Chapter 1
Pittsburg, Pennsylvania; Present Day. USA…
Tricia Evans, PhD in bio-psychology, was getting set up for her next virtual meeting with one of her new clients. Her two daughters, 11 and nine years old, were at that age when she could finally leave them with a family friend’s household while Dr. Evans conducted her business. Given that she was divorced, this was important for her work.
Tricia had been working as a consultant for a few years now and had built up a solid reputation in her field. She enjoyed the flexibility of being her own boss and working from home, but it was important to maintain a professional image during her virtual meetings. She checked her appearance on the screen and took a deep breath before starting the call.
“Dr. Evans,” Dr. Madaline Weber, Tricia’s contact for the firm REx Pharma, greeted upon seeing her face over the virtual call.
“Nice to finally meet you, Dr. Weber,” Tricia responded.
Tricia had been looking forward to this meeting for weeks. REx Pharma was one of the biggest names in the industry, and she was excited to have the opportunity to work with them. As the call progressed, she found herself getting more and more invested in the project. It was going to be a lot of work, but Tricia was up for the challenge…that is, Tricia felt that way until she ran across some disturbing info on the electronically shared document they were going over…
“Uh…Dr. Weber, I do have a question about a result I want to make sure I understand that I’m reading —-”
“—the mortality rates,” the European bio-medical businesswoman interjected. Tricia could see that Dr. Weber was anticipating her apprehension, so she let her speak. “Yes, Dr. Evans, the 45 percentage rates is very troubling for our studies’ participants. At first, our lab thought it was either a typo, then they thought, perhaps, there were some kind of contamination of the studies…” Weber gravely shook her head over the virtual call. “We ran additional tests and ran our Ai behind each time for insurance…”
“Same results,” Tricia asked.
“Same results,” Dr. Weber simply stated, her eyes off to a corner. “Not only in theory, Dr. Evans, but in all practical purposes, those subjects should not have died after our new regiment! Not after we’ve ran successful tests right after the animal trials! Our staff administered the antidepressant-antiviral meds on a consistent basis —”
“—all staffers consistent…no mistakes or even some deviant motivations,” Dr. Evans interjected as she looked up from her own screen.
“Affirmative to all your points, Dr. Evans…We’ve even had security division in our lab with us while we ran a quality and assurance round! There’s no getting around it, Dr. Evans, something is killing our human subjects during this round of tests when things were going well in the previous level—and we don’t have any logical, medical reasons to state why this is happening!”
There was an uncomfortable silence over the virtual link as both women thought on their conversation.
“That’s when we decided we needed to bring in someone from the bio-psychological field to check our study,” Dr. Weber finally said after the long silence. Tricia could see that she was exhausted!
“Thinking there might be some psychosomatic phenomenon going on with these subjects,” Tricia asked, gauging Dr. Weber as she did so.
Dr. Weber nodded in agreement. “Exactly. We were hoping that someone with your expertise could shed some light on what might be happening and help us figure out how to move forward with the study.” Tricia took a deep breath, feeling the weight of the responsibility that had just been placed on her shoulders. She knew that this was going to be a challenging project, but she was determined to find a solution and help the team at REx Pharma. But she could not help if she was walking into an impossible situation!
“Dr. Weber,” Tricia asked after another long and uncomfortable silence during their virtual meeting, “I hate to ask this…We’re all scientists, here. But we’re both also businesswomen. And especially with your situation working for one of the biggest Pharma companies on the planet…why hasn’t REx halted the study after such high percentage of deaths? It’s standard practice in the medical industry to do so, and immediately, at that!”
Dr. Weber sighed heavily before responding. “We’ve invested a lot of money into this study, and we were hoping to get some positive results before making any drastic decisions. Plus, we were hoping that the problem was a one-time occurrence and that it wouldn’t happen again.” Tricia nodded understandingly, but she couldn’t help feeling uneasy about the situation. She knew that she needed to find a solution quickly before any more lives were lost.
“Ok…what do you need from me,” Tricia put to the elderly woman.
Dr. Weber’s face brightened slightly over the virtual connection. “For starters, are you up for a long flight?”
