The Hormone Factory: A Novel by Saskia Goldschmidt

Author:Saskia Goldschmidt [Goldschmidt, Saskia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-59051-650-8
Publisher: Other Press
Published: 2014-11-10T16:00:00+00:00

28 …

After dropping off Aaron at the police station, which he’d entered without bidding me goodbye, I rushed back to the office. I didn’t have time to stop and think about the morning’s events; the ship was still floundering, with a huge gash in the hull.

First I rang the doctor in Nijmegen and informed him of what had happened. I managed to assuage his panic, assuring him that I wouldn’t breathe a word to anyone about Aaron’s testosterone overdose. I pressured him not to tell Professor Levine about it either. This seemed to calm him down. The poor quack must have felt duty-bound as a scientist to fill the professor in, but at the same time he was scared shitless of Levine’s wrath. My directive relieved him of that obligation. It’s astonishing, really, how people will agree to a request if you make them believe it’s an order. It’s rare that they’ll find the strength to resist an assertive demand and hang on to their own sense of what’s right.

After putting down the phone I asked Agnes to gather together the office personnel who had witnessed Rosie’s escape and heard my brother’s brute bellowing of the previous day. Standing in the hall, I gave a short speech in which I apologized for Aaron and his transgression, brought about, I explained, by a harmful concoction of medications. He was already locked away in a cell, I told them, awaiting punishment. Moreover, I said, my brother was racked with remorse and wished more than anything that the dreadful episode had never happened. I sent the employees back to their desks, but not before warning that this was to be the last word spoken about this affair, and that I would not stand for any gossip. I also asked them to do all they could to nip in the bud any rumors undoubtedly already circulating on the outside.

“Farmacom belongs to us all,” I said in conclusion, “and slander and scandalmongering affects all of you just as much as it affects my own family. Blackening the name of the firm is tantamount to besmirching your own. I hope and trust that by pulling together we can rid Farmacom of this blot on its otherwise sterling reputation. I thank you sincerely.”

There was a smattering of applause from the white-coated employees, and some quiet chatter as they returned to their desks.

I shut myself into my office and asked Agnes for a cup of coffee, hoping it would help me get over my exhaustion. Aaron’s tongue-lashing had cast a pall, robbing me of the will to go back to work. I was tempted, just for an instant, to throw in the towel, to leave it all behind, the damn factory, Levine, my children, even my “trophy wife,” and make a break for it. How would it feel to flee this doomed continent like a thief in the night, and to go live the good life somewhere else, on a white sandy beach in some exotic locale among

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