Wayward Sons

by Wayne Stinnett

  “Yeah, he sure is,” I said.

  “Is that regret I’m hearing?” Stockwell said.

  “It’s just not how I would’ve done things, sir.”

  “You got the job done, didn’t you?” Stockwell said. “You put away the bad guy and got a lead on his supplier.”

  “That’s what everybody tells me.” I took another deep drink from my beer. I wasn’t going to fall ass-backwards into an argument with Stockwell. God only knew how badly that might turn out.

  “Then everybody’s right,” Stockwell declared. “You need to get past whatever bad blood you and DJ have between you, Snyder. Jack Armstrong put the two of you together to solve problems, not bicker like stepbrothers. Armstrong doesn’t make mistakes.”

  “Of course not, sir,” I said. “It wasn’t my intent to imply he had.”

  “Good. Because I’ve got a new assignment for you two.”

  “A new assignment, sir?” I asked. “What about following up on the information we got out of Beck?”

  “We’ve got someone down in the Leeward Antilles who’s going to handle it,” he said. “This new problem is right there in your backyard.”

  “All right,” I said.

  “You’re going to talk to Detective Antoine Collat with the Puerto Rican Police Bureau—La Uniformada. A body turned up in Culebra this morning. Scared the daylights out of a couple pleasure seekers at one of those sex resorts.”

  “Sounds… interesting, sir,” I said. “When does he want to meet? Tomorrow morning?”

  “Now,” Stockwell answered. “I’ll send coordinates to your phone. Get a move on.”

  “Yessir.”

  The nurse slipped past the open door like a kid cutting class—eyes forward, feet moving quiet and quick as a house spider in the open. Too much momentum to stop and talk.

  She must’ve sensed the question rumbling around Gabriela’s mind.

  Gabriela softened the tension in her legs—no point in getting up and running after the nurse. She’d only look a fool.

  Still, who could blame her for chasing the nurse down? She could scream like a lunatic while she did it, too.

  Gabriela Ramos had earned the right to desperation. She and her daughter, Flor, had been sitting in the small room with a single window sliced in half by a beige wall for at least a half an hour, waiting for Flor’s doctor to stop by, so the question could be asked—a question that would kink the tube steadily dripping poison into her daughter’s vein.

  Forgive her for not displaying the proper level of etiquette when her little girl’s future would be decided by a stranger in a lab coat, far removed from hair loss, brittle fingernails and nights spent crying over a little girl’s mortality, her loss of innocence and wonder, and … whether she lived or not … all the bills that hung from this poisoned tree, which Gabriela must harvest now, and for the foreseeable future.

  Gabriela looked into her little girl’s deep brown eyes, sunken and dry. Flor smiled at her and reached for her mother’s hand but stopped when the tube in her arm went tight.

  Dragging her hard plastic chair forward, Gabriela took hold of Flor’s fingers and squeezed. They were so cold.

  Worrying about bills didn’t make sense. Not now.

  “Mama, we’re gonna be in the shower for days, getting this smell out of our hair.”

  The hospital smell. Hand sanitizer and latex gloves. It stunk.

  Whenever she and Flor made their visits to the oncology department of San Juan University Pediatric Hospital, that stench lingered in their hair for days. They both had typical Dominican woman’s hair: dark, thick, and laden with tight curls. It held onto everything.

  Even the strands of Flor’s hair that came out after she bathed reeked of rubbing alcohol. And also, the pervasive fumes from diesel generators that ran on an endless cycle to keep the hospital going since Hurricane Maria had hit the island. They’d become well acquainted with it. At twelve years old, Flor was on her third tumor.

  Li-Fraumeni Syndrome, the doctors called it. For some reason, a gene inside Flor had turned off, or had never been on, and without that gene, there was next to nothing stopping her cells from pumping out cancers.

  The only action was reaction. Doctors’ visits, exams, tests, results, chemo, and radiation. Then, more tests to see what worked and what didn’t. More waiting. The waiting might’ve been the worst part. Flor said it was.

  Gabriela, at twenty-eight years old, had never experienced cancer, but it must’ve been a special horror, knowing that at any time the thing that claimed your life might already be inside you, might be stuck on your liver while you were eating breakfast, or filling the space in your lungs when you were talking to your best friend, or ballooning in your brain until one morning, you woke up and couldn’t remember your mother’s name while she got you off to school. Three times Flor had been here.

  Three times Gabriela had been alongside her, holding her daughter’s hand while a bag of poison was drip-fed into her little body.

  Gabriela could barely afford it—neither the physical and emotional cost, nor the financial.

  Which was why, during one of her research sessions two months back, she’d jumped at the chance to enroll Flor in a drug trial. A chance to cure her daughter’s Li-Fraumeni Syndrome.

  So, when Flor’s oncologist, Dr. Juan Soto, came through the door, Gabriela couldn’t help but feel God’s hand fanning the dense air from the room.

  “Flor, how’s your day?” A question so beside the point, it was cruel.

  “She’s had a good morning so far.” Gabriela’s eyes flicked toward her daughter.

  “Well, she has fantastic support. We’re all in this together, right, Mama?”

  “All the way through.” Gabriela wore her bravest face.

  Dr. Soto took Flor’s chart out of a pocket next to the door. He flipped through the pages as if he couldn’t care one way or another about what it said. The man didn’t have to put on a show for them. Not anymore.

  “I have some news I’d like to discuss with you, Miss Ramos,” Dr. Soto said, gesturing toward the hallway with his eyes. His flat demeanor made it impossible to tell if any news was good or bad. He spoke and left the judgment up to Gabriela, who passed it to God.

  God told the hair to stand up on her arms. He told the skin on her head to go tight.

  “Mama?” Flor turned her eyes away from the TV hanging from the ceiling.

  The child was ignorant of the drug trial. And she didn’t have a clue that Dr. Soto had helped Gabriela apply. The fear she must’ve felt, seeing her mother step into a private conversation with her Doctor. These secluded, secret talks always ended with Gabriela delivering bad news to Flor—increasing dosages, switching to more powerful drugs, or worst of all, more tumors. Surprise attacks from tumors always ended up necessitating doses of medicine that made Flor throw up all night, as if they were designed to induce her body to exorcise the tumors by force. Gabriela always stayed up with her. Always prayed.

  She patted her daughter’s cheek.

  “There’s nothing to worry about, little girl. Jesus has you. While I’m gone, he’s sitting next to you, helping you fight.” She kissed Flor’s forehead. It was hot and slick. “You stay brave. I’ll be right back.”

  The moisture clung to Gabriela’s lips as she rose to her feet, following Dr. Soto out of the room. She remained a step behind him, going down the hall, past the inner reception desk to the chemotherapy suites, the impression of Flor’s skin walking the entire way with her. They stopped at automated double doors. Gabriela came alongside him as he pushed the button that made them hum open.

  She tried to read him. Dr. Soto had a card shark’s face, his mouth hidden by a thick moustache, and his eyes shaded and stolid. She’d have better odds guessing the emotional temperature of a smart phone.

  The doors opened. Dr. Soto moved and Gabriela followed.

  Past darkened rooms and overworked nurses, they turned and strode down a hall only lit with emergency lights near exit
doors on either end. The staff would never admit to it, but the hospital struggled for power, the same as everybody else on the island. Anything that didn’t need to suck electricity, like a half dozen lights down a hallway, wouldn’t.

  Dr. Soto’s office was at the end of the hall, bathed in one of the patches of light. He opened the door without a word.

  The big window inside was enough to keep the room from feeling dim. He glided behind his desk and mechanically folded his body into a seated position in his chair. Gabriela nearly collapsed in one of the two chairs positioned in front of the desk while he typed something into his computer.

  “I received word from MRL,” Dr. Soto said, referring to Markel Research Labs—the organization running the trials she wanted Flor to join. His eyes briefly darted from his computer screen to Gabriela, then back again. “Flor’s participation in the trial of Anthradone has been declined.”

  The information was delivered so clinically, Gabriela didn’t at first understand.

  “What was that?” She leaned over, getting her face into his line of sight, dragging his eyes off the computer screen. “What did you say?”

  Dr. Soto rubbed his eyes. Gabriela thought she saw a corner of his mouth flex downward before he covered it with his palm.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Ramos, but Flor won’t be part of the next round of Anthradone trials.”

  Her throat tightened. She’d heard what he said, but he was talking Swahili. The sounds hit the surface of her brain, but they didn’t penetrate. Heat shimmered across her scalp, the words trying to burn through her skull.

  “Why?” was all she managed to ask.

  “I wasn’t part of the deliberations. If I were, I would’ve lobbied on Flor’s behalf.”

  But Flor wasn’t supposed to be denied.

  The door was shut years ago, but this experimental drug was the open window. Gabriela had read about Anthradone’s other trials through her work. This drug was the way—the miracle they needed; it fixed Li-Fraumeni. All those papers said Anthradone turned the P53 gene back on, letting patients’ bodies kill cancerous cells before they matured into knobs of agony.

  Without it, Flor would die. Her baby girl would be gone. No smiles, no laughs, no jokes. No one to argue with about putting away dishes. No homework to help with. No one to listen to Gabriela tell her stories about being a pregnant girl and scrapping to get what she got.

  She would be alone. The greatest piece of Gabriela would disappear.

  “Miss Ramos?”

  Did she hear her name?

  “Miss Ramos?”

  Dr. Soto tapped her shoulder.

  The swarm of thoughts stopped and Gabriela saw clearly again. He was out of his chair, in front of her. Then her eyes clouded, and hot tears flowed, salted with rage, bitter with sorrow, and begging for a chance to stop a little girl’s life from being taken before she had a chance to live.

  There wasn’t time for crying. She ground the tears into her with the palms of her hands.

  God had to find a way. It was His plan. Stay with Him. He knew everything, and He saw all. Whatever happened was His will.

  But this was her fault.

  She’d given Flor her genes. Oh, sure, they could be her father’s, but blaming him for anything had never gotten Gabriela anywhere in the past. The man might as well have not existed at all.

  Misery was inherited. Sins passed from mother to child, each new generation bearing the mistakes and the guilt of the last. A mother who ignored her babies would make daughters who sought comfort in the arms of wicked men, who in turn stole those girls from their children, and so on and so on.

  But Gabriela had broken that cycle. Didn’t that mean she could break this one too?

  Only through the power of God.

  “Apply again,” Gabriela said firmly.

  “Miss Ramos, that’s not how this is supposed to work.”

  “Do it anyway.” Gabriela’s fingers bit into the armrest of the chair. “From what I see, a lot isn’t working how it’s supposed to. Little girls aren’t supposed to get cancer. People aren’t supposed to be able to fix what she’s got. We aren’t supposed to apply again, but what’s the worst thing that can happen?”

  Dr. Soto tapped his desk.

  “This is the best hope I have to fix Flor,” Gabriela said. “You understand that.” Gabriela reached across the gulf between her and the doctor and tried to take his hand.

  He slipped it away, so she wrapped her fingers around his wrist. “This is her cure. This drug is what she needs.”

  “Anthradone won’t cure Flor’s cancer.”

  “But it’ll cure the thing causing all the tumors. So, if we get that stuff, and she beats the tumors she’s got, that’s it. No more cancer.”

  Dr. Soto grimaced.

  “Once this treatment is available to the public, I’ll do my level best to ensure that Flor receives medication from the first supply. You have my word.”

  He broke away from her clutch, then retreated behind his desk, as if to say his answer was final. Gabriela couldn’t accept that.

  “She’s twelve, Dr. Soto, and she’s had cancer three times already.” She fought to keep from raising her voice, but God help her, how could she? “How much longer does my Florita have to suffer? Does Flor have to throw away her entire childhood in oncology wards, getting chemo dumped into her veins until she’s nothing but skin and bones—not even hair? All her hair is pushed out. My girl’s pretty hair…”

  Despair crept out. She stopped herself from crying again.

  “What else do we have?”

  “Miss Ramos, I don’t know what else to say.” He turned his chair until he, at least, faced her. “If I didn’t know better, I’d wonder if you blame me for Flor not being admitted into the Anthradone trial.”

  Maybe she did blame him.

  But Dr. Soto had been nothing but good to Flor—he cared about her in his own way. Even in her darkest moments, how could Gabriela question that? She looked down at the four crescents her nails had pressed into her palms. All that rage that had flashed through her cooled just as quickly as it came on.

  “I’m at the end. I’m sitting beside my little girl, every day, watching her slowly die.”

  He patted his desk, bringing her attention up. Dr. Soto’s hand hung over the edge, waiting for Gabriela’s.

  This time, she took it. His fingers were cold, but long enough to wrap around her palm—as if to lay hands on the marks she’d made.

  “There will likely be another trial for Anthradone when this one concludes,” he said, as warmly as she’d ever heard him. “You have my word as a medical professional—as a man with a heart—that I’ll do whatever I can to put Flor in it. They’ll likely deny us, but I’ll do my best.” He nodded at her, his face pinching. “We aren’t done.”

  His eyes were wet. She felt ashamed for doubting his conviction, however briefly that doubt took hold.

  “Thank you.”

  “Your daughter is a fighter,” he said, squeezing her hand tighter, then letting go. “She will make it through this. Just like last time.”

  “What about next time?”

  “We can only focus on what we see in the here and now.”

  That might’ve been true for him, but it wasn’t Gabriela’s truth. And it certainly wasn’t Flor’s. Beating the cancer she had today meant readying Flor for the next round.

  Compounding that, treatments were neither free, nor cheap. Someone had to pay for them. And she was still making payments on Flor’s second treatment from last year. Meanwhile, the bills for this treatment had begun flowing into her mailbox this week.

  Somehow, she had to stem the tide. Debt collectors would start calling in a couple months, when the bills still weren’t paid. Until then, she’d have to figure a way to stay afloat. A hundred dollars a month to the hospital, two hundred to a specialist, another four hundred for this month’s drugs.

  Then there were groceries—what was the point in all these treatments if Flor was g
oing to starve—and rent on an apartment that lost power whenever it was least convenient for everyone. That did make utilities cheaper, though the water company had raised their rates each month for the past year. New pipes, they said.

  God would find a way. If He willed it.

  “Is there something else concerning you?” Dr. Soto craned his neck closer to her.

  She ran her hands through her thick, dark curls, pulling her hair from the sides of her face, cooling her neck and shoulders.

  “Money,” she said.

  “Have you spoken to the billing department?”

  “They don’t want to hear anything else out of me, except dates for when the checks were written.”

  He closed his eyes and straightened his back. “I understand.”

  Nothing else to say.

  Billing was out of his hands. The hospital didn’t want doctors hounding patients for chunks of $10,000 hospital bills, and they didn’t want irate patients screaming at doctors and nurses about missed mortgage payments and overdue school lunch bills.

  And, anyway, it was easier for some no-named cog hidden in a back room, hunched over a computer, typing out five-figure invoices one after another after another. Debt-bound patients shouldn’t have a face to go along with the bills.

  Instead, they faced an impartial system of inscrutable costs propped up by collection agencies and insurance companies.

  “Thank you for trying Dr. Soto.” She stood from the chair. “I should get back to Flor.”

  “I’m sorry, Miss Ramos.” A pair of heavy eyes settled over her.

  She nodded at Dr. Soto and turned to leave.

  After stumbling through the long, dark hallway, ignored by anyone she passed, Gabriela found her way back to the outpatient room.

  Flor was as pale as the seashells they used to collect before all of this had happened. Her eyes were open, but seemed weighted down—heavy, dark bags, swollen with tears that would never come out of her desiccated little body.