“Because,” he muttered begrudgingly, “I didn’t proof it first.”
It had been months since Mr. Getty had last checked out a copy of the magazine he was editor-in-chief over, because Mr. Getty had already mentally checked into retirement.
“Regardless, sir, I think you’re overreacting. You clearly don’t understand the depth of my content.”
Oops. That crossed a line, Sam realized too late as Mr. Getty’s face purpled.
“Did you just accuse me of overreacting? Are you hysterical? I should fire you on the spot!”
“Fire me? My column is not that bad.”
“This is exactly why I didn’t want to give a woman this position. None of you know the first thing about writing.”
“And you don’t know the first thing about women—” Only too late did Sam realize her mistake as she hastily added, “sir.”
Mr. Getty hmphed at this. “If you know what’s good for you, you will take your medicine like a man and shut up, Samantha.”
God forbid a woman show the slightest emotion, or offer an alternative logic to the one held by her male counterpart, because when she did, the label hysterical was slapped on her as if it was a formal diagnosis, and a script for one sedative or another was imminently prescribed.
“Wait until my cousin Jean Paul sees this,” he groaned. “I’ll be the laughingstock of the family.”
Franklin Getty claimed his second cousin was none other than the world’s richest—and stingiest—man, J. Paul Getty. In a building full of journalists, not one had been able to successfully substantiate this claim, no matter how often Mr. Getty dropped the miserly oil magnate’s name into every conversation with a familial ease devoid of anything personal that would prove it.
“Mr. Getty, hear me out. This is real advice to a real problem. Dry-spell Debbie wants to help her exhausted husband, and I gave her a very logical, very helpful solution.”
Getty laughed, his lip curled up in a cruel smirk. “Green tea and turmeric? Are you kidding me with this?”
“Don’t forget the B12,” Sam added. “It’s necessary for producing S-adenosylmethionine to improve mood and immune function—”
“I don’t care about any of that nonsense you’re spouting, Samantha.” Getty refused to use Sam’s preferred name just as Callous Calvin Dreyfuss had done before him. And every boss before him. What was so difficult about pronouncing Sam? “And none of our readers will care either. All I care about is magazine sales, and this is not the way to do it.”
“You think women don’t want to know about the benefits of B12?” Sam asked. “I could go into more explanation about how it works with folate to improve red blood cells, if that would help.”
“No, that will not help. I thought I told Mel to work with you on your column.”
Mel had told her to skedaddle, but there was no point tattling on him, because in the offices of Women’s House Magazine, the men stuck together. So instead she said, “I did ask Mel for help, but he felt it best I learn on my feet.”
The actual conversation went more like Sam begrudgingly approaching Mel, the dethroned advice columnist of Tell Mel, and him yelling at her to scram before he put a foot up her rear. Then she got nothing but a cold shoulder and silent treatment after what she thought was a threat or two mumbled under his breath for her stealing his job.
She was perfectly happy with Mel’s refusal, since she had never wanted his advice—whether reading it in his column or on how to write hers—in the first place. Despite his years of marital experience and a PhD in accounting, Mel knew nothing about women’s troubles, other than how to multiply their dividends in his own marriage as he belittled his wife and turned her into the butt of every office joke. In Sam’s mind, Mel was a narcissist, and the advice columnist world was rife with them. They excelled at assuming everyone else was the problem and they held the only solution.
“Obviously you don’t have the natural talent Mel does,” Mr. Getty concluded.
“Because I offered different advice from what he would have given?”
“You’re missing my point! First of all, you’re promoting undocumented therapies that have not been proven to work. There are real scientists curing real illnesses with real medicine. Second of all, women don’t care about vitamins. They want to know about the latest Memorial Day party cake recipe. Just write what I tell you instead of this trash.”
“With all due respect, it’s not trash. How many variations of pineapple upside-down cake do you think women need? I’m trying to write about something new. Something relevant. And health and wellness are relevant. Dry-spell Debbie at least thinks so.”
“Fine.” Getty sighed exasperatingly. “You want to talk about health? I’ve got a compromise.”
Grabbing a pen, he scratched ink across Sam’s pages, scrawling frantically in an illegible script, then handed the papers to her.
“Replace the B12 with those black beauty pills that give you energy and help women lose weight. Then we can plug an ad in for the pills, along with a clothing line to bring in some extra advertising revenue. I can see the ad tagline now: One pill tonight, and your pants won’t be tight!” Getty raised his hands, as if boxing the slogan in mid-air.
Black beauties—a dangerous mind-altering drug made by the same manufacturer that created Nosartin, the heart medicine that had killed Sam’s father. There was no way on earth—or in hell, as Sam speculated Mr. Getty could very well be Satan’s second cousin—that she would endorse something so harmful. This was no compromise. This was a dictatorship.
“Sir, for centuries homeopathic remedies have been used in Eastern cultures and have proven to be effective. And safe. I’m not saying modern medicine doesn’t work, but just because something is modern doesn’t make it better.”
“That’s exactly what modern is—better! Otherwise we wouldn’t use it!” Getty bellowed.
Sam did not want to waste oxygen trying to explain how during her grandmother’s youth, highly addictive cocaine tablets could be purchased at your local Sears Roebuck, or consumed in your Coca-Cola soft drink. During her mother’s youth, children were offered Bayer aspirin laced with heroine for the common cough. And a mere three years ago, in 1967, Dr. Walter Freeman was still performing legalized lobotomies, including brain-hacking President Kennedy’s sister, which resultantly left her an invalid. All modern medicine, and all eventually proven ineffective. In fact, quite the opposite of healthy: deadly.
But none of these examples would break through Franklin Getty’s thick, stubborn skull, because men like him only believed in one truth. The one stuck inside his huge ego.
Sam thought of her dad, and the Nosartin that had killed him despite its FDA stamp of approval and Cook Pharmaceuticals’ assurance that the side effects—including but not limited to blurred vision, rapid heart rate, anxiety, panic attacks, and stroke—were perfectly normal, completely safe. For the sake of her father, and all others who suffered at the hands of medical malpractice, Sam refused to give in. Especially to an uneducated tyrant like Mr. Getty who aided and abetted the murder of countless people at the hands of Cook Pharmaceuticals’ negligence.
“Do you realize what pharmaceutical companies put in drugs?” Sam glanced at Mr. Getty’s desk, where an orange prescription bottle sat next to a ceramic coffee mug with an image of Jackie Gleason’s Joe the Bartender emblazoned on the side. She picked up the bottle and read the label: oxyphenisatin. “Did you know this laxative can cause liver damage?”
Mr. Getty’s eyes widened in horror as he yanked the bottle from Sam’s grip. “Laxative? Uh, that’s not mine.”
“It says your name right there—” Sam pointed at the label as Mr. Getty slapped her hand away. “They are already trying to withdraw it from the market because it’s toxic.”
“My doctor never mentioned that.”
“I thought it wasn’t your prescription.”
“Okay, okay, you got me. I’m constipated because of the stress of this job, and you’re not helping matters, Samantha.”
