Miracle Cure by Michael Palmer

artery that mattered. Two of the grafts from his previous surgery appeared to have closed. For three decades of marriage, Jack and Shirley Holbrook had drunk and smoked to excess. After her death from alcohol-induced jaundice and kidney failure, Jack had stopped drinking altogether. He stopped smoking a year or two after that, but much cigarette-related damage had already been done.
    After the final injection of the left coronary—the so-called Widowmaker Artery, Brian whistled softly through his teeth and looked away. Jessup turned from the table to face him.
    “Not a pretty picture,” she said softly.
    Jessup was withdrawing the catheters when the door to the men’s locker room burst open, and Laj Randa strode into the cath lab, followed at a respectful distance by two of his fellows. The surgical chief was no more than five feet four, with café-au-lait skin, a short black beard, and piercing dark eyes. He wore a royal blue silk turban and had a steel bracelet on his right wrist.
A Sikh
, Brian thought.
Mystical, deeply religious, persecuted in the Punjab of northern India for centuries
. He had trained with a Sikh during his fellowship. The man was as determined, as opinionated and intense, as anyone he had ever known. If Randa was equally fervent, the hair beneath his turban had never been cut, and most of his beard was actually rolled up tightly beneath his chin.
    “So, Carolyn,” Randa said, breezing past Brian, “this man is how old?”
    His accent was a mix of British and Indian.
    “Sixty-three. He—”
    “And who did his previous surgery?”
    “Steve Clarkin at Suburban did a quintuple bypass six years ago,” Brian said.
    Randa stopped short and turned slowly to Brian, who towered over him.
    “And you are?”
    “Jack’s son, Brian Holbrook. I’m a—”
    Randa had already turned away.
    “Carolyn, could you have your nurse run the film for me.”
    Jessup nodded to the control-room nurse, who could hear everything they were saying. Surely Randa knew that, too, Brian thought. He could have simply asked the nurse himself.
A 130-pound asshole
. Whoever had made that assessment obviously knew what he was talking about.
    Moments later, Jack’s catheterization began to replay on the monitor.
    “See,” Randa said to his sycophants, “only three grafts are left open and one of them is nearly closed. Typical result for Clarkin.”
    The remark was inappropriate under any circumstances, but doubly so in the presence of Clarkin’s patient. Jessup, obviously used to the surgeon, seemed unfazed.
    “So,” Randa said as soon as the screen went dark, “are you planning on treating this man with your magic juicer?”
    “Laj, let’s not get into this here.”
    “I read an article about your drug in the
Boston Herald
. The
Herald!
Why not the
National Enquirer?”
    “I don’t know where the lay press is getting its information about Vasclear,” Jessup said patiently.
    “Obviously someone is feeding it to them. I don’t like getting my medical information through the tabloids. From the beginning of science, methods have evolved to inform the scientific community of a new discovery. They do not include the
Boston Herald.”
    “I’ve got half a dozen academic papers on the drug accepted or already published in very prestigious journals. The FDA has thousands of pages of our research documentation and dozens of our angiograms. Now please, Laj. Let’s discuss this someplace else. As for your question about this patient, our double-blind research protocol bars anyone from Vasclear treatment who has had bypass surgery, so Mr. Holbrook doesn’t qualify.”
    “Whatever you say.”
    Randa walked past her to the table. Brian could see Jack’s eyes open, then close. He was awake and very much aware.
    “I am Dr. Randa,” the surgical chief said, not bothering to shake Jack’s hand or even to ensure that he wasawake. “Your arteriograms show a great deal of arteriosclerotic blockage throughout the arteries of