Sweet Talking Money. Harry Bingham

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СКАЧАТЬ of the world’s biggest and most successful investment banks. Last year, his bonus had been £625,000 and his group, which handled company acquisitions in the pharmaceutical industry, had advised clients on transactions worth over sixty billion dollars. That wasn’t all. If he looked brutish on a bad day, he was handsome on a good one. He weighed two hundred and ten pounds, not much of which was flab. He was broad, heavy, strong; a corporate bruiser with brains. A Welsh farmer’s son, Bryn had taken himself to Oxford University, then for the last fourteen years crashed successfully through the investment banking jungle. The way he saw it, he’d go crashing on for years to come. If he wanted a prescription to relieve him of flu, he wasn’t going to let some self-righteous doctor with a face that last saw daylight in the Reagan administration stop him.

      He pressed his chest with thick fingers, coughing as he did so. He wouldn’t plead, but he would make his point.

      ‘Dr Wilde, I understand that you would like to cure my flu outright, and I respect you for it. Unfortunately, to the best of my understanding, there is no cure for flu. But right now, this very minute, I am tired, I am in pain and I have a full day of work ahead of me tomorrow. I must therefore insist that you, please, give me the medication specifically designed to relieve people in my situation.’

      Wilde quit doing whatever it was she was doing, and swung around to face Bryn. The anglepoise lamp was directly behind her head, so her face was more or less invisible to view.

      ‘I didn’t say there wasn’t a cure.’

      Barely holding on to his temper, Bryn said, ‘OK. If you’d prefer to try me on something else, I’d be happy to trust your judgement.’

      Wilde consulted her watch, angling it to catch the light. ‘I don’t have much time. Maybe half an hour.’

      ‘Half an hour …?’ Bryn wondered what prescription could possibly take half an hour to write. ‘Sure. OK. Whatever.’

      ‘And no guarantees. I don’t do too much human work these days.’

      Things had gone beyond strange, Bryn decided, and he let this remark pass without comment. Just as well. Wilde had her head buried in one of the clinical fridges, searching for something. In the light streaming from the open door, Bryn could see rows of glass beakers, stoppered vials, glass trays, and neatly labelled cartons. Wilde emerged with a glass tray divided into twelve compartments. In each compartment, a little fluid sloshed around.

      ‘Any health problems? Serious ones, I mean.’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Any history of illness in the family?’

      Bryn had injured his knee playing school rugby. His brother had been invalided out of the Pontypridd scrum with a femur fractured in three places, and his dad had damaged his ankle so badly in a game of pub rugby that when the bones healed, they had all fused together and the foot ended up as stiff as a board. Even Bryn’s grandfather had twice ended up in hospital having his stomach pumped after post-match celebrations that had started too early and ended too late. But still … ‘Nope. All healthy,’ he said.

      ‘OK. Good. Thumb, please.’

      ‘My thumb?’

      Bryn held out his hand. Wilde picked up a cylinder just about big enough to hold a toothpick, held it to his thumb and clicked a button. Bryn felt nothing, but when the cylinder came away, blood welled from a small puncture wound.

      ‘Good. One drop in each compartment, please.’

      She peeled away a cellophane cover from the tray, and Bryn held his hand out, dripping blood into each compartment. As he did so, his chest was racked by a deep and painful cough, and blood splattered untidily around the tray.

      ‘One drop per compartment. Please.’

      Bryn held his thumb steadier as his cough subsided. ‘Can I ask what you’re doing? Is this for diagnosis?’

      ‘Diagnosis? I thought you said you had flu?’

      ‘Yes, but …’

      ‘What’s to diagnose? You get stressed, you get flu.’

      ‘I am not stressed.’

      Bryn hated that. He hated it when those without the balls for the job assume that every successful banker must be stressed just because they’re successful. Bryn was successful, but he wasn’t stressed. Those who worked for him might be, but that was their lookout.

      ‘Sure you are. Stand.’

      Bryn’s thumb had completed its duties, but nobody had mentioned the fact to his circulatory system, which continued to push blood out through the miniature wound. Since no cotton wool was on offer, Bryn stood up, thumb in his mouth to stop the bleeding. Meantime, Wilde stood up too, surprisingly tall in her flat shoes, lanky as anything, her labcoat looking as if it hung on a hanger.

      ‘May I feel?’ She approached Bryn, putting out her hand.

      He opened his jacket, making it easy. With a sudden movement, her hand balled into a fist and shot forwards into the dead centre of his chest. The pain astonished him, rocking him backwards and momentarily winding him. He gripped the edge of the table behind him, careful not to’ dislodge any of its tottering piles.

      ‘Jesus!’ he said, as soon as his voice had emerged from a fit of agonising coughs. ‘Jesus Christ!’

      ‘Stress. That’s stress. Biological stress. Unhappy cells.’

      Bryn held his hands over his heart. The pain in the rest of his body had mostly washed away, although a general ache still sang its reminder. He was about to make some comment, demand some explanation, but Wilde had already moved away from him and was bending over the glass tray with a pipette. Following the drop of blood into each compartment was another drop of something else.

      ‘OK. Let’s look.’

      She thrust Bryn in front of the microscope and he forced his bleary eyes to focus through the eyepiece, as a glass slide slid into view. Round balloons swam in some kind of fluid, along with bigger, more ragged-looking shapes, gently shifting position in the warm currents generated by the microscope bulb. What the hell was he doing here, he wondered.

      ‘See the macrophages? Keep an eye on them.’

      ‘Macro- …?’

      ‘Macrophages. Not the round ones, they’re your red blood cells. The big, irregular white blood cells. They’re what protect you against flu.’

      ‘Right. Only not.’

      ‘Watch.’

      Wilde took the slide, added something from her pipette, and slid it back beneath the light. Little strands of blue had joined the throng beneath the lens, and Bryn watched as slowly, slowly, the macrophages sought out the little blue strands and began to engulf them.

      ‘They’re eating the little blue things. Is that good?’

      Wilde pushed him away and peered through the scope. ‘Hardly. Your white cells are barely moving. I’ve just sprayed them with a ton of foreign protein and they ought to be going СКАЧАТЬ