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“If we find a cure for Barks-Howard’s, that’ll be the best possible outcome for my career development.”
“And that’s why you want me to try this new medication.”
“No, that isn’t why.” She was frankly surprised. “Is that really what you think?”
“I don’t know what I think.” Adriano sighed. “I know this is something you really want me to do.”
“Yes, because I think it’s going to work. I told you I wanted to be professional about this, didn’t I? What did you take that to mean?”
“That you’d do whatever you could to make the experiment a success, I suppose.”
“That might be how things work in the business world,” Amy said. “But no, I wouldn’tdo whatever I could. There are always compromises in the medical field, and the doctor and patient have to decide together what plan of action is going to be best. I wouldn’t have recommended this drug for you at all if I wasn’t confident it would help you, though. And I wouldn’t have brought it to you if I had thought it carried any serious risk of harm.”
“All right.” He turned and started walking again, and she walked along beside him. “I think I can believe that.”
“You should believe it. It’s the truth.”
“I’m sure you don’t wish me harm. But maybe you and I have a different definition of what constitutes harm.”
She nodded. “Listen, Adriano, if this drug isn’t something you want to do, the final choice is yours. I can make recommendations. That’s my job. And I think this is absolutely the best possible option for you. But you know you have every right to say no to it.”
“What if it doesn’t work?”
“Then you would be no worse off than you are right now, and at least we’d know. At least we would have tried. And even then, we’d have an additional data point. We would know that this thing that usually works, to some degree, against autoimmune diseases, didn’t work against yours. That would tell us more than what we currently know about Barks-Howard’s, and would help us move toward developing something thatdoeswork.”
He sighed. “When you say it like that, it really doesn’t feel as if I have a choice.”
“You have a choice,” Amy said. “But this is the right choice to make. It’s the best thing for you, and it’s the best thing for the research.”
He turned away from her again.
“It’s the risk of infertility, isn’t it?” she guessed. “I noticed how you reacted when you saw that that was a possible side effect.”
Adriano hesitated.
“You should be honest with me,” she told him. “We’ll make more progress if you can just speak openly.” She knew it was awkward because of the night they had spent together. But really, that was the main argument for why a person shouldn’t sleep with someone they knew was going to be their doctor. He had put himself in that position.
Adriano nodded. “You’re right,” he said. “Yes, that’s what my hang-up is.”
“I didn’t realize you wanted children.”
He gave her a thin smile. “I suppose I don’t seem like the fatherly type to you.”
“Do you feel like the fatherly type?”
“All right, maybe you have a point,” he conceded. “Still, it was something I always imagined for myself. I always thought I’d have a child eventually. There are a lot of things I’ve been forced to come to grips with, living with this disease, but that’s the hardest.”
Amy could sympathize with that. “There are other options,” she said. “There are things we could explore.”
“Other drugs besides this one?”
“No,” Amy said. “I was talking about other options for having a child, if that’s something you want to do.”
“What do you mean?”
“We wouldn’t have to begin the drug right away,” she said. “You could take a little time—a few months. Your symptoms are progressing slowly enough that I really don’t see that being a problem. I would say as long as you start by the end of the year, I would expect to see results from the drug.”
“You’re suggesting I go find a woman who wants to have babies with me over the course of a few months?” Adriano shook his head. “I’m used to getting what I want out of a situation, as you’ve pointed out, but that’s a bit much even for me. It’s not like I’m going to want to be in a relationship with this woman.”
