Tango With Me

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Book excerpt

Chapter 1

Rob

Tapping rhythmically with his gold and silver Mont Blanc pen on the maple-colored desk, Doctor Robert MacArthur reclined in his office chair and took a deep breath. This is good. The name on the top left of the results sheet read W. T. Humphrey, and the content showed his lifelong friend had recovered his iron health in record time. Only a nerd can get all warm and fuzzy over some numbers. His eyes became misty and the corner of his lips pulled up into a smile.

The phone beeped and his stomach growled almost at the same time. A glance at the Twitter feed of his favorite food truck showed it was nearby. Just two blocks away. He would have to hurry if he wanted to catch it. His eyes drifted toward the pile of papers stacked on the desk and rocketed back to the Twitter feed. Darn, this is important. As if on cue, his stomach growled again.

A quick knock on the door led immediately to the knob twisting followed by his secretary’s head peeking out from the side of the metal frame.

“The truck is coming, let’s go!” Alice said eagerly.

“I can’t. You go.” A gush of air rushed theatrically out of his lungs.

“What do you mean you can’t? It’s the food truck!”

The twenty-two-year-old girl was a ray of sunshine, quite literally as her blonde hair reflected the light wherever she went. Rob loved to take his lunch break with her and hear all the gossip of the office, especially on sunny, windy days when she became, unknowingly, a piece of art in her own right.

“Sometimes I work, you know?”

“I know how hard you work.” Her delicate face softened even more. “I’ll bring you a schnitzel, but only this time so you don’t get ideas about becoming an obnoxious boss on me.”

“I wouldn’t dare,” Rob answered, grinning.

She wrinkled her nose at him and closed the door.

*********

The office was a pompous display of intent put at the service of distaste. Behind a replica of Napoleon’s desk, sat Roger Leven, the clinic's vice-president, dwarfed inside a huge tufted leather armchair. On the further wall behind him, a hand-painted replica of the Mona Lisa three times its real size was encased in a convoluted golden frame. If you could talk, lady. The art on the side walls was more modern and a lot more disturbing. “Gods of the Modern World,” read the caption under a picture of skeletons dressed in leadership garments. It had been positioned right by a huge window. The opposite wall displayed a three-panel image of a very realistic bald eagle ready to attack.

“Please, take a seat.”

Rob pulled the meeting room chair forward and crouched on it as best as he could. It was lime green and designed for a far smaller frame than his. He realized the whole setup was purposely chosen to make any normal-sized male feel extremely uncomfortable. Roger’s torture chamber, how fun. No wonder most meetings took place at the conference room.

“So, do you have numbers to show me?”

“Yes,” answered Rob, pushing forward a pile of papers with graphics. “I separated my patients into two groups, one changed to the new protocols and the second one stayed the same.”

“You did what?” The small and hard eyes of the man looked at Rob over the metal frame of his glasses as if he were about to pounce.

This doesn’t look good…

“It was completely consensual. I offered the new protocols. Some took them, some didn’t. The ones that did signed the corresponding agreements. This gave me the chance to compare results over similar enough cases.”

“It’s not a double-blind study. It has no scientific value,” the short man interrupted with contempt.

“Well…” Rob tried to reason, understanding that at this point, there was no possible meeting of minds, “if you dig deep enough into the science, you realize that the double-blind has no definite value either. It’s just a reasonable working agreement, that’s all. In some cases of vital importance, like vaccines, for example, there are no double-blind studies done at all.”

Roger huffed. “You know it's not done because it would be inhumane for the placebo cases.”

“Of course. I'm just stating a fact.”

“So, what are these curves supposed to show me?” Roger grunted.

“That functional medicine protocols are on average three times more efficient than the regular ones—at least with my patients.”

Roger took a deep breath, grabbed a Kleenex from his drawer and cleaned his lenses thoroughly.

“Of all the doctors in the clinic, Robert, you are the one I least expected to see bringing this nonsense up.”

Now that was an interesting statement.

“What do you mean?” Rob tilted his head.

“You come from a family that understands success in business. Didn’t you have any training at all?”

“Of course I did.” Rob remembered each one of the business trainings he’d attended; some rendered better memories than others.

“Then why did you bring these papers to me when you should have brought a business plan showing how these changes will increase the cash flow of the clinic?”

Rob was about to answer when Roger stopped him by lifting his index finger. He put both elbows on the desk and pushed his stout body forward.

“I’ll tell you why: because it’s not possible! First: there is no insurance coverage for these procedures, so we would be subject to liability and we could only take cash clients. Second: it reduces recurring business drastically. Third: we would have to reinvent our partner network. Fourth: we would have to refinance via bank loan the construction your father is building for us when right now we have zero interest for fifteen years. We’re talking about millions and millions of dollars in losses. Your proposal would bankrupt us! Is that what you want?”

Rob looked at Miss Mona Lisa behind Roger’s shoulder, her smile more secretive than ever. If you could talk, lady. He sighed and scratched the back of his neck.

“I’m talking about life and death and you answer with cash flow issues. I thought we were in the health business, with health being the keyword.”

The small man waved his hand as if there was a fly in front of him.

“And we are. But for any business, its own survival is the bottom line. We’re saving lives already. Think how many would suffer if we go out of business.”

“But…”

“No buts. Find a way to make it profitable, and we’ll consider it. Now, if you excuse me, I have another appointment right… about… now,” he said, looking at his bulky Swiss wristwatch.

Roger’s phone beeped, and the door opened.

Rob turned right in time to see the long legs of Millicent Pearson making an appearance, ending in her signature five inches heels. She wore a short tight pencil skirt and a low-cut white silk blouse under an almost professional looking business jacket. The woman looked as bony and bitchy as he remembered. Well… maybe even more. Rob shivered at the sight of those heels. He still had nightmares about the witch’s shoe sole pressing his throat and cutting off the airflow.

“Robert MacArthur. What a pleasant surprise.” Her lips curled in a predatory smile.

Rob stood fast, almost tumbling the chair to the floor.

“Ms. Pearson,” he nodded and turned his attention to Roger who had also stood up and was looking at the woman with adoring puppy dog eyes. Holy shit… “Roger, I’ll see what I can do about those numbers,” he said as he hurried to the door.

“You do that,” the man whispered, but his attention was not on Rob anymore.