Philanthropist

by Larry Hill

  “How can he be there? We called the General Hospital Emergency and they said there were no Fred Kleins. And our father doesn’t go to bars in the Tenderloin. Hell, I’ve never heard of him going into any bar.”

  “Sorry. I can’t tell you anything more about that. The ambulance brought him in from the bar. No ID. Maybe he was robbed after he fell. They signed him in as John Doe. That’s why they told you he wasn’t there. After they operated on him, he couldn’t’ talk ‘cause of the breathing tube, but he wrote notes saying who he was and that he was married to Barbara.”

  “Can we go see him?”

  “The nurse said you better wait ’til morning. They’re gonna take the tube out and clean him up. He was pretty smelly when he came into the ER – booze.”

  “What does this do to his legal situation, Sergeant?”

  “You’re talking to the wrong guy, Doctor. I’m just a cop on the beat. Talk to his lawyer. I read that he has Greenberg. Good choice. He gets some real scumbags off, as long as they’ve got the dough to pay him.”

  Robert hung up without saying goodbye and relayed the information to the others. Jennifer, relieved, excused herself to go to the bathroom and used her cell phone to bring her lover up to date. His reactions were mixed.

  GENERAL HOSPITAL

  Mark Spencer landed at SFO at the same time that Fred Klein was attending the Mayor’s Cultural Committee meeting, before he consumed too many double cognacs. Meeting Spencer as he arrived at baggage claim were his brother-in law and sister-in-law, Jack and Maggie Jensen. Their faces were long; Maggie’s tears had stopped flowing but her scarlet eyes gave away her grief. It took half an hour to get the suitcase as Mark had been unable to get a first class seat across the country.

  “How’s Meagan?” was his first question after the heartfelt and comforting hugs that he had never before appreciated, in fact found unpleasant, for as long as he knew his wife’s kin.

  “She’s doing fine, Mark. She’s with Ashley and she’s been eating and sleeping OK. She calls for her Mom and we’ve been telling her that she’s gone for a while. We decided that you should be the one who tells her the bad news.”

  Mark was glad to hear of their decision although he hadn’t a clue as to how to tell a two-year-old that she’d never see her mother again. The last thing he thought he’d be was a single father. Teresa was always so healthy. She ate all the right fruits and vegetables, went to the gym four days a week and made sure she had her Pap smear every year. Mark was the one who would not have surprised anyone with an early demise; he ate all the wrong red meats and refined sugary delicacies, never exercised, whored around on business trips and was as much an A personality as anyone could be.

  “Did the cops find the guy who did this?”

  “Yeah, they did. We heard about it on TV last night – this is all over the news. You are going to have hundreds of calls on your answering machine. We’ve had plenty ourselves and everybody asked us to let you know they loved you and will do anything they can to help.

  “The guy is somebody you may have heard of – name of Frederick Klein – he’s got to be at least 70 – lots of money, LOTS of money. He lives six blocks from your house. You may remember him – he ran for Supervisor in our district long before we bought the house –lost badly, even though he put big bucks into his campaign.”

  “Is he in jail?”

  “He was but he’s out on bail. Two hundred thousand – ridiculous amount – he probably carries that much around in his wallet. The judge who let him go so cheap was that Chinese one that Schwarzenegger appointed – she’s tough with low-lifes but a real sieve when a rich crook’s in her court room. Originally, she was asking for three hundred thousand. His lawyer, Greenberg, said fifty and she caved right away at two hundred Gs.”

  “Greenberg? That’s the guy that got the Google VP off after he punched out his wife. Klein isn’t going to jail – he’s got too good a lawyer and the DA’s got no money – they’ll probably send a lawyer right out of law school…Jesus, how can I be talking like this when I have a daughter who lost her Mom? Let’s get out of here and go home. Is she at your place or ours?”

  “Yours. We wanted her to have all her toys with her. And she cries when Bob isn’t in the same room with her.”

  “Bob?”

  “That’s your dog.”

  “Oh, right.”

  The ride from SFO to Presidio Heights could take as little as 30 minutes. Thanks to an accident on the freeway, it took the Jensens and the new widower nearly an hour. Maggie had gotten in the back so that Mark wouldn’t be sitting alone. She and Jack noticed an almost complete lack of emotion on Mark’s part. He commented on the traffic and the cool weather, comparing it to the swelter of West Africa. He did not cry. They knew their brother-in-law well enough that he probably would never let anyone see him shed tears. Or maybe he just couldn’t cry.

  Finally, Jack pulled into the Spencer garage. The three walked into the home through the entry hall and into the family room. Sitting on the ground, playing with dolls were Meagan and Ashley with the beagle asleep on the sofa nearby. Mark had to call out her name to get her to turn around to see that he had returned.

  “Daddy, Daddy!” Smiling broadly, she picked up, and showed him a Barbie doll that he had not seen before – he hadn’t seen it because Maggie had purchased it for her just after she learned that Teresa didn’t make it. “Mommy? Home?”

  He paused. He thought, until his last night in Abidjan that he knew how to respond in almost any situation. But he had no clue how to convey the idea of death to a two-year-old. He was sure that there were experts out there that could help, but a question had been asked that couldn’t wait for expert opinion. He couldn’t talk of God or Jesus – she had had no religious input, although Mark and Teresa had decided that they would bring her up Catholic, as they had been. He couldn’t lie and say that she’d be back later. He obviously couldn’t say she’d died, as a two-year-old would have absolutely no ability to understand what that meant. She had not lost any grandparents that she knew. Both of Teresa’s parents had passed before she and Mark were married and his had not come west from Nebraska since she was less than one. Mark had a house full of siblings; his parents now had 15 grandkids in 4 states. They simply didn’t have the resources to visit them all.

  “She’s gone, my love.”

  “Oh, OK. Where?”

  “A very long way away.

  “She coming home?”

  “No Meagan, she can’t come home.”

  “OK – Daddy play with dollies?”

  “Of course I can, honey.” He sat down on the floor and did his Type A best to establish relationships between himself, his daughter and several six to twelve-inch plastic children, adults, cats, dogs and animals from the barnyard and the jungle.

  Four hours later, late afternoon, Mark had taken a short nap while Meagan was taking hers. He awakened before she did and went out to the living room where Maggie was watching TV. Jack had gone back to work; he was a laboratory tech at Cal Pacific Medical Center, a major private hospital near his home. Maggie had stopped teaching third graders when Ashley was born and hadn’t brought money into the family since. They were clearly living beyond their means; just the taxes on a smallish house in their part of San Francisco set them back over ten thousand per year. They could only have afforded the purchase price of the house because they had sold a larger place in Noe Valley, which they had purchased for a song just after they got married. Though Noe Valley was now the au courant San Francisco address, their buttons burst when they moved into the upscale Cow Hollow neighborhood by the Bay, paying cash.

  “Unbelievable!” Maggie cried out as he entered the room. I just saw the most incredible thing. Klein, the same Klein who killed Teresa, is at General Hospital. He had brain surgery and a pacemaker. They found him on the floor in some bar in the Tenderloin and I guess he almost died, but now they say he is stable, critical but stable.

  “Why didn’t they just let the so
n-of-a-bitch die? It would have saved the State a ton of money and wiped that creep off the face of the earth. He’s an old man who would die anyway and he killed my wife and Meagan’s mother. He doesn’t deserve to have brain surgery and a pacemaker. You know what’s worse? He’s at the General, not some private hospital. You and I and all the taxpayers are going to pay for keeping him alive. What a waste!”

  “You’re right, but there’s nothing we can do about it. They’d have to treat Hitler if he was brought in by ambulance needing brain surgery.”

  “You said he’s at the General didn’t you? Isn’t that where they took Teresa after he hit her?”

  “It is.”

  “Do we know who the doctor was that took care of her? I’d like to find out what happened. Whether she said anything, like what she was doing in the car and why she got out of it.”

  “A nurse named Smith, or something common like that, called me to tell me that she had come in and was in coma. He suggested that we not come in but to stay by the phone. That’s when I called you in Africa. Smith didn’t say anything else. He’d tried to get you but obviously, nobody was home. I don’t know how they got to me – she must have had her address book in her purse. It was hours after the accident that they called us – we were asleep – after midnight – and the accident happened around seven. A couple of hours later, they did call us and told us that she had died. I decided not to call you back. You’d learn soon enough.”

  Mark called the hospital ER. He was directed to the Head Nurse, a woman not named Smith. He was told that, indeed they had a male night nurse named Smith but as it was afternoon, he had not come on duty yet. She didn’t know if he had been on when Ms. Spencer had come in, but presumed he had. Mark decided to go to the hospital after change of shift to talk with Nurse Smith.

  The Spencers, in the name of energy conservation, had only one car. Mark’s wealth did not get in the way of getting to and from work on the #1 Muni bus which traversed the California St. corridor. Teresa had been the primary Nissan driver. He was, as a result of tragedy, now the car’s only operator and decided to drive himself to the General. Having never been to the Potrero St. hospital, he had to get directions off his phone and felt uneasy with the idea of driving alone into a part of town that he felt wasn’t any safer than downtown Abidjan. Parking was not simple – he ended up three blocks from the emergency entrance and scurried down Potrero, wishing he had had somebody like his Ivorian bodyguard at his side. On entering the ER, he was greeted by the triage nurse, the same gray haired veteran who had been the first to see Klein the night he was admitted. She triaged Mark Spencer to a room meant for quiet discussions between patients’ families and staff, usually to deal with an unexpected death. Two minutes later, DeSean Smith, RN, an African-American man of at least six and a half feet and at least forty years, entered the room and sat with Mark at a small table in the center of the undecorated, beige-walled room. His head was clean-shaven and a gold stud shone from his right earlobe. “How can I help you, sir?”

  “I think you were the nurse on duty when my wife, Teresa Spencer, was brought in three nights ago after she was hit by a car. She’s the one who died after the madman ran into her and left without stopping.”

  “Yes, sir, I was the one. And I was the one who called your relative with the terrible news.”

  “That wasn’t my relative. It was hers. What can you tell me, Mr. Smith?”

  “Not much. And my condolences for your loss.”

  “Thanks.” Mark knew the nurse was obliged to say it. Not doing so would have been a breach of etiquette. Saying it added nothing.

  Smith continued, “She was only with us a few minutes before they sent her for a CT scan. We heard that she had suffered massive brain trauma and that there’s was nothing to be gained by operating. She came back after the X-Ray and we just watched her while they waited for a bed in ICU to be cleared. She was here about five hours when her heart stopped. The doctors did everything they could, including CPR and putting a breathing tube in her trachea – all to no benefit. The chief trauma doctor pronounced her dead at about 2 in the morning.”

  “Did she say anything?”

  “Not a word. She was in a deep coma when she arrived. She never woke up. I’m sorry.”

  Spencer could say no more. He wished that he could cry but couldn’t. “Can you tell me where the ICU is?”

  “It’s on 4 East Ward. Go to the elevators, up to the fourth floor then turn left.”

  Spencer entered the elevator alone, pushed 4 and exited to a busy, almost hectic scene of couriers and messengers pushing carts with bottles of IV fluid and toting X-Rays, and med students with their attending physician strolling down the hall, learning on the run of the latest about infections or drugs or how to differentiate levels of shock. He turned left and found massive double doors with ICU in eight-inch bold blue letters on both. He tried to open them but they were locked. He spotted a buzzer on the side that invited him to push the button for entry. “How can I help you, Sir?” A surveillance camera above the doors pointed down at him.

  “I would like to see Mr. Fred Klein.”

  “Are you a relative of Mr. Klein?”

  “No, I’m his friend. I’d like to just say hello for a minute.”

  “I’m sorry, only immediate family members are permitted. I’d be happy to tell him you came by. What is your name?”

  Mark Spencer, venture capitalist, widower, and single father, turned away from the speaker and camera, having not identified himself, returned to the elevator, got off outside the ER and walked the three moonless blocks back to his car.

  The three Klein sons joined their stepmother for breakfast in her gourmet kitchen. She laid out half a dozen boxes of dry cereals, all heart-healthy, and three renditions of bagel with low fat cream cheese. Orange juice was freshly squeezed and the coffee was Peet’s. Jason, who had, to the surprise of the other three, come at 8, offered to drive his rental to General Hospital for their first visit with their husband/father. He had sent the family on alone. All accepted the offer even though his reputation in the family was that of a second rate driver. Phillip thought about using the Lexus with Jennifer at the wheel, but remembering its central role in the drama at hand, said nothing. A brief note in the Chronicle describing Fred’s status and the legal machinations downtown was read aloud by Robert without comment from others. Fred Klein had quickly fallen off the front page.

  The advice the family had received late at night was to come at 9. With a quarter-hour hunt for parking, they arrived at the door of the ICU exactly at that hour. The voice on the speaker queried about who they were and, learning of the four-person visiting party, said that only two could enter at any one time. “Why don’t Phillip and I go in first?” suggested Robert. “We are more used to ICUs than you two. It could be pretty ugly in there.”

  It wasn’t ugly. Their father had had the breathing tube taken out and his head bandaged. One catheter was connected to a bag that allowed for hourly measurement of his urine output and another one drained fluid from inside the skull to prevent the pressure around his brain from reaching dangerous levels. The external pacemaker had been removed and the line from the internal one was thin and covered by the patient gown. The twins could interpret the monitor to determine that his blood pressure was well in the normal range and the pulse was 80 and completely regular. They could see the electrical blips on the screen, proving that their father’s heart had not taken over control of its own rhythm and that the pacer was keeping that rhythm regular at a perfectly acceptable rate. But Fred was asleep and he was not responsive when they simultaneously tried to let him know they were there. The Filipina nurse at his bedside explained that he had been agitated and confused after waking up the night before and that the neurosurgeons had elected to sedate him heavily using large doses of intravenous narcotics. She said that it would be several hours before he’d be awake and making sense, even if everything went well. She suggested that they return in the early evening.
The two doctors left, satisfied that their father was going to survive all of this. Jennifer was upset that she had come all that way and not been able to see her husband, but accepted their suggestion. Jason was angry but recognized he couldn’t do anything about it.

  Ten hours later, the foursome returned. Jennifer spoke to the anonymous intercom and was told that she and one other could come in. Jason made it very clear that the one other was going to be him, even if he hadn’t gone to medical school. Not wanting to go through a Jason rant like they had seen so many times in their many years together, the twins relented. Jen had never been in an ICU. Jason had the experience of his mother’s death and the meningitis of his first child, so had enough familiarity with very sick people to be able to act as if he understood. They walked into Fred’s small electronically-rich room. A young chestnut-haired nurse in scrubs was at his bedside. “Look who’s come in, Freddy! Your first visitors.”

  “He doesn’t like to be called Freddy,” said his wife. “Perhaps Mr. Klein would be more appropriate considering the circumstances.” The nurse did not ask which of the circumstances she meant, but nodded affirmatively.

  “Who is it? Is that you, Barbara? I can’t find my glasses.” He had not had glasses when he was brought in to the ER. They presumably had been lost during the events at the bar. His vision was bad enough without them that he could not distinguish one person from another.

  “It’s me. Jennifer. And Jason’s with me. The other boys are out in the hall waiting their turn. May I give him a kiss?”

  “Of course. We’re not too worried about infections. Just make sure you use a hand cleaner or soap and water every time you come in.”

  Jennifer buzzed him on the cheek. “Hi honey. I’m sure glad you’re OK. We were worried.”