by R. J. Blain
Interestingly enough, the moderate media outlets joined in, highlighting the biased network’s coverage of the Tyrant-in-Chief.
The simplicity of the accusations amused me. As President Castillo refused to denounce the bill meant to enslave Americans, the media held the opinion he was guilty of treason of the highest order, deliberately planning and abetting the murder of millions of Americans while overthrowing and rewriting the government to suit his personal pursuits.
The eradication and rewriting of the constitution, at least in the eyes of the attorneys, counted as treason. The accusations of government-wide treason had started shortly after Senator Westonhaus had announced his run for the White House, and not a week went by without something adding fuel to the flames. To my disgust and dismay, I’d been part of the picture, being used by both sides to attempt to sway the people.
Upon closer research, I discovered Senator Westonhaus typically took hits to his campaign whenever my name came up, and the competition capitalized on it. After having read the bill and digested what the clauses actually meant, I suspected all of the candidates worked under Castillo.
Not a single one of them made a campaign promise to lay the bill to rest, instead focusing on removing various questionable bits. Within a few hours, I understood the looming threat of civil war.
Americans could be prideful, stubborn patriots, but the bill had overreached just far enough to unify a generally split nation.
In a way, I appreciated the circumstances. Every election I’d witnessed had divided the nation further and further, a painful reality to watch unfold. For the first time in my life, rather than be divided, the sides melded, everyone understanding they had a lot to lose, no matter which choice they picked.
I worried the damage was already done, and there’d be no way We the People would be able to change the flow of the government, not without the sacrifice of hundreds or thousands or millions of Americans.
No matter what happened, I worried every path would lead to a great deal of shed blood.
At six in the morning, while Bradley still slept, I tiptoed into the bathroom, closed the door, put the toilet seat down, and sat, thumbing through the contacts on my cell phone until I located Beatrice’s number and dialed it.
“Hey, bitch. Your keepers finally let you out unsupervised?” Beatrice answered.
“I am hiding in the bathroom while Bradley sleeps.”
She laughed. “Finally tired him out, did you?”
“Apparently.”
“What can I do for you? You surely aren’t hiding in a bathroom this time of the morning without wanting something.”
“Can I have a sane government for Christmas?”
“If only. They’ve been bringing you up to speed, I take it?” Beatrice heaved a sigh. “You’re hitting the news here fairly hard. The pictures of you with Bradley are adorable, though. Somebody has gotten a lot of pictures of you staring at him with a disgusting amount of adoration, and he’s no better when he’s staring at you.”
“That would be Mr. Hampton,” I complained. “He fed the newspapers pictures. He’s an entity of true evil.”
“It’s tough having a caring father-in-law.”
“Seriously. At least we managed to get rid of him for a while, although Bradley crashed out early. I’ve been up all night,” I admitted. “My sleep schedule is screwed.”
“To be expected. You don’t use phones without a good reason, so what do you have for me?”
“Beyond a burning need to start some fires?”
“You can’t burn the government, Janette.”
I grumbled curses at her edict. “I wanted to get a basic rundown of where we’re at investigating.”
“Ah. You mean how we’ve been spinning our wheels because we very quickly came to the conclusion we have no idea what we’re doing, and once you got kidnapped, the brains of our operation was gone? Or more accurately, the focus of our operation was gone. It wasn’t until you disappeared we realized you were the glue making sure we all got work done.”
Crap. “Really?”
“We aren’t that bad. I mean, we are librarians for the most part. We’ve been information gathering, but we’re learning how to put the information together. Investigating seemed like a really good idea out of the gate, especially with our skills, but it turns out the real gig is not what we expected. So, we’ve been learning. That’s good. We can start fresh now that we have a better idea of what we’re doing. But I’ve learned my lesson. No, investigating something like a murder is not easy, no, not everyone can do it, and for fuck’s sake, not everyone is suited for it. Meridian likes questioning people, but unless we tell her what we need, she won’t go off on tangents much, so we need to send someone with her to ask additional questions. Mr. Tawnlen is good at that, so we’re teaming them up—and he’s aces on the forensics. That’s where we shine. Apparently, he was damned good at his first job before becoming a librarian.”
I could believe that. My boss tried to do his best at every task he set his hand to, no matter how small or trivial it seemed to be. “I’ve made a mess of things.”
“Hardly. We would have figured out we needed help even without your disappearance. It just would have had a lot more screaming, resentment, and fights. And we had a lot of that even before your kidnapping. I mean, you weren’t even talking to us right before you were taken.”
I winced. “Well, I was talking to you, I just wasn’t agreeing with you, and I was doing what I wanted.”
“Yes, you did do what you wanted. We’re still a bit pissed off you got kidnapped. But then your kidnappers turned out to be otherwise great people. Only great people fix our favorite bitch’s foot. Without the bill. We know how much it would have cost now.”
I winced. “How much?”
“About thirty million dollars.”
I dropped my phone, and it landed on the towels we’d sacrificed to serve as a bathmat. I cursed, snatched the thing up, and checked the display, relieved it had survived. “Can you repeat that?”
“Dropped your phone?”
“Yep.”
“Thirty million dollars. That’s how much the rehab, the operation prep, and the cost of the operation would have been if a hospital had done the work at their typical rates before insurance.”
“I saw a watch today that cost thirty million dollars,” I said, my voice emerging as a breathless whisper. “My foot cost the same as that watch?”
“Yep. Mickey, with some help from some researchers, did a full tally of what your medical bill would be. We wanted to evaluate how to get you back on your feet. Investigating when you’re barely able to walk is tough, and it gave us something to do, as we weren’t able or capable of investigating your disappearance. Honestly, that’s when we really figured out we just don’t know what we’re doing and why there’s so much involved with becoming a detective or an FBI agent. Anyway, give me a second. I’ll tell you the breakdown. I just have to open the file.”
I waited, grateful I hadn’t known the total bill for my foot’s recovery. I would have accepted what I had as the best I was going to get had I known the truth about the costs. “I feel like I just cost a bunch of doctors a lot of profit.”
“Yep,” Beatrice agreed. “And your stubborn ass won’t accept charity without a fight.”
“Do I want to know how much Senator Maybelle’s campaign had spent on their portion of the operation?”
“Two and a half million dollars. The medical supplies and machinery alone started the bill at two-hundred thousand, you needed several MRIs, which they billed at fifty thousand each, you were in the ICU for the first day of it, which came in at twenty-five thousand—the cheap end. Then they had to call in doctors from all over the fucking place, which meant compensating their hospitals, making sure replacement staff could come in, paying for the travel and stay, paying for rush care. The military doctor cost the campaign a solid three hundred thousand. They flew him in via military jet from Europe, and they had to skip
him across the ocean using an aircraft carrier as a fueling station. Moving the aircraft carrier resulted in some rather large expenses. The military didn’t even charge for the fuel. President Castillo gave the marching orders on that, because he didn’t want his administration to look cheap, but Senator Maybelle’s campaign covered the costs. She didn’t need it anymore, and a lot of the donors flagged their contributions for recovery.”
Holy shit. “Dare I ask how much the fuel cost for the fighter jet?”
“I think they dished out twenty thousand on fuel? Something like that. Considering the rest of the expenses, the jet’s fueling costs were negligible. Paying the entire staff of an aircraft carrier, fueling fees, and delays on the carrier’s mission cost a lot more. The doctor only asked for his typically hourly wage for the work, honestly. And he asked that of the government, not the campaign.”
“I like that doctor.”
“He said exsanguinators have to stick together, and you’re the reason he’s a doctor right now, so he owes you a lot. Your ER volunteering got him fast tracked. He’d been taking medical courses on his own dime when off duty, but the rules would have barred him from practicing. Once the military realized he was spending his leaves getting medical training, they tested him in the field. He shook out, and so that’s how you paved the way for exsanguinators being welcomed in the medical field. He would have done the whole op and his share for free if he’d been able to. It just got him there earlier, since the military is the only source for people skilled at neutralizing that drug you’d been contaminated with. It wouldn’t have hurt you for the operation, but it needed to be removed. It just hadn’t needed to be removed in the span it took them to get him in from Europe.”
“Huh. Nobody had told me that. Just that I’d needed a military exsanguinator to purge that medication out of my blood.”
“Honestly, we hadn’t known. We found out afterwards. We got a copy of the itemized care list in case we needed the records for future treatments.” Beatrice clucked her tongue. “Okay, bitch. You ready?”
“No, but I guess I have to be.”
“The campaign paid the military five hundred thousand for treatment supplies, transport, and personnel. It’s listed they brought over the doctor from Europe and several of their trauma specialists, which were shared between you and the other victims. The other medical staff, between transit, pay, expertise, rush servicing, overtime pay for doctors covering other shifts, added two hundred thousand to the bill. MRIs rang in at two hundred thousand, as you got four of them, once before the operation started, once after the operation, and two more during recovery. Drugs came in at a hundred thousand. Twenty-five thousand for first-day ICU care. Twenty-five thousand for transport to hospital; they had to fly in a helicopter capable of handling all of you plus medical staff. The campaign just paid out a donation, as the operators of the helicopter were going to donate the service. I’m guessing twenty-five thousand was the direct costs of deployment and operation for the helicopter and staff.”
Damn. “I have one very expensive foot, Beatrice.”
“No kidding. Treat that thing like it’s gold, but more precious. I think you hold the world record for most expensive foot on the planet.”
“You know what? I don’t want to know the rest of the fees, because it sounds too expensive.”
“They charged five hundred per muscle, tendon, and ligament treated, and a thousand per bone, which was a lot cheaper than normal for magical medical care,” Beatrice stated. “Unfortunately, every damned muscle in your foot needed work, and to simplify the math, they rounded to a hundred.”
“Generous of them.” Still, comparatively, the fifty thousand for the muscles wasn’t a big deal, and the campaign had gotten off lucky only paying twenty-six thousand for the bone work. “That’s still a far cry from two million, though.”
“Consultants, and a lot of them. Your operating room was a mad house, as they had at least ten tablets going at one time making sure they had the right knowledge on hand as needed. Dr. Mansfield did most of the actual work, but she got some serious education during the operation. Dr. Mansfield tried to dodge being paid, but the campaign threatened to overpay her, so she lowballed it. As such, they overpaid her.”
“Good, she deserves to be overpaid.”
“She walked out with half a million dollars.”
I smiled. “That’s great.”
“And that’s the story about how you spent over two million for the first operation. So, the operation you had while you were kidnapped is a totally different ballpark. They essentially would have had to completely reconstruct your foot from scratch. That’s why it’s so expensive. The procedure is rare, the doctors who can do it are few and far between, and it’s risky as hell. You would have probably been in the ICU or the equivalent for at least two weeks before the operation for the operation prep, and then another two weeks after to make sure your recovery went smoothly. Considering how long they kept you sedated, you were likely in an ICU style environment for up to two months. You likely weren’t on a ventilator for any of it, but the equipment they use in the ICU is essentially what’s needed to keep somebody trucking along after trauma—and what happened to your foot is severely traumatic.”
“How the hell did they keep me in an ICU without anyone realizing it, though?”
“That’s where the ridiculous price tags start coming into play.” Beatrice sighed. “From our understanding of the situation, it can cost up to five million dollars to set up an ICU. One ventilator system can cost up to eight hundred thousand, and considering how dangerous the procedure was, they would have had the ventilator system on hand if needed. The bed alone is a hundred thousand dollars, assuming they got a high-end bed, which they probably would have. The basic equipment to monitor your health in the ICU would have come in around two hundred thousand. Because it’s black market, the prices are higher, since they can’t use the regular channels to get the equipment. Somebody would have noticed someone setting up an ICU, especially for only one patient.”
“They usually set them up for more than one patient?”
“Yes. Five tends to be the minimum in most hospitals. Single-patient ICUs are rare. Even in a small community, a single car accident might result in three or more people requiring ICU care, so they typically do a minimum of five. We have two theories. Theory one involves a new hospital being built from charitable contributions, and the ICU equipment was rerouted for storage, but your kidnappers set up for your use elsewhere before moving it into the new hospital. Theory two involves a single patient ICU being made for the black market, with the caveat you get first crack at it. It’d let the black market potentially treat a critically injured operative outside of the view of the public sector. They might even have set up a larger ICU in that case.”
“Is that actually a thing? I mean, I’ve heard of the black market, but why would they need an ICU?”
“Smugglers get injured or sick or they’re trying to get treatments of an ailment that would be best not seen in a public hospital. Apparently, there are a lot of reasons the black markets might want access to an ICU. The kind of doctors needed for your care could definitely set that up for them, and they’d have access to the drugs you’d need to get through the procedure.”
“They did have drug access,” I murmured. “I remember my foot being really infected.”
“It was probably painful enough the illusionist couldn’t completely override your perceptions of it, so they would have worked with what they could and changed how you perceived the infection.” Beatrice paused. “And with your known history of blocking out trauma, it would have been a little easier on them. You would have been easier to imprint an alternative memory on.”
“Like me thinking I’m alone and able to attempt to use my abilities to help purge infection on the sly.”
“Yes, like that. And when they realized you couldn’t purge it even with your magic, they probably would have realized you needed the operation or you’d l
ose your foot.”
“I’m still going to forever ask Dr. Mansfield if she’s amputating my foot every checkup,” I warned.
“I’m sure she won’t mind your horrid sense of humor, as it’s a good problem to have.”
“How did the cost of care shoot up from five million to thirty, though?”
“Our new favorite villain, Dr. Castor, charges a million dollars for a full restoration of a limb. No matter how much work is involved over how many years, that’s her flat fee, and she accepts insurance—and insurance usually pays out, because few others are able to get the results, and she’s damned good at battling with insurance companies.”
“I’m thinking I like this Dr. Castor woman,” I admitted.
“Same. So, most doctors in that field use her approach; they will take the insurance company for a million dollars plus the hospital rates for the equipment. But that’s her expertise being paid for, and her talent. She only takes a limited number of patients, preferring to work on only one at a time.”
“So, I cost her almost a year of income?”
“Essentially.”
“Okay. That’s one million accounted for, then.”
“Then there’s the team of likely five other surgeons just as talented and skilled as she is. So, six million right there, just from the high-level talents at the table. Their assistants would need to be paid, along with the team of nurses and lower-level doctors—for nine months.”
Ouch. “Okay, I am starting to see why this would be so expensive. But it’s not their direct costs, right?”
“Right. We’re just estimating how much they would have lost caring for you rather than taking on their full assortment of regular patients.”
“I resent they did not also kidnap Bradley.”
“They tried,” Beatrice admitted.
I froze. “Could you repeat that?”
“They tried,” Beatrice announced in a cheerful tone. “Ren is handy as a bodyguard, and after the first few failed attempts, Mr. Hampton added some extra security. There was one close call, where Ren and Bradley both got to take an unexpected nap, but his father’s team kept them both safe and sound. Now that we know what we know, we think they were trying to attend to your mental and emotional health. Had we known that, honestly, we might’ve just let them take him.”