Point of Balance
Page 33
“Ma’am, I’m a father. A maniac had my daughter. You, more than anybody, must understand why I did it.”
“And you knew full well where your duty lay.”
“Yes, ma’am. I had to save your husband. And isn’t that exactly what I did?”
She hung up without another word. I gave the phone back to McKenna, who stared at me with such hatred that I was grateful there were bars between us. A sad amateur like me had trampled his professional pride into the dirt. I almost felt sorry for the guy. Almost.
“You won’t last a week in the joint, doc. I’ve got friends inside who would all love to shank you for a half pack of Camels.”
Scrub that. I didn’t feel sorry for him at all.
“Hey, McKenna. Does that mean you take back your apology?”
His footfalls as he charged off like a furious elephant were music to my ears.
It turns out that crime doesn’t pay, but saving your patient from a tumor does. In the end, they didn’t lock me up in Cell Block D at the Leavenworth pen. My attorney informed me that the White House had pulled strings to keep me apart from most of the prison population, a move which earned their approval ratings a couple of points in the blue states but lost them eight in the red states. It is said they weighed up the idea of a pardon, but voters wouldn’t stand for it. I’m still the man many Americans love to hate.
I’m lucky they didn’t put me in a special wing either, with the pedophiles and rapists. I think that call by the First Lady earned me some brownie points. I’ve done my time here, on death row. Where I’ve avoided getting a knife in the guts, but where the mental torture has been much tougher. That’s why cons hate solitary.
The weirdest thing is that I’ve been doing time for longer than he would have lived had I not operated on him. That’s gratitude for you, from those on high.
And what’s to become of me? I don’t know.
It’s infinitely harder to start afresh than to let yourself go under. My life, as I knew it, was wrecked within a week by an unscrupulous psychopath. I haven’t seen my daughter since the trial, when she hugged me good-bye.
“Thanks, Daddy.”
She said no more, and she didn’t have to.
We chat on the phone for ten minutes every three days, the most they’ll allow me. Basically, I do the talking; I read her stories and tell her about her mother. She hasn’t been very talkative since the goings-on, but Jim and Aura are doing what they can about that with lots of Virginia tomatoes and occasional trips to the fair. They’ve ended up looking after Julia. I’m glad somebody got what they wanted out of all this mess. And frankly, after what my little girl’s been through, my in-laws’ plan to spoil her sounds good to me.
With a little help from Kate.
Kate, logically, was busted out of the Secret Service. Her statement of the facts was exhaustive and spared none of the gory details, and from the start she took the blame. The attorney’s office didn’t file charges, after weighing up her impeccable service record and her heroic action at the Rappahannock farm. But she couldn’t avoid getting expelled, or dodge the shaming looks from her colleagues.
I can remember her still, taking the stand, with her left hand on the Bible because her right hand was still in a sling, testifying how she had tracked down Svetlana’s boyfriend’s address just in time to see some shady individuals leaving, whom she decided to follow. When I think of her driving through the night, facing that gang alone and unmasked, my heart aches in gratitude for the huge sacrifice she made.
The Maryland Board of Physicians revoked my license. Never again will I be able to practice medicine in the United States, but these hands were made for healing. I do not plan to use them for anything other than surgery. So I guess I’ll collect the advance royalties for this book, take Julia and go to some other country, warmer climes where I can be of help. Both of us have earned the right to forget and start over.
And before you think of berating me, as many others have done, for accepting an offer from a major publishing house and writing my story to try to retrieve something from all this, may I remind you that it was your curiosity that made you want to buy the book in the first place. Unless you’ve ripped it off from the Internet. In that case, you owe me for all the hours of entertainment you’ve had, buddy.
I’m done. The jailers will come shortly for me, to escort me from death row. It’s just that I, as opposed to the other inmates here, will walk the other way, out of darkness and into light and freedom. Soon the gates will swing open, I’ll be out on the street and Julia will be there, waiting for me. Will she have a smile on her face? Will she run into my arms, or will I have to go and lift her up, hug her and swear up and down that never again will we be parted?
And most importantly, will the years have changed her, or will she still have the same deep, innocent stare and electric-blue eyes she gets from her mother, the love of my life?
I’ll leave you now. I can hear them coming.
I’ll find out soon enough.
Acknowledgments
I have so many people to thank.
To Antonia Kerrigan and her team: Lola, Hilde, Victor . . . Thanks for spreading the word.
To Martin Roberts, who has translated this book flawlessly and with consummate skill.
To Rodrigo Pedrosa, a great neurosurgeon and good friend, for setting me straight on medical matters and providing a great deal of help. And Rachel, his lovely wife, an anesthesiologist, for filling me in on suicide methods. Any medical errors there may be in this book are all theirs. Just kidding.
To Manuel Soutiño and Manel Loureiro, for their patience in reading through the manuscript again and again—as ever—to soothe my anxiety while I worked on it. I love you.
To all the dream team at Atria Books: Judith Curr, Johanna Castillo, Ben Lee . . . and all the rest whom I cannot name here but who have done so much for my books.
To my children, whose love has been the inspiration for this novel and to whom I dedicate the book, even if they cannot read it just yet. For you I would kill all the presidents in the world. Twice over.
To Catuxa, the best partner a writer could have. Thanks for being there.
And to you, dear reader, thanks again for making my books a success in forty countries and making this storyteller’s dreams come true. Best wishes to you all, and I have one last favor to ask. If you have enjoyed the book, please write and tell me about it:
juan@juangomezjurado.com
twitter.com/juangomezjurado
About the Author
Photograph © Guadalupe de la Vallina
J.G. Jurado is an award-winning journalist and bestselling author. The Moses Expedition and his prize-winning novels God’s Spy and The Traitor’s Emblem have been published in more than forty countries and have become international bestsellers. Jurado lives with his family in Madrid, Spain.
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ALSO BY J.G. JURADO
The Traitor’s Emblem
The Moses Expedition
Contract with God
God’s Spy
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and even
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Copyright © 2014 by J.G. Jurado
English language translation copyright © 2014 by Lago Espejo, S.L.
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