by Melinda Minx
She looks at me white-faced and speechless—for once she isn’t shouting—and she opens her mouth to speak, but nothing comes out.
Finally, she croaks, “You...you...I should have fired you when I had the chance. I’ve created a fucking monster.”
“Hire Dr. Meiner as team lead,” I say in a cool, icy voice. “He’ll agree to go along with all your other lies. It will get the device ready for further testing and production, and it’s a win for everyone—”
“A win,” she snaps. “How do I spin this for—?”
“I don’t give two fucks how you spin it, Maryanne, you’re so good at spinning, and that’s your problem. I’d personally have gone with operating the hospital honestly and ethically instead of lying out my ass and nose at every turn, but it’s too late for that.”
She stares me down. “That’s why you’re not director, Dr. Prince. You’d run this hospital into the ground.”
I see the gears in her head starting to turn. She’s already spinning the deceitful web of lies in her head. “You’d really work with Dr. Meiner?” she asks. “After what he did?”
“It’s my only option,” I say. “I’ll do whatever I have to do to get Rose back. I’d work with Satan himself.”
I bite my tongue then, realizing that Dr. Bell and Dr. Meiner together are probably slightly worse than Satan.
Dr. Meiner shows up for work a few days later, after all the paperwork and all of Dr. Bell’s furious spin doctoring takes effect.
The prototype in Rose’s head needed to be shut down for some testing and calibration. This was planned, but never released to the press due to some vague privacy concerns. Dr. Meiner—a specialist in Rose’s disease—had always been considered the most valid candidate to serve as team leader, but he had been finishing up an existing contract elsewhere. He totally wasn’t at home slamming down bottles of vodka and taking photos of Rose and me with a night vision lens on his camera.
The whole story doesn’t sound convincing when I say it, but out of Dr. Bell’s lips it all sounds perfectly legitimate.
I stare him down. “Dr. Meiner.”
“Dr. Prince,” he says. “Sorry that it had to end up this way.”
“I’m sure you’re just heartbroken,” I say through clenched teeth.
He assembles our staff. I’m chief surgeon for the project—tasked with training other surgeons how to install this device and similar nanotech devices. Dr. Bell is trying to develop other technology like this alongside the one that keeps Rose awake. She was never one for pouring big resources into obscure niche markets.
I did get her to agree that Rose’s device—as the one that is tested and proven to work—should be knocked out first. So even though her disease is exceptionally rare, all of the team’s resources are being dumped into it.
I go to see Rose after the team is done with its first meeting. She’s not in the same room she was before, and it feels odd. I’d gotten to know the old one so well.
It feels even more odd seeing her asleep again. It’s as if those amazing days with her awake were really just a dream. It’s as if I watched her sleeping for so long that I imagined what she’d be like if she’d finally wake up. I’d dreamed this relationship up that I had with her, this perfect woman was just pasted onto my forever-sleeping patient.
I shake my head. But no, that’s not what happened. She really was awake, and she’ll be awake again soon. Dr. Meiner thinks it will only take a few months to have another device ready to go now that he has the full Pittsburgh Memorial staff and resources at his disposal.
“I know you probably can’t hear me,” I say. “But you told me you heard sometimes, Rose.”
I look at her face, hoping her eyes will just open up and she’ll turn right toward me. It doesn’t happen, of course.
I stroke her hair and hold her hand. “Dylan and I are both doing fine. Dr. Meiner’s team is assembled, and I’m chief surgeon. The bastard is getting what he wants, but what he wants means you’ll be awake in just a few months, so I’m going with it. I won’t forget my promise, Rose, and I’m not going to take a single day off. I’m doing everything in my power so you can wake up again soon. It will feel just like a long nap.”
“Can we really trust him?” a voice behind me says.
I turn around to see Dylan.
“Shut the door,” I whisper. “You really want to talk about this in front of Rose?”
“You want to keep secrets from her?” Dylan asks.
I shake my head.
“Why should we trust this guy?” Dylan asks.
“Can you create a nano-device that fuses to Rose’s neurons and stimulates them without frying her brain? You been studying nanotechnology and brain surgery between shifts at the coffee shop?”
“You already can do the brain surgery,” Dylan says. “Technically I’d only have to study the nanotechnology.”
I sigh. “We have to trust him. It’s that, or hope that Dr. Bell actually kept the project running and on track—and that she prioritized Rose’s disease instead of a more widespread and lucrative one. Knowing Dr. Bell, I’d say the chances of that were right around zero.”
“I’ve been trying to do more digging on Dr. Meiner,” Dylan says. “It’s like he didn’t exist prior to 1999.”
“Maybe the Y2K bug ate his records,” I say, shrugging.
“The Y2K bug?” Dylan says. “Are you joking? Maybe you don’t remember, but that bug did almost nothing. It’s almost as if Dr. Meiner isn’t even real.”
Wasn’t Dylan like four years old during Y2K?
“He’s in the hospital right now,” I say. “And he’s my boss now. I assure you he’s real.”
“You know what I mean,” Dylan says. “Aren’t you a poker player, man? Shouldn’t you be able to read people?”
“Meiner’s got a good poker face,” I say. “I can’t figure out what his deal is, but I’m trying to figure it out, Dylan. I’ll be working closely with him, so I should be able to get a better handle on him.”
“Just make sure you don’t trust him,” Dylan says.
“I trust no one.”
“Good,” Dylan says. “You can trust me, though.”
I smile. “I know, and that’s helpful. It’s good to have someone I can be totally straight with.”
When Dylan leaves, I realize that there’s a lot I haven’t told Rose about myself. She’s asleep, but it will feel good to get everything off my chest.
I pull a chair up closer to her. “Rose, I told you that I became a billionaire by investing my poker winnings. But let me tell you how I made my first million.”
Ten Years Ago
There’s an intense pounding at my door. I jump out of bed.
Fuck. I overslept.
I know that knock, too. It’s Murphy. He wants his money, and I’ve got nothing.
I move toward the door, trying to make no sound. The chances that he’ll just leave are exceptionally low, and I don’t bet when the odds are against me.
He stops pounding, and I breathe a sigh of relief.
Too early—I jinxed it.
He stopped pounding because he’s kicking in the door now. I see it bending in with each huge kick.
I could slip out the window, but then he’d trash my apartment. He might also have a guy on the window, and then I’d be in real deep shit.
I decide to bet on my ability to sweet-talk him, and I unlock the door and slide out the deadbolt.
I open the door right as he gears up for another kick, and he kicks into thin air, falling down on his face in my living room.
“Murph,” I say, reaching out a hand to help him up.
He glares at me, and gets up without touching me. “I don’t wanna see your hands empty, Prince. Don’t reach a hand out to me unless you’ve got $50,000 in it. Where’s my money?”
“I don’t have it,” I say.
“Then give me what you got!” he shouts angrily. He’s all muscle and fat. I’m strong and could take him for sure, but i
f he just bum rushed me and had two more guys backing him up—and he does have two more guys waiting outside—I’d be finished.
I reach into my pocket and pull out a wadded-up twenty. I slap it into his hand.
“Is this a fucking joke, Kaden?”
I shake my head.
I started playing poker to avoid going into debt for medical school. Now I’m in debt with a guy that will break my legs instead of sending me threatening letters in the mail.
I had $300,000 riding on a single hand. I lost.
After the shock of losing everything faded—which took a solid day—I started doing the math. I played all the hands back in my head, and I did the math. Either I got hit with a one in three million odds, or the table was cheating me.
Though I’m sure Murphy has heard it all before—that I can’t pay back my loan because I got fucking cheated. He won’t give two shits.
“You used to play with me,” I say to Murphy.
“So fucking what?” he asks.
“You know I’m good—the best.”
“If you were the best,” he snarls, “you would be paying me instead of flapping your lips!”
“Here’s my proposal,” I say. “I—”
“Aw, Prince, you’re gonna try to get me to marry you?” Murph says, then he hawks a big loogie and spits it right out onto my floor. He tosses the crumbled $20 bill onto his spit. “I propose you don’t waste my time with this shit, and you pay me back if you don’t want to shit into a bag for the rest of your life…” He goes in for a big dramatic pause, then says, “A colonoscopy bag!”
“Colostomy,” I say. “Colonoscopy is when they check your poop chute for--”
“Shut the fuck up!” he snorts, winding up a punch.
“So you beat me half to death,” I say. “Does that get you your money?”
“You know how this shit works, Kaden,” he says. “If I don’t beat the shit out of you, then no one will fear me. I gotta scare people to get ‘em to pay me back!”
“Here’s how confident I am,” I say, smiling wide. “There’s a big tournament with a $1.5 million pot. It’s in Denmark—”
“Fucking shit—”
“Listen,” I say. “The buy-in is only $30,000.”
He laughs in my face. “You owe me $50K, and now you want another $30K? And conveniently you want to skip off to Denmark so that if you lose this $30K, I’ll have to get my boys from Poland to drive all the way up there to kill you?”
Damn. I didn’t know he had guys in Poland.
“Murph,” I say. “I can do this. You know I can.”
“How the fuck did you lose the $50K then?”
“If I mess this up,” I say. “If I can’t pay you back the $80K—”
“$80K!” he shouts. “Who said a thing about $80K? If I lend you more money, Prince, you owe me $250K back, you got that? You’re so damn confident, then win that 1.5 mil and give me some fat interest. And if you lose? There ain’t gonna be no beating you half to death, I’ll slit your fucking throat and throw you into the North Sea. Got it?” He pauses again, but it’s not exactly dramatic this time. “Denmark’s on the North Sea, right?”
I nod. “Yeah, you got your threat right this time. And I agree, either I pay you $250K back, or my body gets dumped in the North Sea.”
“I’ll bring you the fucking money tomorrow,” Murphy says, shaking his head.
I tear through the brackets in Denmark, until I’m in the Grand Finals.
Everything’s looking good, I’m up $200,000 already—almost enough to pay back Murphy. There’s one problem: The guy I’m pretty sure cheated me last time is in the Grand Finals, too. Walter Broderick.
He flashes me a shit-eating grin as we sit down with two other Grand Finalists: Adrian Kaufmann and Kristina Brinkhaus.
Both are strong players from Germany, while Walter and I are both from the States.
I doubt that Kaufmann or Brinkhaus suspect Broderick. Even in the U.S., he doesn’t have the reputation of a cheat. His rise in the poker world has been curiously fast, however. Most players play low-stakes games—usually online games—for years before getting the skill to advance to the big leagues. Broderick came out of nowhere, and he never played online.
You can’t cheat at online poker.
I’m convinced he’s a cheat, but I need $50,000 more to pay back Murphy. And even if I get $50,000 and quit, it’s not like that will do anything for me. I’d have zero dollars to my name and no way to make more money.
The judge comes over and restates the rules for us. The judge has an American accent, and when I look at him, I realize he looks familiar. I can’t quite place him, though, and he avoids making eye contact with me.
The last time I played against Broderick, my hands were all slightly above average, but not suspiciously so. Usually, if your hands are above average, you can get aggressive and press that advantage, which I did. The problem was that Broderick’s hand always happened to be just that much better than mine.
The judge deals out my first hand, and it’s just nothing.
I fold and watch the table—mostly Broderick.
I fold three hands in a row, losing $15,000 in antes, but I see a pattern developing.
Kaufmann is getting dealt above average hands—just like I was—and Broderick’s hands are always just a hair stronger.
Kaufmann is probably the strongest player at the table, and it looks like Broderick is targeting him first.
After Kaufmann loses his third hand and is down $75,000, he waves the judge over.
I hear him asking in a low voice for a new deck.
TThere are murmurs from the crowd.
“I’m just superstitious,” Kaufmann says, forcing a laugh.
It’s very bad form to accuse someone of cheating, but asking for a new deck usually means just that.
The judge nods and grabs another fresh deck, and as he’s tearing off the shrink-wrap, I suddenly recognize him. He was at another table—a table right next to ours—the last time I played against Broderick. Their backs were facing each other. And—of course—they never said a word to each other.
The judge smiles and shuffles the cards, breaking them in. I notice Kaufmann is eyeing the cards, making sure the shuffle is legit. The judge has been shuffling every single time, of course, and I’ve been watching how he stacks the deck. Broderick’s winning hand, and Kaufmann’s not quite winning hand, have always been formed from cards that were on the table in the previous hand.
There’s no real way for the judge to stack this fresh pack, and I get dealt nothing good.
Broderick raises for a while, but eventually folds. He stayed in just long enough to not look too suspicious. Brinkhaus folds shortly after, and Kaufmann finally folds when I keep raising on him.
I show him that I had nothing at all, and I see a slight twitch from his eyelid. That’s the most I’ll get out of him.
I’ve just earned back everything I lost on that one hand.
I watch carefully as the judge shuffles. I know how he’s stacking the deck now. I make sure I’m one hundred percent certain which cards are being dealt into which hand. I have to be one hundred percent correct, or I’m totally screwed.
The hands are dealt out, and I suddenly break the icy silence by saying, “Kaufmann, you were right to be suspicious. You have two aces with an eight high, and Broderick has two pair: two’s and six’s.”
There’s a huge rush of noise through the crowd, and I see Broderick’s face burning red, and the judge is trying to slink away.
Kaufmann slams his hand down on the table, revealing two aces and an eight, just like I said.
“The judge is in on it,” I say, pointing. “He’s Broderick’s man. I watched him riffle stack the deck, that’s how I knew the hands. Can we get a neutral third party in to check Broderick’s hand?”
Broderick slams his hand down face down, and he jabs a finger at me. “How dare you accuse me of—?”
The new judge steps in and reaches for
Broderick’s hand, but Broderick covers it.
The judge says, “Your hand, sir. If you played honest, then—”
He reveals his hand—two pair. Exactly like I said.
There’s a huge gasp, and the judge is trying to get away, but a tall bouncer stops and grabs him.
“He must have bet on me!” Broderick says, pointing at the judge. “I had no knowledge of this!”
The judge shouts, “Broderick threatened my daughter! I had to!”
Kaufmann winks at me, and I lean back with a relieved sigh. The circus goes on for a good hour, but finally Broderick and his man are taken away by the police, and all of his chips are distributed evenly between the remaining three players.
It’s a tight competition, and Brinkhaus runs out of chips after several close hands. She got third place: $200,000.
I’m safe from my corpse getting thrown into the North Sea, but the $500,000 for second place isn’t going to fully cover medical school for me. I’ve got to win.
I start to chip away at Kaufmann by raising conservatively even on strong hands, and by bluffing strategically on weak hands. I notice his tell shortly after I gain a lead on him. His nostrils flare out when he gets a good hand. It’s hard to spot, but it’s real.
From there it’s an automatic win. I might as well be reading the guy’s mind, and he’s out of chips in ten hands or so.
“Finnegan Myers is our grand champion and $1.5 million winner!” the commentator roars into the microphone.
Finnegan Myers is the poker name that I use in competitions. I don’t need my real name tied to poker after I become a doctor.
The new judge—the dirty one’s replacement—slides all the chips to me: $1.5 million worth. After I pay back Murphy, it’s actually $1.25 million, but that’s still a lot. Enough to invest, not just to cover medical school.
They transfer the money into my bank account. I walk out of the tournament into the cool Danish night. I’m a fucking millionaire now. I hear someone behind me, and turn to see Kaufmann.
“Well played, Myers,” he says. He’s looking at me through his glasses, and his dark black hair is spiked up tall. “You deserve the win. I’d have taken third if you hadn’t called out Broderick. How did you know for sure?”