Dublin spoke up from the kitchen area.
“You didn’t oversleep, Reese, sun has been up less than an hour. I left towels and soap in the bathroom for you if you want to shower. I’ll have breakfast ready for you when you get out.”
I recalled the kiss with Dublin the night before as I caught her grinning at me and couldn’t help but produce a grin of my own.
“Now what are you two smiling about? Keeping secrets from a tired old man, are you?”
The Old Man winked as I walked by him on my way to the bathroom.
By the time I returned from my shower Dr. Miller had arrived and was looking over Alexander Meyer who was then sitting on the leather couch opposite the kitchen area table. A plate of eggs, toast, coffee and juice greeted me as I sat down, soon joined by Dublin who held her own cup of coffee.
“Hope you like eggs. We get them fresh from the reservation – best eggs I’ve ever tasted. They raise chickens there, about a hundred of them.”
The eggs were in fact delicious. I happily dipped the corners of my toast into the soft yolk, thoroughly soaking it before plopping it into my mouth and then washing it down with some coffee.
“That is by far the best egg I’ve ever had Dublin. And the bread – did you make that?”
“No, that would be from a woman named Lucille. I don’t think you’ve met her yet but she will be at Mac’s this afternoon. Her and Mac, he calls her his special lady.”
I chuckled.
“Mac never mentioned a special lady. Lucille, huh? I look forward to meeting her. Now this thing at the tavern, that’s a regular event around here?”
Dublin nodded.
“Yeah, though there will probably be more people there this Saturday than normal. Your arrival, the visits by Carol and those other enforcement officers. I imagine people are a little more riled up than usual. We all bring food, Mac serves drinks, we listen to music, dance…and if we can talk him into it, Mac might play us a couple songs. He’s quite the performer.”
I sat back in my chair, feeling an expression of shock cover my face.
“Mac sings?”
Dublin nodded again, her beautiful smile revealing itself to me again.
“Sings and plays a mean guitar. For an old guy, he’s something of a sex symbol with a lot of the ladies around here. If he puts on his cowboy hat – watch out. It’s show time.”
Dr. Miller’s laugh shot across the room, his head shaking from side to side.
“Dublin is right about that, Mr. Neeson – the ladies love them some Mac! That old boy can kick ass and carry a tune at the same time! Hard to compete with that.”
Dr. Miller stood up from his examination of the Old Man and turned to face Dublin.
“Dublin – you have a moment?”
The two stepped outside the cabin, the door closing behind them.
“Mr. Neeson, see if Dr. Miller will speak with you this morning. Perhaps on your way back to Mac’s place…he likes to walk in the morning anyways, so it shouldn’t be a problem. He can give you a very factual version of just how damaging the government takeover of the healthcare system was for America and if he wants…share with you his reasons for coming up here. He’s…he’s a good man, been a wonderful asset to Dominatus. He was here for Adina when she passed on. Made us all as comfortable as possible through that process, and how he was with her…I’ll forever be in his debt. A fine man, a wonderful doctor.”
“I intend to do that, Mr. Meyer – thank you.”
“Good…good.”
The Old Man’s voice trailed off, and I could sense he was once again having difficulties breathing.
“Mr. Meyer – are you ok?”
He smiled back at me, though fatigue hung over him like a coat he could no longer remove.
“I’m a hundred years old…ok really doesn’t apply anymore. But, I’m here. I woke up to another day. And hopefully I’ll feel good enough to pay Mac a visit a little later. Dublin will try and stop me of course, so I’m counting on you to convince her otherwise.”
“I don’t think she would pay my opinion much attention on that, Mr. Meyer.”
The Old Man’s smile returned, and he again offered up another wink.
“Oh now, Mr. Reese Neeson, I don’t think that’s entirely true. Am I right?”
I was grateful when the cabin door opened and Dr. Miller entered followed by Dublin. The doctor pointed to his patient, his voice emitting the calm assurance of a man born to practice medicine.
“Now, Mr. Meyer, Alexander, you still have some fluid in your lungs. While it hasn’t worsened any since yesterday, I still want you to be very careful exerting yourself. Lots of rest, fluids, and I’ll say it again despite it apparently not doing one bit of good – no cigars. I urge you to stay inside - avoid fluctuations in temperatures.”
The Old Man stood up from the couch without help, walking over to the doctor where he placed his hand on the shoulder of the taller man.
“If I’m so old that I can now lose a battle with the sniffles, well…what kind of life is that to be living anyways Doc? I’ll promise you no more cigars for a while…but I have every intention of being at Mac’s later today. Dublin will wrap me up nice and warm, and we’ll take it slow, but I intend to be there…and that’s non-negotiable.”
Dublin began to protest, telling her grandfather he needed to listen to the doctor, but Alexander Meyer raised his hand in a way that communicated he yet remained the authority in his own home.
“Granddaughter, this is not a negotiation. There was a time I was very much accustomed to getting what I wanted from this world. Later today I will be attending the Saturday afternoon gathering at Freedom Tavern. It has been nearly two years since I last visited that event, and given the most recent threats to those who call Dominatus their home, and the likely concerns resulting from those threats, I think it important I now do so again.”
Dublin’s silence was enough to signal the Old Man’s victory in the matter.
“And now Dr. Miller, I would ask that you walk back with Mr. Neeson here. I believe he already mentioned wanting to interview you?”
“Yes – I believe I agreed to that yesterday. Sure, Mr. Neeson, I’d be happy to talk to you on your way back to Mac’s. That work for you?”
I agreed, putting on my winter coat and boots, and exiting the cabin behind the doctor, quickly trying to compose in my head some questions to ask him. Before closing the door behind me I turned back to face the Old Man and Dublin.
“Thank you again for a wonderful meal. I really, really enjoyed it. I hope to see you both later today, then?”
Dublin smiled back at me, her arm around her grandfather.
“Looks that way, Reese. I hope we can do this again soon.”
XIV.
Within just a few minutes of speaking with him, I realized Dr. Lester Miller was a remarkable man. Born into a family raised by a single mother, with five other siblings, each day facing the challenges of debilitating poverty in the Fuller Park neighborhood of Chicago, Lester Miller always heeded the advice of his mother to “work harder than the others” until eventually it led to his ticket out of Chicago’s East Side – eventually taking him on a full medical school scholarship to Emory University in Atlanta Georgia.
That was 1993, nearly forty five years ago. Lester Miller was then just twenty two years old. He would later return to Chicago to intern at Northwestern Memorial Hospital where he quickly earned a reputation as being among the very best young kidney specialists in the region. By 2005, Doctor Miller was heading Northwestern’s Nephrology department, utilizing the latest innovations to combat the impacts of diabetes, hypertension, and various autoimmune disorders that damaged the kidney. By 2009 he was undergoing a rigorous trial study of a new treatment for cancers of the kidney and liver that showed incredible promise, earning him a nomination for a Nobel Prize in medicine, an astounding accomplishment, given he was not yet forty years of age.
In 2014 Dr. Miller attended a Congressional hear
ing on the impacts of healthcare reform just nine weeks before the 2014 Midterm Election. For the last year he was openly vocal regarding his concerns over the limitations the healthcare mandates were inflicting upon medical science and possible treatments. By 2014 those concerns had transformed into his outright warnings that the new healthcare system was in fact killing Americans. More and more the treatments available by his Nephrology department were being denied older patients or patients whose physical condition limited their chances for a sustainable recovery following treatment. Human beings had become simple calculated outcome risks within the massive and quickly expanding government run healthcare system - a system that within months of its implementation, was directing physicians to kill their patients as a means of saving costs.
The doctor stopped to look up into the morning sky…dark clouds were slowly making their way from the east.
“Storm’s coming, Mr. Neeson. By the looks of it, be here by tonight.”
“Doctor, when you say the government was directing physicians to kill their patients, what do you mean? How did that work?”
Dr. Miller gave a smile that appeared far more like a grimace.
“It didn’t work…not for the patients. Not for any doctor who still cared. It was like I said, the number crunchers had taken over the entire system. Every procedure was compartmentalized statistically, everything I or anyone else did had to fall into an approved category or you were not allowed to do it. So, if I had a man in his 60’s, obese, hypertension, perhaps a previous heart attack, and he’s now suffering from early stage liver cancer…all of that information was plugged into a system that would spit out what procedures were acceptable cost-wise. If there was a procedure, or a drug that would benefit this man, but the statistics put him below a sixty percent full recovery scenario, that patient would be denied that procedure, denied that drug…that treatment. The system was telling me, the physician, to let that man die. Give him a painkiller, something to make them comfortable, and let him die. His death was cheaper than trying to give him the opportunity for another five or ten years of life.
“Now that situation infuriated me. It infuriated a lot of us. It was immoral. It was cruel. Hell, I was telling my wife it was evil.”
‘And what was her reaction?”
“My wife? She didn’t say much at first, but after they suspended my license, she wanted nothing to do with my fight.”
Dr. Miller stopped walking again, as I sensed him reliving that time those many years ago.
“Well, after I testified to Congress in 2014, the hospital was telling me to keep quiet. I wouldn’t do that. I would speak out against the new healthcare law every opportunity I had, radio, television, newspapers, whoever wanted to hear my experiences, I was happy to share. Felt I had a moral obligation to do it. 2015 came around, and I was working on a book about the healthcare law. The hospital administrator calls me in, tells me he heard about my book. Tells me not to publish. He just got off the phone from a representative of the Department of Homeland Security…alleging I may be part of some kind of anti-government plot. Said perhaps I needed to take a break. Now I asked him if he was suspending me…he said no. He was hoping it wouldn’t come to that. So, I told him to go to hell. I kept working, as much as I could, and by April of that year, my book was finished and I had a publisher lined up to distribute it. By June it was out there. I called it Death of America – One Nation Without God.. Within a week of its publication my license was suspended by the State of Illinois. I appealed, but that took…took almost a year. The appeal was overturned, but by then my wife and I were separated. She took the two kids, and I was living in a little studio apartment about a half mile from the hospital.
“So I had the appeal overturned, and two days back at the hospital and I’m being called in for a discipline review by the hospital administration. Takes them about thirty minutes to suspend me from the hospital while they review the possibility of terminating my employment there. And whose sitting in on my discipline review? DHS. It was unbelievable. I felt like I had entered some kind of alternative universe. Had some friends, colleagues, telling me to pull the book, apologize, beg for mercy. I wouldn’t do that. The book was circulating well…the word was getting out. And that was what made me the enemy of the government. By the next week my employment was terminated and the hospital administration submitted a request to the state to have my license suspended – again. And, it was. So, I had no job. No family…wife wouldn’t let me see the kids. No home. But the book was selling, so I had a bit of money from that. Or so I thought, took DHS about a month to freeze all my accounts. They shut down the publisher. All the books were removed. Any mention of it online was scrubbed. The book, and pretty much me I suppose, no longer existed.”
I shook my head in amazement.
“Just like that like? A doctor who had been nominated for the Nobel Prize in Medicine, a few years later your entire career is wiped out?”
Dr. Miller nodded.
“Yeah, just like that. I tried to tell people then, everything, and I mean everything, changed in this country after the government took over the healthcare system.”
“So what then – where did you go?”
“Well, I was contacted by a senator a few days later who had staff monitoring my situation. We set up a time to meet in person. I told him my experiences, he said he agreed with everything I said and wanted to bring me in for another hearing. This one would be publicized big time – big media coverage. And I was to be the only testimony. There were a handful in Congress still fighting the new healthcare mandates. They had been receiving horror stories from other physicians, patients, and they were still willing to try to put a stop to it. My story was going to be a big part in doing that.”
“So did they hold the hearing?”
“No, two days before I was preparing to go to Washington D.C., I got a message from one of the senator’s staffers, a very brief message. She said the Senator had been found dead in his home…suicide. Single shot to the side of his head. There was no evidence of a break-in, nothing in the home had been stolen. No note was left, just his body lying on the kitchen floor. The hearing was cancelled. She also told me it would probably be wise to stay as far away from Washington D.C. as possible. And that’s what I did.”
“You said the Senator was found dead on the kitchen floor?”
Dr. Miller’s eyes indicated he knew the reason for my question.
“Yes, just like Mac’s friend. In the kitchen, single gunshot to the head.”
“And where did you go then?”
“Made my way to Washington State and spent a few years just outside Spokane giving medical examinations to migrant workers in a private community clinic at the back of a hardware store. That was around 2017…2018. My wife had remarried by then, what few messages I sent to my kids were never returned.”
“That must have been tough.”
Dr. Miller stopped walking again and turned to fully face me, the muscles in his jaw flexing. Though his overall appearance was that of a kind and amiable looking older looking black man, there was also the hint of just-under-the-surface anger, and a willingness to push back hard when forced to do so.
“Oh, I’ll tell you this Mr. Neeson. I had thoughts come to me here and there, thoughts of going back and screaming at her, my wife, for her leaving me for my principles. Calling her a coward, a slut, and worse. It’s a strange thing life, how quickly it can change from one thing to another just like that.”
The doctor snapped his fingers for emphasis as he spoke.
“But, in the end, my heart told me I was put on this earth to help people. It’s what drove me. It’s what made me speak out against the government takeover of our healthcare system. I wasn’t the only one, there were others too. But they were all silenced through intimidation, administrative bullying, whatever. You’d hear stories of resignations, traffic accidents, and suicide of course. So people, doctors, nurses, hospital administrators, they just stopped fighting back.
Stopped questioning, and put their heads down, filled out the forms, checked off the boxes, placed the patients in this category or that category, and let a whole bunch of them die. We no longer treated a whole section of patients, we just accommodated their death. Expedited it, to save on resources. These people were what the system started to call ‘expendables’. And the number of expendables as part of the overall population became larger and larger. Now that’s evil, Mr. Neeson. They always call it ‘for the good of society’, but what we were doing in forcing people to die when we could have treated them, prolonged their lives, that’s real verifiable evil. Hell, I haven’t even started talking about the babies, the late term abortions…”
The doctor’s voice trailed off as his gaze once again returned to the darkening clouds slowly making their way toward Dominatus.
“Please explain what you just said Dr. Miller, about the babies, the abortions.”
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