The Term Sheet: A Startup Thriller Novel

by Lucas Carlson

“What?” asked David.

  “Well, she was so stressed about running out of money...”

  “What are you talking about? My mom left plenty of money from life insurance in a trust that was supposed to take care of Heather’s expenses. She was supposed to be able to live off of it for years. What happened?”

  “I don’t know, I know some of the patients have been complaining about cost of living increases lately.”

  “Where’s the head doctor? Who’s in charge here?”

  “Dr. Abington. He’s usually in that corner office.” Belinda pointed to the window in the corner of the building.

  David stormed in and rushed into the nurses’ room. This should not have happened. Everything had been carefully arranged. Everything had been taken care of. Of course he hadn’t double-checked those details. Why hadn’t he? He felt like throwing up.

  He approached a thick-necked woman with flushed red cheeks and a gold cross necklace on her chest. “Excuse me, do you have an appointment?”

  “I need to see Dr. Abington. It’s urgent.”

  “Dr. Abington is with a patient right now. If you have a seat I can—sir, you can’t go in there…”

  David pushed open the door. Inside, a middle-aged man full of wrinkles and skin far more tan than the sparse Portland sun could justify was examining a young boy’s leg. The young boy looked up at David and cocked his head to the side. The young boy’s mother let out a yelp.

  “Excuse me, I’m with a—”

  “Where’s my sister?” demanded David.

  Dr. Abington stood up. He looked infuriated. At the sight of the two angry men, the young boy began to cry.

  “Young man, please. I am with a patient right now. This can wait.”

  “No, this can’t wait. My sister. Heather Alexander. You let her leave. Someone said she was supposed to go into my care, but I haven’t seen or heard from her in a week.”

  The mother came over to comfort the young boy. She stared daggers at the doctor.

  He shook his head, then looked down at the boy. “I’m sorry, Jessy. Please don’t cry. Everything is okay. I’m just going to talk to this young man for one minute in the hallway and I’ll be right back.”

  The doctor patted his patient’s head and the boy calmed down. He and David moved to the hallway and closed the door.

  “Heather? Yes, of course. Ms. Alexander was discharged last week. Angie, can you please look up Ms. Alexander’s records?”

  The secretary scowled at David and opened a file cabinet beneath her computer.

  “Records show that she was discharged last Monday. Are you David Alexander?”

  “Yes.”

  “It shows you as her legal guardian.”

  “But I didn’t pick her up.”

  “It says in the record that you were running late to pick her up and she took to take a bus to meet to you downtown.”

  “And you believed her? What kind of place is this? I’m going to sue you all for everything you have. Where’s all her stuff?”

  “Sir, this is a self-check-in facility—our patients are free to come and go as they please. I’m surprised you don’t know that already. She said she would come back to pick up her things once she got settled.”

  “Didn’t that seem a little odd to you? If she said she was coming to live with me, why would she leave her things here?”

  “Well, let’s be honest, you haven’t been the most…predictable visiting relative around here. Sadly, that’s all too common. So of course we didn’t think that was odd. We take people at their word.”

  “So you just let a chronically ill patient walk out of here on her own? Are you fucking kidding me?”

  Angie frowned and her face flushed bright red. “No, you let her out of here. It’s not our fault you didn’t show up on time…”

  “She never told me she was leaving!”

  “She couldn’t pay,” said Dr. Abington as if that was the end of the subject.

  “What do you mean she couldn’t pay? My mother left her a trust.”

  “The trust ran out a year ago. Heather took out a loan with us in order to extend her care, and I know she was looking into options with insurance and disability. But she has been overdue with us for months.”

  “How much does she owe?”

  “To bring her account back in good standing and ensure she keeps her room for the rest of this year, it’s two hundred forty thousand.”

  David went white. “Is that with insurance?” he asked.

  “Insurance will pick up some of that, but until we have details we can’t tell you how much exactly.”

  Angie jumped in. “Look, all this can be worked out later. Right now, let’s just all focus on finding Heather. I’ll start calling local hospitals.”

  David stormed out of the room. Why didn’t she ask for his help? How could she have deceived him? David sprinted to his car. He turned the key and it wouldn’t start. He took a breath and turned the key again. Nothing but a couple clicks. He looked down at the dashboard. He had left the headlights on.

  He slammed his head on the steering wheel and closed his eyes. He turned the key once more. A couple clicks and he could hear the engine trying to turn. He held the key just a second longer, and the engine finally started.

  “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” David yelled.

  The closest hospital was Legacy Good Samaritan. David pulled up to the emergency area and jumped out of his car, leaving it parked diagonally between two handicapped parking spots.

  “Hi,” said David, out of breath. “Is there a Heather Alexander here?”

  “Are you a family member?” said a lanky young man with a slight stutter.

  “Yes, I’m her brother.”

  “Let me ch-check.”

  The young man stared at his screen.

  “It’s loading.”

  David wondered how a hospital hired someone with a stutter this bad to man the front desk.

  “Yes. She’s in room, f-f-four nine two.”

  David ran to the elevator and pressed four. When he got to the room, he saw his sister with an IV, wires coming from various parts of her body and an oxygen mask. He ran up to her.

  “Heather! What happened? Heather!”

  A nurse saw him run into the room and followed him in. She was young and slender with the body of a runner.

  “Are you family?”

  “Yes, I’m her brother. What’s wrong, why isn’t she awake? What happened?”

  “She had a fall and hit her head pretty badly. We have put her in a medically induced coma to let the swelling go down.”

  “How long has she been here?”

  “Six days.”

  “Six days? How long until she wakes up?”

  “Let me get the doctor.”

  “How long?” pleaded David.

  “We don’t know. The body takes time to heal.”

  David bowed his head and began to cry.

  * * *

  Andrew walked in quietly. “I came as soon as I got your message,” he whispered.

  “You don’t have to whisper, she can’t hear you. She’s in a coma,” said David.

  “So how is she?”

  “Apparently people saw her getting out of a bus downtown. She must have had a muscle spasm as she was stepping off the bus because she fell like a log, headfirst, and smashed it right into the curb. Doctors say they won’t know the extent of the damage until she wakes up, but they’re hopeful that there won’t be any permanent damage.”

  “Fuck.”

  “Thanks for coming.”

  “What are best friends for?”

  “I didn’t know if we were still friends after yesterday.”

  “Pfff. You know what. I was thinking last night, replaying what happened over and over. I think I overreacted. I mean, you just sprung it on me without any preparation. It was like, hey sign this paperwork, you don’t have a choice in the matter. Jeni just wants to see me happy, and if Cryptobit falls and burns, at least I�
��ll know I gave it everything I could.”

  “What are you saying?” asked David.

  “I’m saying I’m in. Let’s do this. Let’s get the funding, save the world, and get you some health insurance so you can pay for this goddamned hospital bill without going bankrupt.”

  David went up to Andrew and gave him a huge bear hug.

  “That’s enough, kemosabe. The hard work is still in front of us. Let’s just focus on your sister for now. And for god’s sake, get that beard back as quickly as possible. You look terrible. You look older without it than you do with it.”

  David smiled.

  Chapter 39

  David’s little hacienda apartment was finally coming together. When Megan left, it seemed like she had taken the soul of the place with her. But little by little, David found cheap items at yard sales that made the place feel more like home again. One weekend, he picked up a pair of nice old wooden chairs from a free pile on the side of the road a few blocks down. When he found them, they were in pretty bad shape with a bunch of bangs and nicks and loose pieces hanging off. But with a screwdriver, a couple long screws, a piece of sandpaper, and a small tin of clear finish (a grand total of $6.28 from Ace Hardware), they looked pretty good. For his dining room table, David picked up an old door and four posts at a salvage shop for twenty dollars and a can of grey spray paint. He used these little projects to stay busy when he wasn’t working on Cryptobit.

  Andrew joined David on his morning runs. But due to Heather’s situation, the runs were more like somber walks. As they made it back to David’s apartment, Andrew fell onto the black leather couch that David bought the week before.

  “I can’t believe you found this at Goodwill. The Goodwill guys must be making out like bandits.”

  David wasn’t paying attention. He sat at his computer and logged into his bank account. He stared at the balance. After paying the invoices for the contractors he had hired and this week’s rent, he wondered if he had enough to pay the hospital bill.

  “How was your sister this morning?”

  “Good, I guess. I thought she smiled, but the nurse told me it was just a reflex.”

  “They know when she’ll wake up?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Sucks.”

  They both didn’t say anything for a while.

  “When did the Rocketship guys say they would get back to you?”

  “Was supposed to be this week, but who knows. It’s Thursday, so if we don’t hear back by tomorrow, it probably won’t be until next week.”

  “What’s taking them so long? Didn’t they know by the time you walked out of the room whether or not they were going to invest? You told them I was back in, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, I told them. I don’t know what’s holding them up. But this whole thing has been so confusing, I don’t know what to expect any more. Just when I think things are going to work out, they fall apart again. I should get back to work, though. We shouldn’t put our whole lives on hold just for a stupid email.”

  Andrew jumped up from the couch.

  “No. I know just what you need. And it’s not work. Come on, you need to get your mind off things. Let’s go to Carson Hot Springs.”

  “I should probably just go back to the hospital in case Heather wakes up.”

  “Just take a little time away. Clear your head. Lots going on. Trust me.”

  “Okay.”

  Upon arriving at Carson Hot Springs, David and Andrew walked into the white historic hotel that looked like it had been pulled out of a Wild West ghost town. The hundred-year-old building hadn’t been used as a hotel for years since a modern resort had been built around it. But you still had to check in and buy your tickets for the mineral bath soak in the main lodge.

  “Two soaks, please,” said Andrew.

  A large old man with a wart on his nose put down a newspaper, the Carson News. David snuck a peek and noticed he was reading the obituaries. The man wiggled up to the counter in no rush, as if David and Andrew had interrupted his important work. He looked the two young men up and down and took David’s credit card without saying a word.

  “Is the place pretty empty?” asked Andrew.

  The man grunted.

  Andrew didn’t seem to notice the grunt and continued: “Can I ask you a question?”

  The man swiped Andrew’s card and handed it back to him.

  “I guess.”

  “The new resort is huge, but it never seems like there are many cars parked out there and I haven’t seen anyone walking around the resort building. What’s going on?”

  He rolled his eyes.

  “The place was bought by some Koreans with more money than sense a few years ago. I guess they had a Field of Dreams moment.”

  David snorted: “If you build it, they will come.”

  “Yeah, well, they built it and you can guess what happened next.”

  “So now it’s like a ghost resort?”

  “I guess. Here, sign this and hand your tickets to Henry in the bathhouse.”

  They walked out the front door. It was cold and drizzling rain, but it felt good, refreshing. They went into the bathhouse. It was dim and lined wall-to-ceiling with cedar. The room with the attendant was filled with cots sitting low to the ground. They handed their paper tickets to the attendant, a middle-aged man with a handlebar mustache reading a paperback novel. If you had seen this man walking down the street, you would assume he was a lumberjack with his checkered shirt and faded jeans.

  “Take off your clothes and go to tubs three and four when you’re ready,” said the man. “And turn off your cell phones.” The attendant went to the tubs and turned the water on.

  David reached into his pocket and checked his email. He only got one bar of reception and the Cryptobit email client seemed stuck. He left the phone on, but put it on mute, and stuck it back into his pants.

  Stupid technology.

  After they soaked for thirty minutes in scalding hot mineral-rich water with a sulfur concentration so high that the room smelled like rotten hard-boiled eggs, the attendant wrapped the friends in thick wool blankets on their cots and they lay there sweating for another thirty minutes. David fell asleep in the warm cocoon, but at some point his internal body temperature got so hot that he sat up panting and pulled off the blankets. Andrew had already gotten up and was in the shower.

  David’s phone buzzed. The attendant looked over at David with a scowl, even though there was nobody else in the room with them. David picked up his pants and stuck his hand deep into a pocket. Nothing. He stuck his hand in the other pocket and pulled out his phone.

  “Hey, this is David,” he whispered.

  “David, this is Frank. Where have you been? Did you get my email?”

  “Sorry, I was just…let me check.”

  David pulled the phone away from his ear and went to his email. It was still refreshing. One bar.

  “Hold on, I’ve got terrible reception here.”

  David looked at the attendant, who was trying to burn a hole in his head with his stare.

  “Is there a place with better reception?”

  “Try outside,” said the man.

  “One second, Frank.”

  David pulled on his pants and ran outside, still topless. The cool rain felt good on his sweaty hot skin. David checked his phone again. Three bars. He went to his email and saw two new messages. One from Frank Atari, and one from Legacy Good Samaritan Hospital.

  “Look David, you did great. Just like I said you would. I am sorry it took so long to get back to you, but we were just finalizing the term sheet with our lawyers. You should find it in your inbox now. And we’re ready to sign right now if you are.”

  David clicked on the attachment and waited for it to load. Two bars.

  “I am pulling up the doc now. Can you give me the net-net while it loads?”

  “We’re ready to put a million dollars in at two million pre-money valuation.”

  David was stunned. He stood
there silently.

  “David? You still there?”

  “Yes, sorry. That’s great.”

  “Good, so take the letter to your lawyers and let them look it over, and let Andrew see it too. Send back all your comments at once. If we can get this signed on Monday, we can be off to the races by the end of next week.”

  “Wow, I’m so excited. Frank, I don’t know if now’s the right time to ask this, and I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, but my sister’s got some major health stuff going on. I’m kind of in a pickle. Can you tell me, do you think it would be possible for me to take a small loan from the million dollars if I pay it back before we need it for Cryptobit?”

  “David? I can’t hear you very well. Are you still there? Did you say you had a question?”

  David’s phone started beeping. He looked at the screen. It was a blocked number.

  “Frank, I am sorry. I am getting another call, can I call you right back?”

  “Sure.”

  David accepted the call on the other end.

  “Hello, this is David.”

  “David, this is Dr. George Burnside calling about Heather Alexander.”

  “Yes.”

  “She has just woken up and is asking for you.”

  “Is she okay?”

  “Yes, but she is tired and in a lot of pain. How quickly can you get here?

  “I’m leaving right now.”

  Chapter 40

  Doug Kensington sat peacefully at his desk as someone on the speakerphone discussed the latest quarterly earnings. Doug hated traditional speakerphones, so when he built his office, he had the speakers and microphones distributed and hidden throughout the room. A complex piece of software analyzed in real time the sounds throughout the room so that Doug could speak from anywhere. The software could also cancel out any sounds that came from the speakers, so Doug would often listen to classical music while on a call and people would never know. He found it easier to pay attention to the drudgeries of earnings and loss statements when accompanied by Mozart’s Requiem.

  Just as the discussion on the phone began picking up, there was a knock at the door. Doug wasn’t used to knocks. Nobody was allowed in during these calls and thanks to the clever speaker system, Khelli could simply speak into his speakerphone to covertly ask Doug any pressing questions.