“It is normal in situations like this. Believe me. But your life will not be altered nearly as drastically as you think.”
“I…hope so. Thank you.”
“When you are able, we have some hospital business to attend to. You were in the intensive care unit for several days, but because the hospital has been filled to overflowing, you have been moved to the building we call the annex. It is not connected to the actual hospital. Estella will be in to take some information for billing and for our records.”
“I have insurance that will cover everything…. I can get the policy number when I call home.”
“We do a great deal of charity work here at Santa Teresa’s, but we certainly appreciate it when we can get paid. We have a small rehabilitation room here in the annex, and we would like to get you up on the treadmill or the bicycle as soon as possible.”
Natalie recalled the countless hours she spent in physical therapy rehabbing her torn Achilles. Would this rehabilitation be as bad? It was probably normal after a trauma like this, but she wasn’t able even to consider the prospect of recovery. First the suspension from school, now this. How could this have happened?
“A phone?” she asked.
“Of course. I’ll have Estella take care of that also.”
“I wonder if you could stay around…. I’m going to call my professor, Dr. Douglas Berenger…. Maybe you could speak with him.”
“The cardiac surgeon in Boston?”
“Yes, you know him?”
“I know of him. He is regarded as one of the very best in his field.”
“I work in his lab.”
Natalie had neither the desire nor the wind to go into the reason for her ill-fated trip to Brazil. All she really wanted, in fact, was to get home as soon as possible.
“You must be a very brilliant student,” Santoro said. “Wait here, we’ll get the phone. Also, the police have asked to be notified if—when—you woke up. They would like to take a statement from you as soon as you are strong enough to give one. And I must replace those eye patches.”
“I don’t feel any pain.”
“We have used numbing drops.”
“I will tell the police what I know…but it isn’t much.”
“Contrary to what we Brazilians often hear when we travel, our Military Police are quite efficient and effective.”
“Even so,” Natalie replied, “I doubt they’ll have much success with this case.”
…I reach for the door handle and prepare myself to hit the pavement at forty miles an hour. But before I can move, the cab screeches to a halt, throwing me hard against the back of the passenger seat. What is happening? Again, the scene blurs. The movement around me is indistinct. Suddenly the door is ripped open. A large man reaches in and grabs me. I fight, but he is very strong. A black nylon mask covers his face. I try tearing at the mask, but a second man is on me. His face is also covered. Before I can react, a syringe appears in his hand. No! Please no! Don’t!
As in the past, Natalie was at once both a participant and an observer in the events that were so radically altering her life. She was a prisoner of her memory, watching and feeling, terrifyingly involved yet strangely detached, and above all, powerless to escape the scenario or to alter the outcome. As always, the cab driver’s voice was as distinct as his appearance was blurred. He might be sitting next to her and she wouldn’t have recognized him, but if he said just one word, she would know.
…The alley’s blocked with trash and garbage and cardboard boxes…and a fence….
An unwilling captive, Natalie, as always, ran from her masked pursuers and clambered over the boxes and trash, and heard the shots and felt the pain, and collapsed into blackness. Then, as had often happened, a voice wedged itself into the hideous experience. This time, the voice was a familiar one.
“Nat, it’s me, Doug. Can you hear me?”
“Oh, thank God. Thank God you’re here.”
“You’re at the airport, Nat, ready to fly home. They gave you something to knock you out for the transfer and the ambulance ride out here. It should wear off in just a few minutes.”
“How…long since I called you?”
“It’s less than twenty-four hours since we spoke. I came down on a medevac flight to get you. The school has consented to pay for whatever your insurance doesn’t.”
“Thank you…. Oh, thank you. This is terrible.”
“I know, Nat. I know it is. But you’re alive, and your brain is intact, and take it from me, your body will improve more than you can imagine. Emily Trotter from Anesthesia is here with me just in case. She’s waiting in the plane. Terry’s here, too.”
“Nothing could keep me from coming, Nat,” Millwood’s comforting voice said. “We have to get you home so we can go running again. I’ve told everyone who would listen about how you ran away from those arrogant high-school track stars. Now I need some more stories.”
He stroked her forehead and then squeezed her hand.
“Nat, we’re all so sorry for what’s happened,” Berenger said. “We’ve been worried sick.”
“The policeman who came to interview me…said that no one had called.”
“That’s nonsense. I even had one of the Boston police who’s originally from Brazil call them.”
“The one who interviewed me…couldn’t get away fast enough…. It was like he just didn’t care.”
“Well, we certainly called and called.”
“Thank you.”
“Dr. Santoro says you’re strong and your recovery has been astonishing—a miracle, he calls it. He says your left lung is doing incredibly well, and your body is compensating beautifully for the loss of the other one.”
“My eyes…”
“I spoke to the ophthalmologist. They’re covered because you’ve had some temporary damage to your corneas from exposure in that alley. He said that if your discomfort isn’t too bad, we could remove the patches for good when we have you settled on board. We’ll have someone from the eye service go over you as soon as we get home.”
Natalie felt the stretcher begin to roll across the tarmac. In just a few minutes, she had been transferred to one inside the plane. Moments later, her eye pads were removed. Berenger, stethoscope in place, was listening to her chest.
“Doing great,” he said.
Natalie reached up and touched his face.
“I never got to present our paper.”
“That’s okay. You can do it next year.”
“That depends. Where’s the meeting?”
Berenger grinned.
“Paris,” he said. “Now get some rest. Everything’s going to be all right.”
As always, the conference call of the Guardian council took place on Tuesday at precisely noon, Greenwich Mean Time.
“This is Laertes.”
“Simonides, here.”
“Themistocles. Greetings from Australia.”
“Glaucon.”
“Polemarchus.”
“The meeting is called to order,” Laertes said. “I have heard from Aspasia. The operation on A has been a complete success. The match was twelve out of twelve, so only minimal drugs will be required, if any at all. Aspasia expects A to be back at work within two weeks. His prognosis is for a full recovery and unimpaired life span.”
“Well done.”
“Marvelous.”
“Other cases?”
“Polemarchus here. We might as well start with me. This coming week we have two kidneys, one liver, and one heart scheduled. The recipients have each already been certified as worthy of our services, and all necessary arrangements—logistical and financial—have been taken care of. In the case of kidneys, the procedure would usually result in the transplantation of both kidneys into our recipient. The liver would result in transplantation of the largest organ segment anatomically possible. Let’s consider the kidneys first. Twenty-seven-year-old male laborer, Mississippi, United States.”
“Approved,” all five called o
ut in unison.
“Forty-year-old female restaurant owner, Toronto, Canada.”
“What sort of restaurant?”
“Chinese.”
“Approved,” they all said as one, and laughed.
“The liver, a thirty-five-year-old male teacher from Wales.”
“Glaucon, here. I thought we agreed no teachers. Have we any options?”
“None that I know of,” Polemarchus said, “although I can check again. This is a perfect twelve-point match for L, number thirty-one on your lists. As you probably know, he is one of the wealthiest men in Great Britain. I do not know what he has agreed to pay for this procedure, but knowing the way Xerxes negotiates, I would guess it was substantial.”
“In that case,” Glaucon said, “approved, but let us not make this a precedent.”
“Approved,” the others echoed.
Twelve
A State…arises…out of the needs of mankind.
—PLATO, The Republic, Book II
Althea Satterfield bustled around Ben’s small kitchen to the extent that her years allowed.
“Would you like lemon with your tea, Mr. Callahan? You don’t have any in your refrigerator, but I do in mine.”
Ben was impressed that his neighbor chose not to remark on those other food items that he also did not have in his refrigerator—virtually all, in fact. It had been three days since his return from Cincinnati, and the octogenarian had interpreted his two blackened eyes as a call to action, along with his swollen nose—“Just a crack at the tip,” Dr. Banks had said. “Nothing to do for it, but don’t get hit there again”—and unremitting pain in his chest—“Just a crack in one of your ribs. Nothing to do for it, but don’t get hit there again.” The truth was that as frustrating as the woman could be sometimes, Ben was grateful for the help. The headaches he was experiencing, which Banks was attributing to a concussion—“Nothing to do for it, but don’t get hit there again”—had diminished from an eight to somewhere around a four, and from present all the time to present only when he moved. He had never been very macho when it came to dealing with any sort of pain, and at the moment he was exhausted from coping with his various discomforts, and more than a little annoyed at being inactive. There were things he needed and wanted to do.
“I’ll take the tea straight up, Mrs. Satterfield. I really appreciate your help. I only wish I could find a way to repay you.”
“Nonsense, dear. Just wait until you’re my age. You’ll be desperate to matter to somebody.”
Don’t bank on it, Ben thought.
The quixotic dedication of Alice Gustafson, the draining week in Florida, the remarkable encounter with Madame Sonja, the surprisingly lucid Schyler Gaines, the close call on Laurel Way, and finally the identification of Lonnie Durkin—granted each had made a dent in his armor of detachment and ennui, but he saw those dents as insignificant. He had done what he had been hired to do, and mostly he still planned to crawl back into his cocoon until the next call came along. Before he did that, however, there was one final loose end he wanted to tie up—this one involving a family in Conda, Idaho.
“Well, Mrs. Satterfield,” he said, “if you really mean that, I could use another favor.”
“Just name it, dear.”
“I have to go away again. I need you to feed Pincus and water my—what I mean is I need you to feed and water Pincus.”
“Pardon me for saying so, Mr. Callahan, but you’re in no condition to travel.”
“Probably not, but travel I must anyway.”
The continuous, stabbing pain in his side, made worse by even minor movement, he could handle. But until today, the headaches had made a trip to Idaho impossible. After his return from six hours with Dr. Banks and the radiologists, a concerned Alice Gustafson, bearing a vase of wildflowers, had visited him at his apartment. Over tea and Danish, courtesy of Althea, he recounted in minute detail the findings and subsequent assault in the garage on Laurel Way.
“I knew it!” Gustafson exclaimed when he had finished. “I knew that woman in Maine was telling me the truth. You can tell these things.” Her grim expression held an odd mix of vindication and toughness. “The guns worry me greatly,” she went on, “but they do not surprise me. Where there is illegal organ trade of any kind, there is very big business, with very high price tags. Many of those involved in the trade are little more than gangsters.”
“Most of the gangsters I know would be envious of the weapons in that garage.”
“There is really no estimating the money involved. In certain countries, those who go abroad to receive illegal kidneys are reimbursed up to one hundred thousand dollars by their health ministries. They ultimately save the system much more than that in dialysis fees and other medical costs, and also make the transplant waiting list for kidneys that much shorter, thereby lowering the dialysis expenses even more.”
“I would imagine those needing a bone marrow transplant would be in even more desperate medical straits.”
“Exactly. It’s always under the sword of life and death that the procedure is done. And of all the organs, the one demanding the closest tissue match between donor and recipient is bone marrow. I can’t help but wonder if these people are dealing with other organs as well.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised. Whatever they are into, those guns I saw say they’re deadly serious about it. Speaking of deadly, why do you think the RV people didn’t just kill Lonnie and the woman from Maine?”
Gustafson shrugged.
“Maybe they draw the line at murder,” she said. “Or maybe they keep these people alive in case they have to repeat the procedure. Remember, the woman said she was blindfolded or drugged most of the time. She recalled few details of what happened to her, so maybe there was just no need to kill her.”
“Or maybe they purposely choose people whom the authorities aren’t likely to believe.”
“That’s a theory, except that if these RV people know what they’re doing, the completeness of the tissue match is all that matters.”
“How many perfect matches does each person have?”
“Perfect, not very many—especially if the recipient has type O blood and an unusually rare protein or two on their white blood cells.”
Initially, Gustafson wanted to call Lonnie Durkin’s family on the spot, but Ben insisted he be allowed to go there in person.
“I feel like I need to do this,” was all he could say.
“You’re not fit to go anyplace.”
“I will be. Give me three or four days.”
“Why the sudden zeal, Mr. Callahan? I really don’t have much left to pay you with.”
“It’s not about money, Professor. It’s, I don’t really know…maybe it’s about closure.”
“I see…. Well, please don’t be embarrassed by those feelings, Mr. Callahan. Many of our supporters find that the more they understand of what is going on in the world, the more their fog of skepticism burns off.” She handed him an envelope. “You’ve done an excellent job. Someday maybe we’ll be in a position to keep you on a retainer. Now, what do you want to do about the Winnebago?”
“I don’t think the guy in the van who did all this to me could be certain whether I was a detective of some sort or just a run-of-the-mill burglar,” Ben said. “In fact, I don’t think he even got a good look at my face before I blacked out his eyes. It was quite dark in that garage. If cops show up there now, that’s it. The people who own that Winnebago will be alerted that I wasn’t just a petty thief.”
“But Lonnie Durkin is dead because of them. If we chose to do nothing and someone else got hurt, or…or worse, I for one would be terribly upset.”
“Okay, okay. Point made.” Ben thought for a time, then offered, “How about if I go online and also make some calls to people I know, and see if I can locate a PI in Cincinnati who has some connections on the force? He can make sure the RV is still there, and then bring the cops in with a warrant to search for weapons or some such.”
; “I’m afraid we don’t have any money left to pay him,” Gustafson said.
Ben held up the Organ Guard check.
“I do.”
It took a painful trip to the office and more than twenty-four hours for Ben to connect with a PI in Cincinnati who was willing to do what they needed for what he could afford. The man’s name was Arnie Dolan, and it didn’t take long for him to complete his investigation.
“It’s gone,” he said, calling back after just a couple of hours.
“The van?”
“That, too, but I mean the garage. Burned to the ground yesterday. The charred remains are still smoldering. Took another building down with it. Three alarms.”
“Do the police know it’s arson?”
“Clumsy arson, they’re calling it. Apparently they found a gas can.”
“That would be just a bit suspicious,” Ben said, wondering if the response meant the people in and around the van knew he wasn’t just a burglar, or if they were merely taking stringent precautions. Either way, when he found the photo of Lonnie Durkin, he knew he simply should have tiptoed out of the garage and driven off.
Even in the stable cocoon of his range Rover, there wouldn’t have been enough Tylenol and Motrin in the state to enable Ben to drive the sixteen hundred miles from Chicago to Conda, Idaho. The town was just north of Soda Springs, which was fifty-seven miles south and east of Pocatello, which was in the southeast corner of the state, not a hundred miles from both Wyoming and Utah. Instead, he flew into Pocatello via Minneapolis and rented a Blazer.
The money from Organ Guard had already melted like spring snow, and his bills remained virtually unchanged—at least until the mailman’s next delivery. Perhaps when he got back to Chicago, he would put some sort of ad in one of the local papers. For the moment, though, he was where he should be, doing something that, in truth, he wanted to do.
Throughout the trip, he continued to wonder why the inventor of the elastic rib belt had never been awarded a Nobel prize. His headache had become manageable, and his nostrils had actually begun to admit some air. But the rib fracture was something else again. Dr. Banks had assured him that only one rib was cracked, and that there was no displacement of either of the two pieces, but after almost six days, Ben still refused to believe it. Even with the miraculous rib belt strapped on, most movements were still broadcast to his pain center in Dolby Surround Sound, but without the elastic splint, even shallow breaths were a challenge.
The Fifth Vial Page 13