Part 7 (1/2)
He leaned back into the sofa. ”She has a genetic disorder. I searched it on my phone. It says there's no treatment. June brought her there so Mack could cure her, he's supposedly this healer? This whole thing is predicated on him being all-powerful. They all have stories about him healing their injuries and diseases”-Shane waved his arms-”with the laying on of his hands.”
”Energy healing works,” she informed him.
”If you're Chinese.”
She shook her head at his ignorance.
”But it's not working for Lily. June and Caleb, they've lost faith in him. I need to find options. There has to be something in trials, don't you think? If not from Helixia, then from someone?”
”There are trials going on for almost everything,” she agreed.
”I need to find one to get this baby into. One as far from Colorado as possible.”
Janelle considered this. ”Talk to Dineesh. He's our Director of Immunology. He'd know all the stuff that's not public yet.”
”Cool,” Shane replied, pressing his eyes with the flats of his hands.
While Janelle slept, he'd lain on his side, staring at her stomach. Her body was making calculations and divisions beyond his understanding. The big questions about their son had already been decided: would he have an instinct for trigonometry? A wide Asian nose? Would he shoot with his left? But other decisions were ongoing. Every day, billions of Nicholas's cells were splitting and dividing, agreeing on details without bothering to check with Shane.
And this was where things went wrong. Too much or too little of one protein in one cell, and their lives would all change forever. Written into the spiraling strands of Nicholas's genetic code were secrets they would only learn by watching.
Shane's knowledge of genetic prenatal disease, which he had picked up during his career selling these drugs, might have frightened him, but Shane felt no real fear for his unborn son. Things did not go wrong in his life. Only his brother had ever disturbed his confidence in the universe.
Stacey took him to his first meeting, where Dennis Adderberry greeted him warmly. He was introduced by conference call to his team of sales reps around the Northwest. They briefed him on the current state of the cancer drug Sorion. It was selling beautifully, though its chart seemed to have plateaued some years earlier. Dennis gave a cheery speech about the future. Afterward, Shane stayed behind to speak with him.
”The scientists who created this,” he asked. ”Do they still work here?”
”Most of them, sure.”
”I'd love to talk with one of them. I like to have an idea of the thinking behind products, understand the pa.s.sion they have for it. I use that when I sell to doctors.”
Dennis's jet black eyebrows arched, and Shane sensed he had made an unorthodox request. ”Well, you should talk to Prajuk Acharn. He led the team. I'm sure he'd tell you what you want to know, if you can get him to leave his lab.”
So at lunch, Shane walked out into June's early breeze, across a brick walkway to the concrete, five-story Research and Laboratory building. It reminded him of a Lego piece: blunt, flat, unadorned, ready to be transplanted like a gene onto another building.
When its industrial door closed behind him, all signs of day disappeared. There were no windows, and no reception area. A small sign directed him to Protein Chemistry. He turned left, facing a long straight corridor, and noticed a pungent chemical scent dominating the air. Though the corridor was empty, he could feel the presence of scientist specters. He walked past narrow offices adorned with names from every culture imaginable, until he found the nameplate for Dr. Prajuk Acharn.
His knock pushed the door open, revealing a slight man behind a small desk. He seemed to be in his early sixties. He wore a white s.h.i.+rt and a brown tie too thick for these times. He possessed a narrow face on the edge of delicacy, and his straight black hair was combed harshly to the left, though it faced a counterinsurgency along its part. He was glancing between an old PC on the side of his desk and a larger Mac monitor in front of him. His neck, Shane thought, must ache at night.
”Excuse me? Doctor Acharn?”
The scientist looked up at him.
”I'm Shane Oberest. I'm the new Director of Commercial on Sorion.”
An empty swivel chair sat just out of reach, but Shane didn't feel he should make a move for it just yet.
”I'm fairly sure I've never seen anyone from Commercial in this building, unless we're in a Phase Three.” Doctor Acharn's voice was unexpectedly high-pitched, that particular nasal blend of Asia and California.
”Are you Korean?” Shane asked him impulsively.
”No, I'm from Khon Kaen.”
”Really? I'd love to see the beaches.”
”All American college students want to see the beaches. This thing has become some rite of pa.s.sage.”
”It used to be Jamaica,” Shane told him.
”A huge loss for the Jamaicans,” Prajuk replied dryly.
Shane smiled and took a tentative step inside his office. ”So, I just started on Sorion.” He placed a thick purple-bound deck onto his desk. ”They gave me this.”
”They want you to learn about a biologic from a PowerPoint deck?”
Shane grinned. The doctor's eyes brightened, and he knew he was in.
”I'd love to ask you a couple of questions really, really quick. Do you have a few minutes by any chance?”
”A few, sure.”
”I'd like to understand more than the numbers. Can I ask you about its genesis? You guys were looking for a cure for prostate cancer?”
”Oh, no. Is that what that deck says?”
He sat in the chair, as Prajuk shook his head. ”This thing, 'cure,' is what they say for investors. We are not looking for a cure for cancer.”
Shane frowned. ”You're not?”
”There is no such thing.”
”If you don't believe in curing cancer, then what do you want patients to do?”
”Live with it.” Prajuk leaned back into his chair.
”Live with it?”
”Why not? Your body already lives with cancer every day. Stop anyone on the street at any time and screen them, and you'll find some cancerous cells. So what? Your body absorbs them, most of the time. We place our bet on aiding the body's natural processes to absorb these mutations before they grow large enough to interfere with life. We do not bombard it with radiations and chemicals. Attack the body, and it will attack back. That is what kills people.”
”Well, the tumors kill people.”
But Prajuk shook his head no. ”Most cancer patients don't die from cancer. They die from having their immune system and red blood cells obliterated by chemotherapy and radiation. They get pneumonia, infections; organ failure. With Sorion, we were not starting from a place of, how do we cure cancer? We were studying B and T cells, to understand how they function. Nothing in the body exists to do nothing.”
”Except male nipples.”
Doctor Acharn looked at him. A moment pa.s.sed.