He studied her carefully. He knew that she knew this stuff inside out. If it had been any other nurse, she knew, he’d have waved her away. “What makes you think that?” he challenged, propping his chin in his elbow, rubbing his upper lip absentmindedly.
She took a seat and pulled out a large folder. “I knew you’d ask that.”
“Of course I’d ask that.”
“That’s right. I knew you’d ask, and so here’s my data.”
“Data. How refreshing—someone who works here who actually believes in the scientific process.”
“I know, it’s amazing, isn’t it?”
After battling a political nightmare a few years ago where there was a near-corruption scandal involving bribes from a pharmaceutical company to help push a drug along, Gian had been brought in. He had—if nothing else—a strict adherence to policy, squeaky clean, and in that respect, a bit like Alex. In the physical department? He was basically as much like Alex as the Gollum.
She opened the folder and handed it to him. “Look at the response rates; in memory, in reflex, short-term memory, long-term memory, all of these different fields. I keep seeing a growing divide. This folder is the group of people who perform well, or at least stay in place, and this is the group of people who don’t. The metrics just keep showing that the same groups are getting more entrenched in their patterns—and the people who are getting worse are deteriorating at a very alarming rate.”
He put his glasses back on and read over the documents carefully. Josie knew to occupy her mind—if it took forty-five minutes, Gian would sit there and take forty-five minutes. His meticulous nature, right here right now, was playing into exactly what she hoped. She wasn’t setting herself up for disappointment, though. She was resigned to failure this first time, but, if nothing else, she’d plant a seed of doubt in Gian’s mind and get him to at least think about it.
To her surprise, he snapped the folder shut and looked up within about ten minutes. “I see the trend—but we need more data.”
“Are you kidding me?” she said. “That’s not enough?”
“Nope. I’d say we need at least six months more.”
“Six months! Some of these people don’t have six months. Some of these families don’t have six months.”
“I’m not at all unaware of that.”
“Oh, that’s a lovely bureaucratic reply. ‘We’re sorry that your father is slipping into incontinence and doesn’t remember his middle child but we’re not unaware of that,’” she said with a snarky affect. Rage started to fill her, thinking about Ed and his confusion. How he was starting to confuse his daughters for each other and how he’d mistaken her, at one point, for one of them.
“I can’t jeopardize the funding, Josie.”
“Funding?”
“Funding.”
She began to play angrily with the little Dungeons and Dragons figures and a set of magic dice that Gian had sprinkled across the front of his desk.
“Isn’t there an ethics aspect to this for human trials, Gian,” she said sharply, “that supersedes funding?” Her anger was coming out and as the tension in the back of her neck got worse it started to blind her, her eyes seeing everything through a lace curtain. Rage roiled up through her veins, spiriting into her fingertips, down her spine into her coccyx, and then dividing in two, running down her legs into her toes.
This was the range of options. If she hadn’t had that conversation with Laura, Dylan, and Mike, if they hadn’t offered her the opportunity to start this crazy business, if she didn’t know damn well deep inside herself that she was right and that those people were in jeopardy by being forced to stay in the control group, then she wouldn’t say what she was about to say.
“Look, you can snap at me,” he said dispassionately. “It’s not going to change anything.”
“I know that.” She stood and got right in his face, bending down, mustering as much intimidation as she could, which wasn’t hard given her fury. She shoved her finger right in his face, making him flinch and pull back. “You get this straight Gian—I’m coming in to this office every f**king day until you convene a committee to look over what I’ve gathered. You know as well as I know that there’s a point in any research trial with human beings where if it is a detriment to continue the trial when it’s known, when it’s known through data analysis, that the drug is so beneficial that it would be detrimental to keep it from the control group, that the research study can be broken. I am telling you—look at that data because I think it’s time we do that.”
“You’re going to be in my f**king office every day if I don’t do what you want?” Oh, now the real Gian was coming out. He had a mouth too. Josie could respect that.
“I’m telling you I’m going to be in your office every f**king day.”
“Then would you mind bringing me a Starbucks?”
“Do you want it poured over your head or your crotch, Gian? Because then yes, I’ll bring you a Starbucks.”
“I’d like it in a cup.” He turned away and began tapping on his computer. “I suppose now I need to make sure I wear one.” He glanced nervously at his crotch. “If you’re done, I’m going to write an email now.”
“All right, Gian. See you tomorrow,” she said, storming out.
It wasn’t until she hit the stairwell that the shakes sank in. She’d left the folder on his desk, but she had five other copies back in her office, ready to deploy every day. There was one thing that her mom had told her over the years. “You are a persistent little shit, aren’t you?” Marlene used to say. Josie had taken pride in it—it's what got her out of Peters, what got her through Daddy’s death, and what got her to make the decision that—yes.
Yes.
If she was a persistent little shit then maybe she could persist in letting herself be in charge of her own life.
She slid her phone out of her pocket and dialed Laura’s number.
Josie couldn’t stop thinking about all of the ways that the day had gone wrong. First, she had tried to be clever and helpful, but it turned out all she really could be was stupid. While it didn’t surprise her that all she could manage was sheer stupidity, and a breathtaking level of stupidity at that, it caught her by surprise. Trying to convince Gian was a gesture of good professionalism and compassion, right? She was trying to be helpful, right? And yet, in the end, as was so often true for her, all the good intentions had brought was more chaos.