The Drucker Proxy

by Lior Samson

  “Not yet, I keep saying.”

  “Make it so, Bannon. Make it so.” Netsky turned back to his keyboard and started the ten-finger hailstorm again.

  At that moment, Jerry Pendrake entered, his face awash with confusion as Bannon pushed past him to leave. “I thought we had a meeting. What’s happening, Aram?”

  “You’re sure on top of things, Jerry—as usual. And punctual, as always.”

  “I was working on strategic planning.” He played with his left earlobe as he talked. “For the board meeting.”

  “The board meeting is us and our rubber-stamp brigade. We have more pressing matters.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as go talk with Bannon Turndale. And give him whatever he needs to make things happen.” Netsky turned back to his array of screens.

  Pendrake stood with his mouth open, making his weak chin even more noticeable. When Netsky returned to typing on his custom keyboard, Pendrake closed his mouth and walked away.

  — —

  Mandi Drucker was already at the hospital when Barbra arrived. “I see you got my message,” Barbra said. She set her purse on the bedside chair, marking it as her territory.

  “Yes, and I do read the news feeds. Any word? I haven’t had a chance to talk with the docs yet.”

  “No, nothing yet. Nothing good yet. He had more surgery. Still out. They didn’t actually call it a coma, but that’s what it seems to be.”

  “How’s Becca taking it?”

  “Freaked. And the boys?”

  “Mark and Toby hardly know their father. They know about him, but that’s mostly from reading news stories. Besides, they’re teenagers. They have their own worlds. Even I sometimes go for a week or more with barely more than a glimpse of a passing shape. ‘Hi, Mom, can I have the keys. Bye, Mom, I’ll be at Angelo’s.’ You know how it is. Or you soon will.”

  “Yeah, Becca is twelve going on seventeen. I don’t remember being so into boys at her age. She came back from camp full of stories, but not about horses or canoeing. It was all about the hunk who was the sailing instructor or the really, really cute older boys, some Counselor-in-Training, the guy at the stables. I’m thinking I may have to start her on the pill this year.”

  “They grow up fast these days, that’s for sure.” Mandi stared off into the distance for a moment, then looked back at Barbra. “And how are you? This has got to be tough for you.”

  “Well, I’m tough, too. And I have a lot to do to keep my mind off worst-case scenarios. Adam Treadwell is now acting CEO, so I’ve stepped in to take over his duties. Overwhelming. And the stock is taking a big hit. No, not a hit; it’s in freefall. We’re trying to counter that by moving up some of the new technology announcements, but the tech press isn’t buying it. Hey, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to bore you with this stuff.”

  “It’s not boring. Remember, I started Drucker Tech with Cole. We nursed it together through the lean years. I was pregnant with Mark when we were awarded our first patents.”

  “And you fought hard for a better settlement after the divorce.”

  “I had two young children to raise on my own. Cole was already the absent father.”

  “He sued for custody.”

  “A tactical maneuver. We both knew that. Look, those battles are ancient history. He moved on, I moved on.”

  “And yet you’re here.”

  “I didn’t stop loving him. I didn’t stop caring.”

  The two women locked eyes for several long seconds before Barbra looked away. “I suppose …”

  “Look, Barbra, I don’t want or need anything from you or Cole. I have enough. I had ten good years with the man I loved, and now I have two wonderful sons who are almost grown. Was I angry when we split? You better believe I was. He dumped me and tried to pull a fast one so the merged company would not fall under community property law. Was I hurt? Damn right I was. I was being shut out and replaced by a newer model. So I fought back. I didn’t win, but I did win enough.

  “I’m sure there’s nothing I could do for you, Barbra, nothing you need from me, but if there ever were, you know where to find me. I’m not angry at you. I never have been. It was all about Cole. Funny, that. It’s always been all about Cole, as I’m sure you figured out long ago. Anyway, I’ll leave you with him. Please let me know if there’s any change.” She reached over and touched Cole’s arm, then backed away.

  Barbra watched Mandi leave. She looked down at her husband’s silent form, watching his chest rise and fall in synch with the huffing of the ventilator that was keeping him alive. “Todd, if you can hear me, I’m here. I love you, Todd. I’m here. Todd, please wake up. Please come back.”

  — —

  The restaurant was crowded and noisy. Barbra spotted a magenta-haired woman studying her menu in a booth at the side. She skirted the queue of customers waiting for a table and made straight for the booth. “I will tell you, Dana,” she said, as she sat down on the far side, “you are easy to spot in a crowd.”

  “I know. Sometimes that’s good, sometimes not. That’s why I had you meet me here. It’s not one of my usual haunts and not a fave of the tech press crowd. So, we can talk. Probably safe.”

  “You make it sound all cloaky and daggery.”

  “Sort of is. We should order first, otherwise we’ll be sitting here forever with nothing but air to suck on.”

  “What’s good here?”

  “Everything, I’m told. Middle East fusion at its highest and most fused. Good wine list, too. I already ordered a bottle to share. Should be here any minute, so get ready to order.”

  “You do it. I’ve been making decisions all day, and I’m all decisioned out.”

  “Okay. I can do that. How’s your Todd doing?”

  “My Todd is not doing, not anything. It’s been nearly three weeks and no sign of anything going on. They’ve done the brain scans and the transcranial whatever and all their abracadabra medical magic. Nothing. He’s not brain dead, but he might as well be. The docs are funny sometimes. They say he’s not in a persistent vegetative state because it hasn’t been long enough to be called persistent. Becca asked whether Dad was a vegetable, and I told her no. But the real reason is that ‘vegetable’ is not in the neurological vernacular anymore.”

  “You talk about it as if this all were happening to someone else.”

  “It is. At least that’s how it feels. I’m living in a different world now, a world without Todd. I don’t think he’s coming back. I’ve been reading up on this stuff, and the odds are so against a recovery. The longer he goes on like this, the worse the odds. I live on data and probabilities, not on hope. My mother lived on hope, and it got her nowhere.”

  “Your mother?”

  “Trailer trash. She was a single mother who got free housing in return for unclogging toilets and nagging neighbors who didn’t pay rent on time. She lived on dreams and denial. You know how I got my name, Barbra Ann Wilson?”

  “No. How?”

  “The Beach Boys. My mother was obsessed with them. Barbra Ann. Ba-ba-bah ba-Barbra Ann. My sister was named Brianna, Brianna Wilson. That says it all. Oh, and the spelling, B-A-R-B-R-A. that was her homage to Streisand, her other idol. She had this screwy notion about a kind of sympathetic magic that, with the right namesakes for us, we would somehow rise to similar heights.”

  “Well, you certainly did all right. What about your sister?”

  “Killed in a motorcycle crash at seventeen. Her biker boyfriend survived to fight off my mother when she tried to kill him with a tire iron. She didn’t need to. He bought it a year later in a bar fight that turned sour. Great family stories. I got a lot of them.”

  “Don’t we all.”

  “Yeah? What about you?”

  “A charmed life. No, really. I had everything a girl could want—except parents. Freddy and Aileen never grew up. They didn’t need to. They were Freddy and Aileen to everybody, including me. Not Mom and Dad, no. Freddy and Aileen, always generous, always ready to
party and please everyone who showed up at the door. I had no idea how they survived, but there was always money whenever it was needed. It wasn’t until I started applying to colleges that I learned they had never filed tax returns, never held jobs, never gotten licenses. My uncle Tommy finally told me the story one time when he was high, which he almost always was, along with almost everyone I knew back then.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  “My dad made a score, a big one, mega, once. He squirreled away the proceeds and slowly doled them out over the decades. Never dealt drugs again, never even drove again. Paid for everything in cash that just appeared whenever needed.”

  “Wow, are your folks still alive?”

  “Oh yeah, still living the dream, still dreaming their lives away in a cannabis haze. Except life caught up with them, and now weed is legal. If uncle Tommy is right about the size of the Big Score, there will still be wads of bills left even when they finally cash in.”

  “So, where’d you end up going to school?”

  “Columbia. I wanted the dead set opposite to the desert isolation I grew up in.”

  “How did you manage that? Columbia’s not cheap. Did you pay in cash?”

  “No, I applied as undocumented and got in on a sympathy wave after all that alt-right anti-immigrant shit died down. Eventually I got all the papers I needed using my grandmother’s maiden name. I liked the sound of Carmody. I was even considering Devine as my first name, but then thought better of it.”

  “So, is Dana your real name?”

  “Real as any. Growing up I was ‘Hey Kid’ at home and Sunny at school. That was short for Sunflower, Sunflower Danica McAllen-Bradley. But I’ve been legally Dana Carmody since I turned eighteen. And here’s our wine. Let’s order.”

  “Okay, and then you have to tell me what you found out.”

  Dana ordered the Chef’s Sampler for two, then raised her glass to toast. “Here’s to health: yours, mine, and of those we love.”

  “Amen. Now what’s the real story.”

  “Well, it’s a little like yours about Todd, more about what we don’t know than what we do, but what we don’t know is interesting. The car has been in the hands of an automotive forensics team. Who even knew there was such a thing? Anyway, the geek squad quickly eliminated brake failure or other electro-mechanical problems. The black box, which is actually gray on today’s cars, recorded the car accelerating with wheels pointing straight ahead just before it went airborne. A team from Tensora was called in to help analyze possible causes, which were pretty much narrowed down to one of three things: either deliberate driver action or driver failure, like a heart attack, or some new kind of major system failure, which, of course, Tensora claims can’t happen and wants to be able to prove never did happen. And then …”

  “And then?”

  “And then, nothing. Suddenly no more leaks, no new statements to the press, no ‘authorities are working on’ gibberish, nothing. The investigation has gone dark, and it’s been just long enough that the whole story is off the press-corps radar. You and your people seem to have righted the corporate ship and steered it around or through the storm. ‘Construction Company CEO Still in Coma’ is nobody’s headline. So, nobody cares.”

  “You once said you knew people at Tensora. What about them?”

  “Nobody’s talking. Nobody even takes my calls. I haven’t given up, but I also haven’t gotten anything. Oh, here’s our food coming. Let’s eat, drink, and take our minds off it all.”

  — 9 —

  Barbra sat on the sofa as her preteen daughter in shorts and a vintage Twenty Øne PilØts tee-shirt paced in front of her and shouted. “You can’t be serious, Mom. We can’t do that to Daddy. It’s, like, murder.”

  “Becca, honey, it’s not. It’s—”

  “It is so. Why would you want to kill him?”

  “I don’t want to lose him any more than you do. But he’s already gone. The daddy you knew, the man I knew, isn’t there anymore. There’s a body in that hospital room being kept going by machines, but Coleman Todd Drucker, the person, is gone.”

  “No! What if you’re wrong? I read about this woman who was, like, locked in. Everybody thought she wasn’t even conscious, but she heard everything and knew what was happening, and they finally hooked up this gizmo and she started communicating again, but with the help of some computer thing, and …”

  “There are lots of stories on the Internet, honey, but this isn’t a story, and your dad is not minimally conscious. He’s gone. All the hospital is asking is whether he should be taken off the ventilator that breathes for him and keeps his heart beating.”

  “Right, so that he’ll be dead, so then you can get all his money.”

  “Oh, Becca, you are so wrong. You—”

  “That’s why you married him anyway, isn’t it? You were just some—”

  “Now you wait just one minute, Becca Brie Drucker. You do not get to say things like that. I know you are upset, but money has nothing to do with this. It didn’t even have anything to do with me marrying your father. I married him because—”

  “Because you wanted his money. He told me once about where you came from, your family. You were a gold digger but good in the sack. He—”

  Barbra grabbed her, pulled her down onto the sofa, and slapped her. “You do not get to talk like that to me. Not ever.”

  Becca’s eyes widened as she put her hand to her reddening cheek. “Go ahead, hit me again, but that won’t stop me from telling the truth. That’s what he said.”

  Barbra’s eyes were closed as she took several deep breathes. “I’m sorry for slapping you. Maybe he did say that. Maybe he was drunk. That doesn’t give you the right to repeat it, though. It’s not about the money. It never was. I had stock options and a generous 401K before we got involved. Live or die, married or not, I was already set. Even if he dumped me like he dumped Mandi, I’m covered under our pre-nup, which a whole cadre of lawyers helped negotiate. So it’s not about money.” She opened her eyes and looked at Becca. “It’s about letting go. That’s hard, I know. And I know how much you love him. I know how close you’ve been, so this will be extra hard for you. But it’s something we have to do, something we both have to be grown up about.”

  Becca closed her eyes, squeezing out pools of tears. “Oh, Mom.” She leaned into her mother’s arms. “I don’t think I can do it. I don’t think I can be grown up. I don’t think I can let him go.”

  They sobbed together for minutes until Becca pulled back and wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her tee-shirt. “Do we have to do it right away? Can I see him again?”

  “Yes, you can see him again. If you want, we can be there together when he … when he passes.”

  “I think I want that. But can I change my mind if … if I just can’t handle it?”

  “Yes, you can change your mind.”

  — —

  There were two doctors and two men in suits in the room when Barbra and Becca arrived at the hospital. “Who are you? What’s going on here?”

  “I’m Dr. Formosa, head of the medical ethics group here. You already know Dr. Baretti. We’re taking the patient off life support.”

  “No you are not. I haven’t authorized this. I’m his wife, I have medical power of attorney.”

  The taller of the other two men stepped forward. “I’m Bannon Turndale, and my authority supersedes yours. Under the circumstances, I have power of attorney.”

  “What circumstances? What authority?” She jabbed a finger toward the doctor. “And don’t you make a single move unless you want to face charges for wrongful death and one whopping lawsuit for medical malpractice.”

  Dr. Formosa stepped back from the bed and held up his hands. “I’m not going to do anything until this matter is settled.”

  “It’s settled. The hospital already has a copy of my husband’s advance medical directive and his notarized assignment to me granting me durable power of attorney to act on his behalf should he ever become
incapacitated.”

  Turndale reached into his breast pocket and removed a thick folded document. “And I have my documents with me, including a copy already filed with the hospital and this copy for you. It’s a binding contract granting medical power of attorney to Existendia Enterprises, a California corporation. I am acting on behalf of the corporation.”

  “I don’t even know if you can do that, grant medical power of attorney to a corporation.”

  “Oh, absolutely. In the case of Reinholt v. Stanford—”

  “I don’t give a shit about either Reinholt or Stanford. I’m getting my lawyers here to stop you.” She pulled her phone from her purse. “And you, doctor, had better get the hospital legal people in here, too, if you want to continue to have a hospital to work for.”

  “I’ll see what I can do. We thought this was settled.”

  “It is. It was. You already had my husband’s papers, properly formulated and duly notarized.”

  Turndale nodded. “Yes, and when were these papers drawn up, Mrs. Drucker?”

  “It’s Wilson, Ms. Wilson, and the papers were drawn up years ago.”

  “Exactly. And your husband completed arrangements with us just over a year ago, so our authority supersedes yours. If you read this contract, you will find that, in the event of your husband becoming non compis mentis, we have medical power of attorney.”

  “That makes no sense. Why would he sign that? I’m his wife. Why didn’t he tell me.”

  “I’m afraid that’s outside my area of expertise. Why do husbands do things without telling their wives? I don’t know. But I do know this is a legally binding contract. And I expect—”

  He was interrupted by the arrival of another doctor and a man in the telltale gray suit of the legal profession. The man stepped into the middle of the assembled group and did a quick pirouette. “Hello, everyone. I’m Chase Garlock, chief counsel for the hospital. Will somebody tell me what is going on here?”

  “I’m Bannon Turndale, attorney for Existendia Enterprises, a California—”