a questionable life

by Luke Lively

  Sitting alone in my office I tried to control my anger. I shut my eyes and leaned my head back, thinking about what had just happened. I leaned forward and saw the PEP document on the desk in front of me. Beside the document were the only photos in my office—Jessica and Joshua. The photos were a couple of years old—from a happier time in my life. The kids were younger and my hopes were alive and appeared within reach. As I looked at their photos I realized how much of their lives I had missed—choosing to be at work instead of spending time with them. They were distant, just like the hopes I had for being the top banker in Philadelphia.

  The past offered no comfort.

  I pulled the cell phone from my briefcase and hit the speed dial for Cassie’s number, but I stopped short of hitting the Send button. What would or could I say to her?

  I thought of Tina, but Tina was out of the question. As I put the cell phone back in my briefcase I saw the top of Benny’s book. The title, Bank on It!, stared at me from the tightly packed quarters it was sharing with Merchants reports. Just like earlier in the day, I needed to find some sanity in the madness of my world. I opened the book to the list of chapters and found the chapter titled “Effective Attitudes.”

  What makes us different? It’s our choice of our attitude. Never underestimate the power of choosing your attitude. Our power to choose is our greatest strength as humans. It’s more important than our IQs, education, experience, jobs, or net worth. You cannot control the conditions, but you can choose your response. Being effective is choosing an effective attitude—the right response at the right time.

  The first time I had read the passage I disagreed with his judgment. I tended to define attitude as either positive or negative. A good attitude was more of a sedative or appeasement instead of a smart solution. I liked absolutes—good was good and bad was bad—even though I somehow found my life always in the gray as Chad had counseled. I still did not know what I was going to say to Benny. I felt another pain in my chest. “Maybe I need a healthy attitude,” I said to myself.

  Then the pain worsened.

  As I leaned forward to try to find a position to control the pain, sweat rolled off my forehead and dripped on the PEP lying on the desk. I felt a wave of nausea. I looked at the photos of Jessica and Joshua.

  Then—nothing.

  Reality can be painful—the truth can hurt.

  —BENJAMIN FRANKLIN PRICE

  17. What Happened?

  “WHAT HAPPENED?” I asked, trying to understand where I was. I could see people around me and had the sense I was moving.

  “Mr. Oliver, you’re at Jefferson Hospital—you’re at the best place you can be,” a male voice responded. “Just relax and enjoy the ride,” I heard him say with an air of humor.

  But this wasn’t funny. I was flat on my back on a gurney racing down the corridors of Jefferson Hospital. Being at the hospital was a shock, but my memory of the hospital and my mother’s death made the trip down the hallway unravel me even more.

  “What happened?” I asked again. I had a variety of monitors hooked up to me and saw an IV stuck into my left arm. The ammonia-like smell that seemed to permeate any type of clinical environment had always been difficult for me to stomach. I held back the compulsion to become ill on the paramedic pushing me down the hall.

  “Calm down, Mr. Oliver, and relax,” he said. “You’re going to be okay.”

  Relax? Is that what he told me?

  “Am I having a heart attack?” I asked. “How did I get here?”

  “We don’t know exactly what’s wrong, but we’re going to find out,” he said calmly. “Relax—we’ll take care of you.”

  After being parked in a room, a male nurse came in and introduced himself. His name was José. José looked like a bodybuilder, with thick arms, wide chest, and a football player’s neck. He smiled and continued to take all of my vital signs, writing them down on my chart.

  “How are you feeling, Mr. Oliver?” he asked.

  “Feeling? I just want to know what happened,” I said. “Can you tell me why I’m here? Am I having a heart attack? What’s going on?”

  José said with a reassuring grin, “I don’t know exactly why you’re here—yet. But you’re at the right place. This is where you need to be. You passed out at work, and your secretary did the right thing. She called and got you in to see us. Now, take some deep breaths for me and just focus on getting yourself relaxed and calmed down. Take a deep breath . . . okay, another . . .”

  Now I was being told how to breathe. As the memories of what was happening at the office began to filter into my thoughts, the monitors responded with a quickening number of beeps.

  “Mr. Oliver, please relax,” José said, patting my shoulder. “I need you to take slow, deep breaths. It’s important. Don’t think about anything else except breathing—slow, disciplined breaths.”

  The deep breathing and José’s calming influence finally helped to slow down the monitors’ beeps. I asked again, “Why am I here?”

  “Don’t worry about why you’re here—you are where you need to be,” he said. “We’ll take excellent care of you. I promise. It’s my job.”

  It would be sad if talking to Rex Nessman could put me in a hospital or even kill me, I thought. Why should a conversation—even worse, a piece of paper—put me into this kind of condition?

  The thought embarrassed me. Then I was mad. How dare that idiot! I thought. That SOB! My anger started to resurface. “Mr. Oliver,” José said, “I don’t know what to tell you other than you need to relax. You’re letting your fear take control—think only about right now—breathe. Take deep breaths. Your doctor will be here shortly to talk with you. Until then, I have one word: relax.”

  José continued to look at every possible gauge, tube, hose, and machine hooked to me, maybe sensing the potential for the Jack Oliver volcano to blow at any time. I’m sure he has experience dealing with overachieving, overweight, overstressed workaholics before, I thought. I was easy to figure out.

  “Rex isn’t worth losing your life over,” I said to myself when José stepped out of the room. Something this insignificant should not put me in a hospital, I thought, leaning forward to find a remote control for the television.

  I briefly fell back to sleep.

  When I awoke, I saw Tina standing over the bed. “Hi, I didn’t expect to see you,” I said, rubbing my eyes. She had obviously been crying, but now had a lost, vacant appearance as she stared at me.

  “How are you feeling?” she asked. “We were pretty worried about you for a while, but the doctor says you’re going to be fine.”

  “What is it?” I asked, not knowing what to expect.

  “The doctor will be back in later,” she said, still standing several feet away as if I had a communicable disease. “He said all of the signs at first pointed toward a heart attack—but, it wasn’t your heart. He thinks you had an anxiety attack.”

  “An anxiety attack?” I asked. “That doesn’t sound right.”

  The doctor had to be wrong. I’m a mentally tough guy who has survived everything life’s thrown at me, I thought. For a moment I almost wished it had been a heart attack. An anxiety attack sounded like something people who cannot deal with stress blamed for their inadequacies. Jack Oliver doesn’t have anxiety attacks. The more I thought about it, I was certain I was misdiagnosed.

  “They must be wrong,” I said. I loved stress and pressure. Stress made me stronger. It separated the wimps from the pros. Like the saying goes, “What does not kill you will make you stronger.” I believed it my entire adult life. Anxiety cannot attack me—I feed off of stress. Pressure is my friend. Just like a drug, stress had juiced me to go to the next level in my career time and time again. But I hadn’t expected Merchants. I realized I was afraid.

  “They’re going to check you out,” Tina said. “You haven’t had a checkup for years, so maybe this is a good thing.”

  “What causes an anxiety attack?” I asked.

  “The doctor di
dn’t explain it to me, but he said he felt like you needed to stay overnight to make sure your system was settling into a normal rhythm. He’ll be back in a few minutes to talk to you,” Tina said, looking at me as though she had a mix of pity and anger.

  “Thank you for coming to the hospital,” I said. “Do the kids know I’m here?”

  “Yeah, they were there when I got the call from your office.”

  “I’m sorry to put them through this,” I said, thinking of how I would have felt in the same position.

  “Jack, they’re not surprised. They expected something like this at any time. You’re not living a healthy lifestyle, and it shows,” she said, pausing for a moment. “I didn’t come down here to upset you or to say I told you so, but your lifestyle is killing you. All you do is work long hours, drink liquor, and eat the worst kind of food. You’re eating and drinking yourself to death!”

  I didn’t respond. I wanted to tell Tina she was wrong, but I was in no position to lie to her. Everything she said appeared to be true.

  “It’s a miracle you have survived this long,” Tina said, shaking her head side to side. “Everyone sees it. Why can’t you?” Tina started to cry tears of rage and what may have been some amount of sympathy. She regained her composure.

  “I’m sorry Jack. I don’t want to upset you,” she said in a calmer tone. “I’m saying this for your own good. You need to change the way you’re living, or you won’t be here much longer.”

  Hearing this at any other time might not have left much of an impression. Or I would have blown up and accused Tina of wanting to see me in this condition. What had she done over the years to help me? But my prone position in a hospital bed with tubes and monitors hooked to me slowed down my normal response. Tina still had anger with me over the past, but hearing her say that I needed to change struck the same chord I felt talking to Benny the night before and John Helms before that. I needed to change. Tina was right. If I didn’t change I would die.

  “I know,” I said. “I’m trying to do better.”

  “I’m sorry, Jack, but I honestly don’t think you can,” Tina said. “You’ve created a monster, and now you’re paying the price for living the life you chose.”

  “A monster,” I said. “That’s a new term of endearment.” My anger started to surface, but I remained determined to show I was in control of my emotions.

  “Endearment isn’t something that can be applied to us,” she said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to lose my temper. You’re still the father of our children, and I do care about your health.” Tina stayed for a few more minutes, standing in silence a few feet from the bed. She got up to leave saying she needed to go meet Jessica at the high school counselor’s office.

  “Is there a problem with Jessica?” I asked.

  She responded with a laugh, “When isn’t there a problem with Jessica?”

  I did not ask any more questions.

  “Let me know how you’re doing,” Tina said.

  “Thanks again for coming here,” I said. “It means a lot to me that you would check in on a monster,” I said, smiling, hoping she would do the same.

  “No problem,” she said, turning away. “Good luck, Jack.”

  She left without making any eye contact with me. No hug or even a pat on my hand or shoulder. As she turned and walked out of the room, I thought to myself, No one cares.

  I lay in silence with the sound of the beeps and drips to keep me company. I fell back to sleep.

  Life is in the making—not in the taking.

  —BENJAMIN FRANKLIN PRICE

  18. What’s in This for Me?

  “WHAT’S IN THIS FOR ME?”

  It was a question I regretted asking Chad so quickly, but I was accustomed to being part of his “deals,” as he referred to them over the years. After hearing him call it the “Merchants deal” several times in the executive committee meeting, the first question that formed naturally in my mind was “What’s in this for me?”

  Over my career Chad had asked me to do some questionable things. A couple of his large stock purchases—or “deals”—left some doubt about what actually happened in the transactions. Whether it was complicity or being forced to do so, I signed documents as a witness without seeing the people involved. I trusted Chad. He had simply asked me to sign as a witness to expedite stock transactions. But the bottom line was that had Chad realized significant gains by knowing what was going to happen in the near future and buying stock at reduced prices ahead of events. My part was to alter the timing of the transactions, back-dating documents, relying on his word about when the person had signed over the stock.

  Lying in the hospital bed, I replayed the situations surrounding my part in Chad’s dubious transactions. Was I wrong? Yes, but what do you do? Tell your boss, a person who has put you in charge and trusted you with the reins of a huge organization, that he is a liar and a cheat? Do you say “No!” and know you will have ruined your career by uttering a two-letter word? I never gained any financial reward from these blind acts as a witness, I reminded myself.

  While the rationalizations allowed me to overlook my participation, the truth was that I was afraid to say no. I did receive something from it—Chad’s promise to make me his successor. Finally, I confronted him but it was too late. I was paying the price now. Where had I gone wrong?

  “What’s in this for me?” I asked Chad as I sat down in his office.

  “I guessed you would ask me that. I know you, Jack. I could see it in your eyes in the meeting. You’re worried. Why? You know you’ll be fine after this merger. You’re one of the prizes for Merchants Bank. Plus, I know your value. Have I ever let you down?”

  “No, you haven’t let me down,” I said, “but what’s going to happen to me?”

  “What will happen to you? Why don’t you ask first what will happen to me? My family has served as leaders of this bank for the past seventy-six years. Do you think it was easy for me to sell PT&G? Don’t you think I’ve been the person all along with the biggest stake to lose? This has been very difficult for me—more difficult than anyone knows.”

  “So what will happen to you?” I asked.

  “I don’t know yet, but I think it’s safe to say I’ll be stepping down and letting you run the show for Merchants,” he said.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, trying to appear sympathetic as I tried to find the positives he was tossing to me in his comments. “But I assumed you would be taken care of in a deal this size.”

  “Assuming again, Jack!” Chad nearly exploded. “Money doesn’t mean everything. I have pride. I have a history. You have a job. Do it!”

  I did not expect his response. I was still mulling over what I would be doing taking over for him, under new management. Hearing Chad say, “Money doesn’t mean everything,” surprised me. But when he said that I “have a job” it hurt me to my core. Chad was basically putting me in the same group as every other person at PT&G. I thought I should mean more after I had given him my trust and more. I had given him my heart and soul. I was his successor—or at least thought I was his successor.

  “Since it’s just a job, what will happen to my job?” I asked, barely containing my anger.

  “You’ll be fine,” Chad said, calming his voice to his normal, mellow tone. “Merchants Bank will want to guard their investment by keeping people like you. You’ll be a key person in this operation, their largest outside of North Carolina. They don’t know a thing about Philly—so you’re very valuable to them. You’re far enough away from Charlotte so I’m sure they’ll leave you alone and let you run things for them.”

  “Do you really believe that?” I asked, hoping he was telling the truth.

  After pausing for a minute, Chad changed his tone to the same tone I had heard when he asked me to help him in his “deals” over the years. “You do need to do one thing for me—without fail,” he said, leaning forward and pointing toward me. “Don’t let me down. Keep up the positive attitude, or your staff will lose faith
in this deal, and everyone will suffer. I’m counting on you, Jack. So are they.”

  He leaned back into his chair and paused to hear my reaction. This was classic Chad. I had seen him use this tactic before. I knew if I waited without responding a compliment was coming next. I was right . . . and wrong.

  “You’re the best young banker I know,” he said and then paused. “But you do have a weakness. You’re always worried about Jack Oliver. You care more about you than anyone else—you have no loyalty, other than taking care of you. I have heard this from your managers—they don’t trust you. They believe you would not go down with the ship like a captain should, that you’d take the last life preserver and swim as fast as you could from the sinking boat leaving everyone else to drown. That’s almost the exact words from one of your managers. How does that make you feel?”

  “I don’t believe that,” I said immediately.

  “Believe it,” Chad said. “As a CEO, I can’t afford to do that. I had to look out for the shareholders and seven thousand employees. If you were CEO, I’m afraid you would have one focus: yourself. I’m looking at what’s the best for everyone—not just me.”

  His words were like pouring salt into an already open wound. I was selfish, but not to the extreme Chad was telling me. “I have always done everything you asked without question and succeeded in every task,” I reminded him. To move away from strictly “me” as the issue, I brought up my concerns about others: shareholders, customers, and the community—and the bank’s employees. “What will happen to the institution that PT&G is for Philadelphia?” I asked. “What about our customers—our employees? People are counting on us. Are we going to preserve that image?”

  “Who was it said that ‘image is everything’? You’re not the first person to ask those same questions. Merchants will make this work. They have done it over sixty other times. They know how to maintain an image,” Chad said, raising his tone. Then, almost chuckling, he added, “They’re the buying experts in banking. You don’t need to worry, Jack. They know what to do. They have a job and you have a job to do.”