by Tim Downs
“I took advantage of you, agreed—we all did. But you need to remember that I did it for your own good.”
“For my good!”
“I saw a business opportunity here—an opportunity for you to take on a role you might not otherwise consider.”
“Yeah—like the alcoholic mother in Lips of Fury.”
“On the contrary—this role had dignity, it had stature. Now tell the truth: Haven’t you enjoyed playing the role of visionary, of prophetess, of spiritual mentor to an entire generation? You had a conversation with an angel—now everyone wants to know what you think.”
“But it didn’t happen, Morty. It was all just a role.”
“Is that so different for you?”
She looked at him. “What are you getting at?”
“You’re an actress, sweetheart. You’re paid to play a role; you play the role, and when you go home at night you set the role aside. It’s what you’ve been doing for twenty years. Is this role really so different? Harrison Ford did a fourth Indiana Jones movie at the age of sixty-five. Why? Because he enjoys the role, and because he couldn’t afford not to—the franchise is a gold mine. Your situation is no different. You have a very profitable role here; do you really want to give it up?”
She paused. “You’re saying I should keep playing this role?”
“The question isn’t whether the vision really happened or not. The question is, ‘Do you enjoy this role?’ and ‘Is it profitable?’”
“You mean profitable for you.”
“I don’t eat unless you eat. I’m a parasite, remember?”
Wes saw where Biederman was headed and joined in. “Biederman’s got a point, Ms. Hayden. I apologize for the past, but let’s look to the future. It’s already done—the book, the publicity campaign, even your own promotional tour. The question isn’t whether you want to play the role; the question is, ‘Why shouldn’t I get paid for a role I already played?’ There’s money in this—big money—if we all just keep our heads here.”
Hayden seemed lost in thought. “Prophetess. Visionary. I could get used to that. No more crash diets; no more tummy tucks; no more push-up bras from the Spanish Inquisition.” She looked over at Wes’s desk. “Is that an Interstuhl Silver?”
“It sure is,” Wes replied. “Have a seat—give it a try.”
She did, slowly rocking back and forth and caressing the arms. She looked up at Biederman. “What about the fiasco at that book signing yesterday—when this moron tried to do a swan dive on top of me? That made the evening news.”
Biederman shrugged. “An avid fan tries to touch the prophetess. That was terrific publicity, sweetheart—we should have planned it.”
Now Wes rose to his feet too, his enthusiasm growing. “What Biederman is saying is that everything’s still going according to plan. We can pick up right where we left off.” He paused. “That is, if you say so.”
Biederman smiled. “Think about it, Liv. A second book—maybe a third. And let’s not forget the movie.”
Hayden swiveled back and forth in her chair. “You really think you can sell the film rights to this?”
“Studios are calling me, sweetheart. They’re hungry.”
“I would star, of course.”
“Whatever you say.”
She looked at Wes. “This second book—would I have to write it?”
“I can handle everything. Production, editing, cover design—you wouldn’t have to lift a finger. All you’d have to do is sit down for a chat with Oprah from time to time.”
“I like Oprah,” Hayden said thoughtfully. “I think we’ve bonded.”
“What do you say, sweetheart?”
Hayden’s expression abruptly hardened. “I say we need to renegotiate the finances—that’s what I say. I’m feeling a little left out, if you know what I mean. What was I getting out of this deal—just the author’s measly cut while you three walked away with the lion’s share?”
“A minor oversight, easily corrected,” Biederman said apologetically. “I’m sure we can easily come to terms that everyone will find amenable.”
“Good. Let’s do it now.”
Wes blinked. “Now? Wouldn’t you like to think about it first?”
“Why? I know what I want and I know what I deserve. Okay, here’s my offer: I take everything—you boys get nothing.”
The room became suddenly quiet.
“How’s that again?” Wes asked feebly.
“Sweetheart, that’s a little one-sided, don’t you think?”
“You’re right, Morty, that did sound a little selfish. I mean, what’s in it for you three? I didn’t make that clear, did I? Okay, let me put it another way: I take everything, and you boys don’t have to spend the next ten years in prison. How’s that?”
No one replied.
Hayden stood up. “I could sue all three of you morons—I could take you for everything you’ve got. I could sue that hospital; I could take this publishing company; and I could put all three of you in prison for a very long time. But why should I do that when you can all work for me—for nothing?”
Now Kemp spoke up for the first time. “That’s not exactly fair, Liv. After all, we’re the ones who—”
Hayden turned on him. “Excuse me. Who are you?”
Kemp blinked. “I’m the nurse, remember? This whole thing was my idea. I’m the one who—”
“That’s who you were,” Hayden corrected. “Who are you now? You’re nobody, that’s who. Morty can handle the film rights; the boy wonder here can write me another book. What do I need you for?”
Kemp had no answer.
Hayden stepped forward until she was almost nose-to-nose with him. “I’ve known a lot of men like you,” she said. “I even married a couple. You’re the worst kind of parasite of all—at least Morty feeds me before he sucks my blood. But you—you’re the kind who takes everything and gives nothing back. Consider yourself lucky, nurse—these other two are going to be working for me for nothing. All I want from you is for you to get out of my sight.”
Then she stepped in even closer and lowered her voice to a whisper. “Oh, and one more thing. I might forgive you for messing with my head, but don’t you ever mess with a woman’s heart—you got that? My ‘one true love’—how desperate do you think I am? Now get out of here.”
Kemp turned without a word and slunk toward the exit. At the door he looked back at Biederman and Wes; he put his hand to his head in an “I’ll call you” gesture, but neither man would make eye contact with him. He left and closed the door behind him.
Hayden took a seat on the Interstuhl again and slowly crossed her legs. “I always wanted one of these,” she said. “Okay, you parasites—let’s get to work.”
Kemp stepped out onto the sidewalk and stopped. Parked directly in front of the building was his very own Mercedes CL65, and leaning against the passenger door with his trunklike arms folded across his chest was a glowering Tino Gambatti.
“Hello, Bobby.”
“Tino—what are you doing here?”
“I came to see you. We’re partners, remember? I was concerned about you.”
“Me? What about you? I saw you at the book signing—who were those guys who took you away?”
“Police. Homicide detectives, to be specific.”
“What did they want?”
“I think you know.”
“What does that mean?”
“They had questions about the disappearance of a certain neurologist from UCLA. I had no answers for them, and fortunately they had no evidence—so they were forced to release me. Why do you think they wanted to question me, Bobby? No one knows me here—I’m from out of town. Someone must have tipped them off.”
“Well, it sure wasn’t me,” Kemp said.
“I’m glad to hear that,” Tino said. “We’re partners, after all.”
Kemp swallowed hard. “About our deal. I’m afraid there might be a small—delay.”
Tino smiled thinly. “Yes—I
saw it on the evening news. You just had to see her, didn’t you? You couldn’t leave well enough alone.”
“I didn’t think she’d recognize me.”
“You didn’t think. You never think—that’s your problem, Bobby. I followed you here this morning, you and Biederman and Kalamar—and Ms. Hayden of course. I know the four of you just had a meeting, and I’m sure by now you’ve told her everything—once she recognized you, what choice did you have? I’ve done business with Ms. Hayden before, remember? I have great respect for her as a businesswoman—she’s very shrewd, very practical. Judging by the fact that you’re out here on the sidewalk while our fellow partners are still inside, my guess is that she’s found some use for them but you’ve been sacked. Am I right?”
Kemp nodded.
“That’s too bad. If she doesn’t need you, she won’t want my money anymore either. Once a woman begins to clean house it’s difficult to stop her.”
Kemp said nothing.
“That’s unfortunate for both of us,” Tino said. “If you’re out of the partnership, you have no way to repay me—and if I’m out of the partnership, I have no way to repay the people I owe.”
“Take the car,” Kemp suggested. “It’s yours.”
“It’s a lease,” Tino said. “I already checked.” He stepped aside and opened the passenger door. “Take a ride with me. Let’s put our heads together. Let’s figure something out.”
Kemp suddenly bolted and started running frantically down the sidewalk—but he could hear Tino’s voice calling calmly behind him.
“It won’t do you any good, Bobby—you have to settle your debts. It’s just business, Bobby. It’s just business.”
45
Why do I have to ride in a wheelchair?” Leah grumbled.
“Stop whining,” Natalie said. “It’s hospital rules—everybody has to do it. Ask Shanice if you don’t believe me.”
The nurse nodded. “Your mom is right. We don’t want our patients falling down on the way out the door. After you get outside we don’t care anymore—you can fall down all you want to.”
Leah reluctantly lowered herself into the wheelchair; painted across the back were the words ucla med center in stenciled block letters. Natalie lowered the foot pedals for her daughter and Leah tried to place a foot on each of them, but her legs weren’t quite long enough and they were left dangling from the slung leather seat.
“Have you got everything?” Natalie asked. “Your books? Your iPod?”
Leah nodded and they started rolling toward the hall.
Shanice held the door for them. “Bye, Leah. Come back and visit us, okay?”
“No way.”
As the wheelchair rolled through the doorway Shanice put a hand on Natalie’s arm. “You gonna be okay?”
“We’ll get by,” Natalie said. “We’re headed in the right direction now; the rest will take care of itself.”
In the hallway Leah turned and asked, “Where’s Mr. Callahan?”
“You can call him ‘Matt’ when you’re not in school, honey. He’s pulling the car around.”
Leah began to look left and right down the long corridor. It was late morning, and the hallway was crowded with doctors and nurses and visitors searching for patients’ rooms.
“Who are you looking for?” Natalie asked.
“Emmet,” Leah said.
“Emmet works nights, honey. He won’t be here this morning.”
Leah tried to stamp her foot but missed the pedal. “I wanted to thank him.”
“For what?”
“For coming to see me after my operation.”
Natalie squatted down beside the wheelchair and looked at her daughter. “When did Emmet come to see you, honey?”
“I told you—after my operation. He said you asked him to.”
Natalie frowned. “I did?”
“Well, he came anyway.”
“After your operation? When they brought you back to your room?”
“No, before that.”
“Before that? In the recovery room?”
“Right—when I first woke up.”
Natalie stroked her daughter’s hair. “Visitors aren’t allowed in the recovery room, honey—that’s a hospital rule too.”
“He was there, Mom. He said he walked right by you.”
“If he did I would have seen him. I was in the waiting room every minute—I never left.”
“Maybe he knows a back way.”
Natalie smiled. “There’s no ‘back way’ into the recovery room, honey. I should know—I’ve worked here for ten years.”
Leah was losing her patience. “He was there. I saw him. I talked to him.”
“Okay. But you need to understand something about anesthesia—the medicine they give you to make you fall asleep. When you wake up you can feel a little fuzzy-headed. Did you notice that? Things can look different; people might sound funny; sometimes you can even imagine things that aren’t really there.”
“He was there.”
“Okay, honey—whatever you say.”
Natalie turned the wheelchair toward the elevators—but just as they started down the hallway the door to Leah’s room opened again and Shanice stepped out.
“Natalie—good, you’re still here. You forgot something.” She handed Natalie an envelope with her name handwritten on the front.
“What’s this?”
“I don’t know. It was under Leah’s pillow. Looks like a card to me.”
Natalie opened the envelope and took out the card. On the front of the card it simply said, “Wishing You a Speedy Recovery.” She opened the card and looked inside—it was unsigned. A slip of paper fell out of the card and drifted silently to the floor. She picked it up and looked at it.
It was a cashier’s check for a million dollars.
Her mouth dropped open.
“You forgot something too,” the nurse said to Leah. “They found it in the recovery room a week ago, right after your operation. They said it must be yours.”
The nurse handed her a small brown cupcake wrapped in plastic.
Leah broke into a huge smile and held the cupcake up to show her ashen-faced mother—but just as she was about to speak she saw something from the corner of her eye.
She saw Emmet standing at the end of the long hallway, leaning on his mop and smiling at her.
He raised one finger to his lips and went, Shhh.
EPILOGUE
I’ve told this story a hundred times; some people believe it and some people don’t. Funny thing is, I tell it the same way every time, so the difference can’t be me. I guess some people are ready to believe and some people just aren’t.
I suppose some people think they’re too smart for this kind of thing; they’ve got the universe all figured out and things like this just don’t fit in. Even God doesn’t fit in—they’ve got him all explained away too. The way I look at it, it’s a really weird universe out there, and you better be careful when you start talking about what can and can’t happen.
But what do I know? I’m just a girl who sees angels.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank the following individuals for their assistance in my research for this book: Barbara Anderson, RN, Neuroscience/Trauma Unit Director, UCLA Medical Center; Susan Baillie, PhD, Director of Graduate Medical Education, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA; Judy Glover, Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist, Raleigh, North Carolina; Peggy Patrick Medberry, Literary Manager, Patrick-Medberry Associates, Valencia, California; Drs. Chip and Ann Smithson, Cary, North Carolina; Sheila Trivedi, Beverlywood Realty, Los Angeles; and the helpful nurses of UCLA Medical Center who were kind enough to interrupt their lunch breaks to speak with an unknown novelist in the UCLA cafeteria.
Thanks to all the others who contributed to the creation of this book: my literary agent and friend, Lee Hough of Alive Communications; my beautiful wife Joy for reading my chapters each day and lending so many valuable insights; story editor Amanda B
ostic for her helpful suggestions on timeline and plot; copy editor Deborah Wiseman for her unerring red pen; my publisher, Allen Arnold; and the rest of the staff at Nelson Books for their dedication, hard work, and patience with demanding writers.
Mea Culpa
I apologize profusely if any of my readers are tempted to suspect that Kemp McAvoy’s derogatory comments about the nursing profession reflect my own opinions as well. Allow me to remind you that Kemp is a complete scumbag, whereas I am a very nice guy. Both my wife and I are ardent fans of nurses and the nursing profession as a whole; this book was co-dedicated to two wonderful nurses who have been especially important to our family. We sincerely believe that nurses contribute just as much as doctors to the process of healing—sometimes more. May God bless them for lending a compassionate face to the sometimes formidable and bewildering field of medicine.
Those familiar with UCLA Medical Center may not recognize some of my descriptions of the facility. That’s because I visited UCLA to do my background research in January of 2008, five months before the doctors, nurses, and angels of UCLA made their move to the beautiful new Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center just across the street.
A special word of thanks to my publisher and my agent who were forced to endure a novel wherein a publisher is portrayed as desperate and incompetent and an agent is described as a “bloodsucking parasite.” I know better—and please note that in chapter 1 writers are described as “basically pond scum.” Thanks for all your work, guys.
