When he looked up, Alan saw that Young was staring at them from
across the bar. His face was white as a ghost’s.
—
THREE WEEKS LATER, Alan was sitting in his new office in Newark
when he got a call from Christian Holmes. Most of the company had
moved to the new building on Page Mill Road in Palo Alto, but not the
clinical laboratory. The lab had moved across San Francisco Bay to
Theranos’s sprawling Newark facility, where it planned to one day
manufacture thousands of miniLabs.
Christian wanted Alan to handle yet another doctor’s complaint.
Alan had fielded dozens of them since the company had gone live with
its tests the previous fall. Time and time again, he’d been asked to
convince physicians that blood-test results he had no confidence in
were sound and accurate. He decided he couldn’t do it anymore. His
conscience wouldn’t allow him to.
He told Christian no and emailed Sunny and Elizabeth to inform
them that he was resigning and to ask them to immediately take his
name off the lab’s CLIA license. Elizabeth replied that she was deeply
disappointed. He agreed to delay his official departure by another
month to give Theranos time to find a new lab director. For the first
two weeks of his notice period, Alan went on vacation. He rode his
motorcycle to Los Angeles to see his brother for a few days and then
flew to New York to spend Thanksgiving with his parents. When he
returned in mid-December, he headed to the new Palo Alto
headquarters to discuss a transition plan with Sunny.
Sunny came down with Mona to meet him in the lobby of the new
building. They ushered him into a room off the reception area and
informed him he was being terminated early. Sunny slid what looked
like a legal document across the table toward him.
Alan read the bold heading at the top: “AFFIDAVIT OF ALAN
BEAM.”
It stated, under penalty of perjury under the laws of California, that
he promised to never disclose any proprietary or confidential