?”

“You little shit!” Glass yelps and lunges for the phone.

I jerk away my arm and he misses his target. He stumbles forward, kicking over the bucket. Dirty water slops around our feet. I step back as he regains balance and lunges again. The lunge is wild, off-center, desperate. I stick out my right hand. Using the force of his forward momentum against him, I drive my fist into his solar plexus. Not the most glamorous Judo move, but it works. Glass doubles over and collapses to the wet floor.

As he clutches his stomach and gasps for air, I look him in the eye one last time, and say, “And she wasn't a junkie. She was my mom.” Then I open the door and release all my anger in one loud shout, yelling to the journalists crawling the halls that the scumbag Glass is in here.

A cop is the first to reach me. I'm too spent to be surprised or to ask questions. “Take this,” I say, handing the officer my phone. “It'll make your job a lot easier.”

I step into the hall just as Tom and the rest of the reporters arrive to pick the final scraps of meat from Glass' carcass.

I wander through the crowd, alone and disoriented, unsure what to do next. I search for my posse, for Jesse, Anj, and Duncan, but I don't see them anywhere. Did the Rat Catcher come back? Did Mohawk bust Jesse and Duncan?

I'm starting to unhinge when I hear someone call my name.

Jesse races across the floor and bear-hugs me the second we meet. “It's over,” he says, nodding toward Glass, who's being mobbed by press as the officer escorts him out of the janitor's closet.

“But how did the cops know?”

“Tom helped me,” he says. “We explained everything to Nigel, and he rallied the troops. It was rad. You should've seen Mohawk in action.”

It's then I see the rest of them. And it's not just my friends—Dr. Monroe and Doc are there, too. I wind through the net of people until I reach them. Everyone starts talking at once:
daft numpty…clogs…are you okay?…what happened?…
I latch onto one voice first.

“I'm so sorry.” Dr. Monroe puts a shaking hand on my shoulder. “You were right about Glass and the vector, and I didn't listen. You have some determination—I wouldn't want to be the person standing in your way. Most people would've given up, but not you. Where did you get the strength?”

I shrug and feel the world of tension rush out of me. “I had faith—in my mom.”

A journalist calls my name, but I don't answer. I hook Jesse's hand with my right, Anj's, and by extension, Duncan's, with my left and turn away from everyone.

I'm not looking back anymore. Only forward.

***

“RNA 120: A Front”

December 14, 2013

By Tom Bradley
Philadelphia Inquirer

In response to documents and an audio recording provided by Faith Flores, an intrepid 16-year-old junior at Haverford High, the Federal Bureau of Investigations in Pennsylvania has opened a preliminary inquiry on Monday into allegations that Dr. Steven Glass, researcher at PluraGen Biopharmaceutical, was using a clinical trial for RNA 120, a drug to treat heroin addiction, as a front to test a biological vector known as PL44.

Medical records from the clinical trial indicate that PL44 causes a mutation leading to the genetic form of a rare disease known as Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF). Currently, Alveolix, a drug developed by Glass and patented by PluraGen, is the only treatment for IPF. According to reliable sources, funding for the drug is being pulled for financial reasons, and Glass' position is being cut.

Fifteen people were enlisted in the clinical trial, none of who were informed about PL44. Two of the participants died while undergoing treatment. Records from the trial confirm that at least one of the two women who died had been given the disease-causing vector. DNA testing is being conducted on autopsy specimens from the second woman.

In a statement released to the press, Brian Millman, PluraGen CEO, offered this: “We will cooperate with every aspect of this investigation, and we will be devoting two million dollars to a state-of-the-art drug treatment center dedicated to Augustina Flores and Melinda Rivera, the two women who died in the clinical trial. It is unfortunate that rogue doctors have damaged our company's reputation, but I can assure you that Dr. Glass was acting alone and that we are committed to stringent new oversight controls.”

In a related incident, Victor Navarro, the nephew of Dr. Glass, was arrested and charged with the deaths of Dr. Raymond Carlisle, Pennsylvania State Medical Examiner, who is believed to be connected with the cover-up, and Dr. Joseph Wydner, the director of the Twenty-third Street Methadone Clinic where the RNA 120 clinical trial was being conducted.

Glass is being held without bail, pending further investigation, and declined to comment.

The clinical trial has been suspended.

Twenty-five

A week after Tom's article made the national news, I stroll along the spine of trees edging the Schuylkill River with Jesse at my side. Aunt T and Sam, Anj and Duncan, trail behind. I hold Jesse's hand and think about Mom as we walk. This little patch of nature butting up against the city was her sanctuary.
I don't need four walls and a preacher to find God
, she used to say as she held out a flower for me to inspect or pointed out the name of some bird trilling in a tree.

We step aside as a pack of joggers take over the trail, so they don't trample us with their aerobic enthusiasm. I feel Jesse's eyes on me as I watch the steely spandex thighs round a bend. Between meetings with cops, meetings with Tom, and more meetings with people who wanted to meet, it's the first time we've been alone since the convention center. There's so much to say, I hardly know where to being, but before I can find the first word, I'm in Jesse's arms, against his body, and my lips are too busy kissing to talk. I relax into the kiss and let it linger, forgetting for one soft moment why we're here, forgetting everything but his cool, soft lips and warm tongue, his taste like winter, and coffee and desire. And this time, I don't pull away.

“I told Doc I'm going out west this summer,” Jesse tells me once the kiss runs its course. “He's not happy, but with a little help from my mom, he caved. He agreed I need a break before senior year. I'm going to get a job on a ranch someplace. I could really use some company.”

It's an invitation, I know, but I don't answer. There's so many things to consider now, so many doors opening as old ones close. There's so much to do: Anj's going-away party before she leaves for Scotland and saying good-bye to Duncan and figuring out my future with Aunt T and Sam. And something else.

Aunt T comes up beside me and hands me the blue urn with Mom's ashes. “Ready?”

I look up at a stream of starlings dancing patterns in the cloudless sky, then hug my aunt. “Ready.”

I walk to the water alone and let the frenzy of last week wash over me—reconciliation with Aunt T after her escape to Sam's, letting her hear the recording from my phone, our talk of legal guardianship, Glass' investigation, the Rat Catcher's arrest, head dude of PluraGen coming to our apartment with his entourage of press people to document his scripted apology. Then my thoughts turn again to Mom. Tears sting my eyes as images of her flow through my mind, but for the first time it's not despair I feel but hope.

I take in a long, sharp breath and fill my lungs with the air of this place she loved. I exhale and do it again. When my mind is clear, I open the tin, and plunge my hand into her ashes, feeling the grit of her bones and skin, hair and teeth between my fingers.

“You'll always be with me,” I whisper as I scoop up a handful and cast her ashes to the earth.

I'm reaching in again, getting ready to scatter a second handful, when I spot a splash of white in the tree next to me. At first I think it's a white dove, but then I see the pink eyes. The bird looks at me for a split second before bursting into flight.

“Good-bye,” I call, tossing the rest of her ashes to the wind.

It's not just what happened to my mom that I finally understand, it's something else. Genes aren't my destiny. They're just part of my story. It's the choices I make that will shape my future. I was given a starting place, the rest—what truths to reveal, what lies to tell, whether I give up and give in or stand up and fight back—that part is up to me.

I'm not angry anymore. No more blame. No more guilt. No more lies or hiding. I know the truth. Finally I can let her go.

I watch Mom's guardian angel disappear into the morning sky.

Author's Note

Although everything in this book is scientifically plausible and I have strived to be scientifically accurate, addiction and its possible cures are treated fictitiously. I made up RNA 120 and the use of antisense RNA to treat heroin addiction. Alveolix is a product of my imagination. While the gene names I used are authentic, in reality the genetics of traits like addiction are truly complex, meaning a single variant is unlikely to make one an addict; these traits are the result of complex interactions among multiple genes and environmental factors. If you are interested in learning more about the genetics of addiction, please visit the Genetic Science Learning Center at learn.genetics.utah.edu.

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