by Steve Alten
I started to feel better. A few times I actually smiled.
And then Stephen Ley entered the gym with his entourage.
“Kwan-san! Shooting some hoops, buddy? Let me help you.” Ley grabbed the rebound from my miss and gently tossed it to me as if I were a three-year-old.
I knew better; I should have left. But there were students watching . . . a few had their cell phones out. So I shot . . . swish.
Ley grabbed the rebound. “Nice shot, buddy.” He walked the ball over to me and offered a low-five—pulling his hand away as I reached out and whiffed.
Palming the ball, he teased me with the offering, performing for his pals.
“Twenty bucks . . . you and me, Ley. Ten foul shots each.”
It was a bold move, but in my mind a win-win. By challenging Ley I stopped the teasing. If he accepted the bet, the worst thing that could happen is that I lost a foul shooting contest to the best basketball player in school.
Oohs and ahhs from the entourage, which had been growing steadily into a crowd, forced Ley into accepting my terms.
Ley smirked. “Where’s your money, honey?”
Reaching into my backpack, I pulled out the twenty. “Put up or shut up, bitch.”
More oohs and ahhs.
Now Ley couldn’t back down. Removing his wallet, he fingered two tens and dropped the bills on the court. “Shoot.” Ley slapped the ball dead onto the wood floor, forcing me to bend over to pick it up.
My first shot missed badly.
He made his shot . . . and the next five. After seven shots, Ley was up six to four when I started feeling it and he started acting like an asshole, shooting behind his back.
I hit my tenth shot to tie it at seven.
He had the last shot . . . and missed.
“Sudden death,” I said, rolling after his rebound.
Behind my back, he was instructing the crowd.
Returning to the foul line, I set myself. Now my ego was pushing me . . . now I wanted to win! I took a calming breath and shot—only to see Ley smack the ball into the bleachers, the students laughing.
Ley had regained control. I should have left. I should have done a million other things. Instead I retrieved the ball like a dummy, intent on winning the battle of egos.
“You afraid, Ley? Afraid of losing to a cripple?”
“Shut up and shoot.”
Setting myself, I went through my preshot ritual and launched the winning basket—which the asshole blocked again.
I felt my heart pounding in my chest like a bass drum; I felt my blood pressure rising. Maybe it was the fact that I was being denied an opportunity to compete, maybe it was Ley just being a jerk, humiliating me yet again in front of my peers—but I lost it. Lowering my head, I rolled as hard as I could for him, aiming for his shins—and missed him as he easily stepped out of harm’s way.
Tears of frustration in my eyes, I went after him again—nearly tipping over on one wheel as he performed his bull-fighting act to the cheering crowd.
Kwan the bull. Stubborn and snorting snot and tears, I charged again and kept after him.
The act quickly turned from comedy to pitiful. Embarrassed, the students filed out.
I was spent. Breathing heavily, I bent over to catch my breath.
Ley picked up his cash and tossed it at me. “You win.” He turned and walked away.
This time I didn’t miss.
The foot-holders of my chair struck the basketball star full-force in the back of his calves and he fell onto his knees, screaming in pain. Rolling onto his back, he kicked my left wheel and suddenly I was airborne.
And then I hit my head.
It must have sounded bad because Ley panicked. He righted my chair. Then he grabbed me from behind, picked me up by my armpits and dragged me backward onto the seat.
Ever handle a drunk? A paraplegic with a concussion is ten times worse. It took Ley several tries before he figured out how to wedge my shoes onto the foot-holders so I wouldn’t slide. He swore again as my pants flooded with urine—my catheter having pulled out in the fall.
He shoved the basketball in my wet lap and fled the scene.
“Kwan? Are you all right?”
It was Anya—the last person in the world I wanted to see. Still woozy, I tried to wheel myself away.
“Where are you going, let me help you. Oh my . . . Kwan, your pants—”
“I know!” My face must have been bright red with embarrassment and purple with rage and what the hell should I do first? I couldn’t think, my mind lost in a fog—urine was dripping down my seat onto the floor! It was splattering everywhere, and I had no control.
I became an animal. I grunted and cried and babbled something incoherent as my mind crawled back inside my mother’s womb.
It was dark when I woke up.
12
It’s scary waking up in the hospital. It’s like being zapped from one moment to the next. You don’t dream. You don’t register the passage of time. You just open your eyes and your throat is as dry as a desert day and there are tubes sticking out of your arms.
Basically, I was toast.
A female voice was calling me Mr. Wilson—which made the whole thing seem even creepier.
“Can you hear me, Mr. Wilson?”
“Throat . . . dry.”
“Here’s some water, just sip it. The doctor will be by to see you. Do you remember hitting your head?”
“No . . . yes.”
“Your girlfriend called an ambulance. You have a concussion and a few bruises we’ll need to keep an eye on. We called your grandmother—she’ll be here soon.”
“How long . . . do I have . . . to stay here?”
“That’s up to the doctor.”
“Tell . . . me!”
“At least three days.”
They kept me in the hospital eleven days. Eleven days of IV bags. Eleven days of being woken up eight times a night. Four roommates, three who snored, two visitors, and no Dilaudid, just enough antibiotics to cure all the gonorrhea in Las Vegas.
Every morning after breakfast the orderly came for me. He’d wheel me across the hall and past the nurse’s station to the elevator; then we’d ride down three floors to the hyperbaric chambers.
A hyperbaric chamber is an enclosed pressurized cylinder where you breathe in pure oxygen. Pure oxygen helps heal the brain, decreases swelling, and fights off infection.
What it doesn’t help is the claustrophobia induced by being locked up for four hours at a time in an enclosed pressurized cylinder.
Eleven days. Ten sessions. Four hours a session.
Forty hours of oxygen therapy—nearly two complete days stuck in an isolation tube with nothing but my Doors CDs and my rancid, ugly, self-loathing thoughts . . . a deadly combination.
This is the end . . . beautiful friend. This is the end—my only friend, the end.
Anya came to visit me on day seven. It was her visit that set my “elaborate plans” into motion . . .
“You’re looking better,” Anya lied. “When will they release you?”
“I don’t know.”
“You seem depressed. Don’t be depressed. Things will get better.”
“Whatever.”
“Stephen Ley was suspended on Wednesday. Principal Lockhart saw the Facebook photos taken in the gym.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said, looking away. “I’m not going back to school.”
“What do you mean? Kwan, you have to come back. If you’re not at Seacrest, you can’t intern at the stem cell lab.”
“Big deal. Why do you care anyway?”
The moment I said the words, I regretted it. I liked Anya . . . hell, I loved her. Okay, the whole college relationship leads to marriage deal—that was YOLO fantasy camp. . . You Only Live Once so Wha
t-the-F? But Anya was also my friend (counting Jesse, one of only two) and I had just told her she could bail on the cripple.
Maybe it was her British-Indian upbringing or just her strong character . . . but she didn’t leave.
“Kwan . . . I thought we were friends.”
“Are we friends, or do you just feel sorry for me?”
“Kwan, I like you. You’re real. Most Americans are con artists—what we used to call jinelz back in London. As in, I don’t trust ’im, ’e’s a jinelz.”
Her cockney slang made me smile.
She sat on the edge of my bed, her closeness causing my flesh to tingle. “Back in August, the first week I was here, a girl who lived in our neighborhood invited me to a party. Stephen Ley was there; he put something in my drink to get me chenzed.”
“Chenzed?”
“Drunk. Did you ever?”
“Ever what?”
“Try to sleep with a girl by getting her chenzed.”
“No.”
“See? That’s why I like you, Kwan, you have morals. When I lived in New Delhi, I couldn’t walk the streets or ride the train without some guy rubbing his hand or his groin all over me. In London and here in America it’s all about partying; in India the women are openly abused. I’m glad my father brought us to the States—I wanted to be able to do something positive with my life . . . something to help other people. That’s why I’m interning at the lab. A good person like you deserves to walk again.”
“Do you even know how I injured my spine?”
“To be honest, I was waiting for the right time to ask. Why don’t you tell me now?”
So I told her. Everything. From texting and killing my mom to being disowned by the Admiral, to my attempted suicide back in the hospital . . . everything.
When I was done, she hesitated, contemplating her response. “Becker had a breakthrough last week.”
“What kind of a breakthrough?”
“I’m not supposed to say. I’ll tell if you promise not to breathe a word of this to anyone—especially Li-ling.”
“I won’t tell. Now tell me.”
“We started injecting the rats with Taurus’s stem cells last Monday—with one change. Dr. Becker had me set up a separate experimental group of rats. We gave these rats a daily two milligram injection of mouse growth hormone.”
“Mice have growth hormones?”
“Everything has growth hormones. We used mice GH because it’s ninety-five percent compatible with rat physiology and shares sixty-five percent of the same proteins found in human growth hormone. Anyway, it’s been a week since the two subject groups received their bull shark stem cell shots. The control group has already regressed into Phases 3 and 4—the mutation and death stages. But the rats that received growth hormone shots haven’t shown any ill effects—no mutations whatsoever.”
“Anya, what about the rats that were paralyzed?”
“They’re crawling on all fours again.”
I sat up in bed, my pulse numbers racing on the cardiac monitor.
“Kwan, it’s early—there may still be side effects. Dr. Becker has to test the GH doses, perform full physiological tests on the—”
“But it worked! Does Becker know why it worked?”
“She thinks the growth hormone caused an intergenic suppression.”
“In English?”
“The growth hormone diverted the shark mutation by causing a second mutation somewhere else within the rat’s genome . . . they call that an intergenic suppression. The second mutation released a protein inhibitor which suppressed the shark mutations, protecting the rat’s DNA.”
“How soon?”
“You mean for human trials. I knew you’d ask me that. Don’t ask me that. And don’t ask Becker because you’re not supposed to know. No one’s supposed to know. But if you came back to the lab, then you’d eventually find out. You’d have the inside track. In a few years, when the medical profession allows Dr. Becker to begin human trials—”
“I can be first in line.” I closed my eyes, my thoughts racing. Why are you telling me this, Anya? Is it to give me hope, or is it something else? Are you saying that there’s a place for me beside you—but only if I was whole again?
“You’re right, Anya. I need to get back to school . . . I need to be putting in time at the lab. Thank you for trusting me with this. I promise it’ll stay our little secret.”
After she left, I formulated a plan. There was no way I was going to wait two or three or four more years . . . I wanted to walk now! I wanted to play ball again . . . play in college and the pros . . . above all, I wanted Anya.
To complete my mission, I needed the bull shark stem cells and human growth hormone.
My first call was to the principal. “Dr. Lockhart, it’s Kwan. Sir, I hope to get out of the hospital soon, and I’d like to square things with Stephen Ley.”
“No need to worry, son. Mr. Ley has been suspended.”
“Yes, sir, I heard. But what happened was partly my fault. If it’s okay with you, I’d like to propose a truce—if you’d get him to agree to my terms.”
The suspended star of Seacrest High’s varsity basketball team entered my hospital room a day later carrying a grudge. Maybe it was my imagination, but when he saw the IV bag and tubes, I thought I felt the Grinch’s heart soften.
“Lockhart said he’d remove the suspension from my record if I came to visit you. So? I’m here. I suppose you want an apology?”
“What I want is a favor. I need you to score me some human growth hormone. It has to be the natural stuff, not the synthetic crap. You know . . . the injections.”
Ley shook his head in disbelief. “HGH? First, I don’t do HGH. How am I supposed to get it? B—that stuff’s expensive—a month’s worth of injections runs about three grand. And three—even if I liked you I wouldn’t do it. If I got caught, no college recruiter would touch me.”
“Fair enough. Now here’s why you are going to do this. A—because you owe me for putting me in here. B—because if Lockhart doesn’t remove your suspension then you’ll be labeled a bad risk by college recruiters, so bye-bye scholarship offers, hello junior college. C—because if you know what it costs, you probably know someone who uses it, maybe a relative or a doctor. And D—because I’m going to pay you well to get it for me.”
I handed him a debit card. “There’s five thousand and change in that account, all that’s left from my inheritance. Go to any ATM and withdraw what you need—my pin number is one-nine-five-nine. Bring me a month’s worth of injections and you can keep what’s left over. But you’d better bring the real stuff, because if you try to screw me I’ll know, which means I’ll file assault charges and we’ll see which college coach wants to recruit your ass then . . . buddy.”
I held out my hand for him to shake. He ignored it, took my debit card and left.
13
I awoke the next morning to a visitor—a familiar-looking man seated in a chair at the foot of my bed. He was in his early fifties—slender and just short of six feet tall, his hair jet-black and kept neat, his skin mocha-brown. His dark eyes smiled warmly at me from behind wire-rimmed glasses.
“Good morning, Mr. Wilson. I hope I am not disturbing you.”
“Do I know you?”
“My name is Tanish Patel. I am a professor of economics currently teaching at Florida Atlantic University. My daughter, Anya, suggested I pay you a visit.”
I sat up in bed. “Professor Patel, it’s so nice to meet you.”
“The honor is mine. May I call you Kwan?”
“Please.”
“Anya told me what happened to you in school. My eldest, Rudy . . . as an adolescent, he possessed a temper that often led him into confrontations which ended badly.”
“Sounds like me.”
“Yes.” The professor f
lashed a smile, his lower lip quivering for a revealing moment. “Anya also tells me you are quite brilliant. Do you play chess?”
“These days, only against the computer.”
“Is that a reflection of your skill level, or the void in your social life brought about by your recent paralysis?”
“Both, I suppose.”
“Then perhaps you and I might play sometime. I doubt I’d offer you much of a match, but it might be fun. They say one can only learn the game by exposing oneself to better players.”
“I suspect you’re far better than you let on.”
“I suspect the same of you.” He smiled, this time uninhibited. “I suppose that leaves both of us suspicious of one another, an interesting beginning to what I hope will be a lasting friendship.”
“I hope so, too.”
“Then please forgive me if this comes across as intrusive, but Anya may have mentioned in passing that you and your father suffer from a strained relationship. Rudy and I, too, lacked the common ground Anya’s academic interests provide. I realize, of course, the circumstances are completely different . . . my only purpose in bringing this up is simply to offer my services to you—not as a surrogate father, but as a friend. If you ever require my assistance in any capacity—free of judgment or conditions, it would honor me if you called.”
He reached into his shirt pocket and handed me a business card.
The emotion welled up in my throat. “Thank you.”
Stephen Ley stopped by a few hours after Anya’s father left—my drug mule coming through like a champ, delivering four hypodermic needles of natural human growth hormone directly to my hospital room. Ley claimed the stuff had cost him every penny in my bank account, but I knew he was lying. Having accessed his Facebook page, I was quite aware that Ley’s older brother, Ronnie, was a physician’s assistant at a wellness clinic in Boca and could get whatever supplies he needed. The brothers had made a nice profit off of me, but I didn’t care. As long as Ley didn’t bring me Restylane, I was in business.
After he left, I drew the privacy curtain around my hospital bed and injected the first dosage of the clear elixir right into my IV, hiding the remaining three needles in between the double lining of my Doors backpack. If anything bad were to happen, at least I was in the hospital.
