Strong Medicine (54 page)

He grimaced. "That's all behind us." Then, with a brief, "Excuse me," he

went to the kitchen, returning moments later with a bottle of Schramsberg

champagne. Winnie March followed, beaming, with glasses on a tray.

Andrew announced, "Winnie and I are going to drink to you. You can join us

if you like."

When the glasses were filled, Andrew raised his. "To you, my dearest love!

To everything you are, have been, and will be."

"Me too, Mrs. Jordan," Winnie said. "God bless you!"

Winnie sipped her champagne, then looked at the glass and hesitated. "I'm

not sure I should drink the rest of this."

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Celia asked, "Whyever not?"

"Well . . . it may not be good for the baby." With a glance at Andrew,

Winnie blushed, then giggled. "I just found out I'm preggers-an' after

all this time."

Celia ran to embrace her, "Winnie, that's wonderful news! Much more

important than mine!"

"We're happy for you, Winnie," Andrew said. He took the champagne glass

from her. "You're right. You should do without this stuff now. We'll open

another bottle when your baby's here."

Later, when Celia and Andrew were getting ready for bed, Celia said

tiredly, "It's been quite a day."

"A joyous day all around," Andrew pronounced. "I hope everything stays

that way. No reason why it shouldn't."

He was wrong.

The first hint of bad news came precisely a week later.

Bill Ingram, still boyish despite the passage of years, came into Celia's

office, which would soon be his. Running a hand through his red hair,

unruly as ever, he said, "I thought you should see this, even though I

don't believe it's important. A friend in Paris sent it."

"This" was a newspaper clipping.

"It's a news item from France-Soir, " Ingram explained. "How's your

French?"

"Good enough so I can understand."

As Celia took the paper and began reading, she experienced a sudden sense

of chill and premonition, felt a physical shiver as if her heart had

skipped a beat.

The news story was brief.

A woman in a small French town, Nouzonville, near the Belgian border, had

given birth to a female child, now one year old. Doctors had recently

diagnosed the baby girl as having a central nervous system disorder which

permanently precluded any normal movement of the limbs; also, tests

showed a lack of any brain development. No possible treatment was

foreseen. The child was-in the terrible descriptive term-a vegetable. The

examining doctors expected her to remain one.

During pregnancy the mother had taken Montayne. Now, she and others in

her family were blaming the drug for the baby's birth defects. There was

nothing in the news item to indicate whether Or not this view was shared

by doctors.

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The France-Soir report concluded with a cryptic sentence: Un autre cas en

Espagne, apparernment identique, a W signal6.

Celia stood silent, meditating, weighing the significance of what she had

just read.

... another case, apparently identical, in Spain.

"Just as I said," Bill Ingram assured her, "I don't think there's any

reason we should get concerned. After all, France-Soir is known for

sensational reporting. It's not as if it was printed in Le Monde. "

Celia did not reply. First Australia. Now France and Spain.

All the same, common sense told her Bill was right. There was no reason for

concern. She reminded herself of her own convictions about Montayne, the

painstaking French research, the multicountry, lengthy testing, assurances

sought after and obtained, Montayne's remarkable record of safety. No cause

for concern, of course.

And yet

She said decisively, "Bill, I want you to find out, as quickly as possible,

everything there is to know about those two cases, then report back to me."

She touched the French news clipping, then put it on her desk. "I'll keep

this."

"Okay, if it's what you want." Ingram glanced at his watch. "I'll telephone

Gironde-Chimie. There's still time today, and I have the name of one of

their guys I've spoken to before. But I still don't think-"

"Do it," Celia said. "Do it nowl"

Bill reported back cheerfully an hour later.

"Not to worry!" he pronounced. "I've had a long talk with my friend at

Gironde-Chimie. He knew all about the two cases mentioned by France-Soir he

says they've been investigated thoroughly and there is no cause for alarm,

or even doubts. The company sent a medical-scientific team to Nouzonville,

and flew the same people to Spain to look into the incident there."

Celia asked, "Did he give you more details?"

"Yes." Bill consulted a page of notes he had been carrying. "Incidentally,

both cases seem remarkably similar to that Australian one which turned out

to be a phony. You remember?"

"I know about the Australian report."

"Well, both women-the mothers of the babies born with CNS disorders-were

taking a hodgepodge of other drugs and large

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amounts of alcohol throughout their pregnancies. Also, in the case of the

French birth there's a history of mongolism in the family, while in Spain

the baby's father, and his father, are epileptics."

"But both mothers were taking Montayne?"

"That's true. And my French contact-his name is Jacques Saint-Jean, with

a Ph.D. in chemistry-told me Gironde-Chimie was enormously concerned at

first, just as you were. As he pointed out, their company has as much at

stake as Felding-Roth, maybe more."

Celia said tersely, "Get on with ifl"

"Well, the verdict is: Montayne had absolutely nothing to do with the

birth deficiencies of either baby. The scientists and doctors, including

consultants from outside the company, were unanimous about that. What

they did find was that some of the other drugs being taken by both women

are dangerous in combination and could have - . ."

"I want to read the reports," Celia said. "How soon can we get copies?"

"Both reports are here."

"Here?"

Bill nodded affirmatively. "In this building. Jacques Saint-Jean told me

that Vincent Lord has them. They were sent a couple of weeks ago, as part

of Gironde-Chimie's policy of keeping everyone informed. Would you like

me to ask Vince-"

"No," she said. "I'll get them. That's all, Bill."

"Listen." His voice was troubled. "If you don't mind my saying so, I

don't think you should get too exercised about-"

She snapped, unable to control her mounting tension, "I said that's a111"

"Why do you want to see them?" Vincent Lord asked Celia.

She was in the research director's office where she had come to ask for

the recent reports about Montayne that she and Bill Ingram had discussed.

"Because I think it's important that I read that kind of information for

myself, rather than just hear about it secondhand."

"If, by 'secondhand,' you mean through me," Lord observed, "don't you

think I have more qualifications to read those kind of reports, then make

a judgment-as I already have?"

"What was your judgment?"

"That in neither incident was there any possible involvement of

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Montayne. All the evidence supports that, and it was evidence investigated

thoroughly by qualified, competent people. My additional opinion-now

shared by Gironde-Chimie, by the way-is that the families concerned were

simply trying to extort money. It happens all the time."

Celia asked, "Has Sam been told about the reports-the incidents in France

and Spain?"

Lord shook his head. "Not by me. I didn't consider them significant

enough to bother him."

"All right," Celia said. "At this point I'm not questioning your

decision. But I'd still like to read the reports myself"

Lord's increased friendliness of late had cooled noticeably during their

conversation. Now he said acidly, "If you have some pretensions about

possessing scientific knowledge and making judgments yourself, let me

remind you that your scrubby B.S. chemistry degree is a long way behind

you, and out of date."

While surprised at the research director's reluctance to let her have

what she had asked for, Celia had no intention of turning this into an

argument. She said quietly, "I have no pretensions, Vince. But

pleasel-may I have the reports?"

What came next also surprised her. She had assumed the reports would be

in a general office filing system and that Lord would send for them.

Instead, with a sour expression, he used a key to open a locked drawer

of his desk from which he extracted a folder. Withdrawing papers, he

handed them to Celia.

"Thank you," she acknowledged. "I'll let you have these back."

That evening, though tired when she arrived home, Celia stayed up late

to read the Gironde-Chimie reports and most of the trial transcript from

Australia. The latter caused her most concern.

There were several significant points in the full transcript which the

abridged, summarized version she had read earlier did not contain.

The woman in the Australian case had been stated-in the abridged

version-to be of poor character, a heavy drug user (apart from Montayne),

a near-alcoholic, and a chain smoker. All true.

But also true, and not appearing in the abridged report, was that despite

her background the mother of the deficient child was intelligent, a fact

to which several witnesses testified. Furthermore, there was no known

history of mental impairment or physical deformity in the woman's family.

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A second piece of information new to Celia was that the woman had had two

previous pregnancies which produced normal, healthy children.

The abridged Australian report had stated that the woman did not know who

was the father of her latest child.

But-the full trial transcript revealed-she did know that the father had to

be one of four men, all of whom were questioned by an investigating doctor.

In no case, among the men or their families, was any history of mental or

physical problems found.

The French and Spanish reports, obtained from Vincent Lord, were much as

Bill Ingram had described them earlier in the day. The detail they

contained also confirmed Lord's opinion that the Gironde-Chimie

investigations had been done thoroughly by competent people.

Just the same, the totality of all three documents heightened, rather than

diminished, the unease in Celia's mind. For what was inescapable, despite

all other considerations and opinions, was the fact that three women, in

widely separated places, had produced deformed and mentally defective

babies-and all, during pregnancy, had taken Montayne.

By the end of her reading she had reached a decision: Despite Vincent

Lord's reluctance, Sam Hawthorne must be informed, not only of all known

facts, but of Celia's personal, growing anxiety about Montayne.

12

It was late afternoon next day.

A memo, flagged "URGENT," from Celia to Sam Hawthorne had reached him by