For Blood or Money
7. Showdown with Billie the Kid
I CAN’T THINK OF A WORSE PLACE to die than a hospital. So I tend to avoid them. I finally got myself out of bed Monday morning and looked in a mirror at the damage Davy the doorkeeper had done to my face Saturday night. I wasn’t much surprised when Riley drove me straight through the pelting rain to the hospital instead of to the office.
“I don’t need to see a doctor. I just got punched in the face. It’s not like I had a heart incident or anything,” I complained.
“Dag,” Riley said patiently, “if you want to play punching bag for guys who are half your age and twice your size, that’s your business. I’m not going to interfere. But you’ve got an appointment with Dr. Roberts this morning.”
“Newel? Why?” I asked.
“This is the first Monday of the month. It’s your regular monthly appointment.”
“Damn, Riley. How could I forget that?” I’d been seeing Newel Roberts, one of Seattle’s finest heart surgeons at least once a month since my heart attack last March. I must be getting pretty pre-occupied with this case. I didn’t even realize it was Monday. “Well, I’m glad you remembered. Thanks, Riley.” I looked at her. She was still a little ticked off at me for the whole Saturday night affair.
Scratch that word. It was not an affair.
Anyway, she seemed to believe that if she’d gotten there sooner I wouldn’t have gotten hurt. I needed to debrief on what she learned Saturday night, but it would have to wait until after I’d seen the doc. She dropped me off at the hospital and I went in for my appointment.
“Dag,” my cardiologist said to me. “This just isn’t looking good to me. The wall of the left ventrical is so thin you can practically see through it. We’ve got to accelerate you on the program. If we don’t get you a new heart soon, I can’t guarantee that you’ll be around for Christmas.”
It was bleaker than I’d anticipated. Different symptoms told me that things weren’t exactly right, but I’d been telling myself I was getting stronger. I’d followed all the routines he’d given me. Eat right, stay trim, get as much light exercise as I could, lots of liquids, don’t get stressed. Well, that last one was a little harder to live by. I suppose getting clocked on Saturday night isn’t exactly avoiding stress. Remind me to apologize to Riley.
I supposed my cup of espresso each morning wasn’t exactly on the program either.
“What do I need to do?” I asked.
“There’s not a lot you can do that you haven’t been doing, though I’d try to quit running into things if I were you.” He looked at the cut and bandage job Riley did on me Saturday night. “I’m moving you onto the active list. We’ve got to try to find a match for you and get you a new heart.”
“When do you think?”
“You know the donor situation. There’s probably a heart in a morgue someplace in Seattle right now that would be a perfect fit,” he said, “if the corpse had been a donor. But we’ve got to watch a couple of other things with you as well. Your blood type is not the easiest to match and we’ve got to get you on the right anti-immune drugs before we put someone else’s heart in your chest. That means you are going to be more susceptible to illness, which means you’ll have to be even more careful about your health.”
“Well, it’s not like I’m planning any big illnesses this month,” I joked. “I’ll be sure to wash my hands.”
“Okay, smart aleck. I’m prescribing the drugs and I want to see you once a week now. And if I call, be here in 30 minutes or the heart will go somewhere else.” Newel Roberts scrawled out the prescription and I took it a little shakily.
“Don’t worry, Dag,” he said. “Our success rate with this is pretty remarkable now. In all likelihood you’ll live to be eighty if we get this taken care of.”
“Thanks, Newel,” I answered. “I’m looking forward to getting old.”
“You will,” he said. He put a hand gently on my shoulder before he left and I got dressed.
Damn.
I’ve known it was coming. According to the reports, I’d been going through a gradual deterioration of my heart muscle most of my life, caused by a childhood disease. It had been so gradual that no one noticed until my jackpot heart attack in Las Vegas last spring. Since then, the assessment was that the deterioration was accelerating. This old ticker was headed for the grave with or without me. It scared the crap out of me, but I was frankly willing to let it go first. The meds were making me feeble minded, too. I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten it was time for my monthly appointment.
Out in the waiting room I stopped at the reception desk to make an appointment for the following Monday. When I’d finished I turned and almost stepped on a small person with a high voice.
“You got a bad ticker, mister?” she asked. Maybe nine years old, my little assailant was dressed in jeans, cowboy boots, and a red bandana. “Dr. Roberts says mine’s gonna kill me if I don’t get a new one soon.”
“Billie!” An exasperated mother rushed to her side from the other receptionist. “I’m sorry, sir,” she said. “Sometimes she is so blunt.”
“That’s okay,” I answered. “Do you mind?” I gestured toward Billie and squatted down until I was about her height. “It’s a tough life, isn’t it Billie?” I asked the little girl.
“Not so bad once you learn to live with it,” she answered. “It’s really hard getting anybody else to understand though, don’t you think?” This was a precocious youngster, I thought.
“Yes,” I said, “unless you’ve got it there’s really no way to understand it. What happened to yours?”
“Dr. Roberts says its con…” she looked quickly at her mother, closed her eyes and concentrated, then spit out the word, “congenital. I was born with a bad heart and it’s been going downhill ever since. How about you?”
“Uphill all the way,” I answered. “I got sick when I was a bit smaller than you and it damaged my heart somehow. Now I’ve got to get a new one.”
“Or you’ll be sorry,” she chimed like the ad on the radio. “You know what, though?” she asked innocently. “Somebody else has to die in order to get a new heart. That’s not fair is it? I want to grow up to be president of the United States, but it’s not fair for someone else to have to die so I can grow up.”
“That’s true, Billie,” I said, “but people die every day. People have accidents or get sick. We don’t have to kill someone to get a new heart. We’re not going to take anything that they need.”
“I know,” Billie looked straight in my eyes. “I just want them to be proud in heaven when they see who got their heart.”
I was near tears when the nurse called, “Billie Martin.”
“Oops, gotta go.”
“Come on, Billie,” her mother said, reaching for a hand. I could see that our conversation had affected her as well.
“I need a few minutes alone with Dr. Roberts, Mom.” She turned to me. “What’s your name?”
“Dag Hamar,” I said.
“Mr. Hamar, would you keep my mother company for a few minutes so I can ask the doctor some personal questions? Thank you.” She marched over to the nurse and called back over her shoulder, “I’ll call for you in a few minutes, Mom.” Then she left with the nurse.
I stood and looked at Billie’s mother and decided to introduce myself.
“I’m Dag Hamar,” I said holding out my hand. She took it hesitantly.
“Wanda Martin,” she responded. “I’m really sorry if my daughter bothered you Mr. Hamar.”
“Not at all. She seems very mature for her age.”
“She had to grow up fast,” Wanda said. “Even faster than I did. I never wanted my baby to go through this.” Her lip was quivering so I led her to a chair and sat with her.
“No parent should ever have to watch her child suffer,” I said. “You should be very proud of her.”
“She’s adjusted to it much better than I have.”
“Well, I’m sure there will be a heart donor soon,” I said, thinking in part about my own position in the waiting line for donors. I’d have to do a little research to find out how low on the list I was.
“It won’t make a difference,” Wanda said. “She won’t get it. We don’t have insurance. I’m trying to raise the money, but I might not be able to make it in time.” That was a gut-punch.
“There are assistance programs available, aren’t there?”
“Oh yes. On the condition that I give up custody of my child and make her a ward of the State. And that is no guarantee that she’d get a heart. They’d evaluate her case and determine the urgency. Then in a couple of months when they decide, they’ll put her on a list with all the other children who are sick and give her a number. Then maybe she’ll still be alive when her number comes up. And maybe if she is, I’ll still be allowed to visit her once in a while, if the State deems me fit to be near her. I won’t let them take her away from me. Not now.”
The impassioned plea set all kinds of ideas in motion for me. Heart transplants cost in the neighborhood of a hundred grand, but care and medication after surgery can cost double that.
“Can’t Billie’s father help?” I asked.
“I don’t even know who Billie’s father is,” Wanda said bitterly. “I wasn’t exactly a model teen. Billie’s all I’ve got. I’m not even employed right now because I have to take care of her.”
This looked bleak, but I was sure there must be a way to help her. I didn’t have dough to give her. My own transplant was going to cost me my life savings after the insurance ran out. Healthcare is the privilege of the rich. I didn’t know what to say to Wanda, and thankfully was spared the necessity when the nurse came back out and called for her to join her daughter.
“Good luck to you, Mr. Hamar,” she said as she rose to leave.
“And to you and Billie, too,” I answered.
I called Riley and told her with a little more force than was necessary not to bother coming up to pick me up, I’d take a cab to the office. She told me that she was already waiting at the front door.
Damn.
I needed to walk. I needed to run and fill my lungs with air. I needed to go to a gym and pump iron, play basketball, and work up a sweat. None of that is going to happen. It’s all I can manage to walk the mile downhill from home to office with one or two rest stops on the way. I couldn’t bear to think of a nine-year-old who couldn’t run and play and was willing to tell a perfect stranger that her heart was going to kill her if she didn’t get a new one. Not fair didn’t even begin to describe it.
I ducked through the rain and got in the car next to Riley and sat in silence. She pulled away from the curb. She looked at me in a way that nearly melted what was left of my heart and asked, “Do you want me to take you home instead of to the office?”
“Don’t patronize me, Riley,” I said more sharply than I intended. “I have work to do.”
“Yessir,” she responded sharply and drove the rest of the way to the office in silence.
I closed the door to my office and sat staring out my window at the rain-swept Sound. Once before I die, I’d like to see Mount Rainier again.
Damn!
I heard Riley come into the office after she’d parked her car. I flicked on my laptop and connected to the network, and called her into my office to hear her report on what happened Saturday night. She entered a little hesitantly, not sure if I’d bite her head off again.
The reports that I’d set to run and compile on Saturday were ready and waiting. I scanned through them, not expecting much, as Riley told me about the girls who came to party at the condo. I figured now that Simon had set up the laptop to get me involved, but it wasn’t going to lead me to him. I was much closer when I talked to Angel. Maybe Riley had found out something, too.
“Well, they all have jobs outside the condo,” Riley began. “I met a couple and acted like I was interested in maybe joining them.” I raised an eyebrow. I didn’t want Riley to get herself into a bad position. “Don’t worry,” she assured me. “It was just research. Anyway, they are there for anonymous company to very powerful men. Officially, they don’t know any of them. Of course, they aren’t blind. They know who’s there. But these guys, for all their money and power, are pretty pathetic. A lot of them have the typical wife and family that don’t understand them, are out of town, or supposedly don’t care. But mostly they want to be with women who make them feel young and attractive. They slip the girls ‘tips’ to hang around them while they are talking sports or to play drinking games with them. There are private rooms, but usually those are where the men go to talk privately with each other and not with the girls, unless she’s a professional.”
“Come on,” I said. “These guys are taking a huge risk even being in the same room with each other, let alone with anonymous women offering them sex.”
“Not sex,” Riley was quick to point out. “Some of the girls are professional escorts and are available for sex, but most are employed by the very companies that the men run.”
“That’s even worse. Quid pro quo,” I recited. “An exec is open to a huge lawsuit if a woman’s employment is dependent on a sexual relationship with her boss.”
“Never with their bosses,” Riley pointed out, “or with anyone who works for the same company. There is a strict rule forbidding contact between anyone in the same company at the condo. It’s like an incest taboo. There is some kind of separate initiation that goes on. Cinnamon wouldn’t talk about it. I’m going to try to talk to some of them outside the condo tomorrow.”
“Did you tip her?” I asked, remembering the two hundred dollars I gave her Saturday night.
“Uh…” Riley was blushing. “I didn’t have to.”
“Riley.” She looked at me and pulled the money out of her purse that I gave her.
“Do you want the two hundred I earned, too?”
“You what?” I exclaimed.
“A couple of guys asked Cinnamon and me to join them for a game of cribbage. Cinnamon egged me on and I figured I’d better not blow the cover, so I joined. We played for about an hour and they slipped us each two hundred dollars when I said I had to go pick you up. It was really easy.”
“They paid you two hundred dollars to play cribbage for an hour?” I asked in disbelief.
“We gave them shoulder rubs and flirted a lot,” Riley said sheepishly. “Did I do wrong?”
I didn’t know what to say. I knew that Riley—in spite of being an incredible flirt—avoided close contact with most men. I stared at the screen on my laptop as I shook my head, unable to say anything. The search for ‘Angel’ in the files came up with a few dozen instances of Los Angeles, but nothing specific to the tall blonde I’d met at the condo. Something else in the report caught my eye. There were forty-two fuzzed documents on the drive. I chuckled. Then I laughed out loud.
“Dag?” Riley asked softly. “Is it okay?”
“Riley, what is the answer?” I asked, still laughing.
“The answer to what, Dag?” she wasn’t sure yet that I wouldn’t bite her head off.
“The answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything,” I said. I watched Riley puzzle it out as I continued to laugh.
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