Strong Medicine

by Arthur Hailey

  At all levels of the company, as with any new drug launching, there was a mix of excitement, circus, nervousness and hope.

  Also creating hope, in an even wider dimension, was some news from the Felding-Roth Research Institute in Britain. There, it seemed, Martin Peat-Smith’s scientific team had successfully broken through the technical barrier which had baffled them for so long. Complete details were lacking—Martin’s report had been brief and in general terms only—but it appeared the now demolished barrier was the one of which Dr. Rao Sastri had said, when talking with Celia eighteen months earlier, “There are no techniques to take us further … possibly in ten years from now …”

  Celia was delighted to learn that, in this specific at least, Sastri had been wrong and Martin right.

  What was known, via a letter from Nigel Bentley, the Harlow administrator, was that the British technical achievement involved purification of a brain peptide mixture obtained from rats, and maze tests on rats had shown it to be effective in improving the memories of older animals. More experimental work was proceeding.

  Clearly, while a medication to improve human memory was an unknown number of years away, it was much more of a possibility than at any previous time.

  The news was timely in that it forestalled the latest attempt, by some members of the board, to close the Harlow institute—again because of high costs and an absence of results. Now, with some positive results, Harlow and the mental aging project appeared safe for the time being.

  This, too, pleased Celia, who felt happier in having recommended against closure of Harlow a year and a half earlier.

  In mid-December the Australian trial transcript for which Celia had asked arrived on her desk. It was a bulky typewritten volume, several hundred pages long. By then, however, the pressures on Celia were such that she was obliged to put it aside for later reading. The transcript still had not been read by early January, when another event occurred which was totally unexpected and seemed likely to push her reading even farther into the future.

  Now that President-elect Carter had surprised the world by securing the White House tenancy for the next four years, outriders for the new administration were urgently recruiting candidates for the many government posts which Republicans would soon vacate. Among those recruited was Felding-Roth’s corporate vice president for sales and merchandising, Xavier Rivkin.

  Xav Rivkin, a lifelong Democrat and more recently an ardent Carter supporter, had given time and money in the election campaign; he also knew the new President, having served with him in the Navy. From all this, a reward now arrived—the offer of a post as assistant secretary in the Department of Commerce.

  Within Felding-Roth, news of the offer was at first kept secret, as was the fact that Xav wanted to accept. Sam Hawthorne and a few members of the board, between whom the matter was discussed privately, believed he should. There was an awareness that it would do the company no harm to have a friend in Washington at Commerce. Quietly, a special and generous early pension arrangement was made, with Rivkin due to leave soon after the January 20 presidential inauguration.

  In the second week of January, Sam sent for Celia and informed her of the Rivkin arrangements, of which she had not heard previously but which would be common knowledge in a day or two.

  “Quite frankly,” he said, “no one, including me, expected this to happen so soon but when Xav leaves, you’ll move up to be vice president of sales and merchandising. I’ve had discussions with the same members of the board who approved the arrangements about Xav, and we realize this has happened at an awkward time, with Montayne about to—” Sam stopped. “Is something wrong?”

  “Not really,” Celia said. They had been standing, in his office, and she asked, “Do you mind if I sit down?”

  “Of course. Please do.” He waved her to a chair.

  “And give me a minute to get my gears engaged.” Her voice was huskier than usual. “You may not realize it, but you did just drop a thunderbolt.”

  Sam looked contrite. “Oh, hell, I’m sorry! I should have made this more of an occasion. Some days I operate in such a damned hurry that—”

  Celia said, “This way is fine. In fact any way is fine. You were saying about Montayne …”

  But the words were coming from a part of herself that was detached. Her mind whirling, she was remembering an occasion seventeen years earlier when the then vice president of sales, Irv Gregson, now long departed, had ordered her angrily from the company’s New York sales convention while an audience of hundreds watched … and Sam had saved her—from the vice president and all the others—and now it was Sam who … Dammit! I’m not going to cry, she told herself. But she did, a little, and looked up to see Sam holding out a handkerchief and smiling.

  “You earned it, Celia,” he said gently. “All on your own, every step of the way, and what I should have said sooner is—congratulations! I told Lilian at breakfast and she’s as pleased as I am; she said to tell you we’ll all get together soon.”

  “Thank you.” She took the handkerchief, wiped her eyes, then said matter-of-factly, “Please thank Lilian; and I thank you too, Sam. Now about Montayne.”

  “Well,” he explained, “because you’ve been so close to the plans for launching Montayne, I and those board members I spoke of would like you to see them through, even while you’re taking over the bigger responsibility. It will mean a heavy load on you …”

  Celia assured him, “That won’t be a problem. And I agree about Montayne.”

  “At the same time,” Sam pointed out, “you should think about a successor as director of pharmaceutical sales.”

  “Bill Ingram,” Celia said without hesitation. “He’s good and he’s ready. He’s also been working on Montayne.”

  The hitching-your-wagon-to-someone-else’s-star principle, she thought, just as she had described it to Andrew on their honeymoon—also long ago. Celia had followed Sam upward, and how successfully her plan had worked! Now Bill had followed Celia; and who, she wondered, had already attached themselves to Bill?

  With an effort—her mind for the moment split in two—she concluded her discussion with Sam.

  That evening, when Celia told Andrew of her impending promotion, he hugged her and said, “I’m proud of you! But then I always have been.”

  “Most of the time,” she corrected him. “There were moments when you weren’t.”

  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?”

  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.

  The France-Soir report concluded with a cryptic sentence: Un autre cas en Espagne, apparemment identique, a été signalé.

  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 now!”

  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 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 it!”

  “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 all!”

  “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 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 please!—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.

  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 midmorning. Soon after that, Sam summoned a senior management conference for 4:30 P.M.

  Now, as Celia approached the president’s suite, she could hear through a doorway open to the corridor the sound of boisterous male laughter. At this moment, she thought it seemed incongruous.

  As she entered the outer office, one of Sam’s two secretaries looked up and smiled. “Hello, Mrs. Jordan.”

  “Sounds like a party, Maggie,” Celia said.

  “In a way, it is.” The secretary smiled again and motioned to another open doorway. “Why don’t you go in? There’s some news I think Mr. Hawthorne would like to tell you himself.”