The RX Factor Read online

  "Sure, I hear ya. There won't be any more problems."

  Craven glared at him. "Good, because if you become a loose end like that kid, you're expendable, too."

  Sulari sipped his drink and put on the best macho front he could. But the sweat on his upper lip gave him away. He didn't dare stand up until Craven dismissed him.

  "Before we go, I have one more question. Did you get the guy's name? The news reports haven't released it yet."

  "It's Matthews. Ryan Matthews."

  Craven's mind went into overdrive as it processed the name. It couldn't be. That's too much of a coincidence. "Ryan Matthews?"

  "That's right, so what?"

  "I think I know . . . wait a minute. I have to check this out. Don't do anything until you hear back from me."

  With a shrug, Sulari said, "You the man. I'll wait until I hear from you."

  Outside, Craven brushed off the sleeves of his topcoat as he waited for a cab. Ryan Matthews. The muthafuckin' Ghost of Christmas Past.

  Chapter 18

  Jordan perched on the edge of Ryan's hospital bed and settled herself into a comfortable position. Ryan leaned back into his pillows. Her eyes avoided his as she said, "First of all, I need to confess that our meeting at Rosey's was no accident."

  Ryan's brows shot up, his eyes widening.

  "Though it's true that I was down there to visit my aunt and uncle, my ulterior motive was to meet you."

  His spine went rigid. "What? Why? Why did you want to meet me?"

  She squirmed, unable to hide her tension. "Let me start at the beginning. I was approached by a man several months back who worked in the drug industry. He said he'd heard of the clinic that I was opening and told me he had a cure for ovarian cancer. Nevertheless, he warned me that the drug was not now nor would it ever be FDA approved. I was skeptical, but intrigued. Through my own experience and research, I know that there are many drugs out there that offer real cures that are not FDA approved, so I took a closer look. The information he showed me was promising, and I was prepared to offer this as an alternative drug for my late-stage ovarian cancer patients. However, when I was told that it came with a five-million-dollar price tag and that my clinic's cut would be ten percent, I told him I wasn't interested. He kept calling and sweetening the offer, but I refused to reconsider."

  She paused. "My refusal had nothing to do with the cut my clinic was offered. I was appalled at the exorbitant price being charged overall. It really pissed me off."

  Ryan was disoriented, and this flood of new information wasn't helping. "I still don't understand. What does this have to do with me? Sure, I worked on an ovarian cancer cure several years ago, but it never panned out." Just uttering those words brought back a flash flood of memories: Cindy's initial diagnosis, the canceled drug trial, the fatal crash.

  Jordan shifted, tucking one leg under her. Ryan moved over to accommodate her. "I'll get to all that, but first let me tell you more about these last-hope medical clinics based outside the United States. There are basically two types of clinics. The most common offer some homeopathic remedies using a mixture of herbs, minerals, spices, shark cartilage, apricot seeds, and other homegrown remedies. They pretty much agree to treat anyone, and the price is usually based on how much the patient can afford. Besides temporary placebo effects, patients rarely live longer by going to these places. Actually, a lot of them die much sooner than they would have if they'd just stayed with traditional medicine."

  Ryan tilted his head. "That's what I've always thought of these places. I have to admit, I wasn't too impressed when you told me you were opening a clinic in Mexico offering non-FDA-approved treatments."

  If Jordan was insulted by his remark, she didn't show it. "My clinic's not going to be anything like that. It falls into the second category. These clinics offer miracle drugs that are available only outside the States. The drugs offered are typically drugs in the pipeline at major multinational pharma companies all the way down to the micro-biotech firm still trying to get funding for clinical trials. From what I can tell, I don't think most give a damn if the drugs work or not. They're just interested in the money. They charge millions of dollars and make ridiculous claims that only someone in a desperate situation would believe." She paused as if she had just realized who she was talking to. "Listen, I'm sure you know most of this stuff, but my clinic is going to be different. I just want you to understand how my clinic fits in and why I sought you out."

  Ryan had been in medical research his entire career and there had always been stories of hucksters who prey on the wealthy when they're desperate and vulnerable. He wanted to believe that Jordan was different and kept an open mind as she continued.

  "At my clinic we'll only be charging enough to generate a reasonable profit back to our investors. We offer treatment for under ten thousand dollars in most cases. And I'm planning to offer these same drugs to anyone who's able to make it down there, even if they can't afford it. While I am not able to sit here and say with one hundred percent confidence that every treatment we offer is a definitive cure for the disease it is meant to treat, I can tell you that we have thoroughly researched every treatment we will be offering and believe it will give our patients a better shot at survival than anything else on the market."

  Ryan admired her passion and was pleased to hear that she wasn't all about the bottom line. He knew many people in the medical field who didn't give a damn about anything other than lining their pockets. Over time, greed took priority over the Hippocratic oath. Still, there was no way to know for sure what Jordan's true motives were, and he hoped his feelings for her weren't somehow blinding him.

  Jordan was on a roll now. "I review all the data and testing results of every drug that we of fer. Unless there's strong evidence to support the claims of the drug and a reasonable explanation as to why it's not FDA approved, I won't offer it in my clinic. So far, I have nine drugs that we'll be offering when the clinic opens that will treat everything from cancer to diabetes to Alzheimer's disease, and we're hopeful that our patients will live a longer and higher quality of life as a result of these drugs."

  Ryan shifted. The pain was growing, and despite his interest in her story, he was having a hard time concentrating on her words.

  Reading the discomfort on his face, Jordan asked, "Can I get you something? Or have the nurse get you something?"

  Glancing at his IV, he grimaced. "I think my pain dispenser is empty."

  "I'll get the nurse."

  "No need. I'll be the obnoxious patient and ring for her."

  The nurse was not the Nurse Ratched type but a man's fantasy version—a cute redhead with a voluptuous body and caring demeanor. She marched into the room within seconds, saw him eying the IV bag and said with a winsome smile, "I'll check your records and refill it right away." The redhead glanced at Jordan. "Is there anything else I can do for you?"

  Ryan smiled and let his eyes rest on her long enough for both women to notice. "No thank you."

  When the nurse left the room, Jordan rolled her eyes.

  Ryan grinned. "What? She's a nice kid. Gave me a back rub this morning."

  The bit of jealousy that Jordan revealed did much to alleviate his flagging spirits. He started to smile but thought better of it. Better stay on track. Something deeper is going on.

  Pushing his feelings aside, Ryan was once again all business. "The way I see it, if a drug can't get past the FDA, it doesn't work. It's that simple. The FDA has top scientists and investigators, and if they don't approve a drug, it's because the clinical trial results didn't show it to be safe and effective."

  A frown clouded Jordan's face. "That's complete bullshit, Ryan! That's what they want you to believe. Ever since the Vioxx fiasco, those bureaucratic pencil pushers at the FDA are too scared to approve any novel drugs. The higher-ups got their asses handed to them for approving Vioxx, and you better believe they won't make that mistake again anytime soon. While they're busy covering their asses, hundreds of promising new drugs
are getting shot down."

  He wondered if her resentment was blurring her judgment. "I don't think they're capricious about giving or withholding approval. I'm sure they need to have a good reason for not approving a new drug. Otherwise, the drug companies would go ballistic."

  Jordan pounced on his naivety. "Sure they do. But it doesn't have to be because of the data. New drug submissions to the FDA are often hundreds of thousands of pages long. There's a lot of room for mistakes. Any number of procedural mistakes might happen, and the FDA often throws the baby out with the bathwater. They hide behind their bureaucratic rules to keep from having to make a rational decision."

  Ryan stared at the foot of the bed. "I agree that there are bureaucratic snafus that delay approvals, but companies don't abandon good drugs just because they have to go back and repeat some procedural issues. If it's a good drug, it will eventually make it to the market."

  Jordan shook her head in frustration. "That's only if the company is persistent, has the resources, and can't find a more lucrative way to market the drug. I'm almost certain now that the people after me have a high stake in these other clinics and fear that they'll lose hundreds of millions of dollars a year if the patients they're recruiting and charging millions can get the same drugs at my clinic for a fraction of the cost. They even have one of these clinics a few miles from mine. I didn't know about it until I was approached. They tried to get me to join their little fraternity, and I refused. Now they want me out of the way." She paused as if to steel her emotions. "They need me out of the way."

  Ryan shook his head in disbelief. "Jordan, you should have told me all this earlier. If you had, I might not be in this bed now. Still, I don't understand why you wanted to come down to Exuma and meet me in the first place."

  "Ryan, I had no idea it would get this crazy. I hated not telling you, but I needed to make sure you were not somehow involved with them."

  That caught him by surprise, and it stung. "Involved?" He had to restrain himself from shouting. "How would I be involved, and why in the world would you ever even consider that as a possibility?"

  "As I was researching this supposed ovarian cancer cure, I traced its origins back to Tricopatin, and back to your former employer, Fisher Singer Worldwide. I found out that FSW bought your company and that you were assigned the lead position on the Tricopatin project. I was surprised to learn that the project was canceled midway through human trials. From everything I reviewed, Tricopatin looked promising. I came to find you to learn what went wrong and to find out if the drug was a potential cure. If it was, I hoped to convince you to come work with me at the clinic so we could offer your wonder drug to my patients for a reasonable price."

  Jordan watched as Ryan squeezed his rubber bubble device on the IV for a fresh shot of morphine. A few seconds later, he felt the drug course through his veins. He sighed and returned his attention to her.

  "I can assure you that Tricopatin doesn't cure cancer. For years I believed that it would." His body sagged and his voice grew rough. "And I even staked Cindy's life on it." Anger swept over him, and his voice rose. "I can't believe those bastards are pushing Tricopatin as a cure!"

  "Well," Jordan ventured, trying to defuse his reaction, "maybe they have more information now, you know? Maybe they discovered something you missed."

  "No! I reviewed the trial data myself." Ryan was adamant. "The trials were not shut down because of some bureaucratic red-tape issue. In fact, the FDA was more than accommodating in allowing us to advance the drug to human trials. The trials were halted because tests revealed that, for some inexplicable reason, Tricopatin made the cancer grow faster than in the placebo group."

  Jordan looked forlorn as she listened to him describe the failure.

  "We thought there might be a way to alter the drug to produce desirable results, but shortly after the trial was canceled, I left FSW, and then Cindy, Jake, and Karly's plane went down, and I . . ." He paused to get a grip on his emotions. "At that point I lost my desire to continue my research. None of it seemed important anymore. If the drug you were offered was a copycat version of Tricopatin, I think your first assessment was correct. These guys are a bunch of charlatans offering false hopes with no chance of a cure."

  They both fell silent as a sense of gloom settled over the little room.

  Ryan opened his mouth to continue just as the cute redhead breezed in.

  "It's time to change the dressing on your burns. And you really should be resting." The last statement was aimed at Jordan with a pointed look.

  Jordan rubbed her eyes and stood up to leave. "I'll be back tonight," she said to Ryan as she leaned over the bed and kissed him on the cheek. "Maybe I can sneak you in a treat." She said it just loud enough to make certain the redhead heard.

  Chapter 19

  Jordan's revelations had given Ryan a lot to mull over, but sleep was beckoning. With the sedatives pumping into his veins, his eyelids grew heavier as his body relaxed into the bed. He closed his eyes and awaited a dreamless slumber.

  Instead of the welcome sleep, he found himself five years in the past. Back when it all started to go wrong. . . .

  ***

  It was a normal Thursday morning, and Ryan was running late for a 9:00 a.m. meeting with his lab director. He had done FDA paperwork until 3:30 that morning and had woken up late. Cindy was rushing Karly and Jake to finish their breakfast and get out the door in time to catch the school bus when the phone rang. Ryan answered.

  "Hello, Ryan, this is Albert Seymour."

  The hair on the back of Ryan's neck stood up. "Hello, Dr. Seymour."

  "Ryan, I need to see you and Cindy in my office today to discuss Cindy's latest test results."

  A chill ran through his body. "Albert! What is it?" he blurted, not about to let the doctor get away with a cryptic reply.

  Dr. Seymour hesitated. "I shouldn't discuss this over the phone, but . . ." He took a deep breath. "The biopsy that we took from Cindy yesterday confirms the abnormal CA-125 blood test results that we saw last week."

  Ryan's heart dropped to the pit of his stomach, and his legs began to wobble. He wished he weren't a scientist—all of this would have sounded like mumbo jumbo, and he wouldn't have understood the implications of the doctor's words.

  "What stage?"

  "I'd like to run some additional tests," Dr. Seymour said.

  Ryan knew he was hedging, and the doctor's attempt at sugarcoating what he had to say was infuriating.

  "Damn it, Albert! You don't need more tests. I know what a biopsy is. What stage is it?"

  "Stage four."

  Ryan hung up the phone in a fog of grief. The shock on his face held Cindy's attention and she knew without asking. After the kids were out the door, they clutched each other and cried.

  It was a veritable death sentence. A mere six weeks earlier, Ryan had been celebrating the greatest success of his career. His company had completed pre-clinical testing on Tricopatin, a drug with the potential to become a revolutionary cure for ovarian cancer. Today he would need to rely on his raw courage to carry them through the next hours.

  Later that morning at Dr. Seymour's office, they heard the whole story. After a third test reconfirmed the diagnosis, Cindy Matthews—at the age of thirty-four—was given less than two years to live. Ryan's familiarity with the clinical details, as well as his own family's connection with ovarian cancer, made him no stranger to this killer. On Cindy's side, her mother had died of the cancer at forty-two. This family history fueled Ryan's drive to find a cure. His own daughter Karly was no doubt at an increased risk, too. He was determined to defeat this beast.

  Cindy's chance for survival was now reduced to a miracle cure, a cure Ryan hoped he had developed in Tricopatin. But it would be several years, if ever, before the FDA approved the drug. Although pre-clinical test results were promising, all that meant was that it could cure lab rats. Human clinical trials had not even begun yet, and even if they had, final approval would still be years away. Time was n
ot on their side.

  Ryan's firm, Immugene, was small and cash-strapped. It had neither the resources nor the bureaucratic connections to rush the drug through human trials and achieve government approval. But with the desperation of a protective husband and father whose family is threatened, Ryan promised Cindy he would find a way to cure her. It wasn't something he said rashly to make her feel better. He'd never been more determined about anything in his life. He refused to let this disease take her away from him.

  When word of Immugene's success with Tricopatin's pre-clinical tests reached the market, several large pharmaceutical companies took notice, and the acquisition offers began to pour in—some of them from major players. It wasn't Ryan's plan to sell out. Ryan, along with his best friend and business partner Eric Maynard, started Immugene with venture capital. The two men shared big dreams. Their business plan involved surviving on the venture capital until they could bring a major drug to human testing. The plan from there was to take the company public and raise the vast amounts of money needed to advance through clinical trials. If the drug proved successful, Immugene would be worth several hundred million dollars, and Ryan and Eric would be multi-millionaires. But now, with Cindy's diagnosis, Ryan was running out of options. Immu-gene did not have enough time to go public, and Cindy's only chance for survival was for her to receive Tricopatin within the next six months.

  A month earlier, pharmaceutical industry leader Fisher Singer Worldwide had made an enticing offer to purchase Immugene for $150 million plus. The "plus" would come in the form of negotiations on stock options, compensation packages for retained Immugene employees, and severance packages for the employees who were let go once the acquisition was complete.