“Any progress with Julie?” He’d told her about his affections one day when they had lunch together in the cafeteria.
“Not yet. But I keep trying.”
“That’s all you can do. Have a good day.”
“I will.”
Sula drove away, thinking Robbie seemed so sweet, so different from his father. She understood why he used a different last name and didn’t want people to know they were related.
“Dr. Warner is not in the hospital,” Serena blurted out as Sula entered the HR office.
“I don’t think she’s at home either.” Sula called Northwest McKenzie again and asked if they had any non- identified patients. They didn’t.
Marcy, the HR director, stepped out of her office and joined their conversation. “I called Dr. Warner’s son, Jeff, and left him a message. He’s the only family member we have contact information for.”
“Should we file a missing persons report?” Sula asked.
“Let’s wait to see what her son says. If he hasn’t heard from her, we will.”
Sula went back to her office and distracted herself by responding to the e-mails and phone calls that had piled up that morning.
At noon, she bought a Luna bar from a vending machine and took it outside to the bench in the courtyard. The drizzle had stopped but the sky was still dark. The R amp;D building loomed in front of her and she couldn’t stop thinking about Dr. Warner. The knot in her stomach made Sula feel certain the woman was not coming back.
What would happen to her research files? Would Rudker destroy Warner’s work on the genetic response to Nexapra? Without Warner, the clinical trials would surely move forward and the screening test would be forgotten. The thought filled her with dismay.
People could not be allowed to kill themselves simply because Rudker was too greedy and too impatient to develop a diagnostic test. Sula had suffered the grief of losing someone to suicide and had experienced the impulse herself more than once. She could not sit back and let those lives be lost. The trials had to be stopped. But how? She couldn’t go to the FDA without proof. All she had was a conversation she’d overheard. The recording she’d made was barely audible, and she couldn’t do anything that would risk her job right now.
Sula wondered if Peterson or one of the other scientists was aware of Warner’s discovery. If they knew about the genetic/suicide link, why hadn’t they been at the meeting with Rudker to back Warner up?
The horrible thought came back to her. Rudker made Warner disappear. What if he had not stopped at intimidation? On an intuitive level, Sula knew the man was capable of violence. But would he hurt-possibly kill someone-over money?
The thought made her jump up. She had to stay rational about this. She would be no help to Dr. Warner or future Nexapra patients if people thought she was flake. Sula tossed her wrapper in the trash and went back into the building.
She tried to write a press release, but she couldn’t stop thinking about Warner’s files. If the doctor had simply pulled a vanishing act, maybe she’d left behind the data that would point out Nexapra’s fatal flaw and put a stop to its development. Somebody had to get to that information before Rudker did. Unless it was already too late.
Chapter 8
Robbie had arranged with his supervisor to take the morning off so he could keep his appointment with the Oregon Research Center. They had asked him a dozen questions over the phone: “What is your blood pressure?” “Have you ever tried to kill yourself?” “Do you use illegal drugs?” He smoked pot every once in a while, but it had been weeks since the last time and they didn’t need to know about it. This morning he had another screening.
The research center was on 20th Avenue and Willamette, so it was an easy bike ride from his apartment near the University of Oregon campus. It drizzled lightly on the way, but he had rain gear and didn’t mind. If the weather got worse while he was in the clinic, he’d strap his bike to the front of a city bus and get to work from there. He liked to ride, but he wasn’t a martyr about it the way some people were.
The small two-story building looked new and Robbie didn’t recall seeing it before. Gray and uninviting with minimal windows. He locked his bike to a sturdy metal rack and went inside. The interior looked like a cross between a dentist’s office and the unemployment division: Plush carpeting and soft tones in the front and counseling cubes in the rear. He approached the receptionist and told her he had an appointment.
“For the depression trial? Excellent. Do you have a referring physician?” She had a friendly smile and didn’t sound like she grew up in Eugene. Robbie couldn’t place the accent.
“No. I work at Prolabs and saw a flyer in the lunchroom.”
“Excellent. One of the company’s own.” She handed him a clipboard with a thick stack of papers. “I need you to fill out this questionnaire. Then we’ll analyze your qualifications and let you know if you’re eligible. If you are, Dr. Lucent will give you a complete physical. Also, there’s a consent form in the back. Please read through it, but it isn’t necessary to sign it yet.”
“Okay.” Robbie wondered what would make him eligible or not. Did he have to be despondent? Or too poor to afford medication?
The paperwork took forty-five minutes. After completing a health history, the next section detailed the symptoms of depression: sadness or irritability, low energy, difficulty concentrating, insomnia, low self-esteem, loss of interest in social or physical activities. For each, he had to indicate how often he experienced the symptoms and how long the feelings lasted. Then the questions became more specific: Have you ever taken medicine for depression? Yep. He listed the other drug he’d taken and noted that he was using Zoloft now.
Have you ever had thoughts of killing yourself? Didn’t everybody? He had never acted on those feelings, so he hesitated to check yes. He figured this was one of the important questions that would determine eligibility. Were they looking for people with serious depression or were they screening out the extremes? He decided to be honest and checked yes. For frequency, he indicated occasionally. He finally flipped to the consent form, which went on for pages about side effects and liability. Robbie skimmed over it. They wouldn’t give people the drug if it wasn’t safe.
He returned the clipboard to the receptionist. She smiled. “If you’d like to wait, one of our clinicians will review this now to determine your eligibility.”
“If you’re going to run a credit check, I might as well leave now.”
She gave him a hearty laugh, which cheered him up considerably.
While he waited, Robbie stepped outside and smoked a cigarette. He’d picked up the habit in high school, and even though he had come to hate it as much as his parents did, he couldn’t quit. Every time he tried, he ended up too depressed to function. So he limited himself to five or so a day most of the time. Nicotine had a direct effect on brain chemicals, and his brain needed all the stimulus it could get.
It began to rain, so he tossed the butt into the wet bark and went back inside to wait. In a few minutes, a pretty woman in a white coat came out and called his name.
“Hi. I’m Dr. Lucent. I believe you’re eligible for this trial. Would you like to proceed?” She had nearly black hair, an easy smile, and reminded him a little bit of his mother.
“Sure.”
“Great. Let’s go back to my office and go over some information.”
Robbie followed her back to a small room that looked somewhat like a doctor’s examining area. She motioned him to sit and they spend about twenty minutes going over his answers to the depression questions. Dr. Lucent kept asking him to rate his feelings on a scale of one to ten. She jotted down his responses and, at the end, performed a calculation.
After a moment, she said, “The good news is that this is not a placebo trial. The sponsor is testing its investigational therapy, Nexapra, against the currently marketed therapy, Prozac. You will be taking one of the two, but you won’t know which one. Did you read the consent form?
“Yes.”
“Do you feel you have a thorough understanding of the possible side effects?”
