And with each successive squeeze, McCready felt his grip grow weaker and weaker.
"Now rest up a bit," Axford had said. After smoking half another cigarette and further fouling the office air, he stuck out his hands again. "Once more now."
McCready squeezed with all he had, and, with no little satisfaction, saw Axford wince. After a brief rest his strength had returned.
"See," Axford said, wiping his hands on his lab coat. "Myasthenia gravis. But just to be absolutely sure, we'll do an EMG."
"What's that?"
"Nerve conduction study. Which in your case will show the classic decremental pattern."
"Where do I get this done?" He was suddenly desperate to have the diagnosis confirmed or denied.
"Lots of places. But my rig here in this office affords the most nutritional value."
McCready was baffled by this Brit. "I don't understand."
"The fee I'll charge you," Axford said with the barest hint of a smile, "will help keep food on my table."
McCready fled Axford's office, fully convinced that the man was a lunatic. But second and third opinions, along with exhaustive testing, proved the Brit right. Senator James McCready had a particularly virulent case of myasthenia gravis, which he learned was an incurable neuromuscular disease caused by a deficiency of acetylcholine, the substance that transmits messages from nerve cells to muscle cells at their junction.
Out of a sense of loyalty, he returned to Axford for therapy. And, as he had long ago learned about such supposedly noble impulses, it was a wrong move. Axford's bedside manner embodied all the concern and personal warmth of the average cinder block. Axford didn't seem to care how the medications were affecting his patient—the muscle cramps, the twitching, the anxiety, and insomnia. He cared only about how they improved the responses on his damned EMG machine.
And McCready went the route—the whole route. He had his thymus removed, he was juiced up with drugs like neo-stigmine and Mestinon, then bloated up with cortisone. He went through plasmapheresis. All to no avail. His case progressed slowly but relentlessly no matter what Axford or anyone else did.
But he had never fully accepted his illness, not even to this day. He had fought it from the beginning and would keep on fighting it. He had plans for his life and his career that went beyond the Senate. Myasthenia gravis threatened to stop him. It wouldn't. He would find a way—over it, around it, or through it.
And toward that end, he began investigating Charles Axford years ago. He learned he'd been born into a working class family in London, and that he saw his parents and his home destroyed during the Blitz when the Paddington section had been heavily bombed. He proved brilliant in his studies, graduating from medical school in England at the top of his class; he was considered equally brilliant by anyone who knew him during his neurology residency here in Manhattan—admired by all but considered far too abrasive for anyone's comfort. After countless bids for research grants and fellowships had been turned down, he had reluctantly opened up a private practice, where he was quietly starving. Brilliant though he was in the science of medicine, he was virtually an idiot in the art of dealing with people.
To add to his problems, his wife had run off to "find" herself, leaving him with a chronically ill daughter.
Charles, of course, had never mentioned a word of his personal problems to the senator. McCready had ferreted them out through the contacts he still maintained with his publishing empire.
It became evident to McCready that the two men were made for each other: Axford was a whiz in neurology and McCready had a neuromuscular disease that was considered incurable at medicine's present state of knowledge; Axford was looking for a research post and McCready had more money than he could spend in many lifetimes—at last count his personal fortune had totaled somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 million dollars.
Two ideas were born then. The first was the seed of the Medical Guidelines bill. Doctors had explained to him over and over that myasthenia gravis was subtle and difficult to diagnose in the early stages. He didn't care. It should have been discovered years before he went to Axford. These doctors needed a lesson or two in humility. If they wouldn't do their jobs right, he'd show them how.
The second idea became reality sooner than the legislation: The McCready Foundation for Medical Research was begun, with Charles Axford, M.D., as its director. The setup was tax-advantaged and allowed McCready to direct the course of all research done. Axford seemed delighted—he was well paid and could follow his interests without having to deal too much with patients.
McCready had his first pet doctor. He too found the situation delightful.
With an influx of grants and donations, the Foundation grew until it presently provided inpatient as well as outpatient services and occupied its own building on Park Avenue in Manhattan, a former office building raised in the thirties that looked like a smaller version of Rockefeller Center. He had started off with one pet doctor; now he owned a whole stable of them. That was the only way to keep doctors in line: Own them. Make them dependent on you for their daily bread and they soon lose their maverick ways. They learn to toe the line like anybody else.
Axford still showed a lot of maverick tendencies, but McCready laid that off to the fact that he gave his research chief plenty of room. Someday he would yank on a few strings and see how the Brit danced. But not yet. Not while he needed Axford's research know-how.
That might not be much longer, though. Not if one tenth of what he had heard about this Bulmer character were true. After years of false leads, it was almost too much to hope for. But those stories…
His mouth went dry. If those stories were even half true…
And to think that Bulmer had been in his committee room only last month. He hadn't come across as a nut case then— anything but. But was it possible he had been sitting a few yards away from a cure and not known it?
He had to find out. He had to know! He didn't have much time!
___13.___
Charles
"C'mon, Daddy," Julie said, her voice a shade away from a whine. "Tonight's a dialysis night." She stood there in her cut-off jeans and long-sleeved Opus the Penguin T-shirt, holding the glass out to him. "Let me have some more. I'm thirsty."
"How many ounces have you had already?" Charles asked.
"Six."
"Only two more."
"Four! Please!" She hung her tongue out of her mouth and made a choking sound.
"All right! All right!"
He filled her eight-ounce tumbler halfway to the top, but restrained her arm as she lifted the glass.
"Use it to wash down your last three Amphojels."
She made a face but popped them in her mouth and began chewing one the twenty-eight pills Julie had to take a day— the calcium, the activated vitamin D, the iron, the water-soluble vitamins—she hated her aluminum hydroxide tablets the most.
When she had finished gulping down the juice, he pointed toward the back end of the apartment.
Julie slumped her shoulders and pouted. "Can't it wait?"
"Toddle on, and no more lolly-gagging. It's after six already."
He followed her into the back room where she plopped herself into the recliner, rolled up her sleeve, and placed her bared forearm on the arm of the chair.
Charles had the dialyzer all warmed up and ready to go. He seated himself next to his daughter and inspected her forearm. The fistula was still in excellent shape after five years. The thickened, ropy veins about as big around as his little finger bulged up under her skin. A few years ago one of the kids at school had seen her fistula and given her the name "wormy arms." She had worn long sleeves ever since— even in the summer.