Strong Medicine (15 page)

and closing ranks. No doctor, it seemed, ever reported another doctor for

drug addiction. As for a drug-addicted physician losing his license to

practice, Andrew couldn't find a record of its happening.

And yet the question haunted him: What about Noah Townsend's patients who,

in a way, were also Andrew's because of the shared practice, with each

doctor sometimes substituting for the other? Were those patients now at

risk? While Townsend seemed normal in his behavior, and while he had made

no mistakes medically so far as Andrew knew, would that condition continue?

Could it be relied on? Would Noah someday, because of drugs, misdiagnose or

fail to see an important symptom he should have caught? And what of his

even larger responsibility as chief of medicine at St. Bede's?

The more Andrew thought, the more the questions multiplied, the more

elusive were any answers.

In the end he confided in Celia.

It was early evening, a few days before Christmas. Celia and

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Andrew were at home and, with Lisa's excited help, had been decorating their

tree. It was Lisa's first awareness of "Kissmus," as she called it; all

three were loving the experience. Eventually, with his daughter almost

asleep from excitement and fatigue, Andrew gently carried her to bed.

Afterward he stopped briefly in the adjoining bedroom where Bruce, the baby,

was sleeping soundly in his crib.

When Andrew returned to the living room, Celia had mixed a scotch and soda.

"I made it a stiff one," she said as she handed him the glass. "I think you

need it."

As he looked at her inquiringly, she added, "Lisa was good for you tonight;

you were more relaxed than I've seen you in weeks. But you're still

troubled. Aren't you?"

Surprised, he asked, "It shows that much?"

"Darling, we've been married four years."

He said feelingly, "They've been the best four years of my life." While he

drank his scotch Andrew studied the Christmas tree and there was a silence

while Celia waited. Then he said, "If it was that obvious, why didn't you

ask me what was wrong?"

"I knew you'd tell me when you were ready." Celia sipped a daiquiri she had

made for herself. "Do you want to tell me? Now?"

"Yes," he said slowly. "Yes, I think I do."

"My God!" Celia said in a whisper when Andrew had finished. "Oh, my God!"

"so you see," he told her, "if I've been less than a barrel of laughs,

there's been good reason."

She came to him, putting her arms around him, her face against his, holding

him close. "You poor, poor darling. What a burden you've been carrying. I

had no idea. I'm so sorry for you."

"More to the point-be sorry for Noah."

"Oh, I am. I really am. But I'm a woman, Andrew, and you're the one who

means most to me. I can't, I won't, see you go on this way.,,

He said sharply, "Then tell me what to do."

"I know what to do." Celia released herself and turned to face him.

"Andrew, you have to share this. You have to tell someone, and not just

me."

"For instance--who?"

"Isn't it obvious? Someone at the hospital-someone with authority who can

take some action, and help Noah too."

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"Celia, I can't. If I did, it would be talked about, brought out in the

open . . . Noah would be disgraced. He'd be removed as chief of medicine,

God knows what would happen about his license, and either way it would

break him. I cannot, simply cannot, do that."

"Then what's the alternative?"

He said glumly, "I wish I knew."

"I want to help you," Celia said. "I really do, and I have an idea."

"I hope it's better than the last one."

"I'm not sure the last was wrong. But if you won't talk about Noah

Townsend specifically, why not talk to someone in the abstract. Sound

them out. Discuss the subject generally. Find out how other people at the

hospital feel."

"Do you have anyone in mind?"

"Why not the administrator?"

"Len Sweeting? I'm not sure." Andrew took a turn around the room,

considering, then stopped beside the Christmas tree. "Well, at least it's

an idea. Thanks. Let me think about it."

"I trust that you and Celia had a good Christmas," Leonard Sweeting said.

"Yes," Andrew assured him, "we did."

They were in the hospital administrator's office with the door closed.

Sweeting was behind his desk, Andrew in a chair facing it.

The administrator was a tall, lanky ex-lawyer who might have been a

basketball player but instead had the unlikely hobby of pitching

horseshoes, at which he had won several championships. He sometimes said

the championships had been easier than getting doctors to agree about

anything. He had switched from law to hospital work in his twenties and

now, in his late forties, seemed to know as much about medicine as many

physicians. Andrew had come to know Len Sweeting well since their joint

involvement in the Lotromycin incident four years earlier, and on the

whole respected him.

The administrator had thick, bushy eyebrows which moved up and down like

vibrating brushes every time he spoke. They moved now as Sweeting said

briskly, "You said you had a problem, Andrew. Something you need advice

about."

"Actually it's a physician friend of mine in Florida who has the

problem," Andrew lied. "He's on staff at a hospital down there and has

uncovered something he doesn't know how to deal with. My

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friend asked me to find out how we might handle the same situation here."

"What kind of situation?"

"It has to do with drugs." Briefly Andrew sketched out a mythical

situation paralleling his own real one, though being careful not to make

the comparison too close.

As he spoke he was aware of a wariness in Sweeting's eyes, the earlier

friendliness evaporating. The administrator's heavy eyebrows merged into

a frown. At the end he pointedly stood up.

"Andrew, I have enough problems here without taking on one from another

hospital. But my advice is to tell your friend to be very, very cautious.

That's dangerous ground he's treading on, especially in making an

accusation against another doctor. Now, if you'll excuse me . . ."

He knew. With a flash of intuition Andrew realized that Len Sweeting knew

precisely what he had been talking about, and whom. The Florida-friend

gambit had not fooled Sweeting for an instant. God knows how, Andrew

thought, but he's known for longer than I have. And the administrator

wanted no part of it. All he wanted, quite clearly at this moment, was

to get Andrew out of his office.

Something else. If Sweeting knew, then others in the hospital must know

too. Almost certainly that meant fellow physicians, some of them a great

deal senior to Andrew. And they were doing nothing either.

Andrew stood up to go, feeling na:fve and foolish. Len Sweeting came with

him to the door, his friendliness returned, his arm around the younger

man's shoulders.

"Sorry to have to hurry you away like this, but I have important visitors

due-big donors to hospitals who we hope will give us several million

dollars. As you're aware, we really need that kind of money. By the way,

your boss will be joining us. Noah is a tremendous help with

fund-raising. Seems to know everybody, and everybody likes him. There are

times I wonder how this hospital could continue functioning without our

Dr. Townsend."

So there it was. The message, plain and unequivocal: Lay off Noah

Townsend. Because of Noah's connections and moneyed friends, he was too

valuable to St. Bede's for any scandal to intrude. Let's cover it up,

fellas; maybe if we pretend the problem isn't there, it will go away.

And of course, if Andrew attempted to repeat what Sweeting had

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just conveyed to him, the administrator would either deny the conversation

had taken place or claim his remarks were misinterpreted.

In the end, which was later the same day, Andrew decided he could only do

what everyone else was doing-nothing. He resolved, though, that from now on

and as best he could, he would watch his senior colleague closely and try

to ensure that Noah's medical practice or his patients did not suffer.

When Andrew told Celia about the chain of events and what he had decided

she looked at him strangely. "It's your decision and I can understand why

you made it. All the same, it may be something you'll regret."

10

Dr. Vincent Lord, director of research for Felding-Roth Pharmaceuticals,

Inc., was a mixed-up--an unkind person might say '.messed-up"- -personality.

A scientific colleague had observed wryly, "Vince behaves as if his psyche

is whirling in a centrifuge, and he's not sure how it will come out---or how

he wants it to."

That such an assessment should be made at all was in itself paradoxical. At

the relatively young age of thirty-six, Dr. Lord had reached a plateau of

success which many dream of but few attain. But the fact that it was a

plateau, or seemed to be, kept him worrying and wondering about how he got

there and whether anything significant lay beyond it.

What might also be said of Dr. Lord was that if there had not been

disappointments in his life, he would have invented them. Expressed another

way: Some of his disappointments were more illusory than real.

One of them was that he had not received the respect he believed he

deserved from the academic-scientific community, which was snobby about

drug company scientists-regarding them generally, though often erroneously,

as second-raters.

Yet it had been Vincent Lord's own personal, free choice, three years

earlier, to move from an assistant professorship at the Univer-

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sity of Illinois over to industry and Felding-Roth. However, strongly

influencing that choice were Lord's frustration and anger at the time-both

directed at the university-the anger persisting even now to the point

where it had become a permanent corroding bitterness.

Along with the bitterness he sometimes asked himself. Had he been hasty

and unwise in leaving academia? Would he have become a more respected

international scientist had he stayed where he was, or at least moved to

another university somewhere else?

The story behind it all went back six years, to 1954.

That was when Vincent Lord, a graduate student at U of 1, became "Dr.

Lord," with a Ph.D. in organic chemistry. The doctorate was a good one.

The university's chemistry school at Chainpaign-Urbana was acknowledged

as among the finest in the world, and Lord had proved himself a brilliant

student.

His appearance fitted the concept of a scholar. His face was thin,

sensitive, delicately boned and, in a way, agreeable. Less agreeable was

that he rarely smiled and often wore a worried frown. His vision was

poor, perhaps from years of intense studying, and he wore rimless glasses

through which dark green eyes-Lord's strongest feature-looked out with

alertness mingled with suspicion. He was tall and lean, the last because