Chapter 3
Chapter Three
At the clinic office Tuesday morning.
Trent walked down a semi-dark corridor after entering through an unmarked door of the facility.
He took off his Red Sox baseball cap and stuffed it into his jacket pocket before stopping at the door of an office—the only one with a light on at six a.m.—and found a small woman sitting behind a large desk examining a very fat file.
This had to be the right place although he saw no name plate.
The ache in his shoulder tightened to a coil of pain.
He wished he’d had a chance to talk to Nunley yesterday, but the trainer had been kept busy with the midseason injuries of Trent’s teammates, some way worse off than him.
He moved forward into the nondescript space.
Coming to a stop well in front of her desk, he watched her for a moment without announcing himself. A huge pile of papers lay to her right. She scanned the page in front of her then lifted it—the last one—and placed it face down on the four-inch-high pile to her right before looking up at him.
She wore a white lab coat and he saw a well-worn, plain-white collared shirt under the coat.
Her hair was dark, wavy, and long and she wore no makeup—not that she needed any.
She looked younger than she must have been to be in her position.
She looked like goddamn Snow White, with apple cheeks, long dark lashes, and ridiculously lush red lips.
This was not how he’d pictured her from the phone call.
He was expecting someone more like Jessica Rabbit than Snow White.
The smile that formed on his lips couldn’t be helped.
“Dr. Morneau, I presume?”
“Trent Lockheed, I presume?” She didn’t exactly smile at him, but there was an amused twinkle in her eye. “Have a seat. So far, your medical file doesn’t disqualify you.”
“How encouraging. That my file?” He nodded at the pile of papers in the folder.
He lowered himself into one of the two sturdy, barely-large-enough chairs waiting in front of her desk.
He’d bet a Super Bowl ring these chairs didn’t get used much, but then it didn’t look like the whole office got much use.
She nodded back. “I got the file from Ralph on the QT.” She paused and glanced at her diplomas on the wall to her left.
He tried not to squirm in his chair, but she was in control and that didn’t sit well. At least not here. He could think of—
She interrupted his thought, “You’re a problem, you know. Even if you match the physical profile perfectly—which it appears you do and which I’ll confirm with an examination today—you don’t fit the rest of the profile—the lifestyle profile. Not at all.”
“What do you mean?”
“Think about it—do you suppose it’s accidental that you’ve never heard of this research and this drug trial? Do you suppose you’re the only professional athlete who would want in if they knew about it?”
“No. So does that mean I’m at the back of a long line or what?”
“There is no line.”
He waited for her to explain. He didn’t dare rush her because her face was the very picture of conflicted and he was too desperate to risk knocking her to the wrong side of the fence she was on.
Only thing he needed to do was not let her see his desperation—partly out of habit, the way he played his game—and partly because he had a sense that she was not above somehow using it against him.
Sometime. The stray thoughts of her in his bedroom flashed again into his mind.
“This is top secret. You know what the implications are—what this serum will do if the trials go well and it’s ultimately put on the market?
It will change the face of medicine. Regular treatment could heal musculoskeletal injuries and degenerative diseases in a short time.
This serum could prolong a professional athlete’s career by at least ten percent.
I’d say two or more years. And the quality of functioning would remain high. ”
“I understand. You’re sitting on the goddamn fountain of youth for athletes everywhere.”
She nodded. “But we’re funded by NIH and the hospital’s general fund—no pharmaceutical companies.
NIH and the FDA made it clear to us they wanted to maintain the scientific integrity to an unusually high degree of the research because there was too much potential for high-profile abuse and too much money at stake to risk corruption of the results by the pharmaceutical money.
And my institution wants to maintain their reputation.
Everyone wants to keep the big money agendas away from it— and the media.
For now, anyway. For round one, the first drug trial.
Too much could go wrong.” She didn’t take a breath.
“They know—we all know—we’ll be under a microscope eventually when the drug testing is over and it’s ready for FDA review and approval for commercial use.
There’s already so much controversy. Basically, NIH and the FDA both said the only way we could go forward is with strict confidentiality with no funding except NIH’s grant or from the hospital’s general funds. ”
“Then why am I here? I mean if I don’t fit the profile. If you’re trying to stay away from professional athletes?”
“Money.”
There wasn’t another word she could have uttered that would have stung more, like a whip across his cheek.
Money. He was coming to hate money. Hated having so much of it that that was all people saw.
Hated feeling like his face had been replaced with a giant dollar sign. One big commodity for someone to use.
His jaw clenched, but he controlled himself with a breath and maintained a tight smile.
“So how does this work? With the money? I thought you said—”
“Let’s do the physical exam first. Then we’ll see about the rest. No sense going to all the trouble if I find any surprises.”
For some reason, he liked her. He sensed they had a connection somewhere that was not readily apparent. He always went with his instincts with women. He always avoided the ones he might get too connected to. Like her. It would be the smart thing to do.
“Let’s get on with your exam,” she said.
“Sure.” He followed her two doors down the hall to the examining room.
“You didn’t read the fine print, did you?
” She didn’t think he would be smiling if he had.
She took a long look at his chiseled body and tried to hide the shock of her unprofessional gut reaction.
He had a ridiculously unfair combination of sex appeal and charm.
Turning away, she picked up a cloth and antiseptic and rubbed his shoulder, then she picked up a needle and, before he could react, she stabbed him in the arm with it.
“Don’t worry. It’s only Novocain. Your shoulder should feel numb within sixty seconds. ”
“What’s that for?” His grin was gone.
“This is the worst part. I’m going to do a muscle biopsy to remove a tiny sliver from your shoulder, the rotator cuff.”
“At the injury site?”
She nodded and had a flicker of conscience when he clenched his mouth shut so tight his jaw muscle twitched.
“It’ll be okay. I’m only taking a tiny piece.” She dragged over a giant rolling microscope and positioned it so she could see his shoulder as he placed his arm over the metal plate. Then she turned and picked up her scalpel.
This was when most of the subjects showed real fear.
At least the others had been in an operating room for the procedure, which should have given them a better sense of security.
But this procedure was often done in doctors’ offices and this research center examining room was better equipped than most.
“This is for the production of your own designer drug. We inject the sample with the EM-HGH-1. We’ll isolate each patient’s skeletal muscle stem cells and combine it with embryonic stem cells to produce their designer serum.
This is the magic formula. It reduces toxicity and teratogenesis associated with HGH treatment. ”
“What happens after you decide I can be a research subject?”
She looked at him as she sliced into his shoulder and spoke. He flinched, but listened attentively. Flapping the small sliver of skin and muscle aside she sliced a wafer-thin piece of his muscle and tendon. She then used a 1 cm curette rather than forceps to remove the sliver of tissue.
“I’ll monitor you. Regularly testing your plasma IGF-I concentrations, periodic physical examinations, differential blood count, urinalysis, blood chemistry tests, radiography of your shoulder, and electrocardiography.
Regular measurements of mobility and pain, in your case, especially after games or strenuous use. ”
“You mean daily?”
She frowned. She did mean daily, but she refused to think of the logistical problems with that now. One hurdle at a time. She ignored his question.
“You seem to have remarkable tolerance for pain.”
“It’s the Novocain. Works like a charm.”
She knew that wasn’t true. It hadn’t penetrated deep enough to numb him completely. Fifty percent effectiveness at best. She patched his shoulder up and finished the exam in silence, taking his blood pressure, measuring his heart rate, and taking blood for cholesterol levels and blood sugar.
She checked his ligament and tendon stability. The problem was in his throwing shoulder, but she would account for that in the subsequent testing. Now she measured for the baseline mobility and pain, moving his limbs to test flexibility.
As she finished up, trying not to be impressed with his stoic cooperation, coils of trouble tightened at the thought of the issues he faced.
The worst thing was the potential for a stroke, especially after trauma.
This would be the thing that almost stopped her from accepting him into the program.
The thing that would keep her up at night.
Because enough repeated trauma had a high likelihood of causing clots and stroke.