_Wednesday, April 8
3:18 P.M.
_
Ellen O'Hara, R.N., who was in charge of the nursing staff at the
Dorian Institute and chair of the union committee for the Gerex
Corporation, looked around the room, which was a conference space just
off the laboratory in the first level of the basement. Each of the
three other nurses present reported directly to her and they had filed
in casually one by one, in order not to draw the attention of the
research staff as they passed the laboratory. They all sensed the
imminence of crisis and this was a clandestine emergency meeting.
The appearance of Katherine Starr and the shooting that transpired had
left the entire nursing staff in dismay. Of course they all remembered
Kristen Starr, the outgoing and scatterbrained TV personality, who had
arrived in the throes of a mental meltdown. Some also remembered her
mother, Katherine, who had made a nuisance of herself till she was
refused further admittance (on the orders, everyone suspected of the
owner, Winston Bartlett, who was widely reported to have a romantic
relationship with the girl).
They also suspected that something had started going terribly wrong
with Kristen's cosmetic procedure. After seeming okay, her behavior had
suddenly become erratic and she had been immediately whisked into
intensive care in the subbasement and quarantined before anybody on the
regular nursing staff could learn what the problem was. She was
attended by the research team he had brought from California, and the
information officer at the registration desk in the lobby, May Gooden,
was instructed to say she had voluntarily left the program. (Well,
maybe she had, but she hadn't left the institute.) Then less than a
week ago, she was rolled out on a gurney and loaded into the ambulance,
which was driven by Winston Bartlett's Japanese thug, and taken God
knows where.
Ellen had checked and was dismayed, though not entirely surprised, to
discover that none of this had been included in the weekly clinical-
trial reports being forwarded to the National Institutes of Health.
(Which in itself was a flagrant violation of procedural requirements.)
And now this. Kristen's own mother showed up deranged and carrying a
pistol, looking for her. How much longer would it be before the NIH, or
the police, found out that something funny had gone on?
Right now the first thing to do was to get the three senior nurses in
the room to put a lid on the rumors. They were her lieutenants; it was
their job.
Elise Baker, single and sharp and acerbic, was in charge of the second
floor; Mary Hinds, a kindly mother of two, had responsibility for the
third floor, and May Gooden, the queen of communication skills, handled
the reception and oversaw the staff responsible for the dining room.
All three were in their forties and they reported to Ellen O'Hara, who
reported to Karl Van de Vliet.
"Elise, could you please close the door."
"Sure." She was getting up. "Is this the quorum? You don't want anybody
else here?"
"We have to decide what to do about Katherine Starr," Ellen began. "In
my opinion, the absolute first thing we have to do is make sure the
story of what just happened never leaves this building."
"Well, I think Dr. Vee should call the police and have her arrested"
Elise said as she quietly shut the door. "The very idea. Barging in
here with a loaded gun."
"I don't feel safe in the lobby anymore," May Gooden declared. Her face
was lined and she had streaks of premature gray. "We're all exposed out
here in the middle of nowhere. I think Charles should have a pistol.
What good is it having a 'security guard' if you're still not secure."
"Mary, what do you think?" Ellen asked. She knew Mary would always try
to split the difference and reconcile differing opinions.
"I don't know. Maybe it was just the case of one crazy person. It's
probably not going to happen again."
Okay, Ellen thought, that's three different votes. Call the cops, beef
up security, or put our collective heads in the sand.
She worried about the others, but she was also worried about her own
situation. Her husband Harold left her eight years ago for a younger
woman, and after reclaiming her maiden name, she'd raised their two
young sons on her own. Now the oldest, Eric, was ready to start college
and she had no idea how she was going to pay for it if she lost this
job.
The Gerex Corporation paid her almost twice what she would be earning
as an R.N. at an ordinary hospital. With her current salary, she had a
shot at providing the boys with an education. Without it--if Gerex got
embroiled in some horrible scandal and was put out of business--she had
no hope whatsoever.
Even worse, she might be named as being complicit in some unethical
shenanigans, knowingly putting a patient at risk in a human trial. That
would certainly drive a stake into the heart of her nursing career.
"Elise, we'd better think long and hard about bringing in the police.
They would talk to Katherine and she'd tell them Kristen was missing
and we simply have no idea where it would end." She paused. "I'm about
to say something I shouldn't, but I guess this is the moment. You all
deserve to know an important fact. The NIH has not been told the reason
Kristen Starr was terminated from the stem cell program."
"How do you know that?" Elise asked.
"I just checked the reporting records. Call it a hunch. We all know
that, for a formal clinical trial, that's a flagrant violation of NIH
rules."
"What are you saying?" Mary asked, her voice filling with alarm.
"I'm saying we have no choice but to keep this whole matter of Kristen
and her mother under cover. If the Dorian Institute gets caught
tampering with the data from a clinical trial, it could be the end of
everybody's career. Dr. Van de Vliet's certainly, but most probably
ours as well."
"My God," Elise blurted out "Did we have to wait till some crazy person
with a gun barged in here before you got around to telling us that
clinical-trial data had been fiddled with?"
"Maybe Dr. Vee still intends to provide a full report to the NIH.
Whatever he intends, if this whole matter blows up, the less any of us
knows about what may have gone on, the better."
"Well," Elise declared, "I think they all should be confronted. The
clinical trials aren't over yet. There'll be a final report so he can
still give the NIH whatever data had been left out. We should confront
him and demand that he give a full accounting in the final report
Otherwise we all could end up being part of some conspiracy."
"Maybe we ought to think this over for a few days before we do anything
drastic," Mary said. "We don't know what he intends to do and there's
still time. If we start giving Dr. Vee ultimatums, it's just going to
upset him even more. He could have been killed taking the gun away from
her. He's got enough to worry about just now. Maybe he's going to
handle her special case some other way that we don't know about."
"My concern right now," Ellen said, "is the people who work under us. I
don't think pulling an ostrich number is going to protect anybody.
We've got to get out of denial and face up to how serious this might
get. And I'll tell you our number one priority right now. If Katherine
Starr walks out of here before the Kristen problem is cleared up and
gets the ear of someone in the media, then everybody who works here . .
. Let's just say we mustn't allow that to happen. That's why we're
having this meeting."
"Are you suggesting we should keep her . . . sedated?" Mary asked. "All
her medications have to be approved by--"
"No sedative should be listed on her chart and I'm not telling you what
to do, but use your imagination."
There was a moment of silence as the implications of the unspoken order
settled in.
"And starting immediately, we need to hold a meeting of the staff on
each floor and impress on them that the story of Katherine Starr must
never leave this building. Ever. Remind everybody that that would be a
serious violation of a staffer's original security agreement and would
subject them to legal action the likes of which they can't even begin
to imagine. And if somebody comes around asking questions about Kristen
Starr, nobody here knows anything. We can say she was here because
that's part of the record and she is no longer here. End of statement.
Beyond that, nobody knows zip."
This problem is far from over, Ellen told herself. God only knows how
it's going to end.