Death Spiral

by Janie Chodosh

  “…and I’d like to thank the Philadelphia Convention Center for welcoming us…”

  Where are they? They should be here by now. I fidget with a button on Anj’s sweater, twisting the thing until the thread breaks and it pops off into my hand. Unless Mohawk figured out Jesse’s scam and turned him over to some authority. Or he came back to the projection room and found Duncan tampering with Glass’ presentation.

  “…our distinguished speakers symposium will focus on the emerging field of genomic medicine…”

  What about Anj? Did Starr get all best-friendish with her and ensnare her in some gossipy web of gal pal bonding? My fingers work my hair, tugging loose strands from Anj’s masterpiece. What seemed like a great plan in last night’s fury seems like foolish ignorance now.

  “…exploring novel disease treatments, strategies made possible by the latest genetic technologies…”

  Someone taps my shoulder. I whirl around and find Jesse sliding into the seat beside me.

  “What happened?” I whisper.

  He leans over and cups his hand around my ear. “Let’s just say the emergency had been dealt with by the time we got to the first floor. Dr. Petrosky was nowhere to be found, and this AV-tech chick saved my ass when she blew a fuse to the sound system and Nigel was the only one there to deal with it.”

  “What about Duncan? Have you seen him?”

  “Nope.”

  It’s total I-might-hurl panic. I have no idea if Duncan downloaded the slides, and if he did, how Glass will react. What will the audience do? Will Tom lead an attack? What if Duncan didn’t download them? Just when I think my nervous system will blow, I spot Dr. Monroe in the third row. I’d been so focused on the details of the plan, I managed to push her from my mind. I don’t dare guess what will happen when she sees the presentation. I’m about to speak, to try and offload some of my anxiety onto Jesse, when I see something even worse than Dr. Monroe.

  “Oh my god, Jesse, look!”

  He follows my pointing finger and stares at the Rat Catcher, standing by a side door. Instantly Jesse’s on his feet. “We have to get out of here.”

  The woman with the bun sitting next to Jesse shoots us a dirty look and puts her finger to her lips.

  “No way. We’re safer here,” I whisper, ignoring her, and shoving Jesse back down into his chair. “What can he do to us in front of all these people? Just try and stay cool and blend in. We have to hold him off until our slides come on.” That is, if our slides come on.

  “Our first speaker is Dr. Steven Glass,” I hear the woman say. I point my phone at the stage and press record so I can video the show for Aunt T as proof of what I’ve been up to. “A graduate of Johns Hopkins Medical School and board certified in both pulmonology and clinical genetics, Dr. Glass currently works in research and development at PluraGen Biopharmaceutical, where he is directing a clinical trial for a novel opiate addiction treatment.”

  Dr. Glass walks onto the stage amidst a round of applause. He’s just as I remember, slick as a pool of fresh blood in his charcoal suit and red tie, a smile Botoxed onto his face. He shakes the woman’s hand and turns to the audience. The triplicate screens behind him open with the name of his talk: Antisense RNA 120, A Genetic Hope for Addiction.

  “Heroin addiction is a chronic, complex disease with substantial genetic contribution,” he begins. His booming voice fills the room with egotistical confidence as the second slide opens to a bunch of numbers and statistics.

  I stare at the scatter points clustered on the graph like a cloud of black flies, then glance again at the Rat Catcher. His back is to the stage. He’s not paying attention to the slides or the graph. He has no idea what’s going on behind him. As if he’s looking for us.

  “Heroin addicts who fail with methadone treatment have been found to have more than a four-fold higher frequency of the A1 variant of the DRD2 gene.” Dr. Glass lets this information sink in and then says, “Those abusers with a genetic predisposition toward addiction may be helped by innovative treatments.”

  I grab Jesse’s hand as the next slide opens, hoping it’s one of ours, but the slide isn’t one of our creations. It’s a bulleted list of current addiction treatments followed by statements of their limitations. Dr. Glass rambles on about the various therapies and drugs. I’m not listening. My attention is on the Rat Catcher. He’s moving up the aisle, stopping at each row, forcing his soulless eyes on each audience member.

  Three more rows and he’ll reach us. Screw videoing. I drop my phone into the roomy front pocket of Anj’s skirt and hold up the program of the talks to shield my face. Will he recognize me? Is Anj’s makeover a good enough disguise? What about Jesse? I slink even lower into my seat, my heart thumping hard enough to vault right through my rib cage. Glass’ words work their way back into my consciousness as I try to make Faith Flores invisible and morph into Faye Fuentes.

  “Antisense RNA 120 is a genetically driven treatment offering great promise for opiate addiction.” He clicks to the next slide, and continues to talk, but the collective gasp from the audience stops him. I pop up in my seat and cover my mouth.

  It’s not another self-congratulatory graph depicting the genetic promise to cure addiction filling the triplicate screens behind him, it’s the first slide of our own presentation, RNA 120—A Front to Kill: How Dr. Glass Got Away with Murder.

  Below our title is our table—a monument of murderous data as obvious as a row of A, T, C and G’s from a sequencing machine. Beneath the data lie the handwritten instructions for administering PL44 and PL45 with Dr. Steven Glass, the executioner’s signature, highlighted for us all to witness.

  I can hardly breathe as Glass consults his monitor to see what all the murmuring is about. He’s on his game. Quick as a snake in the grass. “Excuse me,” he says, without faltering and clicks onto the next slide.

  This time the title reads: Dr. Glass Murdered These Two Women With His Experiments. Two images share the screen, one of my mother, the other of Melinda. Their haunted eyes foreshadowing death stare at us like specters from the grave, the words MURDERED BY GLASS’ VECTOR: PL44 printed in bold red letters above their scabby, ravaged faces.

  People turn to each other. Confused muttering spreads through the room. I steal a glimpse at the Rat Catcher. He hasn’t turned yet and seen what’s happening on stage. He stops at the end of our row. I slide to the edge of my seat, ready to jump up and haul ass out of here.

  Hurry up. Change the slide.

  “I’m sorry, there seems to be a technical error,” Glass says, scrambling to maintain his dominance at the top of the food chain. “If you’ll bear with me, we’ll have this figured out in just a moment.”

  He clicks the next slide. This time it’s the Rat Catcher’s face that fills the screens, the words HIRED TO KILL BY DR. GLASS bolded across his chest. The Rat Catcher smiles as he finally sees me.

  Our eyes lock and he steps into our row.

  “Look,” I mouth, and point at the screen.

  The Rat Catcher turns and glances at the stage. Before people can figure out what’s going on, before they can connect the man in front of me with the man on the screen, he slips out of the row and disappears through the east side door.

  Glass clicks again: The data table.

  Click: Mom and Melinda.

  Click: The Rat Catcher.

  Click: Data table.

  Click: Mom and Melinda.

  Click: The Rat Catcher.

  The woman who introduced Glass scurries onto the stage. She’s flailing around in a futile attempt to correct the technical malfunction when a lone voice rises from the front row.

  “Excuse me, but I have some questions if you don’t mind.”

  I look to where the voice has come from and see Tom, Doc’s journalist friend, rise to his feet. “Dr. Glass, can you comment on PL44 and PL45?”

  The room has g
one dead still, so quiet you can practically hear the beads of sweat dripping off Glass’ forehead and spattering down onto the podium.

  “I don’t believe Dr. Glass will be taking questions at this moment,” the woman anxiously informs Tom.

  Glass ignores her. “I’ve never heard of it.”

  “But your signature appears to be on the paper giving directions to administer those things,” Tom insists. Before Glass can respond, or his fashionable bodyguard can whisk him away, Tom fires off another question. “I’m looking at data right now that indicates two women died in your clinical trial. The data also says that both of the women were clean, neither was using heroin at the time of death. Are those the women in the photo?”

  “What data?” Dr. Glass snaps, his face hardening. “Where did you get that? You can’t just—”

  “Again, the data I have here from the clinical trial indicates that RNA 120 got patients off heroin,” Tom interrupts, “but some patients were given a drug referred to here as PL44, and two of them receiving this drug died.” Glass tries to interrupt, accusing Tom of slander, but Tom won’t be silenced. “It looks like those patients who received PL44 died or got very sick, but those who received PL44 and another drug called PL45 got better. One might infer that you are giving some people in this clinical trial a drug to make them sick and then withholding the treatment!”

  I can’t believe I didn’t see it before. The first row is swarming with press. Like ants at a picnic. They’ve come in droves and suddenly they’re on their feet, vying for a piece of the action. They all start shouting at once, closing in on Glass with their voracious hunger for headline news.

  Glass has sustained too much injury. Any second he’ll leave the stage. I nod to Jesse. We slip out of our seats and position ourselves at the back of the room as Glass steps away from the podium and heads straight into the pack of salivating predators. He straggles up the aisle, elbowing past their cameras and questions. They shout. They paw at him. Questions fire from every direction. Big hitting words and insinuations. Murder…profit…greed…billion dollar company…conspiracy.

  Finally Glass makes it to the exit and pushes through the door. Mohawk and the motley crew of security cops, who get paid to maintain straight lines and check badges and ensure that everyone plays nice, stand at the door doing their untrained best to hold back the onslaught of journalistic mayhem.

  I have to get to Glass. While I still can.

  I’ve just taken my first step when Mohawk looks in our direction. “Hey!” he shouts, bulldozing the less substantially sized beings out of his way and stomping toward us.

  “Go,” Jesse says, nudging me forward. “I’ll deal with this.”

  I turn and race out of the ballroom without waiting to see what happens. The hall is crowded, but I spot Dr. Glass some twenty feet ahead of me, scurrying past the bathrooms.

  “Dr. Glass!” I shout.

  He keeps walking.

  “Dr. Glass!” I shout again. When he still doesn’t stop, I fling off Anj’s clogs and start to run. I bump into a woman and knock a stack of papers from her hands as I weave through a web of people gathered outside one of the conference rooms.

  “What the—” she calls after me, but I don’t stop moving.

  “Dr. Glass,” I say a third time when I reach his side.

  He whirls around and our eyes meet. There’s a second of nonrecognition, and then his face pinches and his jaw sets into a hard, wolfish line. Before I can say or do anything, he pushes open a door and yanks me into a stale smelling, closet-sized room with a mop sticking out of a bucket of dirty water in the middle of the floor.

  He closes the door behind him and shoots me a blazing look. “It was you, wasn’t it?” he snarls. “You made those slides.”

  I reach into the deep front pocket of Anj’s skirt for Mom’s lighter. Of course it’s not there. Faye Fuentes does not carry a lighter. Faye Fuentes does, however, carry a phone, and unless it’s out of charge, the video is still on, and everything we say is being recoded.

  “Yeah,” I say, trying to keep my voice steady. “It was me, and you’re so busted.”

  Glass takes a step toward me. I lift my right foot, aiming to maim, forgetting for a second that I’m shoeless and can do what—poke him with my toe? He stops, inches from my chest. His breath is hot and dangerous on my face.

  “I don’t have much time, so I’m going to keep this simple,” he says, a vein in his forehead pulsing. “I’ll make you a deal. You tell the journalists what you did was a stunt. That you were confused. That you wanted to blame someone for your mother’s death. I publicly forgive you, and I make you a very rich young lady.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” I snap, thinking I’d like to gouge his eyes out.

  “Not at all. I know about you. You’re smart, but you don’t have a penny to your name. You’d like to go to college, but you can’t afford the stamp for the application.” He eyes dart wildly around the room, then land back on me. “How does a million sound?”

  A stomach sick taste of bile and disgust burns my chest and rises in my throat. I want to tell him where he can shove his million, tell him that I wouldn’t be bought off before and I won’t be bought off now—but I run my fingers over my phone and play along.

  “You’re lying. You don’t have that kind of money. No way one cash-strapped meth clinic can make that much.”

  “It’s not just one clinic,” he says. “RNA 120 is a front.”

  “A front for what?”

  “To test my vector.”

  Everything inside me clenches. “PL44. Why did you need to test it?”

  I hear footsteps outside the room. Voices. Some language I don’t recognize. Glass glances at the door. White-knuckles the greasy doorknob. “Look, we don’t have much time. I’m sorry about your mother, but she was a junkie. She would’ve died anyway.”

  I dig my fingernails into my palms until I can speak without screaming. “I said why did you need to test it? If you want me to cooperate, I need to know what I’m getting into.”

  “So I know how much people need in order to get sick, I give them IPF and they need the cure. My cure. It’s that simple.” His words spill out fast and breathless. “You have no idea how many ways I can make money from this vector. All the manufacturers I have access to. Drugs. Vaccines. A whole population of people with IPF needing treatment. The clinical trial was just the test phase. Now that I understand the dosing, the vector won’t kill anyone else. It will just make them sick enough to need the medicine. It will be like getting the flu, only a little worse.”

  Drugs? Vaccines? A whole population of people with IPF? My stomach buckles, but I keep my game face on. “Sounds big.”

  “So do we have a deal?” he asks, sweating through every one of his Botoxed pores. When I don’t say anything, he pulls a handkerchief from his pocket, wipes his forehead, and says, “Fine. Make it two million.”

  He reaches out to seal the deal.

  I lift my hand out of my skirt pocket, but I don’t go for a handshake. “As if, you asshole. I wouldn’t make a deal with you for all the money in the world.” I hold out my phone for him to see. “Did you know these things come with audio recording these days?”

  “You little shit!” Glass yelps and lunges for the phone.

  I jerk away my arm and he misses his target. He stumbles forward, kicking over the bucket. Dirty water slops around our feet. I step back as he regains balance and lunges again. The lunge is wild, off-center, desperate. I stick out my right hand. Using the force of his forward momentum against him, I drive my fist into his solar plexus. Not the most glamorous Judo move, but it works. Glass doubles over and collapses to the wet floor.

  As he clutches his stomach and gasps for air, I look him in the eye one last time, and say, “And she wasn’t a junkie. She was my mom.” Then I open the door and release all my anger in one lou
d shout, yelling to the journalists crawling the halls that the scumbag Glass is in here.

  A cop is the first to reach me. I’m too spent to be surprised or to ask questions. “Take this,” I say, handing the officer my phone. “It’ll make your job a lot easier.”

  I step into the hall just as Tom and the rest of the reporters arrive to pick the final scraps of meat from Glass’ carcass.

  I wander through the crowd, alone and disoriented, unsure what to do next. I search for my posse, for Jesse, Anj, and Duncan, but I don’t see them anywhere. Did the Rat Catcher come back? Did Mohawk bust Jesse and Duncan?

  I’m starting to unhinge when I hear someone call my name.

  Jesse races across the floor and bear-hugs me the second we meet. “It’s over,” he says, nodding toward Glass, who’s being mobbed by press as the officer escorts him out of the janitor’s closet.

  “But how did the cops know?”

  “Tom helped me,” he says. “We explained everything to Nigel, and he rallied the troops. It was rad. You should’ve seen Mohawk in action.”

  It’s then I see the rest of them. And it’s not just my friends—Dr. Monroe and Doc are there, too. I wind through the net of people until I reach them. Everyone starts talking at once: daft numpty…clogs…are you okay?…what happened?…I latch onto one voice first.

  “I’m so sorry.” Dr. Monroe puts a shaking hand on my shoulder. “You were right about Glass and the vector, and I didn’t listen. You have some determination—I wouldn’t want to be the person standing in your way. Most people would’ve given up, but not you. Where did you get the strength?”

  I shrug and feel the world of tension rush out of me. “I had faith—in my mom.”

  A journalist calls my name, but I don’t answer. I hook Jesse’s hand with my right, Anj’s, and by extension, Duncan’s, with my left and turn away from everyone.

  I’m not looking back anymore. Only forward.

  ***

  “RNA 120: A Front”

  December 14, 2013

  By Tom Bradley

  Philadelphia Inquirer