Chapter 16 #2
“Yes.” Isabel couldn’t safely say it, but she could agree.
“And Chase is still recruiting participants for next year’s clinical trials.
BioPulse might not disclose the medication’s cognitive-impairment results in cephalopods to these people—though it should.
But the company’s practices are already unethical.
. . And if Hydromotinzate works correctly for even a small percentage of patients, it has the potential to be very lucrative. ”
“So BioPulse is taking the risk. It wants to test the drug on humans and bring it to market as soon as possible, even if there’s a chance of major side effects?
Right.” Swearing under his breath, kicking at the damp footprints he’d left on the carpet, Wes paced the living room.
A muscle ticked in his jaw. He scrubbed a hand over his flushed neck.
“Do you think he knows? Does Chase know what BioPulse is doing with the octopuses? What’s happening to them in that satellite lab?
What could happen to any people who use the drug? ”
She didn’t know.
She needed to.
She reached for her phone. “I have to return his calls. Now.”
Hopped up on too much angry adrenaline, Wes had to force himself to stop pacing, to stop torturing the dish towel, to breathe through the tight constriction of muscle in his chest—and to speak without cursing when he asked, “Do you want me to leave while you talk to him?”
While Isabel talked to Chase fucking Meyer.
But since she needed him to be steady, he could be. Would be.
Anxiety, jealousy? Not helpful.
Anyhow, he wasn’t worried and he definitely wasn’t jealous.
The ice in his gut and the burn on his neck?
The pain knotted under his ribs? Irrelevant.
Isabel wasn’t calling her rich, influential, neurologist ex-fiancé because she regretted her decision to break off her engagement with Chase and to twist off his ring.
Wes knew that. He still hated that she needed to contact the fucker at all.
Hated that even after everything he’d done to her, Chase had something valuable to offer Isabel that he, Wes, didn’t.
Not the value of a pricey diamond—though there was that, too, God damn it.
Information.
He tried for a smile. This was fine, it was fine, he was fine. “I can go somewhere else, I can—”
“No.” The jerk of her chin was small but decisive.
“You’re sure?”
She nodded. Then she moved with tense, tiny steps to the couch.
She sat very upright, resisting the pull of saggy cushions, gravity, and the drag of his own weight settling beside her.
Her spine was rigidly straight beneath her pale, motionless ponytail as she dialed Chase’s number on speaker mode and placed her phone atop the coffee table’s vacation binder.
Maybe she meant to reach for Wes’s hand, gripping it hard enough to hurt while the line rang. Maybe not.
He didn’t care, because she had.
Calling: Dr. Chase Meyer Jr.
The call shrilled once, twice, vibrating through the bungalow.
No matter how the conversation between Isabel and this asshole doctor went, he’d keep quiet. He promised himself.
Brrrriiinng!
She was choosing to call Chase. The neurologist hadn’t harassed her into contact. She was calling because she needed something from him. This was practical. Again: her choice.
Brrrriii—
“Bella?” The call connected. “Babe?”
Fuck.
Wes had already detested this man for how he’d mistreated Isabel.
Idiot. But hearing Chase’s voice—suave, smiling with expensively white teeth?
He could just see the doctor mouthing apologies while stepping out of a conference room that overlooked lights and cars on the glitzy Las Vegas strip, possibly straightening his tie after a gin-and-tonic lunch, rolling his eyes toward his colleagues and pointing at his left hand—where despite everything, he probably had the ego to imagine that Isabel still wore his stupid diamonds.
The sound of Chase’s greeting grated on his brain like coarse sand.
His free hand made a fist; it wasn’t half as fierce as Isabel’s grip on him.
“Babe, thank God. I’ve been calling and texting for days, but you haven’t answered. I didn’t know where you were or what happened to you, or—”
The nerve of this fucker.
Isabel’s restraint was better than his. She had more practice with Chase, enough to sit back (metaphorically, since her spine remained straighter than the venomous needles of a lionfish) while the man vomited babes and concerns.
She listened without interrupting his justifications for why he’d left early for Las Vegas, why he was still in Sin City two weeks later, regardless of his apparent concern for her.
It wasn’t like Chase gave her an opening to participate in the conversation, anyhow.
Was this what she’d dealt with before in their relationship?
“. . . because BioPulse’s marketing head had a change in her schedule and needed to meet a day earlier than we’d planned or we couldn’t meet at all, and then Research and Development wanted a consultation after the marketing brief—but you didn’t answer any of my texts about moving up my timeline here, and—I walked out in the middle of an R when he spoke again a full ninety seconds later, his justifications and caveats were gone. So were his sweet words.
“All of BioPulse Pharmaceuticals’ research complies with both state and federal regulations. The corporation even adheres to voluntary industry best practices regarding lab safety reporting, as well as post-trial support for test subjects.”
Slick, practised, corporate.
No one talked like this! Not unless they were reading off a cue card. Or had just attended a seminar on brand voice? Or had been trained on a response to this exact question.
Shit.
“Yes, I believe that BioPulse is in compliance with current industry regulations.” Isabel’s counter was steady, while the tips of her ears flamed.
Her fingers clenched tighter around Wes’s hand; regulatory compliance and ethics weren’t the same.
“But have you seen these research practices in action?”
“I’ve just spent a week meeting with R&D in BioPulse’s headquarters, Bella. So, yes.”
“Have you visited the satellite testing facility in Moss Landing?”
Another pause.
Static and muffled breathing. A door clicked shut.
Then: “Where. . . are you in Moss Landing right now?”
She didn’t answer that. “Are you aware of Hydromotinzate’s side effects?”
“What?”
“When you promote BioPulse’s upcoming trial at the San Francisco Medical Center, do you disclose that the ataxia medication causes brain damage in its animal test subjects?”
“Wha—how—” An inhale crackled across the connection. “How do you know. . .?”
“Do you, Chase?”
“Isabel, how did—what did you—”
She hung up on him.