But what he hadn’t counted on was the doctor’s commitment to his new work.
“God has sent me to tell the world about His love. He will protect me against all who would do me harm. I have no doubt of that, believe me. Thaddeus, you’re part of my mission. I can feel it.”
Thaddeus blushed. “I don’t feel a part of anyone’s mission. I’m just a lawyer up here in Flagstaff doing my job. It just so happens Ms. Turkenov lives here and I do too.”
“I can see God using you in my work. And what about you, Dr. Murfee, what’s your take on all this since you’ve read my records?”
Katy nodded. “I’m totally fascinated by what happened to you. Your brain activity was absolutely non-existent when these incredible visions came to you. We have immutable proof of that in your brain scans. So what happened to you? And how did you recover so fully from the terrible infection that rendered you comatose for a week? I have lots of questions.”
“Most medical professionals do come away from my records simply stunned. No one’s ever seen anything like it. I was truly dead and came back. They were within an hour of removing my life support when I suddenly opened my eyes.”
Katy stirred on the couch, shifting her position and moving her legs up under. She took a drink from her Coke and fixed her eyes on the doctor.
“Do you—would you mind telling me about the vision itself?”
“Vision? It wasn’t a vision. It was an actual experience. I died and went to heaven.”
Katy nodded. “All right. Experience. Would you mind telling me about that?”
“Sure.” Dr. Sewell drew his arms back along the armrests of his chair. He stretched out his legs and crossed them. His head went back and he looked up at the ceiling, gathering his thoughts.
“Many near death experiences or NDE’s share a common pattern. The patient’s heart stops beating and a bright light appears, a tunnel, music, and bright light and maybe God. You can find that kind of NDE all over the Internet. Entire websites dedicated to those stories. But that wasn’t me.”
He paused and again looked up at the ceiling. He was gathering memories of the most important event in his life.
“I lapsed into a coma and vaguely, vaguely, vaguely knew I was a body in the ground. I was in muck and dirt and damp—wet—and I couldn’t breathe. Three inches above my face was solid rock. It prevented me from moving. If I even took too deep a breath, my chest pressed up against the rock and I was restricted. I couldn’t roll onto my side. And it was loud, angry noise. Have you ever been inside an MRI machine when that terrible banging begins? That’s what this was like but a thousand times louder. I could not only hear the banging I could feel it along the entire length of my body. This condition persisted for something like forty hours. I knew I was in hell. But then something funny happened. I saw music. It came in the form of raindrops coming out of the rock and as the drops hit the mud around me, they sounded a musical note. The music grew and swelled. It became symphonic, then it became heavenly and I found myself aloft, flying on a filament, moving through clean air with dappled sunshine all around, green fields, murmuring brooks, and I looked beyond me and realized I was traveling on a song. The notes were sweeping me along and it was a song I hadn’t heard since childhood when someone was singing me to sleep.”
“Goodness,” said Katy. “My mother used to do that for me.”
“Exactly.”
“Can I say something?” Thaddeus asked. He wished he could go upstairs and take a shower then retreat out back and work with his horse. This had become all too much. But neither did he want to dampen the conversation with his obvious discomfort with what was being said.
“Sure, Thad,” said the doctor, “what’s up?”
“Are you all right, honey?” Katy asked.
Thaddeus slowly nodded and came upright on the couch.
“I just remembered I have a call I need to make before four o’clock. I’m just going to climb upstairs and take care of that. Will you excuse me?”
“Sure,” said Dr. Sewell. “Actually, I’ve probably been talking too long anyway. I could stand to grab a shower and freshen up.”
“No!” said Katy resolutely. Then she heard the sound of her own voice and pulled back a notch. “I mean—would you please continue with your story. You’re in the air, moving through—was it heaven?”
“All right,” Thaddeus said. “Excuse me.”
Thaddeus stood and headed for the stairs. He could hear the doctor’s voice continuing with his drama as he hurried up the stairs.
Actually, there was no one to call. He just wanted to lose the suit, change into jeans and boots and a T-shirt and go see Coco.
Which he did.
Coco was loose in the corral and saw him coming. He walked up to the gate and lowered his head, eyeballing Thaddeus as he unlocked the gate. The horse knew. They always knew when it was time.
Thaddeus let himself inside and seized Coco by the halter.
“C’mon, Buddy,” he said. “Let’s go brush you. Then we’ll lunge you and maybe have a short spin around the property.”
The property he was referring to was fifteen hundred acres of PJ—piñon and juniper.
Coco let off a shuddering whinny and followed Thaddeus into the barn. There they connected, hand to brush to coat. Inside the huge house, perched on the side of a mountain, Katy and the visitor continued with the visitor’s journey to heaven.
For his part, climbing aboard Coco and walking off onto the land was the same thing for Thaddeus.
A journey to heaven.
And it was all Thaddeus had ever wanted.
Now if only Katy could find her own way. As he rode by the windows, he could peer inside the floor-to-ceiling windows of the family room. A glassy figure that he knew to be Katy on the couch could be seen small and helpless inside the house on the mountain.
He said a silent prayer that she would connect with something greater than herself and that it would take her the rest of the way.
For he was exhausted at that point. Almost too exhausted to continue on with her.
But he swallowed hard and fought back the tears.
He would never let her know that.
And Katy, watching him pass by fifty yards below, would never let him know that she already knew.
She returned her attention to the doctor. It was more than she had ever hoped for.
Heaven was real and waiting for her.
Now she only had to summon up the courage and go there herself. Or maybe it didn’t even take courage at all. Maybe it just took her letting go.
She watched Thaddeus disappear off-stage. She looked past the doctor out to the swell of the mountains and up to where the peaks disappeared into the clouds.
And she knew.
It had been right in front of her all the time. All she’d had to do was accept.
So she did the next indicated thing.
She let go and let God.
14
Anastasia was so wrapped up in her final year of med school that she handed off her mother’s estate questions to her husband, Jack Millerton. Jack was a sole practitioner CPA in Chicago and he felt that Uncle Roy—Nadia’s lowlife brother, as Jack referred to him—had picked Jack’s pocket by managing to get himself appointed as Nadia’s conservator.
“Talk about the fox in the hen house,” Jack told Anastasia one night. They had just finished dinner in their French Provincial dining room, paid for and deducted on their tax return by Jack. He fancied himself a great curator of fine art and furniture, all of which began life in his professional office where it was appropriately deducted on the corporate tax returns, but which, after only a short appearance on that professional stage, quickly found its way down to his home for personal use—a use definitely not allowable on Jack’s 1120S return. But Jack, in his usual sneaky pattern, didn’t really give a damn. He figured that if the IRS came snooping around, he’d simply move the furniture back up to the office for the duration of the siege then move it
back home again. Simple, tidy, and totally illegal.
But that was Jack, as Anastasia told her friends.
“Fox in the hen house?” said Anastasia. “Would you rather that you were in the hen house?”
“Well, it makes a helluva lot more sense. Do you want a used furniture guy managing Nadia’s million bucks or do you want her CPA son-in-law who has ethical restrictions placed on him by the state CPA licensing board?”
Anastasia had to fight off the laughter. Ethics? She thought. What ethics? Like most professionals burdened with ethics, Jack was all too quick to trot his ethics out when they would benefit him. Otherwise, they were never mentioned—or followed.
But Anastasia was true blue—or, more apt, she was not quite ready to eject Jack from her life yet; not until she had her M.D. degree under glass and on the wall. Nadia’s pill popping had come at a bad time: that was the bottom line for Anastasia. And another thought crossed her mind increasingly: if Nadia happened to die from her OD, shouldn’t she, Anastasia, be ready to take her cut of the estate soon after? She figured that with Uncle Roy standing between her and a few hundred thousand it would be hell to get him to turn loose of her money. So maybe it would be best to see husband Jack standing in the gap rather than Uncle Roy if Nadia nosedived.
“I would rather have you, Baby,” Anastasia said. She placed her forehead against Jack’s forehead and then kissed him. “Always rather have you.”
Jack took a drink of his Wild Turkey.
“Exactly. I say we go in with a petition to revoke Uncle Roy and have me appointed. Base it on malfeasance. You know Roy’s two weeks late with the initial inventory of your mother’s assets? Two weeks! Give me a break!”
“He is? Two weeks? No, I didn’t know.”
“I’m calling my lawyer. This has gone on long enough. You’re next-of-kin and you should know before Uncle Roy what assets Mama has. What the hell!”
“Yes, call that lawyer. I’m behind you on this, Jack. You know I always count on you for this kind of stuff.”
“I know you do, Baby. I know you do. We’ll have a petition to revoke on file this week. I can promise you that.”
And so he did. Friday afternoon, Federal Express delivered a certified petition to revoke conservatorship based on four acts of alleged malfeasance. It was signed by Jack under oath and notarized. The clerks at the Coconino County Clerk of the Court’s office sniggered when they saw it come in. Uncle Roy’s lawyer—Milbanks Wang—visited the court several times a week and reviewed the file himself—in itself billable hours, useless as they were. He would be apoplectic when he discovered the interloper had sullied his clean court file with some accusatory petition to revoke. The clerks could hardly wait to see his expression go from chipper to obscene. For Milbanks Wang was known for his rages and public meltdowns whenever he didn’t get his way. This development held great promise for the bystanders in the Clerk’s Office.
Sure enough, at four p.m., here came Attorney Wang to review his precious file with its promise of huge legal fees. Expecting to find the same old nothing new in the file, Wang was civil and courteous and even said “Thank you” when the clerk handed over the file. Then everyone watched out the corner of an eye.
It soon erupted.
“Holy shit! Who filed this?” Wang demanded of the clerk who had given him the file.
“I—I—did.”
“Well, take it out! Immediately.”
“Mr. Wang, I can’t just un-file something. That wouldn’t be legal.”
“I’m the lawyer! I say what’s legal and what’s not. I say take it out!”
“Let me get the Clerk.”
The deputy disappeared into a back office and reappeared moments later with Nancy J. Reardon, an extremely confident and competent black woman who outweighed the lesser Wang and would have crushed him in at least two out of three falls in the wrestling ring.
“Sir, are you having a problem out here?”
“Problem? You goddam right there’s a problem. Your helper filed this perjured petition in my case!”
“Well, it’s a properly formatted, properly signed pleading which self-identifies as having been signed under oath both by the petitioner and by his attorney too. I have no choice but to file such a document in my file.”
“My file!”
“Well, actually it’s the court’s file. Neither yours nor mine.”
“My file!”
The Clerk sighed and pressed her massive bosom against the filing counter.
“Look here, Mr. Wang. You can always file a motion to strike the pleading and take it up with Judge Gabberts. I would encourage you to do that. But I’m not removing that document from that file and if you do it I’ll have the sheriff arrest you.”
“On what charge?”
“Destruction of public property. Interference with an official act of an elected official. Theft. Perjury before an elected official. Do you want me to continue?”
She had her gaze screwed down tight on him now. Wang perceived the first round had been lost. Or maybe was a draw.
“I’ll be back this afternoon with a motion to strike the pleading.”
“We close at five, sir. You have fifty minutes left.”
Wang spun on his heel and leaped from the office.
Superior Court Clerk Nancy Reardon watched him go.
“Blowhard,” she whispered to her deputy. “Close five minutes early today, Cynthia.”
“You sure?”
“Did you hear me?”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
When the doors were bolted shut at 4:55 that afternoon, there had been no subsequent pleading filed.
Neither did anyone pay any attention to Wang’s bullheaded pounding on the door glass two minutes before five when he arrived with his paperwork.
* * *
Thirty minutes later, Wang was arguing with the nurses over getting to see Nadia Turkenov on his visit to her hospital room.
“She is my conservatorship,” Wang warned the nurse, Molly Potter, who blocked his entrance into Nadia’s small, glassed-in suite.
“Sir, I couldn’t care less. You aren’t family so you don’t get in.”
“But I think my client, Uncle Roy, is in with her.”
The nurse turned around and looked.
“Her daughter and her husband Mr. Millerton are in with Ms. Turkenov. Are they your client?”
“Certainly not. But they will want to see me.”
“Then when they come out, they can. You are welcome to wait at the end of the hall in the visitors’ area. There are soft drink machines, microwave—”
“No, no, no. That is Jack Millerton in that room and he is guilty of perjury. He filed papers in my case and I must talk to him!”
“And you shall. Just not in my patient’s room. It is not a conference room. It is the ICU room of a very sick hospital patient. Family only, Mr. Wang!”
Wang head-faked the nurse and stepped around her. Up to the window, he scurried and rapped the glass with his knuckles. Both the woman and man inside looked up from the patient. They studied Wang, who was now motioning them outside.
Jack Millerton said something to Anastasia and went around her. He stepped into the hallway.
“You’re Jack Millerton!” cried Milbanks Wang. His voice was accusatory and threatening. Jack took a step backward.
“Who the hell are you?” said Jack.
“I am the lawyer for Uncle Roy.”
Jack’s eyes narrowed. He scrunched up his face and moved a step closer to Wang.
“You’re the sombitch who beat us all to court. Bastard!”
Wang stepped back. He hadn’t counted on the CPA closing the gap between them. Encouraged, Jack closed the space between them again and Wang moved back again.
“You filed that pack of lies today!” cried Wang. “It’s all perjury and I’m going to see to it that you serve time in prison for what you’ve done.”
“You do that. In the meantime, I’ll have you disbarred!�
��
“For what? I haven’t done anything.”
“I rest my case. You’re two weeks late with the inventory. That’s malpractice, bub. We’re suing you personally next week. Malpractice insurance paid up? Goddamn well better be!”
Wang’s hands clenched and unclenched. He wasn’t sure about the insurance, and the malpractice threat rattled him not just a little. Did he owe these people a duty as clients? Or did he just owe a duty to Roy? Or maybe Nadia, too?
“Please, we need to talk about what’s best for Nadia,” said Wang, abruptly turning his horse around midstream. “That’s all that really matters here.”
“Goddam right. My mother-in-law—”
Wang had suddenly had the best idea of the day and it stopped Millerton in mid-sentence.
Said Wang, “How close are you to that Phoenix lawyer who filed for you?”
Jack paused. He was about to attack from a new direction, but he paused instead. The question just posed was a very good question.
“I’m not married to him. I’ve used him before on tax audit cases.”
“So he’s not even really an estate lawyer?”
“I guess not.”
“Then we should talk.”
“About what?”’
“About working together.”
“Really? And just how does that work?”
“I dump Roy and take you on. I’ve read your petition a dozen times. It makes some good points. Roy has been less than diligent in getting the inventory on file. Are you ready with an inventory, by the way?”
The Near Death Experience (Thaddeus Murfee Legal Thriller Series Book 10) Page 7
