by Robin Cook
“Your real point is that National Health Care has a very specific type of advertising it wants,” Brian said. “Tell Terese what you told me just before she came in here.”
“It’s simple,” Robert said, making an open gesture with his hands. “They want either ‘talking heads’ discussing actual patient experiences, or a celebrity spokesperson. They couldn’t care less whether their ad wins a Clio or any of the other awards. They want results. They want market share, and I want to give it to them.”
“Am I hearing that Willow and Heath wants to turn its back on its successes and become a mere vendor shop?” Terese asked. “We’re on the edge of becoming one of the big-league firms. And how did we get here? We got here by doing quality advertising. We’ve carried on in the Doyle-Dane-Bernback tradition. If we start letting clients dictate that we turn out slop, we’re doomed.”
“What I’m hearing is the usual conflict between the account executive and the creative,” Taylor said, interrupting the increasingly heated discussion. “Robert, you think Terese is this self-indulgent child who is bent on alienating the client. Terese, you think Robert is this shortsighted pragmatist who wants to throw out the baby with the bathwater. The trouble is you are both right and both wrong at the same time. You have to use each other as a team. Stop arguing and deal with the problem at hand.”
For a moment everyone was quiet. Zeus had spoken and everyone knew he was on target as usual.
“All right,” Brian said finally. “Here’s our reality. National Health is a vital client to our long-term stability. Thirty-odd days ago it asked for an internal review, which we expected in a couple of months. They now have told us they want it next week.”
“Next week!” Terese all but shouted. “My God.” It took months to put together a new campaign and pitch it.
“I know that will put the creatives under a lot of pressure,” Brian said. “But the reality is National Health is the boss. The problem is that after our pitch, if they are not satisfied, they’ll set up an outside review. The account will then be up for grabs, and I don’t have to remind you that these health-care giants are going to be the advertising cash cows of the next decade. All the agencies are interested.”
“As chief financial officer I think I should make it clear what the loss of the National Health account would do to our bottom line,” Phil Atkins said. “We’ll have to put off the restructuring because we won’t have the funds to buy back our junk bonds.”
“Obviously it is in all our best interests that we not lose the account,” Brian said.
“I don’t know if it is possible to put together a pitch for next week,” Terese said.
“You have anything you can show us at the moment?” Brian asked.
Terese shook her head.
“You must have something,” Robert said. “I assume you have a team working on it.” The smile had returned to the corners of his mouth.
“Of course we have a team on National Health,” Terese said. “But we haven’t had any ‘big ideas’ to date. Obviously we thought we had several more months.”
“Perhaps you might assign some additional personnel,” Brian said. “But I’ll leave that up to your judgment.” Then to the rest of the group he said: “For now we’ll adjourn this meeting until we have something from Creative to look at.” He stood up. Everybody else did the same.
Dazed, Terese stumbled out of the cabin and descended to the agency’s main studio on the floor below.
Willow and Heath had reversed a trend that began during the seventies and eighties when New York advertising firms had experienced a diaspora to varying chic sections of the city like TriBeCa and Chelsea. The agency returned to the old stamping ground of Madison Avenue, taking over several floors of a modest-sized building.
Terese found Colleen at her drawing board.
“What’s the scoop?” Colleen asked. “You look pale.”
“Trouble!” Terese exclaimed.
Colleen had been Terese’s first hire. She was her most reliable art director. They got along famously both professionally and socially. Colleen was a milky-white-skinned strawberry blonde with a smattering of pale freckles over an upturned nose. Her eyes were a deep blue, a much stronger hue than Terese’s. She favored oversized sweatshirts that somehow seemed to accentuate rather than hide her enviable figure.
“Let me guess,” Colleen said. “Has National Health pushed up the deadline for the review?”
“How’d you know?”
“Intuition,” Colleen said. “When you said ‘trouble,’ that’s the worst thing I could think of.”
“The Robert-and-Helen sideshow brought in information that National Health has lost more market share to AmeriCare despite our campaign.”
“Damn!” Colleen said. “It’s a good campaign and a great sixty-second commercial.”
“You know it and I know it,” Terese said. “Problem is that it wasn’t shown enough. I have an uncomfortable suspicion that Helen undermined us and talked them out of the two-hundred- to three-hundred-point TV commercial buy they had initially intended to make. That would have been saturation. I know it would have worked.”
“I thought you told me you had pulled out the stops to guarantee National Health’s market share would go up,” Colleen said.
“I did,” Terese said. “I’ve done everything I could think of and then some. I mean, it’s my best sixty-second spot. You told me yourself.”
Terese rubbed her forehead. She was getting a headache. She could still feel her pulse clanging away at her temples.
“You might as well tell me the bad news,” Colleen said. She put down her drawing pencil and swung around to face Terese. “What’s the new time frame?”
“National Health wants us to pitch a new campaign next week.”
“Good Lord!” Colleen said.
“What do we have so far?” Terese asked.
“Not a lot.”
“You must have some tissues or some preliminary executions,” Terese said. “I know I haven’t been giving you any attention lately since we’ve had deadlines with three other clients. But you have had a team working on this for almost a month.”
“We’ve been having strategy session after strategy session,” Colleen said. “A lot of brainstorming, but no big idea. Nothing’s jumped out and grabbed us. I mean, I have a sense of what you are looking for.”
“Well, I want to see what you have,” Terese said. “I don’t care how sketchy or preliminary. I want to see what the team has been doing. I want to see it today.”
“All right,” Colleen said without enthusiasm. “I’ll get everybody together.”
3
WEDNESDAY, 11:15 A.M., MARCH 20, 1996
Susanne Hard had never liked hospitals.
A scoliotic back had kept her in and out of them as a child. Hospitals made her nervous. She hated the sense that she was not in control and that she was surrounded by the sick and the dying.
Susanne was a firm believer in the adage If something can go wrong, it will go wrong. She felt this way particularly in relation to hospitals. Indeed, on her last admission, she’d been carted off to urology to face some frightful procedure before she’d finally been able to convince a reluctant technician to read the name on her wristband. They’d had the wrong patient.
On her present admission Susanne wasn’t sick. The previous night her labor had started with her second child. In addition to her back problem, her pelvis was distorted, making a normal vaginal delivery impossible. As with her first child, she had to have a cesarean section.
Since she’d just undergone abdominal surgery, her doctor insisted that she stay at least a few days. No amount of cajoling on Susanne’s part had been successful in convincing the doctor otherwise.
Susanne tried to relax by wondering what kind of child she’d just birthed. Would he be like his brother, Allen, who had been a wonderful baby? Allen had slept through the night almost from day one. He’d been a delight, and now that he was three and
already exerting independence, Susanne was looking forward to a new baby. She thought of herself as a natural mother.
With a start, Susanne awoke. She’d surprised herself by nodding off. What had awakened her was a white-clad figure fiddling with the IV bottles that hung from a pole at the head of her bed.
“What are you doing?” Susanne asked. She felt paranoid about anybody doing anything she didn’t know about.
“Sorry to have awakened you, Mrs. Hard,” a nurse said. “I was just hanging up a new bottle of fluid. Yours is just about out.”
Susanne glanced at the IV snaking into the back of her hand. As an experienced hospital patient, she suggested that it was time for the IV to come out.
“Maybe I should check on that,” the nurse said. She then waltzed out of the room.
Tilting her head back, Susanne looked at the IV bottle to see what it was. It was upside down, so she couldn’t read the label.
She started to turn over, but a sharp pain reminded her of her recently sutured incision. She decided to stay on her back.
Gingerly she took a deep breath. She didn’t feel any discomfort until right at the end of inspiration.
Closing her eyes, Susanne tried again to calm down. She knew that she still had a significant amount of drugs “on board” from the anesthesia, so sleep should be easy. The trouble was, she didn’t know if she wanted to be asleep with so many people coming in and out of her room.
A very soft clank of plastic hitting plastic drifted out of the background noise of the hospital and caught Susanne’s attention. Her eyes blinked open. She saw an orderly off to the side by the bureau.
“Excuse me,” Susanne called.
The man turned around. He was a handsome fellow in a white coat over scrubs. From where he was standing, Susanne could not read his name tag. He appeared surprised to be addressed.
“I hope I didn’t disturb you, ma’am,” the young man said.
“Everybody is disturbing me,” Susanne said without malice. “It’s like Grand Central Station in here.”
“I’m terribly sorry,” the man said. “I can always return later if it would be more convenient.”
“What are you doing?” Susanne asked.
“Just filling your humidifier,” the man said.
“What do I have a humidifier for?” Susanne said. “I didn’t have one after my last cesarean.”
“The anesthesiologists frequently order them this time of year,” the man said. “Right after surgery, patients’ throats are often irritated from the endotracheal tube. It’s usually helpful to use a humidifier for the first day or even the first few hours. In what month did you have your last cesarean?”
“May,” Susanne said.
“That’s probably the reason you didn’t have one then,” the man said. “Would you like me to return?”
“Do what you have to do,” Susanne said.
No sooner had the man left than the original nurse returned. “You were right,” she said. “The orders were to pull the IV as soon as the bottle was through.”
Susanne merely nodded. She felt like asking the nurse if missing orders was something she did on a regular basis. Susanne sighed. She wanted out of there.
After the nurse had removed the IV, Susanne managed to calm herself enough to fall back asleep. But it didn’t last long. Someone was nudging her arm.
Susanne opened her eyes and looked into the face of another smiling nurse. In the foreground and between them was a five-cc syringe.
“I’ve got something for you,” the nurse said as if Susanne were a toddler and the syringe candy.
“What is it?” Susanne demanded. She instinctively pulled away.
“It’s the pain shot you requested,” the nurse said. “So roll over and I’ll give it to you.”
“I didn’t request a pain shot,” Susanne said.
“But of course you did,” the nurse said.
“But I didn’t,” Susanne said.
The nurse’s expression changed to exasperation like a cloud passing over the sun. “Well then, it’s doctor’s orders. You are supposed to have a pain shot every six hours.”
“But I don’t have much pain,” Susanne said. “Only when I move or breathe deeply.”
“There you are,” the nurse said. “You have to breathe deeply, otherwise you’ll get pneumonia. Come on now, be a good girl.”
Susanne thought for a moment. On the one hand she felt like being contrary. On the other hand she wanted to be taken care of and there was nothing inherently wrong with a pain shot. It might even make her sleep better.
“Okay,” Susanne said.
Gritting her teeth, she managed to roll to the side as the nurse bared her bottom.
4
WEDNESDAY, 2:05 P.M., MARCH 20, 1996
“You know, Laurie’s right,” Chet McGovern said.
Chet and Jack were sitting in the narrow office they shared on the fifth floor of the medical examiner’s building. They both had their feet up on their respective gray metal desks. They’d finished their autopsies for the day, eaten lunch, and were now supposedly doing their paperwork.
“Of course she’s right,” Jack agreed.
“But if you know that, why do you provoke Calvin? It’s not rational. You’re not doing yourself any favors. It’s going to affect your promotion up through the system.”
“I don’t want to rise up in the system,” Jack said.
“Come again?” Chet asked. In the grand scheme of medicine, the concept of not wanting to get ahead was heresy.
Jack let his feet fall off the desk and thump onto the floor. He stood up, stretched, and yawned loudly. Jack was a stocky, six-foot man accustomed to serious physical activity. He found that standing at the autopsy table and sitting at a desk tended to cause his muscles to cramp, particularly his quadriceps.
“I’m happy being a low man on the totem pole,” Jack said, cracking his knuckles.
“You don’t want to become board certified?” Chet asked with surprise.
“Ah, of course I want to be board certified,” Jack said. “But that’s not the same issue. As far as I’m concerned, becoming board certified is a personal thing. What I don’t care about is having supervisory responsibility. I just want to do forensic pathology. To hell with bureaucracy and red tape.”
“Jesus,” Chet remarked, letting his own feet fall to the floor. “Every time I think I get to know you a little, you throw me a curveball. I mean, we’ve been sharing this office for almost five months. You’re still a mystery. I don’t even know where the hell you live.”
“I didn’t know you cared,” Jack teased.
“Come on,” Chet said. “You know what I mean.”
“I live on the Upper West Side,” Jack said. “It’s no secret.”
“In the seventies?” Chet asked.
“A bit higher,” Jack said.
“Eighties?”
“Higher.”
“You’re not going to tell me higher than the nineties, are you?” Chet asked.
“A tad,” Jack said. “I live on a Hundred and Sixth Street.”
“Good grief,” Chet exclaimed. “You’re living in Harlem.”
Jack shrugged. He sat down at his desk and pulled out one of his unfinished files. “What’s in a name?” he said.
“Why in the world live in Harlem?” Chet asked. “Of all the neat places to live in and around the city, why live there? It can’t be a nice neighborhood. Besides, it must be dangerous.”
“I don’t see it that way,” Jack said. “Plus there are a lot of playgrounds in the area and a particularly good one right next door. I’m kind of a pickup basketball nut.”
“Now I know you are crazy,” Chet said. “Those playgrounds and those pickup games are controlled by neighborhood gangs. That’s like having a death wish. I’m afraid we might see you in here on one of the slabs even without the mountain bike heroics.”
“I haven’t had any trouble,” Jack said. “After all, I paid for new backb
oards and lights and I buy the balls. The neighborhood gang is actually quite appreciative and even solicitous.”
Chet eyed his officemate with a touch of awe. He tried to imagine what Jack would look like out running around on a Harlem neighborhood blacktop. He imagined Jack would certainly stand out racially with his light brown hair cut in a peculiar Julius Caesar-like shag. Chet wondered if any of the other players had any idea about Jack, like the fact that he was a doctor. But then Chet acknowledged that he didn’t know much more.
“What did you do before you went to medical school?” Chet asked.
“I went to college,” Jack said. “Like most people who went to medical school. Don’t tell me you didn’t go to college.”
“Of course I went to college,” Chet said. “Calvin is right: You are a smartass. You know what I mean. If you just finished a pathology residency, what did you do in the interim?” Chet had wanted to ask the question for months, but there had never been an opportune moment.
“I became an ophthalmologist,” Jack said. “I even had a practice out in Champaign, Illinois. I was a conventional, conservative suburbanite.”
“Yeah, sure, just like I was a Buddhist monk.” Chet laughed. “I mean I suppose I can see you as an ophthalmologist. After all, I was an emergency-room physician for a few years until I saw the light. But you conservative? No way.”
“I was,” Jack insisted. “And my name was John, not Jack. Of course, you wouldn’t have recognized me. I was heavier. I also had longer hair, and I parted it along the right side of my head the way I did in high school. And as far as dress was concerned, I favored glen-plaid suits.”
“What happened?” Chet asked. Chet glanced at Jack’s black jeans, blue sports shirt, and dark blue knitted tie.