Head Case

by Jennifer Oko

  “Let’s hang here for a second. I think we’ll be okay,” Mitya says again, tucking his knees to his chest and curving his spine into the shape of a claw so that he can fit neatly next to Polly in the tight space they’ve secured. Mitya is squeezed so tightly, Polly can almost count all of the vertebrae poking through the back of his wool coat.

  “What’s in that thing, anyway?” Polly stretches out a leg and taps her sneaker against the air valve at the back of the blown-up pill bottle. “Oh, wait.” She reaches forward to pick up a cellophane wrapped package that has fallen onto the purple industrial carpeting. “Ha. How perfect.”

  “What is it?”

  She laughs. “It’s from Pharmax,” she says, handing over the small but heavily branded desk clock. “Promotional swag for Ziperal Targeted Release.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope. Look here.” She opens up the small piece of folded paper attached to the clock. ‘Do you or someone you love suffer from Fatico Dystopia? Ziperal Targeted Release can help. Because your work life shouldn’t kill you. Ziperal TR. The working person’s answer to making life work.’” She turns the paper over and reads the small print on the back. “Listen to this. ‘Fatico Dystopia is a medical condition that makes it difficult for the inflicted individual to find satisfaction in his or her career or workplace. Ziperal TR targets the—’ blah, blah blah. You get the rest. I wouldn’t be surprised if Missy Pander wrote those words herself. She made up the disease, she might as well be the one to write the copy.”

  “Missy Pander. Gotta love that,” Mitya says ironically, because, of course, it is in fact Missy Pander they’re trying to avoid, and Missy Pander whose own career ambitions are at least partially responsible for getting them into this mess. Mitya looks at the inscription circling the digital numeric display. “Love your job, love your life. Nice slogan.”

  Polly peers around the inflated bottle. “I don’t think they saw us.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I can see that security guy a few aisles down. He’s looking the other way. Let’s go.”

  “Hold on.” Mitya pulls himself forward onto his knees and reaches for a few more Pharmax clocks that have fallen down. “Ammunition,” he says and then grabs Polly’s wrist, pulling her out from under the table.

  They look both ways and then run, Mitya a few feet ahead. They race down the corridor, trying to avoid tripping over the displays, the pamphlets, the pill-shaped mascots.

  “Stop!” one of the mascots shouts.

  Mitya keeps running, thinking Polly is right behind him.

  But she isn’t. She cannot move.

  A 6-foot high, inflated green and white capsule has jumped in her path and is blocking her way.

  At its top, about face level, there’s a small window so that the person inside can see out. And what the person inside sees is precisely the young woman security has declared unwelcome—Polly Warner, the almond-eyed brunette whose photograph (along with photographs of her skinny, brooding boyfriend Mitya Stoopsky) is plastered all over the front office.

  “You!” the capsule shouts again and (with a hand encased in an over-sized, padded white glove) grabs for Polly’s shoulder. “Don’t even think about moving.”

  Polly pulls back as hard as possible, but she’s stuck. Two other inflated pill bottles have moved in to surround her. She looks down the long central corridor of the convention center and sees Mitya running further away, not realizing that she isn’t behind him, not realizing that she’s about to be held captive by an oversized mock-up of a capsule of Ziperal Targeted Release, the most hyped-up mood enhancer to hit the market since Prozac.

  54

  December 17 (A.D.)

  A Few Minutes Later.

  11:58 A.M.

  “Looks good, Missy,” says Stanley Novartny, handing back the papers Missy Pander prepared for the presentation she’s about to do. They’re sitting at a linen-covered table in the front of the ballroom, directly in front of the podium where representatives of the largest pharmaceutical companies have been taking turns one upping each other with songs and dances about their latest offerings, before they all settle in for a four-course lunch. Over in the media section, to the right of the stage, the journalists are furiously documenting every utterance, worrying about whether they’ll have anything interesting enough to merit the front page, rather than being delegated to a spot somewhere deep inside the business section, or at the end of the broadcasts. So far it isn’t looking very promising.

  “I think we’ll give them something to report.” Missy gestures toward the gathered members of the forth estate.

  Novartny nods. “Stock was at 23 this morning. I’m betting it triples by the end of the day.”

  “From your lips, Stanley,”—Missy points at the ceiling—“to the big man’s ears.”

  He laughs. “Okay. Go get ‘em, tiger.”

  Missy winks. “If you’re looking for me next week, I’ll be in St. Barts.” She smiles, and together they start to make their way to the podium.

  ***

  “It should be over here.” Mitya grabs the banister and propels himself up a short flight of stairs. He turns around at the first landing. “Polly? Oh crap,” he says, craning his neck, trying to catch a glimpse of her. All he can see, a couple hundred yards away, back in the middle of the great hall, are two large inflated “pills” blocking his view. “Damn it.” He looks up at the ceiling. “Olivia,” he says, “I hope you’ve got her back. She’s trying to get yours.” And then he runs up the remaining steps and into the room marked “Audiovisual Controls.”

  ***

  “Ladies and Gentlemen,” Stanley Novartny begins, looking out from the podium at the hundreds, if not thousands, of industry leaders, media representatives and corporate investors gathered around the circular tables. “My esteemed colleagues of the pharmaceutical industry. As a president of the Pharmax Corporation, I’m sure you were all expecting it to be me presenting our exciting new property. But it would be, well, hubristic of me to assume all responsibility for this phenomenal discovery. As I’m sure you’re all well aware, Fatico Dystopia is a horrifically debilitating disorder that, until recently, had no known cure. Until a brilliant young woman was able to recognize some potentially beneficial properties of one of the medications we already had on market. With her drive and her vision, we were able to put our team of scientists to work. They persevered, and along with researchers from the world-renowned Leary Institute for the Advanced Study of the Brain, were able to isolate some of those wonderful benefits of Ziperal Extended Release. From there they created a new generation of this phenomenal medication that would effectively target this crippling disease. Ziperal Targeted Release, or TR, as we call it. So, without further ado, I would like to introduce you all to the woman responsible not only for identifying Fatico Dystopia, but for seeing the process through so that this illness could be treated. I’m confident that as soon as Ziperal TR is cleared for market, likely in just a few months, millions of working people the world over will have her to thank. And with that,”—he extends his hand to the corner of the platform—“Missy Pander, everybody. Give her a round of applause.”

  Missy smoothes out the front of her skirt and tugs on the back of her jacket. Chin up, spine straight, chest way out, she steps forward and approaches the podium. With a few slight nods, she acknowledges some of her colleagues in the audience—Eugene Throng over there towards the back, Cheryl from marketing at a table in the middle, a cute guy from sales standing by the side exit door.

  The polite applause quickly fades, and Missy leans into the microphone, exposing even more of her cleavage. “Good afternoon.” She smiles. A small amount of red lipstick is smeared across one of her front teeth. I doubt people past the first tables can actually see it, but I can, and let me tell you, I would be laughing pretty hard right now if
I could.

  “Thank you for the kind words, Stanley,” Missy begins. “But I really can’t take so much of the credit. This is a proud day for our company, and I don’t think it would be an exaggeration to say that everyone of us at Pharmax is responsible for the success and future of this new drug.” She looks up at a small window in the back of the room. “Alex, please start the tape.”

  ***

  “Ouch! You’re hurting me!” Polly says, trying to free herself from the inflated capsules. They each have a hold of one of her arms, grasping her with the enormous white padded mitts that are sticking out from the body of the costumes. They pull her across the hall, her heels dragging on the floor, her body thrashing. “Let me go!” she says again and again, but then, realizing she needs a better game plan, she stops fighting, letting them carry her at a 45-degree angle, like a nonviolent protester at a university uprising. She looks around at the displays, trying to avoid eye contact with the people staring at her as they pass. Over by the one of the biotech booths, there’s a large clock on one of the displays. It’s 12:05 p.m. Shit, she thinks, it’s started. Oh God, please don’t let Mitya get caught or screw this up. And then, over on one of the columns supporting the space, she spots a large video monitor. It’s a live feed from the Special Events Hall, and there’s Missy, turning to the screen behind the podium as the now familiar Ziperal TR commercial starts to play.

  “Oh, please. Please, please, please,” she says aloud. “Make this work.”

  “Shut up!” one of the capsules shouts, tugging her arm even harder.

  Suddenly, the commercial freezes. “Wait!” Polly cries. “It’s Lillianne Farber! She’s over there!” The capsules both spin around, and seeing the ever-luminescent Lillianne Farber on the monitor, excitedly drop Polly’s arms. And Polly, unable to suppress it, laughs out loud as she falls to the ground. “Olivia,” she says, “I think this is going to be okay.”

  ***

  It’s not that it’s unusual for a celebrity to grace the stage at one of these events. Far from it. For almost every disease there is, there’s a celebrity paid to endorse the latest cure. But the thing is, the publicists usually promote the said celebrity’s appearance before the events, not during. The whole idea, after all, is to get as many people to attend as possible. But here was Lillianne Farber, a celebrity about as big as they come, interrupting an industry executive in the middle—not even the middle, the very beginning, in fact—of her presentation.

  Lillianne gives a little nod to the back window, and the Ziperal TR commercial running on the screen behind her fades to black.

  “Hi.” She smiles, and a thousand electronic flashes bounce off her teeth. She waves her hands downward, gesturing for everyone to mellow out.

  Missy just stands there, mouth agape.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” Lillianne says. “It’s just that I heard you’d be here, talking about this dreadful disease, and I wanted to come and lend my support.”

  “Uh,” says Missy, unsure of what to say, but sure that she shouldn’t trust this girl. But what could she to do? Tell an A-list celebrity to shut up? Shuttle her off the stage? She sees Stanley Novartny grinning like a lunatic, two thumbs high in the air. Clearly, he thinks this is a planned trick that Missy has pulled out of her hat. Or bra. Or whatever.

  “May I?” Lillianne asks, pointing to the podium but not waiting for Missy to respond before taking the stage. “So, as I was saying. I feel very strongly about this cause, and so I enlisted some friends to help me get the message out. Well, actually, credit where it’s due. They enlisted me. Anyway, Alex, would you please start up that other video?” She places her hand over the microphone and whispers to Missy, “I really didn’t appreciate you posting those photos, you know. That was a totally un-cool thing to do.” She removes her hand and says into the microphone, “I wish you all could have met my friend Olivia.” A large photo of me fills the screen over the stage. “But you can’t. Because she’s dead. And even though it was a bullet that did the job, one could reasonably argue that it was actually Ziperal TR that killed her.” Cue the violins … and then the video begins—a rat running aimlessly around a cage.

  Stanley Novartny jumps out of his seat. “Turn that off! This is unauthorized!” he shouts, pointing a finger at that small back window.

  Lillian smiles demurely and leans back into the microphone. “It’s only a couple of minutes long, sir.”

  “How did you get in here? Security!” he wails.

  Lillianne smiles slyly. Seriously, who would ever turn her away at a door?

  “Please settle down,” she says in a mockingly seductive tone. “I think you might even find this entertaining.”

  The audience concurs, people shouting from the back, the side, the center to keep the video on, let Lillianne Farber do her thing.

  “My friend Olivia was smart. Really smart.” As Lillianne’s recorded narration begins, Missy slowly moves backwards, trying to get off the stage without drawing attention. “But, like so many graduate students and young professionals living in this town,” the narration continues, “she was also broke.” There are photographs of me in my lab coat, me feeding Raskolnikov, me surrounded by books. “So when Missy Pander from the Pharmax corporation offered this budding neuroscientist some lucrative side-work, who was she to turn it down?” Cut to shots of the Pharmax headquarters, shot from a low angle to make it look all the more sinister. “But instead of using Olivia’s groundbreaking research to further the cause of medicine, Pharmax was putting it to illicit use—without her knowledge—all in the name of making a buck. A lot of bucks. Until, of course, Olivia did know. Until she came across documents and witnessed horrific side effects she was never meant to see.” The video cuts to a shot of a rat, flat on its back, its legs sticking straight up like it’s in either in a very deep sleep or approaching rigor mortis. The music swells to a haunting crescendo and the screen fades black. It then fades up to show Polly’s father, esteemed Professor of Psychiatry and President of the Continental Psychiatric Association, sitting in his office, facing the camera.

  “The ethical spine of modern psychopharmacology has been corrupted,” he says. “This once venerable industry, an industry that has done so much to cure illness and improve the quality of our lives, has lost its soul, valuing marketing over research, stock ratings over clinical results.”

  The din from the tables keeps rising and Stanley Novartny once again demands the video be stopped. But it isn’t. And there on the screen is Ivan Petrovich Lumpkyn, introduced as a renowned neurochemist from the former Soviet Union, discussing the results he discovered when completing the research that Olivia had started—the high degree of potential for mania, narcolepsy, or even death. There’s Zhanya, talking about her uncontrollable high and the crushing let down that followed. There’s Raskolnikov, stopping short in his cage and crumbling into the sawdust.

  The video ends and Lillianne looks squarely at Stanley Novartny. “I might just be an actress, so what do I know?” she says with an innocent shrug. “Maybe this all sounds a like a silly Hollywood thriller. But it seems to me that my friend Olivia knew just a little too much, if you know what I mean. And it also seems to me that Pharmax has no business trying to rush this medication to market.” She points at Missy Pander, who’s trying to sneak out the exit door at the side of the stage. “Hey Missy, why don’t you stick around a while? We could have a drink. For old time’s sake, you know? You, me and Polly.”

  Missy stops for a moment. All eyes are on her. The security guards are speaking into their wrists. She drops her notes, spins on her high heels, and starts to run.

  She doesn’t get very far.

  Once Lillianne’s performance had started, Polly was able to quickly redirect the aggression of her captors. And now Missy Pander is flat on her back with the air knocked out of her, and a large, inflated capsule of Ziperal Targeted Release
is pinning her down.

  Epilogue

  November 5 (A.D.)

  One Year after My Death.

  I know what you’re thinking. It’s like, great, woo-hoo, it all worked out. Polly orchestrated this hugely successful media splash, the Ziperal campaigns (both ER and TR) were halted, there was an investigation and Missy was indicted for a whole slew of things, my murder included (Novartny and Eugene, as predicted, got off scot-free. Shotkyn’s murder is still an open case, but I think we all know who did it). Mitya turned out to be a fairly decent guy (he recently moved in with Polly—I’m really okay with it. Truly). Dr. Warner saw to it that Zhanya continued to be appropriately medicated, and Ivan Petrovich even got some industry respect (and, if you can believe it, a teaching position at the Leary Institute). And, of course, Lillianne’s star only shined brighter.

  I suppose I should be resting easy now. I should go flitter off to wherever it is that dead souls go to rest in peace, right? Well, screw that. I might not be alive, but my best friend very much is, and right now, I want to be there for her, however I can. And I can. Remember those party tricks? The candles and the apparitions, the moving mirrors and all that jazz? That’s nothing. Because this afterlife thing? Well, I’m getting pretty good at it.

  See, there she is now, Polly, pivoting in front of our mirror, trying to figure out what to wear. The gray flannel pants? The platform pumps? The fitted blue jacket? For the founder and CEO of a new non-profit that promotes the ethical marketing of psycho-pharmaceuticals (The Olivia Zack Foundation, thank you very much), I think she looks pretty good. She should probably wear something more comfortable for the train ride down to DC, though. She’ll need to be rested before that congressional hearing.