Michael Palmer - Miracle Cure

My name is on the cover of this book but it was hardly written in a vacuum. My deepest gratitude goes once again to my tireless editor, Beverly Lewis, assistant editor Christine Brooks, and my incomparable agents, Jane Rotrosen Berkey, Don Cleary, and Stephanie Tade.

In addition, thank you

Dr. Anthony Zietman for the evening at the Kings Rook;

Drs. Michael Fifer and Igor Palacios and the gang at the MGH cath lab for your skill and hospitality;

Dr. Jerry Faich for the inside stuff;

Dr. George Allman for sharing knowledge and experience;

Dr. Michael Czorniak for the articles;

Dr. Bob Smith and Bill Wilson for the tool kit;

Beverly Tricco, Sam Dworkis, and Mimi Santini-Ritt for the readings;

Matt, Bekica, Daniel, and Luke for the inspiration and the help in solving problems;

And special thanks to Dr. Cary Akins, Renaissance man and mender of broken hearts.

The people named above have contributed mightily to the color and flavor of this novel. Any errors or other misrepresentations of fact are purely mine.

M.S.P.

ALSO BY MICHAEL PALMER

F ROM B ANTAM B OOKS

T HE S ISTERHOOD

S IDE E FFECTS

F LASHBACK

E XTREME M EASURES

N ATURAL C AUSES

S ILENT T REATMENT

C RITICAL J UDGMENT

T HE P ATIENT

F ATAL

M ICHAEL P ALMER , M.D., is the author of Fatal, The Patient, Critical Judgement, Silent Treatment, Natural Causes, Extreme Measures, Flashback, Side Effects, and The Sisterhood. His books have been translated into twenty-six languages. He trained in internal medicine at Boston City and Massachusetts General hospitals, spent twenty years as a full-time practitioner of internal and emergency medicine, and is now involved in the treatment of alcoholism and chemical dependence. He lives in Massachusetts.

THE BOSTON GLOBE

Jungle Drug Holds Promise for
Heart Disease

Researchers at Boston-based Newbury Pharmaceuticals are heralding what they say may be a major breakthrough in the treatment of heart disease, now Americas number one killer.

Y OU CANT THROW THE SEVEN OF HEARTS , B RIAN . I just picked up the eight of hearts three cards ago.

Im betting youve got eights.

Okay. Bad bet. Gin.

Brian Holbrook watched his father score up gin plus nineteen and sweep the cards together with practiced ease. The hands that had once been thick and strong enough to crush walnuts were spotted from sixty-three years in the sun and bony from almost a decade of infirmity. But they could still handle cards.

Jack HolbrookBlack Jack Holbrook to many for as long as Brian could rememberwasnt a professional gambler. But he dearly loved to bet. He called it wagering, and he would do it on anything from the Super Bowl to whether the next car coming around the corner would be foreign-made or domestic. Two bucks, ten, a hundredit really didnt matter to Jack. The game was the thing. He was, and always had been, the most fiercely competitive man Brian had ever known.

Careful not to let his father see, Brian glanced at his watch. Three oclock. They had been playing gin for almost two hours. At a penny a point, they kept a running score until one of them, invariably Jack, reached ten thousand. Brian was currently down over seventy dollars.

How about we quit and watch the ball game? he suggested.

How about we ride into Boston, have an early dinner, and see that new Van Damme movie?

Ive got to be at the club at nine.

Theres plenty of time. I dont remember the last time we spent a whole day together like this.

Jack was right about that. With two jobs and his weekly supervised visitations with the girls, Brian was usually either on the move or dead asleep, facedown on the bedspread. The club was Aphrodite, one of the Day-Glo rock spots on Lansdowne Street, across from Fenway Park. Brian was a bouncer. At six three, 215, he fit the part well, though at thirty-eight he was a bit long in the tooth for the work. Then, of course, there was the matter of his education. An M.D. degree with board certification in internal medicine and cardiology made him an oddity among the bouncers. But without a license from the Board of Registration and Discipline in Medicine, those certifications were useful only for the bottom of a birdcage.

It was a rare totally free Sunday afternoon for him. Becky and Caitlin were away for the weekend at Phoebes parents place, so his weekly visitation was postponed until Tuesday. And for some reason, his boss at Speedy Rent-A-Car hadnt noticed that he failed to slot Brian for yet another Sunday in the office. A career man at Speedy, Darryl loved exercising power over peopleparticularly the new college grads who used the agency as their entry into the job market. He hadnt found out until well after Brian started work at the place that he was an M.D., but since then, Darryl had done his best to make up for the lost time.

Bouncer car-rental gofer supervised visitations with his daughters living with Dad Brian knew that after eighteen months of hard workcounseling, Narcotics Anonymous meetings, and endless hours with his NA sponsor, Freeman Sharpe, a building maintenance man with twenty years of recovery from heroin addictionhis internal demons were pretty much under control. But his external life still left a lot to be desired.

Brians Saturday-night stint at Aphrodite had ended after three, so it wasnt until ten that he had gotten up. He had planned to go for a run, and then maybe hook up with some of the kids playing touch football in the park. They loved having him in their game, especially when he sent one of them deep and threw a fifty- or sixty-yard bullet spiral to him. But one glance at Jack had changed his mind. The man who had been Brians football coach from Pop Warner to high school and on to college was wrapped in an afghan in his favorite chair, where he had been sitting up for most of the night. On the table next to him were several cardiac medications and others for pain. He looked drawn and in need of a shave.

Got any plans for the day, Coach? Brian asked.

Yeah. The sultan of Brunei is supposed to stop by with his harem. I told him just three for me, though.

How about I make you some breakfast?

Jacks gray crew cut, chiseled features, and lingering summer tan helped him look younger, and healthier, than he was. But Brian knew that his cardiac condition was worsening. Portions of his six-year-old quintuple bypass were almost certainly closing. Brian picked up the small vial of nitroglycerin tablets and checked inside. More than half were gone.

How many of these did you take yesterday? he asked.

Jack snatched the vial away and put it into his shirt pocket.

To tell you the truth, I dont remember taking any.

Jack, come on.

Look, Im fine. You just tend to your business and let me tend to mine.

You are my business, Jack. Im your son and Im a cardiologist, remember?

No. Youre a bouncer in a bar. That and a car salesman.

Brian started to react to the barb, then caught himself. Jack was probably operating on even less sleep than he was.

Youre right, Coach, Brian responded, willing his jaw to unclench. When Im back to being a cardiologist again, then I can give advice. Not before. Let me toast you a bagel.

The living room of the first-story flat that Jack had owned for the ten years since his heart attack was, like the rest of the place, devoid of a womans touch. There were sports photos on the walls and trophies on almost every surface that would hold one. Most of the awards had Brians name on them. They were the trappings of a man who needed gleaming hardware and laminated certificates to pump up his self-esteem. When Brian had first moved in, being surrounded by all those trophies had been something of a problem for him. But Freeman Sharpe had helped him deal with his issues.