few days to think things over.
When he got back to his house in Palo Alto, he decided to go back and look at all the documents he’d been given over the previous year as a board member, including the investment materials he’d received before he bought his shares. As he read them over, he realized that everything about the company had changed in the space of a year, including Elizabeth’s entire executive team. Don needed to see these, he thought.
* * *
—
IN THE MEANTIME, Ana Arriola was getting antsy. Ana was by nature excitable. She spoke quickly and was a constant whirlwind of activity. Most of the time, it was positive energy that she channeled into her work to great effect. But at times it could also turn into stress, anxiety, and drama.
After their coffee, she’d stayed in contact with Avie and had learned from her former Apple colleague that Elizabeth wanted him off the board. She didn’t know what had prompted their rift, but it was an ominous development.
Ana’s own relationship with Elizabeth was deteriorating. Elizabeth didn’t like being told no, and Ana had done so on several occasions when she’d found a demand Elizabeth made unreasonable. She was also getting put off by her secrecy. A designer might not be as crucial to this little enterprise as an engineer or a chemist, but she still needed to be in the information loop about the product’s development to do her job properly. Yet Elizabeth kept Ana on a need-to-know basis.
During one of their early morning meetings, Ana confronted Elizabeth with what she’d heard from Aaron Moore about problems with the Theranos system. If they were still working out kinks in the technology, wasn’t it preferable to put the Tennessee study on pause and concentrate on fixing the problems first? They could always restart it once they got the machine working reliably, she told her.
Elizabeth flatly rejected the idea. Pfizer and every other big drugmaker wanted her blood-testing system and Theranos was going to be a great company, she said. If Ana wasn’t happy, then perhaps she should reflect on whether this was the right place for her.
“Think about it and then tell me what you want to do,” she said.
Ana went back to her desk and stewed for several hours. She couldn’t shake the thought that forging on with the Tennessee study wasn’t the right thing to do. The fact that Elizabeth wanted Avie to leave the board was also unsettling. Ana trusted Avie and considered him a friend. If Avie and Elizabeth had a beef, she was inclined to side with Avie.
By midafternoon, Ana had made up her mind. She wrote up a brief resignation letter and printed out two copies, one for Elizabeth and one for HR. Elizabeth was out of the office by then, so she slipped the letter under her door. On her way out, she typed out a quick email to let her know where to find it.
Elizabeth emailed her back thirty minutes later, asking her to please call her on her cell phone. Ana ignored her request. She was done with Theranos.
* * *
—
DON LUCAS DIDN’T USE EMAIL. He’d seen his share of litigation over the years, including a wave of class-action lawsuits targeting Oracle in the early 1990s, and didn’t like the idea of leaving behind an electronic paper trail that might one day be used against him in court. If Avie wanted Don to see what he’d found, he’d have to show it to him in person. He reached out to Don’s two assistants and set up another meeting.
On the appointed day, Avie showed up at Don’s office with hard copies of all the documents he had been given as a Theranos director. It amounted to hundreds of pages. Taken together, they betrayed a series of irreconcilable discrepancies, he told Don. The board had a problem on its hands, he said. It was possible Theranos could be fixed, but it wasn’t going to happen the way Elizabeth was managing things. He suggested they bring in some adult supervision.
“Well, I think you should resign,” Don replied. He quickly added, “What are you planning to do with that stack of papers?”
Avie was taken aback. Don didn’t even seem interested in hearing him out. The older man seemed concerned only with whether he was going to escalate the matter to the full board. After turning the situation over in his mind for a few moments, Avie decided to stand down. He’d retired