Read Online A Case of Need: A Novel by Michael Crichton, Jeffery Hudson - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Michael Crichton, Jeffery Hudson
Tags: Suspense, Literature & Fiction, Medical, Thrillers, Genre Fiction, Mystery; Thriller & Suspense
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proteins, right? This’ll be easy. See, the normal rabbit test is chorionic gonadotrophin in urine. But in this lab we’re geared to measure that, or progesterone, or any of a number of other eleven-beta hydroxylated compounds. In pregnancy, progesterone levels increase ten times. Estriol levels increase a thousand times. We can measure a jump like that, no sweat.” He glanced at his technicians. “Even in this lab.”
One of the technicians took up the challenge. “I used to be accurate,” she said, “before I got frostbite on my fingers.”
“Excuses, excuses,” Murphy grinned. He turned back to me and picked up the tube of blood. “This’ll be easy. We’ll just pop it onto the old fractionating column and let it perk through,” he said. “Maybe we’ll do two independent aliquots, just in case one gets fouled up. Who’s it from?”
“What?”
He waved the test tube in front of me impatiently. “Whose blood?”
“Oh. Just a case,” I said, shrugging.
“A four-month pregnancy and you can’t be sure? John boy, not leveling with your old buddy, your old bridge opponent.”
“It might be better,” I said, “if I told you afterward.”
“O.K., O.K. Far from me to pry. Your own way, but you will tell me?”
“Promise.”
“A pathologist’s promise,” he said, standing up, “rings of the eternal.”
1 Boston Lying-In Hospital.
2 Stillbirths, abortuses, and placentas are in hot demand at the BLI for the dozen or so groups doing hormone research. Sometimes rather bitter arguments break out over who needs the next dead baby most for their studies.
SEVEN
T HE LAST TIME ANYONE COUNTED , there were 25,000 named diseases of man, and cures for 5,000 of them. Yet it remains the dream of every young doctor to discover a new disease. That is the fastest and surest way to gain prominence within the medical profession. Practically speaking, it is much better to discover a new disease than to find a cure for an old one; your cure will be tested, disputed, and argued over for years, while a new disease is readily and rapidly accepted.
Lewis Carr, while still an intern, hit the jackpot: he found a new disease. It was pretty rare—a hereditary dysgammaglobulinemia affecting the beta-fraction which he found in a family of four—but that was not important. The important thing was that Lewis discovered it, described it, and published his results in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Six years later he was made clinical professor at the Mem. There was never any question he would be; simply a matter of waiting until somebody on the staff retired and vacated an office.
Carr had a good office in terms of status at the Mem; it was perfect for a young hotshot internist. For one thing, it was cramped and made even worse by the stacks of journals, texts, and research papers scattered all around. For another, it was dirty and old, tucked away in an obscure corner of the Calder Building, near the kidney research unit. And for the finishing touch, amid the squalor and mess sat a beautiful secretary, looking sexy, efficient, and wholly unapproachable: a nonfunctional beauty to contrast with the functional ugliness of the office.
“Dr. Carr is making rounds,” she said without smiling. “He asked for you to wait inside.”
I went in and took a seat, after removing a stack of back issues of the American Journal of Experimental Biology from the chair. A few moments later, Carr arrived. He wore a white lab coat, open at the front (a clinical professor would never button his lab coat) and a stethoscope around his neck. His shirt collar was frayed (clinical professors aren’t paid much), but his black shoes gleamed (clinical professors are careful about things that really count). As usual, his manner was very cool, very collected, very political.
Unkind souls said Carr was more than political, that he shamelessly sucked up to the senior staff men. But many people resented his swift success and his confident
One of the technicians took up the challenge. “I used to be accurate,” she said, “before I got frostbite on my fingers.”
“Excuses, excuses,” Murphy grinned. He turned back to me and picked up the tube of blood. “This’ll be easy. We’ll just pop it onto the old fractionating column and let it perk through,” he said. “Maybe we’ll do two independent aliquots, just in case one gets fouled up. Who’s it from?”
“What?”
He waved the test tube in front of me impatiently. “Whose blood?”
“Oh. Just a case,” I said, shrugging.
“A four-month pregnancy and you can’t be sure? John boy, not leveling with your old buddy, your old bridge opponent.”
“It might be better,” I said, “if I told you afterward.”
“O.K., O.K. Far from me to pry. Your own way, but you will tell me?”
“Promise.”
“A pathologist’s promise,” he said, standing up, “rings of the eternal.”
1 Boston Lying-In Hospital.
2 Stillbirths, abortuses, and placentas are in hot demand at the BLI for the dozen or so groups doing hormone research. Sometimes rather bitter arguments break out over who needs the next dead baby most for their studies.
SEVEN
T HE LAST TIME ANYONE COUNTED , there were 25,000 named diseases of man, and cures for 5,000 of them. Yet it remains the dream of every young doctor to discover a new disease. That is the fastest and surest way to gain prominence within the medical profession. Practically speaking, it is much better to discover a new disease than to find a cure for an old one; your cure will be tested, disputed, and argued over for years, while a new disease is readily and rapidly accepted.
Lewis Carr, while still an intern, hit the jackpot: he found a new disease. It was pretty rare—a hereditary dysgammaglobulinemia affecting the beta-fraction which he found in a family of four—but that was not important. The important thing was that Lewis discovered it, described it, and published his results in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Six years later he was made clinical professor at the Mem. There was never any question he would be; simply a matter of waiting until somebody on the staff retired and vacated an office.
Carr had a good office in terms of status at the Mem; it was perfect for a young hotshot internist. For one thing, it was cramped and made even worse by the stacks of journals, texts, and research papers scattered all around. For another, it was dirty and old, tucked away in an obscure corner of the Calder Building, near the kidney research unit. And for the finishing touch, amid the squalor and mess sat a beautiful secretary, looking sexy, efficient, and wholly unapproachable: a nonfunctional beauty to contrast with the functional ugliness of the office.
“Dr. Carr is making rounds,” she said without smiling. “He asked for you to wait inside.”
I went in and took a seat, after removing a stack of back issues of the American Journal of Experimental Biology from the chair. A few moments later, Carr arrived. He wore a white lab coat, open at the front (a clinical professor would never button his lab coat) and a stethoscope around his neck. His shirt collar was frayed (clinical professors aren’t paid much), but his black shoes gleamed (clinical professors are careful about things that really count). As usual, his manner was very cool, very collected, very political.
Unkind souls said Carr was more than political, that he shamelessly sucked up to the senior staff men. But many people resented his swift success and his confident
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