Ellie had sneaked out of her apartment this morning, taking the stairs in Meg-avoidance mode, but when she arrived at Warren’s office, coffee in hand, Meg herself was waiting outside it. She’d apparently baked a Bundt cake and carried the thing, slathered with shiny white frosting, on a foil-covered plate.
“Hey, Ellie.” She held up her offering. “I made carbs.”
“Come in!” Warren had draped his coat on a padded hanger and was hanging it on a hook behind his door. He settled in his swivel chair, waved off the cake, opened his computer and pulled a thermos from a battered leather briefcase. Pointed them to the two ladder-backed visitor chairs. “Sit. So. Ellie. Whaddaya got? Two weeks, three max, till you’re on the air. No pressure, ha ha.”
Meg had taken out a spiral notebook, had a pen poised over a blank page.
“Okay.” Ellie scooted her chair to face Warren. “I haven’t completely nailed it down yet. But—”
“Ellie?” Warren’s face had hardened into dark slate, no longer the affable Papa Bear. “What’s the story? That’s what I need to hear. Right now.”
Meg studied her notebook, as if to indicate she hadn’t noticed Warren’s disapproving tone.
“Reporters,” Warren said, letting some humor back into his voice. “Don’t mess with me before I’ve had enough coffee.”
Ellie toasted him with hers. “Understood.” She took a deep breath, knowing her success depended on how well she sold this story. Too much information would either confuse him or make him lose interest; too little would make him ask too many questions. She needed a headline.
“How about ‘acclaimed wonder drug harms women more than helps them’? Like the opioids. Like Vioxx and Bextra and fen-phen and thalidomide and the whole list of them.”
Meg’s eyes widened, but Ellie couldn’t read Warren.
“You know of them, right? How terrible they—”
Warren gestured yes at her. “Go on.”
“Those drugs were FDA-approved, and aggressively pushed on patients as lifesavers. But in truth, they were deadly. So now? Monifan, it’s called. It’s also FDA-approved, but only to be used to decrease recovery time after surgeries. That’s all good. But Pharminex, the drug company that makes it, thinks it can also—let’s see how to put this—make it easier for fertility drugs to take effect.”
“Easier?” Meg asked. “Because I know—”
“You know how many women want to have children,” Ellie went on, “how many try hormone treatments. It’s incredibly expensive and not always covered by insurance, and in the end, it doesn’t always work. But like I said, Pharminex, the company that produces Monifan, believes it also makes hormone treatments more effective. And apparently doctors agree. But since it’s not approved for that, it can only be used for it off-label. Meaning—”
“Not big news.” Warren’s voice was brusque with dismissal. “Doctors can prescribe an approved drug for whatever they want if they think it works. We did that story in San Fran, Ellie. Years ago. Like Rogaine, the heart drug, turned out to grow hair. Viagra was created to help high blood pressure. And that stuff that makes eyelashes grow—glaucoma patients noticed the beneficial side effects.”
“Right,” Ellie said. “That’s what makes it a good story. Because a doctor can prescribe whatever they want. But. Here’s the thing. A pharmaceutical company is not supposed to push it for that. This one does. I mean, who wouldn’t want a pill that increases the chances for the thing you want most in the world? A child?”
“If it works,” Meg said.
“Exactly.” Ellie pointed to her, punctuation. “But I’m hearing that sometimes Monifan doesn’t work for that. Even worse—it can cause women to be unable to have children. Ever. Because some people have bad reactions. And apparently there’s no way to predict it.”
Meg’s mouth opened, closed again.
“You sure?” Warren put down his coffee, leaned toward her.
Ellie nodded. “Yeah.”
“How often?” Warren asked. “How often does it not work? And how do you know this?”
Ellie pressed her palms together, put them to her lips as if praying. “I have proof—just between us for now, and I only found it last night—that P-X did a cost-benefit analysis. Decided they could handle the liability for individual cases, and that it was better to settle out of court with confidentiality agreements and keep the whole thing quiet. That’d be less expensive than giving up all the profits from the times it does work. So goes the calculus.”
The room went quiet for a moment. Ellie figured Warren was realizing what that meant. That Pharminex had calculated the cost of a human life. Of the cost of a woman’s ability to have children versus their desire to make a profit.
“It helps some people, though, doesn’t it?” Warren asked. “It must, if it’s on the market. How many are helped versus how many are hurt? Do we know?”
Elle nodded. “Sure. But ask yourself, for instance, if three hundred people are helped, but one can never have children again, does that make it okay?” She shook her head. “How many successes make up for a disaster? Given those odds, what would you do?”
“I’d want to know,” Meg said. “I’d want to choose.”
Silence again. Ellie agreed with Meg for once. People should be given the facts.
“You have real documents?” Warren finally asked. “And someone who says she was harmed by this? A victim?”
“Looking for that, of course,” she said. “And as for the documents—I have a source.”
“Who? How? Where?” Warren frowned. “This could be blockbuster, Ellie. This is—a company knowingly causing women to become infertile and then covering it up to protect their own bottom line. The publicity—the lawsuits and the backlash—could destroy the company.”
“Yup,” Ellie said.
“And destroy us, and you, if we get it wrong,” Warren continued. “So?”
Ellie crossed her legs, smoothed down her black skirt, hesitating. No turning back now. She took a stalling sip of coffee, but her cup was empty. She pretended it wasn’t.
“I’ve been doing research much of the time since I’ve been here.”
“At the library,” Meg offered.
“Sometimes. Of course.” Ellie agreed, trying harder to be inclusive. “And I’ve talked to some lawyers who might be putting together lawsuits. But I’ve also been tracking the pharmacy reps. The salespeople for Pharminex.”
“Don’t they have an office here?” Warren asked. “Downtown?”
“Yeah. By the Custom Tower. The training office. So I followed a couple of the new sales rep trainees. I found one or two, maybe three, who might be willing to talk about what they do. What they’ve been told to say.”
“You’ve talked to them?” Warren eyed her skeptically. “Wait—you followed them?”
Ellie needed to derail the second-guessing train. “Really. It’s fine. I’m still working on it. Seeing where they go have coffee, that kind of thing.”