She

by Shireen Jeejeebhoy

chapter twenty-two

  SAYONARA

  “THIS IS THE Haoma Therapy Clinic. We are cancelling all your appointments with us except for Dr. Jones. He makes his own arrangements.”

  “What?” she sits down abruptly. Things have been going well for the last five months since she went on that Retreat. She hadn’t seen this call coming.

  “I know we agreed to wait for the Shadow Court to pay us, but we cannot carry you any longer. We have no choice but to cease providing you with services.”

  “But, but I asked, I s-s-said if —”

  “I’m sorry, but you will have to take it up with your lawyer. Good-bye.”

  But wait, wait a minute. She had told them that if they couldn’t carry her any longer that she could pay. She’d have to cut down the frequency, but she could pay. Even going once a month would keep the worst of the pain at bay. What is she going to do now? She drops the handset in its cradle and her head into her hand.

  Her Palm buzzes. She picks it up. Oh, crap, she has to finish dressing for mediation today. She’d better get going. She’ll process the news and what to do later. In about twenty-four hours, to be exact. That’s her standard. Receive a stimulus, and twenty-four hours later respond to it when no one is around but her. She sighs. Well, she is getting better. It used to be forty-eight hours. Perhaps Akaesman isn’t slowing her brain down as much as he used to. Perhaps it’s finding kinship in Job, the man her Wednesday Bible study group is studying, the man with his miserable situation and miserable friends. She’s not like Job though in his intense bitterness and desolation, for she’s drifted into a permanent state of neutrality, with no emotional highs or lows, no depression when bad news hits, which is like every time she picks up the phone, but no happiness either on those few times when things go well. She has less fury, but that irritability, like nails scratching down a chalk board, is as present as ever.

  She calls a taxi, a rare luxury, but necessary when facing two lawyers who want to destroy you and think it’s all a game and nothing personal. The driver honks, and she rushes outside. The taxi speeds forward on this fresh May day, almost four years since Akaesman —

  The sound of the driver’s window going down distracts her from that thought. Hork. Spit. Whir. She blinks. They reach Vaughan Road. He guns round the corner, and down goes the window. Whir. Hork. Spit. Whir. She swallows compulsively. And then remembers she has an iPod. She hurriedly puts in her earbuds and turns her iPod Mini on. She resolutely watches the cityscape go by her window as Broken Social Scene croons Cause = Time into her ears.

  She arrives on time at Mintken’s office, but he is late. He hurries her down into the underground PATH, him steaming through the warren of shops and food courts that reside underneath Toronto’s skyscrapers, she panting to keep up as he informs her as to what to expect, reminding her of what to say and not to say. Answer no statements, only questions. Keep answers short. Only answer what’s asked her directly. Keep her mouth shut otherwise. Let him do the talking. By the time they reach the elevator that sails them up to the mediation offices, she’s gasping for air and wondering if her heart really will leap out of her chest. He hasn’t broken a sweat, and he’s hauling a fat, square black leather briefcase on wheels.

  As before, the lawyers chat while she hangs around in the waiting room until it’s time to enter the conference room. Messrs Brill, Lance, Mintken turn serious and respectful before an older man with a pinched face and a spare frame off of which hangs a fine-tailored pin-striped black suit. He carries a polished ebony cane with a silver curved handle and swings it affectedly as he stumps to his chair. They all wait until he seats himself portentously, and then they all sit. She and Mintken face the windows that frame a great view of Lake Ontario, that vast lake of beauty and deathly freezing depths.

  “I’m Mr. Drake,” the pinched-face man informs her. “I’m the mediator that your lawyer and Messrs Brill and Lance agreed to. I expect respectful conduct during this mediation, you understand?”

  What does he expect her to do? Spit on them. Now that’s an idea. She doesn’t realize that she smiles at the thought.

  “Yes.”

  “I hope you do,” he glowers at her.

  She doesn’t answer again; she already did, and her ire is rising, her own ire with no help from Akaesman.

  “We will begin with each lawyer stating their case. I will ask Mr. Lance to go first.” He turns his gimlet eyes back on her, “If he asks you any questions, you are to answer them.”

  She doesn’t feel that she needs to answer that, after all it’s a statement, not a question. Fury joins her ire. Akaesman must be delirious. She fights the fury and ire, trying to keep the irritability off her face, wondering if she’s succeeding. She comes to with a start as she realizes Mr. Lance is speaking.

  “… we dispute the plaintiff’s contention that she has complete Akaesman syndrome. As I mentioned before, there was no evidence at the scene of anything beyond the most minor of physical ailments. We believe that her claims since then are psychological in nature. Our doctors have examined her — here I refer you to reports by these esteemed professionals — and have found that in fact she suffers from somatoform disorder and not from Akaesman syndrome. We also believe that she’s capable of working and of earning an income, but she’s obsessed with this idea of songwriting. We’ve seen no evidence that she was earning any sort of income before this and dispute her income claim. We also believe her pain and suffering are of her own accord, that Akaesman had no part in this, and dispute that claim as well. We are, however, willing to offer what we consider a generous settlement, given the lack of evidence on her part.”

  The pinch-faced mediator thanks Mr. Lance and gestures to Mr. Brill to speak.

  “We agree with Mr. Lance. We also would like to warn the plaintiff that she has no chance in court. We will be asking for a jury, and no jury is going to see her side of this matter. She is young and healthy and wanting to suck off the public teat: that is what a jury is going to see. They’ll be struggling with jobs and wondering why the plaintiff expects free money and why she expects to go through life without working again. If you go to court, you will lose, and you will be worse off than you are now. The court will require you to pay not only your lawyer and disbursements, but also court costs as your lawyer Mr. Mintken will explain to you. You will lose your house. We advise against going down this road. You will lose. No jury is going to see you as credible. They’ll see you as a spoilt brat who wants free money and to be supported by a man, or in this case the public purse. Mr. Lance and I will be offering our generous settlement to your lawyer through the esteemed Mr. Drake.”

  What an effing idiot. Does he think she believes him? Maybe a judge would buy his baloney, but people who live in the real world, with common sense, will not. She doesn’t think so anyway. She hopes not. How dare he threaten her like that. How contemptible. Her mouth twists. What kind of bullshit is this? Isn’t mediation supposed to be a way to get all sides to work together? This sounds more like who can hit the other over the head harder; who can threaten harder; who can stare down the other harder; who has the greater stamina for this game. They’re betting she does not. The only thing is that she is desperate for help, and they’re it. They’re the only way for her to get back to her dream. Without money, she has no hope. Her RRSPs are almost all gone. But whatever happens, she will do whatever it takes to reclaim her pre-born songs, no matter what Mr. Fuzzy Head and Mr. Pinch-Face say.

  “… we believe that a jury will find her credible.”

  Oops, she missed the whole of Mr. Mintken’s arguments. Oh well. They’re all standing up. She gets up too and follows Mr. Mintken out the door and into another room. They sit down, and Mr. Mintken explains what happens next: “At this point, the mediator will discuss their offer with them and then bring it to us. He will represent the offer to us, but he will also listen to our counter-offer and take it to them. He is a neutral, objective party in this procedure. This will continue until either we agree o
n a settlement or decide we can’t reach a consensus.”

  Sounds tedious, inefficient, and inhuman. Strange that they see it as dangerous to have face-to-face discussions and treat each other like fellow human beings who have the same goal. She thinks on this for a bit. Well, maybe they don’t have the same goal. She wants to get well; they want to avoid responsibility, drag things out so that it becomes impossible for her to get well and they can save money.

  Mr. Pinch-Face barges in and remains standing, cane held nonchalantly in his right hand.

  “Mr. Brill and Mr. Lance are offering you a generous ten thousand dollars. I suggest you take it. You cannot earn a living off of songwriting. No one in Canada earns a living off songwriting or any kind of writing. This is pie-in-the-sky nonsense, young lady. No jury is going to believe you are sick or are suffering from the complete syndrome, and your supercilious attitude does not help matters. I asked you to be respectful while the lawyers were speaking, and all I saw from you was attitude. You will not get better than what they are offering. I suggest you take it and go find a real job.”

  “Thank you Mr. Drake. I will discuss the offer with my client,” Mr. Mintken speaks up before she has a chance to blurt, “asshole.”

  Mr. Pinch-Face inclines his head and stumps out.

  “You need to control your facial expressions better.”

  “I’m supposed to be cru-cru-crucified,” she sputters, “because the lawyers don’t like the way I-I-I look?”

  “I’m afraid so. It’s all about appearances here, and it will be in court too. It doesn’t help that you can walk and talk fine. Physical disabilities always makes more of an impact on a jury, and you can’t see an injured neck as well as a limp or Akaesman syndrome as well as paralysis. But let’s discuss the offer. It’s clearly too low. I don’t think we can get more than, say, seventy-five thousand, but ten thousand dollars is insulting. It says to me that they’re not serious, and they’re only going through the motions. I recommend we counter-offer with a hundred thousand dollars.”

  Righteous anger energizes her, sparks her brain into gear. She asserts, “That’s too low to end up where you’re suggesting. And besides if they’re insulting, we should push back. Two hundred thousand dollars. By the way, Haoma Therapy fired me today, this after TARC kindly saw me late last year for a follow-up ‘cause, ‘cause, they’d discharged me last year ‘cause, you know, the government s-s-says you should be better in some, some set amount of time. And now, and now Haoma says not to come back in because it doesn’t look like the Shadow Court will s-s-settle with me any time soon so they don’t think they’ll get paid. They didn’t even give me a chance to pay out of my own pocket, not that I could pay for as many appointments. I’d have had to cut down, but still — ask me!”

  “Two hundred thousand dollars is unrealistic. I’ll tell my clerk to call Haoma, find out the total bill. I’m afraid I can’t get them to take you back on as a client, but we’ll work to document how much they’re owed. We’ll add it to the total cost of your treatments so far. I’m afraid that’s the best I can do.”

  “Well, it’s already cost me four years, and I can’t see an end in sight. Two hundred thousand dollars,” she spits out.

  They argue back and forth, she becoming more intransigent, him trying to explain the game to her.

  “Very well,” Mr. Mintken relents. “I usually find Mr. Drake a capable mediator, but I’m not sure why he’s taken such a tough stance. This offer is not going to help. They’re going to laugh at it. But I can’t see us getting anywhere, given where they started anyway.” He leaves to negotiate.

  “Let them laugh,” she grumbles under her breath. And as for Mr. Pinch-Face, that’s because he thinks he’s Mr. I-Know-Everything. Mr. I’m-Better-Than-You. He probably hates his job and takes it out on anyone trying to follow their heart. He wants them to suffer too. Stupid asshole. She gets up and stares out the narrow window as cumulonimbus clouds roll in from the west, their dark front and blacksheared anvil tops threatening the May blue sky. She waits for an eternity for her lawyer to return, and then they wait for Mr. Pinch-Face to stomp back in with an answer.

  It continues like this, back-and-forth insults interrupted by waiting, until the sun fades and the city’s lights punctuate the darkness without. The others don’t budge from their original position as she and her lawyer slowly descend to one hundred thousand dollars. And then they all call it quits.

  She follows Mr. Mintken wearily down to street level, where he whistles her a taxi. One immediately swerves into the curb. He opens the door for her and helps her in. Before he closes the door, he says, “This is just an opening volley. They’ve taken our measure and understand that you have a better value for yourself than whatever you can get. I think we can use that to our advantage. It’ll go better next time.” And he swings the door shut.

  ~~~*~~~