Next: A Novel (3 page)

The security guys wanted to know what was in the dewar, which was no longer smoking. Vasco got some gloves and pulled out the long metal stick. There was nothing there, just a series of empty clips where the embryos should have been. The embryos had been removed.

“You mean to say he killed himself?” one of the security men said.

“That’s right,” Vasco said. “He worked in an embryology lab. He knew about the danger of liquid nitrogen in a confined space.” Nitrogen caused more laboratory fatalities than any other chemical. Half the people who died were trying to rescue co-workers who had collapsed in confined spaces.

“It was his way out of a bad situation,” Vasco said.

Later, driving home with him, Dolly said, “So what happened to the embryos?”

Vasco shook his head. “No idea. The kid never got them.”

“You think the girl took them? Before she went to his room?”

“Somebody took them.” Vasco sighed. “The hotel doesn’t know her?”

“They reviewed security cameras. They don’t know her.”

“And her student status?”

“University had her as a student last year. She didn’t enroll this year.”

“So she’s vanished.”

“Yeah,” Dolly said. “Her, the dark-skinned guy, the embryos. Everything vanished.”

“I’d like to know how all this goes together,” Vasco said.

“Maybe it doesn’t,” Dolly said.

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Vasco said. Up ahead, he saw the neon of a roadhouse in the desert.

He pulled over. He needed a drink.

CH001

Division 48 of Los Angeles Superior Court was a wood-paneled room dominated by the great seal of the state of California. The room was small and had a tawdry feeling. The reddish carpet was frayed and streaked with dirt. The wood veneer on the witness stand was chipped, and one of the fluorescent lights was out, leaving the jury box darker than the rest of the room. The jurors themselves were dressed casually, in jeans and short-sleeve shirts. The judge’s chair squeaked whenever the Honorable Davis Pike turned away to glance at his laptop, which he did often throughout the day. Alex Burnet suspected he was checking his e-mail or his stocks.

All in all, this courtroom seemed an odd place to litigate complex issues of biotechnology, but that was what they had been doing for the past two weeks in Frank M. Burnet v. Regents of the University of California .

Alex was thirty-two, a successful litigator, a junior partner in her law firm. She sat at the plaintiff’s table with the other members of her father’s legal team, and watched as her father took the witness stand. Although she smiled reassuringly, she was, in fact, worried about how he would fare.

Frank Burnet was a barrel-chested man who looked younger than his fifty-one years. He appeared healthy and confident as he was sworn in. Alex knew that her father’s vigorous appearance could undermine his case. And, of course, the pretrial publicity had been savagely negative. Rick Diehl’s PR team had worked hard to portray her dad as an ungrateful, greedy, unscrupulous man. A man who interfered with medical research. A man who wouldn’t keep his word, who just wanted money.

None of that was true—in reality, it was the opposite of the truth. But not a single reporter had called her father to ask his side of the story. Not one. Behind Rick Diehl stood Jack Watson, the famous philanthropist. The media assumed that Watson was the good guy, and therefore her father was the bad guy. Once that version of the morality play appeared in theNew York Times (written by the local entertainment reporter), everybody else fell into line. There was a huge “me, too” piece in theL.A. Times, trying to outdo the New York version in vilifying her father. And the local news shows kept up a daily drumbeat about the man who wanted to halt medical progress, the man who dared criticize UCLA, that renowned center of learning, the great hometown university. A half-dozen cameras followed her and her father whenever they walked up the courthouse steps.

Their own efforts to get the story out had been singularly unsuccessful. Her father’s hired media advisor was competent enough, but no match for Jack Watson’s well-oiled, well-financed machine.

Of course, members of the jury would have seen some of the coverage. And the impact of the coverage was to put added pressure on her father not merely to tell his story, but also to redeem himself, to contradict the damage already done to him by the press, before he ever got to the witness stand.

Her father’s attorney stood and began his questions. “Mr. Burnet, let me take you back to the month of June, some eight years ago. What were you doing at that time?”

“I was working construction,” her father said, in a firm voice. “Supervising all the welding on the Calgary natural gas pipeline.”

“And when did you first suspect you were ill?”

“I started waking up in the night. Soaking wet, drenched.”

“You had a fever?”

“I thought so.”

“You consulted a doctor?”

“Not for a while,” he said. “I thought I had the flu or something. But the sweats never stopped.

After a month, I started to feel very weak. Then I went to the doctor.”

“And what did the doctor tell you?”

“He said I had a growth in my abdomen. And he referred me to the most eminent specialist on the West Coast. A professor at UCLA Medical Center, in Los Angeles.”

“Who was that specialist?”

“Dr. Michael Gross. Over there.” Her father pointed to the defendant, sitting at the next table.

Alex did not look over. She kept her gaze on her father.

“And were you subsequently examined by Dr. Gross?”

“Yes, I was.”

“He conducted a physical exam?”

“Yes.”

“Did he do any tests at that time?”

“Yes. He took blood and he did X-rays and a CAT scan of my entire body. And he took a biopsy of my bone marrow.”

“How was that done, Mr. Burnet?”

“He stuck a needle in my hipbone, right here. The needle punches through the bone and into the marrow. They suck out the marrow and analyze it.”

“And after these tests were concluded, did he tell you his diagnosis?”

“Yes. He said I had acute T-cell lymphoblastic leukemia.”

“What did you understand that disease to be?”

“Cancer of the bone marrow.”

“Did he propose treatment?”

“Yes. Surgery and then chemotherapy.”

“And did he tell you your prognosis? What the outcome of this disease was likely to be?”

“He said that it wasn’t good.”

“Was he more specific?”

“He said, probably less than a year.”

“Did you subsequently get a second opinion from another doctor?”

“Yes, I did.”

“With what result?”

“My diagnosis was…he; uh…he confirmed the diagnosis.” Her father paused; bit his lip, fighting emotion. Alex was surprised. He was usually tough and unemotional. She felt a twinge of concern for him, even though she knew this moment would help his case. “I was scared, really scared,” her father said. “They all told me…I didn’t have long to live.” He lowered his head.

The courtroom was silent.

“Mr. Burnet, would you like some water?”

“No. I’m fine.” He raised his head, passed his hand across his forehead.

“Please continue when you’re ready.”

“I got a third opinion, too. And everybody said to me that Dr. Gross was the best doctor for this disease.”

“So you initiated your therapy with Dr. Gross.”

“Yes. I did.”

Her father seemed to have recovered. Alex sat back in her chair, took a breath. The testimony unrolled smoothly now, a story her father had told dozens of times before. How he, a scared and frightened man, fearing for his life, had put his faith in Dr. Gross; how he had undergone surgery and chemotherapy under the direction of Dr. Gross; how the symptoms of the disease had slowly faded over the course of the following year; how Dr. Gross had seemed at first to believe that her father was well, his treatment successfully completed.

“You had follow-up examinations with Dr. Gross?”

“Yes. Every three months.”

“With what result?”

“Everything was normal. I gained weight, my strength came back, my hair grew back. I felt good.”

“And then what happened?”

“About a year later, after one of my checkups, Dr. Gross called to say he needed to do more tests.”

“Did he say why?”

“He said some of my blood work didn’t look right.”

“Did he say which tests, specifically?”

“No.”

“Did he say you still had cancer?”

“No, but that’s what I was afraid of. He had never repeated any tests before.” Her father shifted in his chair. “I asked him if the cancer had come back, and he said, ‘Not at this point, but we need to monitor you very closely.’ He insisted I needed constant testing.”

“How did you react?”

“I was terrified. In a way, it was worse the second time. When I was sick the first time, I made my will, made all the preparations. Then I got well and I got a new lease on life—a chance to start over. Then his phone call came, and I was terrified again.”

“You believed you were sick.”

“Of course. Why else would he be repeating tests?”

“You were frightened?”

“Terrified.”

Watching the questioning, Alex thought, It’s too bad we don’t have pictures. Her father appeared vigorous and hearty. She remembered when he had been frail, gray, and weak. His clothes had hung on his frame; he looked like a dying man. Now he looked strong, like the construction worker he had been all his life. He didn’t look like a man who became frightened easily. Alex knew these questions were essential to establish a basis for fraud, and a basis for mental distress.

But it had to be done carefully. And their lead lawyer, she knew, had a bad habit of ignoring his own notes once the testimony was rolling.

The lawyer said, “What happened next, Mr. Burnet?”

“I went in for tests. Dr. Gross repeated everything. He even did another liver biopsy.”

“With what result?”

“He told me to come back in six months.”

“Why?”

“He just said, ‘Come back in six months.’”

“How did you feel at this time?”

“I felt healthy. But I figured I’d had a relapse.”

“Dr. Gross told you that?”

“No. He never told me anything. Nobody at the hospital ever told me anything. They just said,

‘Come back in six months.’”

Naturally enough, her father believed he was still sick. He met a woman he might have married, but didn’t because he thought he did not have long to live. He sold his house and moved into a small apartment, so he wouldn’t have a mortgage.

“It sounds like you were waiting to die,” the attorney said.

“Objection!”

“I’ll withdraw the question. But let’s move on. Mr. Burnet, how long did you continue going to UCLA for testing?”

“Four years.”

“Four years. And when did you first suspect you were not being told the truth about your condition?”

“Well, four years later, I still felt healthy. Nothing had happened. Every day, I was waiting for lightning to strike, but it never did. But Dr. Gross kept saying I had to come back for more tests, more tests. By then I had moved to San Diego, and I wanted to have my tests done there, and sent up to him. But he said no, I had to do the tests at UCLA.”

“Why?”

“He said he preferred his own lab. But it didn’t make sense. And he was giving me more and more forms to sign.”

“What forms?”

“At first, they were just consent forms to acknowledge that I was undertaking a procedure with risk. Those first forms were one or two pages long. Pretty soon there were other forms that said I agreed to be involved in a research project. Each time I went back, there were still more forms.

Eventually the forms were ten pages long, a whole document in dense legal language.”

“And did you sign them?”

“Toward the end, no.”

“Why not?”

“Because some of the forms were releases to permit the commercial use of my tissues.”

“That bothered you?”

“Sure. Because I didn’t think he was telling me the truth about what he was doing. The reason for all the tests. On one visit, I asked Dr. Gross straight out if he was using my tissues for commercial purposes. He said absolutely not, his interests were purely research. So I said okay, and I signed everything except the forms allowing my tissues to be used for commercial purposes.”

“And what happened?”

“He got very angry. He said he would not be able to treat me further unless I signed all the forms, and I was risking my health and my future. He said I was making a big mistake.”

“Objection! Hearsay.”

“All right. Mr. Burnet, when you refused to sign the consent forms, did Dr. Gross stop treating you?”

“Yes.”

“And did you then consult a lawyer?”

“Yes.”

“And what did you subsequently discover?”

“That Dr. Gross had sold my cells—the cells he took from my body during all these tests—to a drug company called BioGen.”

“And how did you feel when you heard that?”

“I was shocked,” her father said. “I had gone to Dr. Gross when I was sick, and scared, and vulnerable. I had trusted my doctor. I had put my life in his hands. I trusted him. And then it turned out that he had been lying to me, and scaring me needlessly for years , just so he could steal parts of my own body from me and sell them to make a profit. For himself. He never cared about me at all. He just wanted to take my cells.”

“Do you know what those cells were worth?”

“The drug company said three billion dollars.”

The jury gasped.

CH002

Alex had been watching the jury all during the latest testimony. Their faces were impassive, but nobody moved, nobody shifted. The gasps were involuntary, evidence of how deeply engaged they were with what they were hearing. And the jury remained transfixed as the questions continued:

“Mr. Burnet, did Dr. Gross ever apologize to you for misleading you?”

“No.”

“Did he ever offer to share his profit with you?”

“No.”

“Did you ask him to?”

“Eventually I did, yes. When I realized what he had already done. They were my cells, from my body. I thought I should have something to say about what was done with them.”