I'm back, and with a brief author's note: this chapter is based on a real-life event that occurred in October 2019 with the drug Vincristine. As far as I am aware, the story was not covered by any major news outlet, and I only heard about it because of direct social media connections to families with kids fighting cancer. I found it rather disturbing that an issue which so drastically affected many people went largely unnoticed by the general public. Children's lives were at stake, and the country hardly seemed to care.
Chapter 22: The Vibranin Crisis
The residents of Gravesen thought living in a hospital was the shittiest circumstance they could possibly find themselves in…until they learned about Shield and Hydra.
Bucky found out first. He burst into the classroom late with his phone in his hand, waving it around at a loss for words. "Bucky, what's the matter?" Steve asked, concern radiating from his every pore like heat from an electric blanket. Bucky couldn't muster the breath to speak, just slammed the phone down on the table and shoved it towards Steve. Tony, Quill, and Thor hurriedly gathered around and stared at the device.
Bucky followed several fellow Ewing's sarcoma fighters on social media to exchange moral support and learn about everything going on in terms of treatments and other news. Today one of them posted a video about what had just gone down in the pharmaceutical world and their personal reaction to it. "For the past twenty years, only two major companies have produced the critical antitumor drug Vibranin: Shield and Hydra. As of yesterday, Shield acted upon its proposal to halt distribution entirely because of a lack of profitability. Hospitals across the country expect to experience massive shortages of Vibranin within the week unless Hydra can somehow double its production overnight. Thousands of children fighting cancer may not receive the medicine that is keeping them alive. Thanks Shield. It' s nice to know that your profit margins are more important than saving lives."
The video concluded, and the huddled kids stood in stunned silence. The Ancient One finally turned around from writing the day's material on the chalkboard and rapped her knuckles on her desk to draw their attention. "Why aren't you in your seats?" she asked sternly.
"There's a crisis," Bucky announced, finally finding his voice.
"A crisis?"
"The country's gonna run out of Vibranin and we're all gonna die," Bucky spluttered.
A split second later, the other kids infiltrated the classroom, Clint and Natasha shouting, "We're all gonna die!"
"Stop this nonsense!" the Ancient One commanded. "Everyone to your seats, now! Young ones, get out and I will see you in ninety minutes."
The rest of them started to back out, but Natasha stood her ground and stated simply, "No."
"Our survival is more important than our education," Bucky said.
"What is all this drivel about dying? What happened?"
"Shield stopped producing Vibranin," Clint explained. "Some of us are on that drug." Bucky and Natasha nodded. Eventually, the rest joined in for solidarity.
"They stopped because it wasn't profitable enough," Bucky growled. "Fucking big pharma!"
"Language," the Ancient One scolded. "There's no need to act like children."
"But we are children," Clint countered.
"And clearly nobody cares whether we live or die," Quill added.
"Of course people care," the Ancient One said. "I understand why you're upset, but I'm afraid there's nothing you can do but hope it works out."
"Don't tell me I can't do anything. If it's all the same to you, I'm willing to put in some effort when my life is on the line," Bucky said, punctuating his statement by pounding his fist on the desk in finality. He stood up, leveled the Ancient One with a try-and-stop-me glare, turned, and strode out. Steve was the first to follow him out. Next Clint and Natasha. Then Quill, Nick, and Parker. Finally, the rest of the kids gathered in the classroom ignored the Ancient One's protests and left without looking back.
Tony, at the back of the pack, wondered where exactly they were going. What could a bunch of kids do to convince an enormous company that increasing their profit margins was a bad thing?
They marched through the hospital and straight to Dr. Potts' office, where Bucky harshly knocked on the door. No answer. He tried again. Still nothing. "She must be with patients," Bucky muttered. He set off in a new direction, and the rest of the group followed blindly. They ended up in the chemo clinic. Jane, one of the pediatric oncology nurses, startled at the sight of such a large group storming the clinic.
"Have you heard?" Bucky asked.
"Heard what?"
"Shield cut production of Vibranin."
"That's awful!"
"We know it is. We need to know who we can talk to in order to fix it."
"Well, I'm sure the proper authorities here will ensure that all of you who need it get your Vibranin."
"We do not care if we get it if we are only kids who get it," Natasha stated firmly.
"We don't want to let any kid in any hospital go without," Quill confirmed.
"I'm sorry, but I don't know what to tell you," Jane admitted. "Did you try Dr. Potts?"
"She's not in her office."
"Dr. Lee?"
"That's a great idea," Bucky said. Now they hurried to the president's office. Before Bucky's fist could even touch the door, it opened to reveal Dr. Lee.
"I know what you're going to say, and I'm already on it."
"Really?" Bucky asked.
"Yes. I've been on the phone with colleagues all day. Gravesen's supply of Vibranin is secure for at least two weeks, and we're now trying to help other hospitals."
"Fantastic." The entire group breathed a massive sigh of relief. "What can we do?" Bucky asked.
"Just spread the word. By any means you can."
"Okay."
"Well don't just stand there, get going!"
They scurried back to the common room and immediately started brainstorming. On the way, Tony took the short time to ponder this situation. To think, thirty minutes ago he'd thought that the worst part about today would be going to class. Now the lives of several of his friends hung in the balance. Usually, a passion took time to develop, but he instantly cared about this cause as deeply as he'd ever cared for anything before. How would it feel to know that your life was valued below money in the eyes of the very people responsible for maintaining your life?
He completely understood Bucky's rampage.
"So, what can we do?" Steve questioned, looking fully prepared to march to war against Shield.
"Well, we can start with social media. Anybody have a Facebook?" Quill asked.
"We're not forty years old," Tony drawled.
"That was a joke," Quill hummed.
"Guys, this is not a joke," Bucky said sternly. "Dr. Lee might have said that we're stocked for a while, but lots of other hospitals aren't and that means lots of other kids might go without their Vibranin and be that much more likely to die or relapse because they missed a dose."
"Sorry. I know it's no joke, I just needed to lighten the mood a little," Quill admitted.
"I found an online petition to get the issue seen by the national government," Steve announced.
"Fantastic!" Bucky exclaimed. "How many signatures does it have already?"
"About twenty thousand. It needs a hundred thousand to end up on the president's desk."
"Well, we have," he paused to count the people in the room, "Nine right here. And I'm sure we could get all the doctors and nurses here to sign if we asked."
"That's a great idea," Thor said.
"Wait a minute," Steve drew all their attention. "Tony, isn't your dad the face of a multi-billion dollar tech company?"
"Umm, yeah. Why?" Tony worried where this line of inquiry might lead. He hadn't really spoken to his father since the incident with Natasha and the Code Silver afterwards. Their relationship was strained at best, and Tony doubted the man would take too kindly to being suddenly asked a favor that didn't directly benefit him by the son he barely recognized he had.
"What if we could get him to make some sort of statement? That would get so many people's attention."
"That would be amazing," Clint said eagerly, eyes alight with hope.
Tony hated to crush that hope, but he couldn't promise them anything from his father. "Look, I dunno if he'd be willing to do that. He's very goal oriented."
"He is your father," Natasha said. "Why would he not do something to help his son?"
"He can be difficult sometimes," Tony admitted.
"You at least have to ask," Bucky told him. "For our sake."
Tony glanced around the room at this small fraction of all the people who depended on this drug to survive. He couldn't deny them this because of a fear of his father. Worst case scenario, Howard Stark said no, that pleading for a cause unrelated to his company's mission would ruin his public image. Then Tony would have to let all of them down by admitting that their best hope for spreading the word refused to help them. And Tony was related to that curmudgeon of a best hope. New worst case scenario: they hated his father for what he did and by extension hated him too. But he still had to try.
"I'll go call him," Tony said and headed back to his room. He dreaded every step that brought him closer to this inevitably uncomfortable conversation with his father. He picked up the phone and, to kill time, dialed by hand instead of just scrolling through his contacts. Howard Stark always picked up on the third ring, never earlier or later. If the third ring passed and he hadn't picked up, he wasn't going to answer. Tony held his breath as the first two rings sounded.
"Tony?" his father's voice greeted.
"Hey Dad."
"What's the matter? You should have called your mother, she can be there sooner."
"No, I don't need either of you to come here. I'm fine."
"Then why are you calling me in the middle of a weekday?" He hadn't even attempted to disguise the annoyance in his voice.
"There's a bit of a crisis going on right now in the pharmaceutical industry," Tony explained. "Shield completely shut down their production of the drug Vibranin, which is crucial in treating many types of cancer."
"And this matters…why?"
"People are going to die, Dad," Tony stated, fed up with his father's lack of sympathy. If Tony was in charge of Stark Industries, he'd redirect them to start producing Vibranin themselves. "A lot of my friends here rely on that drug. We talked to the president of Gravesen, and he said that patients here would be okay for a few weeks, but plenty of other hospitals are going to start running out. And soon."
"What do expect me to do about it? Stark Industries is not a pharmacy."
"I know, I know. It's just that my friends wanted me to ask if you'd be willing to make a public statement about the issue to raise awareness."
"A public statement? About a drug shortage that has absolutely nothing to do with my company?"
"Yes," Tony confirmed meekly.
"Tony, you do realize what you're asking me to do."
"Yeah, I know it's not going to benefit you at all. But it might save lives, and it would make my friends really happy. It would make me really happy." The line went silent, and for a moment Tony feared his father had hung up on him. In a last ditch effort, Tony added, "There aren't many things for me to be really happy about anymore. Please."
"Okay." Then he hung up. Tony pulled the phone away from his ear and stared at it in shock, unsure if he'd heard correctly. Did Howard Stark just agree to philanthropy? Tony didn't believe it. He hurried back to the common room to deliver the good news.
"Well…?" Bucky asked, looking up at Tony in anticipation.
"He said, 'Okay.'"
The room erupted in cheering and raucous applause. Tony may or may not have blushed.
~0~
Tony had no idea what the scope of his father's public statement would be. His father hadn't contacted him to forewarn him or tell him anything about what he planned to do or when. Dr. Potts visited all of her patients to reassure them that the shortage would not alter their chemo doses for the foreseeable future. He'd never seen people so relieved to be told they wouldn't get less poison after all.
Their only clue came when Happy told them to tune into the news at six o'clock that evening for a special announcement. They begged him to tell them what it was about or how he knew, but he refused to give them any more information. Everyone who was available gathered in front of the TV in the common room at five 'til six, eagerly awaiting this 'special announcement.'
The news program began, and the anchors began by summarizing Shield's actions and their implications for cancer treatment. They did those split-screen interviews with several renowned oncologists and other leaders from around the world, including a figure Tony vaguely recognized with an African accent and Gravesen's own Dr. Potts. Everyone perked up, wondering if this was the special they were promised.
"Vibranin is irreplaceable in these kids' chemotherapy regimens," she explained in response to the anchor's question about why this particular drug was so important. "Without it, they face lower chances of achieving remission and higher chances of relapsing if they do enter remission."
"What are the implications of this shortage?" the anchor continued.
"Hospitals that don't have the stock to treat their patients will have to turn some of them away or give lower doses to ration supply. If the deficit is not picked up somehow, oncologists will have to completely redesign standards of treatment for leukemia, lymphoma, neuroblastoma, Ewing's sarcoma, rhabdomyosarcoma, Wilms' tumor, and some types of brain tumors. By losing this drug, we're losing our primary weapon against these cancers."
"Thank you Dr. Potts," the anchor concluded. The split screen slid back so the screen was once again filled only by the newsroom set. "Now, we go live to a press conference with the head of Hydra Pharmaceuticals, Arnim Zola." The screen cut to footage of a crowded room with a man standing at a podium marked with a tentacled skull, the logo for Hydra.
"As many of you know, Shield Pharmaceuticals has cut production of the cancer-treating drug Vibranin. As of now, Hydra is the only other company that manufactures the drug, but we were not prepared to supply the demand for the entire country. Until now," Zola spoke. He paused, and the assembled kids held their breath in anticipation of whatever he was about to say next. "In an unprecedented demonstration of inter-industrial cooperation, weapons manufacturer Stark Industries has donated a sum sufficient to allow us to reconfigure our facilities to manufacture enough Vibranin to pick up the slack that Shield created."
"What the fuck?" Tony exclaimed reflexively. How was this possible? On the phone, his father had seemed reluctant to even acknowledge that this was a problem, and now he'd gone and shared his fortune with a company he normally would have nothing to do with? His friends shushed him as Zola continued after waiting for the applause to die down.
"Shield may have its own priorities, but here at Hydra we dedicate ourselves to ensuring that nobody faces this monstrous disease without the best treatment options in their corner." Zola delivered the remark with suave confidence, clutching the podium with one hand and pointing to emphasize his point with the other. Tony felt the hope in the room swell enormously.
"Hail Hydra!" Bucky shouted exuberantly.
"Hail Hydra!" Steve echoed.
"Hail Hydra!" everyone joined in, chanting in unison and applauding alongside the press conference attendees on screen. The program cut back to the anchor, who announced a pre-recorded message from Stark Industries' head Howard Stark regarding his interactions with Hydra Pharmaceuticals.
"Shhh," Tony hushed everyone as the screen cut to an image of his father, standing behind a familiar podium. Tony had watched his father present there on countless occasions, but always about some new high-tech weapon or foreign politics.
"Our children are the future of this country," Howard began. "So when I heard that so many of their lives were threatened by the actions of Shield Pharmaceuticals, I reached out to provide aid by whatever means I could. Financially assisting Hydra to make up the difference and eliminate the shortage was the least I could do in the face of such an issue. I hope that other drug manufacturers look at this chain of events and recognize the importance of their jobs so that we as a nation never have to face a crisis of this caliber again. Thank you."
The news cut back to the anchors, who then transitioned into the next news story. Steve grabbed the remote and turned it off while everyone in the room slowly turned from the screen and towards each other, faces slack with disbelief and awe.
"Tony, your dad is awesome," Bucky said.
Tony reconsidered every negative thought he'd ever had about the man who raised him. At a time when it mattered most, Howard Stark discovered selflessness. "Yeah…I guess he is."