Strong Medicine by Arthur Hailey
It was done. As Sam’s face clouded, then suffused with anger, she knew that now there could be no turning back.
“Very well,” he pronounced tautly. “At least we know where we stand.” He considered, then went on, “Earlier I said there would be no formal vote here. Cancel that. I want us to go on record. Seth, please take notes.”
The comptroller, his expression still sad, again produced his pencil and held it poised.
“I have already made my own position clear,” Sam said. “I am, of course, in favor of continuing our introduction of Montayne, as planned. I wish to know who agrees or disagrees. Those who agree, raise their hands.”
Vincent Lord’s hand shot up. Those of Dr. Starbut, Hammond, and two other vice presidents followed. Nicholson, apparently overcoming his doubts, raised his hand too. Bill Ingram hesitated; he looked at Celia in mute appeal. But she turned away, refusing to help him; he must make his own decision. After a second more, Bill’s hand went up.
Sam and the others were looking at Seth Feingold. The comptroller sighed, put down his pencil and waveringly raised his hand.
“That’s nine to one,” Sam said. “It doesn’t leave any doubt that this company will continue with the launching of Montayne.”
Once more there was a silence, this time awkward, as if no one knew what to do or say next. Amid it, Sam stood up.
“As you know,” he said, “when all of this began, I was about to leave to see my daughter and grandson at the hospital. I’ll go there now.” But the earlier joy had left his voice. Sam nodded to the other men, but pointedly ignored Celia as he left.
She remained in her seat. Bill Ingram, now standing, moved toward her. “I’m sorry …” he began.
She waved him to silence. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t want to hear.”
Suddenly, unexpectedly, she realized that everything she had built up for herself within the company—her position, authority, reputation, future prospects—had come tumbling down. Could she even survive here now? She wasn’t sure.
Bill said, “I have to ask this. What are you going to do?” When she didn’t answer, he went on. “Surely, now that you’ve made your protest, now that everyone knows where you stand about Montayne … surely you can go on directing sales?”
Celia responded dully, not wanting to make decisions now, “I don’t know. I just don’t know.” But she did know that, at home tonight, she would have to think her position through.
Seth Feingold told her, “I hated to vote against you, Celia. But you know how it is—I don’t understand anything scientific.”
She glared at him. “Then why did you vote at all? You could have said that, and abstained.”
He shook his head regretfully, and left.
One by one the others followed until Celia was alone.
13
“I know something is wrong,” Andrew said at dinner, breaking a lengthy silence, “and my guess is, seriously wrong.”
He stopped, and when Celia made no immediate reply, continued. “You’ve been quiet since I came in, and I know your moods pretty well, so I won’t bug you. But when you want to talk, and need me … well, my love, I’m here.”
She put down her knife and fork alongside the meal she had scarcely touched, and turned to him, her eyes brimming.
“Oh, darling! How I need you!”
He reached out, covering her hand with his, and said gently, “Take your time. Finish dinner first.”
She told him, “I can’t eat.”
Soon after, in their living room and sipping a brandy which Andrew poured, Celia described the past two days’ events, culminating in her failure to convince Sam and others this afternoon that the launching of Montayne should be delayed.
Andrew listened carefully, injecting an occasional question. At the end he told her, “I don’t see what else you could have done.”
“There was nothing else,” Celia said. “But what I have to decide is—what do I do now?”
“Do you have to make a decision, at least right away? Why not take some time off? I could get away too, and we’ll take a trip somewhere.” He urged, “Away from pressures, you could think everything through, then do whatever seems right when you get back.”
She smiled gratefully. “I wish it would keep that long. But it’s something I can’t put off.”
Andrew came to Celia and kissed her, then assured her, “You know I’ll help in any way I can. But remember one thing. I’ve always been proud of you, and I’ll go on being that, whatever you decide.”
Looking at her husband fondly, she thought: A lesser man would have reminded her of their argument in the hotel in San Francisco, when Andrew had refused to concede his doubts about Montayne, or the use of any drug by pregnant women. That was when Celia had suggested—maliciously, as she saw it now—that his medical reasoning might be prejudiced or outdated, maybe both.
Well, Celia was now the one who had come around to having doubts, but Andrew was too big a person ever to say, “I told you so.”
If she were to apply Andrew’s standards to her own present dilemma, she wondered, which way would it be decided?
She didn’t even have to ask. She knew.
She remembered, too, some advice given to her years earlier.
“There is something you have: a gift, an instinct, for judging what is right … Use your gift, Celia … When you have power, be strong to do what you believe … Don’t let lesser people dissuade you.”
Emotion surged as she remembered Eli Camperdown. The long-ago president of Felding-Roth had spoken those words, near death, in his home at Mount Kemble Lake.
Andrew asked, “More brandy?”
“No, thank you.”
She finished what was in her glass, met Andrew’s eyes, then declared decisively, “I cannot take part in marketing Montayne. I’m going to resign.”
In all of her twenty-four years at Felding-Roth, it was the most painful thing she had ever done. Celia’s letter, handwritten and addressed to Sam, was brief.
With the greatest personal regret I am resigning as Director of Pharmaceutical Sales and from Felding-Roth.
This letter will terminate my connection with the company.
You are aware of my reasons. It seems unnecessary to repeat them.
I wish to say that my years of employment here have been pleasurable and privileged. Not least among the privileges have been your support and friendship for which I have been—and remain—most grateful.
I am leaving without bitterness. I wish Felding-Roth Pharmaceuticals and its people success in every way.
Celia sent the letter, hand delivered, to the president’s office and followed it herself a half hour later. She was shown in immediately to Sam’s inner office. Behind her a door closed quietly.
Sam looked up from a paper he was reading. His features were set grimly and his voice was cold. “You asked to see me. Why?”
She responded uncertainly, “I’ve been with the company a long time, most of it working for you. I felt I couldn’t just walk out …”
He cut in, with a savage anger she had never seen before, “But that’s exactly what you are doing! Walking out on all of us—your friends, colleagues, others who’ve depended on you. Quitting disloyally at the worst possible time, an important merchandising time, when the company needs you.”
She protested, “My leaving has nothing to do with loyalty or friendship.”
“Obviously not!”
She had not been asked to sit down, so continued to stand.
“Sam,” she pleaded, “please understand! I cannot, simply cannot, help to sell Montayne. It’s become a matter of conscience.”
He retorted, “You call it conscience. I could apply other names.”
She asked, curiously, “Other names like what?”
“For one: feminine hysteria. For another: phony, uninformed self-righteousness. Spitefulness at not getting your own way, so you quit.”
Sam glared as he went on. “Why, you’re behav
He motioned to that morning’s New York Times, which lay open on his desk, turned to a news item featuring a statement by Dr. Maud Stavely who, too, had learned of the deformed baby cases in France and Spain and was using them in her own campaign to delay Montayne. Celia had read the Times story earlier.
“What you just said isn’t the truth,” Celia insisted, “and I have not been duped.” She decided to ignore the petty anti-feminist remarks.
As if he had not heard Celia’s disclaimer, he sneered, “Now, I suppose you’ll go to join Stavely and her gang.”
“No,” Celia said. “I’ll be joining nothing, seeing no one, making no statement whatever about why I’m leaving.” She added, in a voice she hoped was reasonable, “After all, I admitted yesterday that most of what I feel is instinct.”
Never before had she seen Sam in a mood so ugly. Despite it, she decided to make a last appeal, one final try.
“I’d like to remind you,” Celia said, “of something you once told me. It was when I was in London after we recruited Martin Peat-Smith.”
Earlier today, thinking about this meeting, she had remembered Sam’s words when she managed to lure Martin into the Felding-Roth orbit after Sam had failed. Before it happened, Sam warned her against mentioning money to Martin, but Celia ignored the warning and it was money which, in the end, had tipped the balance where Martin was concerned. On learning the news, and on the telephone from Boonton, Sam declared, “If ever, someplace down the road, you and I differ on a matter of judgment that’s important, you have my permission to remind me of this incident, and that your judgment was right and mine wrong.”
She reminded him now, and it was as if she had addressed an iceberg.
“Even if that’s true,” he snapped, “and though you say it is, I don’t remember, it’s merely proof your judgment has gone to pieces in the meantime.”
Suddenly, great sadness and emotion seized her, so she had difficulty in speaking, but managed to say, “Goodbye, Sam.”
He didn’t answer.
At home, it seemed extraordinary to Celia that the act of leaving Felding-Roth had been so simple. She had merely cleared her desk of personal things, said goodbyes to her secretary and a few others in the office, some of whom had been tearful, then driven away.
In a way, she supposed, her abrupt departure had been inconsiderate, but in another it had been essential. In recent weeks almost all of Celia’s work had centered on Montayne, and since it was work she could no longer do in good conscience, staying on would have achieved nothing. There was also the fact that everything in her department was in order; therefore Bill Ingram, who would have taken over anyway in a few weeks’ time, could move in at once without disruption.
The thought reminded her that she would never, now, be a corporate vice president—a poignant disappointment since the cup had come so close. But, she told herself, it was a disappointment she would learn to live with.
Andrew telephoned Celia twice during the day, first at her office, then later at home. On learning that her resignation had already taken effect, he announced he would be home early, and arrived in time for afternoon tea which Celia prepared. The experience was new for her. She supposed that from now on she would be doing it more often.
They greeted each other lovingly.
Soon after, as Andrew sipped his tea, he told her gently, “You need a rest from decisions, so I’ve taken some for us both. One is that you and I are going to live a little.”
He produced a large manila envelope. “I stopped at a travel agency on the way home, about one of my other decisions. We are going on a tour.”
“To where?”
“To everywhere. A world tour.”
She threw up her hands. “Oh, Andrew, you’re wonderful! You’re a comfort just to be with.”
“Let’s hope you feel that way after six months of togetherness on ships and in hotels.” He began pulling brochures from the envelope. “To begin, I thought we’d fly to Europe, do some touring there—France, Spain, Italy, anywhere else that interests either one of us—then take a ship through the Mediterranean …”
Despite her depression from the past few days, Celia’s spirits lifted. A world tour was something they had often talked about, but always vaguely, as something for the future. She thought: so why not now? Would there ever be a better time?
Andrew—with a small boy’s enthusiasm, she observed affectionately—was already making the idea come alive. “We should go to Egypt and Israel, then stop at the United Arab Emirates … India, of course … Japan’s a must, so is Singapore … we have to include Australia and New Zealand …”
She said, “It’s a magnificent idea!”
“Something I’ll have to do,” Andrew explained, “is get another doctor in the practice—a locum tenens—to help out while I’m away. That will probably take a month to arrange, so we can get away by March.” There would be no problem concerning the children, both of them knew, because Lisa and Bruce had committed themselves to summer jobs away from home.
They went on talking, Celia aware that the pain of today would inevitably return, and perhaps never disappear entirely, but at the moment—with Andrew’s encouragement—she succeeded in pushing it away.
Later that evening Andrew asked, “I know it’s early, but have you given any thought to what you’ll do now that you’re through at Felding-Roth? I can’t see you staying at home forever.”
“No,” she said, “I’m sure I won’t do that. But as for anything else, I just don’t know. I need time to think—which you’re giving to me, darling.”
That night they made love, not with grand passion but with a sweet gentleness in which Celia found peace.
During the several weeks that followed, Celia kept her word about making no public statement concerning the reason for her departure from Felding-Roth. Not surprisingly, news of her resignation filtered quickly through the industry and became known to the business press. There was a good deal of curiosity, which remained unsatisfied. The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, and New York Times all telephoned Celia, requesting interviews. She refused. She also politely turned aside questions from her own and Andrew’s friends.
Only to Lisa and Bruce did Celia confide everything, and that on Andrew’s urging. “You owe it to them,” he told her. “The children admire you, just as I do. They’re entitled to know why they can go on doing that. They should not be left wondering.”
It meant special trips, to Stanford in the case of Lisa, and to Potts-town where Bruce was now in his junior year at the Hill School, and in a way the diversion was good for Celia. Her days were no longer active and filled. The adjustment to having more time on her hands than she could use did not come easily.
Lisa was sympathetic but practical. “You’ll find something else to do, Mom, and whatever it is will be important. But the best thing that could happen right now is you and Daddy going on that world tour.”
But it was Bruce who, with a sensitivity beyond his years, summed up the situation best. “If you’re comfortable with yourself, Mom … if, now that time’s gone by, you’re sure what you did was right, that’s all that matters.”
After talking with both children, Celia decided that she was comfortable, and in that mood, in early March, flew from New York to Paris with Andrew for the beginning of their get-away-from-it-all odyssey.
14
In his house at Harlow, Martin Peat-Smith had gone to bed for the night, but couldn’t sleep. It was Saturday, a few minutes short of midnight, and the culmination of an exciting, eventful week.
Deciding that sleep would come when it was ready, he lay relaxed and wakeful, letting his mind roam.
Science, he thought whimsically after a while, could be like a woman who withholds her favors from a suitor until eventually he is close to giving up, ready to
Carrying the metaphor further, Martin mused, sometimes a whole series of orgasms followed (wasn’t “rippling” the word women used?) as more and more of the hitherto unknown, and only dreamed of, continued to come clear.
Why the hell, he asked himself, am I doing all this sexual fantasizing?
Answering his own question: You know damn well why! It’s because of Yvonne. Every time she comes near you in the lab, your mind leaps to one thing, which might be biology but sure as hell isn’t science.
So why haven’t you done something about it?
Why indeed? Come back to that question later.
For the moment, Martin returned to thoughts of his own scientific pursuit and the truly remarkable progress made since … when was it?
Well, the breathtaking, breakthrough part had begun barely a year ago.
His mind went back. To that point and beyond.
The visit to Harlow by Celia Jordan had been two years earlier, in 1975. Martin remembered showing her films of chromatograms and explaining, “Where bands appear, we have a peptide … you’ll see two columns of dark lines … at least nine peptides.”
But the problem—insurmountable, it seemed—was that the mixture of peptides discovered in brains of younger rats occurred in amounts too small to be purified and tested. Also, the mixture contained extraneous material, causing Rao Sastri to describe it as “nonsense” peptides.
Attempts to purify the mixture had continued, but results were desultory at best, seeming to confirm Sastri’s view that the required techniques were a decade or more away.
Among other members of the Harlow scientific team, morale had declined, along with faith in Martin’s basic theory.
It was then, at a time of lowest ebb, that it happened.