Healer (30 page)

“Pharma didn’t interest me when I was younger. I’ve seen people make a lot of money in it, but the risks seemed too unpredictable.” Addison leans forward to add something but Walker puts his hand up. “Bear with me. You already know a lot of what I have to say, but if we’re going to be bedfellows in this I want to say it anyway.”

Claire glances at her husband and leans her elbows on the table with her chin in her hands, ready to absorb Walker’s point of view, an economic side of this story she’s never fully heard.

“I like cancer.” He pauses as if he’s replaying his own words, realizing how they sound. Then he breaks into a self-deprecating smile. “I like
investing
in cancer. Cancer treatment.” The waiter pours out the last of the second bottle, Walker holds a hand across the top of his glass. He goes on. “My first wife died of cancer.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Claire says.

Walker wipes his mouth on his napkin, folds it carefully before putting it back in his lap. “Chronic myelogenous leukemia at thirty-nine. She might have lived if Gleevec had been on the market then.” His focus comes back to the table. “It was a long time ago.” He smiles, though a bit sadly. “I’ve had a very patient and lovely second wife for the last eight years. But I didn’t get rich being sentimental, and so that is not the main attraction. Five years ago I put ten million dollars into a cardiovascular drug. Armor Labs in California developed it. Everybody who saw the data was stunned—said it was the best new drug they’d seen in decades. Even the FDA. Demographics projected it could save 200,000 people a year between heart attacks and strokes. Then the FDA decided we had to study it in 50,000 people before it could be approved, which would take more than ten years. Armor went bankrupt in year three.”

“I remember that,” Addison says. Then he turns to Claire. “Cancer drugs have a shorter time to market since you’re studying them in patients with a terminal disease.” She nods at him, wondering if he could have forgotten all the times she’s listened to him tell her this and more
about his work. He’s too distracted, focusing on the endgame instead of the moment.

“That was the last drug I put money into. I do own a large holding company that invests in some biopharma research—including several CROs and an IRB—but I manage their business, not their science. He looks straight at Claire, his graying eyebrows lifted. “A CRO is a contract research organization that helps run drug studies, finds the volunteers and runs all the tests. The IRB is the review board that oversees any human drug testing.” Claire smiles politely at this, catches Addison giving her a look that clearly means
Please just play dumb.

Then Walker reaches into a briefcase at his feet and pulls out a thick binder that Claire recognizes as the reams of information Addison has been carting to meetings all over the country. He pushes his dessert plate aside and plants the notebook squarely in front of himself. “I like this drug. I like it, and the consultant I had review it likes it.” Addison shifts in his seat. Claire looks at him but can tell he is trying not to meet her eyes, doesn’t want to see his own vulnerability in her expression. “Now for my questions,” Walker says.

Addison clears his throat and opens his hands over the table like two birds taking flight. “Ask me anything you’d like to. If I don’t have the answer I’ll get it for you.”

“There are a lot of labs working on antiangiogenesis drugs. Many are already at the human trial phase. You had only a provisional patent on this drug, is that right?”

“Yes,” Addison says. He flares his hands again then quickly drops them. Claire watches him, recognizing every sign of his anxiety, holding her breath. Addison continues, “I’m sure you know how tricky the timing can be on patent applications—we wanted to protect the basic molecule while it was still in development but not be forced to disclose the unique structure. I wanted that twelve-month window the provisional patent gave us.”

“But in the meantime some other lab could be making your drug. Vascumab.” Walker’s hands are resting on either side of Addison’s files, his fingers in a relaxed arch. Claire has the feeling he knows every answer before he asks the question.

Addison clears his throat again and Claire has to lock her hands in her lap to keep from gripping his knee. “I felt—and believe to this day—that vascumab is a singular molecule.”

Walker studies him, motionless, like a hunter waiting for precisely the right opening. “Convince me that your patent situation doesn’t expose my investment to greater risk.” He fans his arm across the table, taking in the room, taking in the whole world. “You have no way of knowing the lab down the street isn’t about to put in their own patent application for the same molecule. Beat you to the finish line.”

Addison moves his head in a slow figure eight, not a yes, not a no. Claire waits, her mouth going dry. “Science isn’t a process that happens in isolation, Ron. It’s a ladder of incremental steps that a lot of people around the world are building at the same time. It’s very rare—extremely rare—to have one individual or one lab make a huge leap ahead of anyone else.” He pauses. Claire can almost hear him deciding how far to go. “But I have. It may look like a small difference in the chemical structure, but it completely changes the binding characteristics. I haven’t seen any other lab focusing on that variance. I believe vascumab is going to change the way we treat cancer, not just in the U.S. In the whole world. It is going to change the meaning of that diagnosis.”

Something passes across Walker’s face, little more than the way the light is reflected in his eyes. He isn’t hearing anything he didn’t expect; Claire is sure of that. He is testing. Testing Addison. “How confident are you that vascumab can be safely studied in humans within the year?” Walker asks, sitting a touch straighter, little more than the twitch of a muscle. “Your own child. Or Claire, here. How comfortable would you be giving this drug to them?”

Claire sees Addison stall; she knots her hands in her lap. Walker waits, unblinking, clearly knows more than anything printed in that binder, more than any bankrupting legal fees could protect—the silence makes her want to stand up and put an end to all the possibilities right now, collect their daughter and their bags and the tentative purchases they made today on the breath of hope and drive back across the mountains to Hallum.

But then Addison pushes past the question, into a part of himself beyond shame or ego, lets himself be taken over by the same conviction that drove vascumab from a sketch on a scrap of paper to a biologically active compound. “I believe the mouse studies were flawed. They need to be repeated. As soon as they are I would be happy to be the first human volunteer.”

Walker still doesn’t move, locked on Addison’s eyes as if he can see all the way through to whatever heaven or hell has in store. And Addison holds his own with it, stares right back until, slowly, Walker breaks into a grin. He flicks his eyes at the waiter and within a minute there is a bottle of champagne on the table with three glasses. “Well, then. Let’s be sure we get it on the market before any of us needs it.”

After too much champagne they all walk down to Steinbrueck Park overlooking Puget Sound, the night so clear and moonless even city lights can’t diminish the stars. They stand with their heads craned back, testing each other on constellations, listening to the plaintive bellow of the ferry’s horn. Claire starts to tell Walker about the times Addison would wait for three shooting stars, but changes it to something less intimate. “Funny to think some of those stars are already dead. That used to blow me away when I was a kid. But it always made me feel like fate had a plan for me—my own light after death, I guess.” She drops her chin level with the ground again and stumbles against Ron in a wave of dizziness. “Oh God. Champagne after wine.”

Walker has a hand behind his own head, supporting it like a pillow so he can stare straight up. “I don’t know. Always made me feel more like an accident. I think you earn your life.”

Claire is quiet on the walk back to the hotel. Addison seems lost in plans until he asks her what she thinks about the dinner, whether she is excited.

“Stunned more than excited, I guess,” she says, leaning into him and wrapping her arm around his. “And a little drunk. But I’ll wake up excited. So can I ask why you were so resistant to calling Ron, or will you get mad at me again?” He should take it as a joke, the way she lets her voice sing. When he doesn’t respond immediately she worries the
wine has relaxed her judgment too much, the issue is still too ensnared in their balance of marital power.

But his answer falls outside of any subject she’d been expecting. “Because Rick made the same suggestion to me. Just before we split up the team. He thought I should get Ron interested before the mouse data leaked out.” Addison takes his arm out of hers and stops in the middle of the sidewalk. “Paranoia, maybe. Embarrassment. You were walking on a landmine.”

Jory has fallen asleep across the bedspread in her clothes; the three empty chocolate wrappers from their turndown treats litter her pillow. Claire shimmies the covers out from under her and rolls her between the sheets. Jory sleeps through it all with nonsensical grumbling, but mumbles, “I love you, Mama,” just before Claire closes her door.

Addison is in the bathroom. She knocks. “I forgot my phone charger. Where’s yours?” The water is running and he doesn’t answer, so she opens the top dresser drawer to rummage through his boxers and undershirts and daybook and computer cords. Underneath them all she uncovers the framed picture missing from the mantelpiece—Jory. Jory weighing less than three pounds, a pencil-sized endotracheal tube strapped to her pale rosebud mouth, bunny-shaped EKG pads over her chest and an IV line taped into her scalp. Her head was the size of a tennis ball. Claire clearly remembers the nearly imperceptible weight of it when they’d let her hold her. The translucent skin over her hands and feet was mottled purple and pink, her ribs puffed like the veil-thin wings of a butterfly each time the ventilator cycled. All the tapes and straps holding baby Jory together had sweet pictures on them: teddy bears and stars, as if designing them for the child she might become gave them less austerity, more healing power.

The picture makes Claire’s heart turn over—because she has found it again, and because she remembers it all again. Remembers the wooden rocker they let her sit in day after night after day, waiting for Jory’s tissue paper lungs to grow, waiting for the fetal channels in her heart to close. Claire had known too much. Addison could stand beside the incubator and talk excitedly with any nurse that brought news of
progress, however small. Claire would have traded every second of her education for some of his naïveté.

But Jory is here now, born just across the cutting edge of neonatal miracles. Here they all are.

She puts the picture back beneath his underwear when the bathroom door opens. Addison sits on the bed. “So how do you feel?” he asks.

She sits down next to him, looks at his profile, his cheeks flushed and damp from washing his face. “You first. When do you think we can believe it?”

He shrugs and rubs his face, runs his fingers up through his hair, the smell of scented soap exhaling from his skin. “Not until the lawyers sign.” He smiles at her. “Never till the lawyers sign. It could take months, assuming Ron doesn’t change his mind. There’s a chance things could go faster because he’s already connected with a CRO and an IRB. If we could run the drug trials through them.”

“That sounds so nepotistic, doesn’t it? How can you own the research organization
and
the review board that are evaluating the drug you’re investing in? It seems like a conflict of interest.”

“He owns the holding company that manages them. I think he’s pretty removed. Anyway, he can’t vote. He wouldn’t be allowed to actually sit on the board. If you think about it, how objective is a traditional academic review board that oversees its own studies—asking faculty to criticize a study designed by their boss? The last thing any investor wants is a lawsuit. They have every incentive to keep it safe. And if you take all the profit out of it, why should anyone invest the half a billion dollars it takes to get a drug to market?”

Claire scans his face with a half smile. “Just testing you,” she teases.

He pulls her backward on the bed and rolls over her. “But that champagne felt like the real stuff.” He brushes her hair off her face, lets his eyes roam the arc of her brow, the slope of her cheek. “Your turn. How
do
you feel? Really?”

Claire lets her arms fall back on the bed and looks past Addison’s face. “I don’t know yet.” She pauses and adds, “Tired. I’m tired. You know how sometimes you don’t even realize how tired you are until the stress lets up?” And that was true for her right now. It reminded her of a
story she’d heard from one patient about a badly botched border crossing—two people had died within a thousand yards of water. Dan said it happened a lot; they would get close enough to almost smell it, almost see the lights of a house and collapse, as if the most they could hope for was to have their bodies claimed; their souls had fled miles before. She looks into Addison’s face. “So what do you think? Do you think we really get the life we earn? Did we earn this life?”

“
This
life?” he says, emphasizing the here and now, making it clear that he can’t answer that with a simple yes or no after the precarious ride of the last year. “Maybe.” He thinks about it another minute. “Yeah. I have to say I probably earned it. Both the crash and the recovery. If it really comes. You don’t?”

Claire turns toward the window, a siren passing in the street below. “I think… I think I might have said so before I worked at the clinic.” She pauses. “I can’t just walk out on them, Addison. Dan’s missed two days in the last week, for ‘appointments in Wenatchee.’”

“Well. We aren’t there yet. You worried Dan’s sick?”

She huffs. “He cuts me off if I even think about asking.”

“Then I guess this isn’t the time to think about it.” He moves closer and runs his hand lightly down her sternum, reaches behind to unzip her dress.