“The five-year survival rate is less than five percent,” Dr. Timmons admitted, hanging his head.
One of the women took over from there. “Mr. Prescott, I’m a radiologist who specializes in interventional procedures. The next step toward a definitive diagnosis would be to determine what that mass in your pancreas is for sure, and the only way to do that is by looking at a piece of it under the microscope. It turns out the easiest and least invasive way to get that piece is with a needle biopsy, performed under CT guidance.”
“Alright, when can we do it?” Prescott asked, desperate to know exactly what he was up against.
“That’s up to you. We can certainly be flexible with your schedule, keeping in mind that we shouldn’t sit on this for too long.”
“How long does it take?”
“Thirty minutes or so. An hour max.”
“Is there any recovery time?”
“No, it’s a pretty simple outpatient procedure.”
“Alright then, let’s go. Let’s do it now,” Prescott said decisively.
“Well, the equipment probably wouldn’t be available right now,” the doctor backpedaled, not expecting that response. “And regardless, you’d need to be fasting for the procedure.”
“I haven’t eaten anything today. And with the money I’m paying the hospital, I’m sure you can solve the equipment availability issue. Now let’s hurry up and get to wherever we need to be in this hospital and get this over with.”
~~~
Leonard Weinstien exited the baggage claim at Cleveland Hopkins Airport to find Ryan idling at the curb. After receiving the external hard drive in the mail that morning from Dillon, Ryan had spent the last several hours reviewing all of the J’Quarius Jones files. Nowhere had there been any mention of either Weinstien or a biological father.
“Paper files,” Weinstien grunted, as he hoisted an overstuffed suitcase into the back seat and then climbed in the front next to Ryan.
Weinstien was five-six with frazzled gray hair that shot out horizontally from the base of an expansive bald spot. He seemed to be in a constant struggle with a pair of thick-rimmed glasses that were perpetually trying to slide down his nose, away from his reddish-brown eyes that were stuck in a continuous squint. He wore a faded brown suit that obviously hadn’t been upgraded since well before his retirement five years earlier, and his generous gut hung lazily over his belt.
“Ryan Ewing,” Ryan nodded with a forced smile, hoping his skepticism wasn’t too apparent.
“Pleasure. Leonard Weinstien. Ok, then. Now that I’m no longer billing by the hour – or even billing at all – we might as well get straight to business. I’m staying at the Hampton Inn by the way, if you want to head that direction.
“First of all a couple of security questions for you. What school did you go to?
“Hunting Valley Academy.”
“Full name please.”
“Hunting Valley Academy for Math, Science and the Arts.”
“And what was your birth name?
“Ryan Tyler, Jr.”
“How old are you?
“17”
“College and Major?”
“Harvard. Economics.”
“Adoptive parents names?”
“Thomas and Sara Ewing.”
“ATM pin number?”
Ryan glared over at his passenger to see a wry smile materialize on Weinstien’s face.
“OK, well that’s all I’ve got,” Weinstien said, slamming a small notepad shut. “If you’re not who you say you are, I’ll at least give you credit for doing your homework.”
“What kind of law did you practice?” Ryan asked, visibly underwhelmed.
“Mostly family law, but I did a little criminal defense in my early years. Now, what can I do for you?”
“Well, as I stated in my email, J’Quarius was the second orphan adopted into Avillage – after me of course. And I was actually at the game the night he died. I happened to see your sign.
“Since that time, I’ve had the chance to talk with some of the other Avillage orphans out there, and there were some who had... I’ll say
unusual
circumstances surrounding their adoptions into Avillage.”
“Uh huh,” Weinstien nodded with a knowing smile. “So what you’re saying is, ‘You see, Mr. Weinstien, I’ve got this friend who...?’”
“Don’t get me wrong,” Ryan jumped in. “There were some unusual circumstances around my adoption too. I’m not trying to hide that. Right now I’m just trying to collect as much information as I can – not just for my sake, but for every kid who’s been put up on AVEX.”
“Ok, ok.” Weinstien’s smirk had disappeared. He could see Ryan was sincere. “I’ll tell you what I know.
“A little over ten years ago, in the weeks before J’Quarius’s adoption, I represented a man named Melvin Brown. So, he tells me he’d had a relationship with J’Quarius’s mom Cheryl Jones for a little over a year at the time J’Quarius was born – he had plenty of pictures of the two of them to support his story. I don’t doubt the story at all.
“Now, he claimed that Cheryl’s mom never really approved of him and was constantly in Cheryl’s ear the whole time they were together, trying to break them up.
“Then one day, when he was out of town for his uncle’s – or maybe it was a cousin’s? Anyway. Neither here nor there. He was at a family member’s funeral – he got a call from Cheryl’s mom to tell him Cheryl had had a seizure, been admitted to the hospital with uncontrollable blood pressure, and had
died
of brain swelling.”
“Eclampsia?” Ryan whispered.
Weinstien stared at him incredulously. “I thought you said you were studying economics?”
“Yeah, that’s my major, but I try to take a variety of classes.”
“So, yes,” Weinstien continued, “as it turns out, she died of eclampsia, which you already seem to know is a condition some pregnant women get – causes high blood pressure, seizures, and, if untreated, potentially fatal brain swelling.”
“But how did Melvin not know she was pregnant?”
“I don’t think
she
knew! I saw the pictures.
“I mean, you’ve seen J’Quarius. You could probably guess he came from a pretty big mom. She wasn’t necessarily fat. Just big. Over six feet. And big-boned. Sure, she looked a little heavier in the later pictures, but I could see how they might not have known she was pregnant. And when I got to digging into it a little, I found out J’Quarius was actually born prematurely – almost a month and a half early.
“Well anyway, years down the road when J’Quarius is starting to make a name for himself as a middle school basketball prodigy, somebody asks Melvin if he has an illegitimate son, just joking around with him. Says the kid looks just like him. So Melvin actually looks into it. Turns out the kid was born on the exact date his longtime girlfriend had died.
“And that’s when he got me involved. It didn’t take me too long to find out J’Quarius was in an orphanage, and within a week we’d started the process of trying to arrange DNA testing. The only problem was Avillage had found out about J’Quarius a few weeks sooner.”
Ryan pulled the car into the Hampton Inn lot and waited while Weinstien checked into his room. About 20 minutes later, Weinstien reemerged from the lobby sans the suit coat carrying a small file folder.
Without so much as a greeting, he plopped back down in the passenger seat of the parked car and started right back in where he’d left off, detailing the child pornography charge, the suicide, and his delayed discovery of the letter Melvin had sent him, a copy of which he took out of his file folder and handed to Ryan.
Ryan quickly scanned the letter. “So he didn’t want to stay and fight because he thought his son would be better off without him?”
“Yep. But he couldn’t stand the thought of living without his son,” Weinstien added. “So he asked me to make sure he was taken care of.
“I truly don’t remember filing the letter away. I must have. But I don’t remember it. I’m not sure there’s anything I could’ve done anyway, but if I could’ve somehow extricated J’Quarius from Avillage and left him in the custody of the Washingtons... Who knows?”
They sat in silence for half a minute, both staring out the front windshield, before Weinstien was the first to snap back to reality. “Speaking of the Washingtons,” he continued, as if he’d never paused, “I did track them down. They’re really another casualty of this whole thing.
“Hansford just couldn’t come to grips with it. He claims he was the one who talked J’Quarius into playing in that final game. The head coach and some of the other players tell a different story, but he’s convinced J’Quarius never would’ve played if it weren’t for him.
“He ended up getting heavy into alcohol, lost the coaching job he’d held for over 20 years, and eventually watched his marriage fall apart. His brother took him in, but he’s still an absolute mess.
“Arlene seems to be doing considerably better, working to raise awareness for childhood heart disease and drunk driving, which is what killed her first son. But she told me privately that the only thing that drives her is an interminable sense of guilt, which she knows will never allow her any kind of fulfillment. She puts on a smile for public events and speaking engagements, but she told me she hasn’t had a single
good
day since J’Quarius died.”
Ryan’s eyes narrowed as he continued nodding after Weinstien finished his story. “How would you like to do some pro bono legal work for an Avillage kid?”
“What did you have in mind?”
“Well, my parents were killed in a car crash – a head-on collision 3 months before I was adopted by Avillage. I saw it. The car that hit them was in the wrong lane, going way over the speed limit and, I’m pretty sure, had to have blown through a stop sign. There’d have to be police records from that night. Would you have any interest in looking into something like that?”
“Trust me, I’ve got
nothing
better to do. Just give me the details.”
~~~
James Prescott’s secretary must have been on her lunch break. Bradford hesitated just outside the cracked door to the CEO’s office. It sounded like he was on the phone. There was no need to interrupt. He usually kept his conversations brief.
“So what did you find?” Bradford overheard.
“And what about the spot in the liver?”
The liver?
Bradford squinted his eyes almost shut and leaned in toward the door.
“So will we need to do another biopsy or do we just presume that it’s the same thing?
“I see.
“And what kind of treatment options am I looking at?”
Bradford’s heart sunk. It turned out the only man he’d ever admired was indeed mortal. But as he stood in the anteroom with his ear as close to the crack of the door as possible without creating a shadow, he couldn’t keep his mind from visualizing a new Avillage – an even more efficient one – with himself at the helm.
Prescott was a big picture guy, but he had a tendency to overlook details at times. Bradford didn’t. If he were given the opportunity to extend his reach into every orphan’s upbringing the way Prescott did, sure, he may have a few more casualties, but the ones who were really fit to thrive would reach even higher heights.
“I didn’t hear surgery,” Prescott said into the phone. “Are there any other centers in the world that are offering surgery for this?
“I see.
“Alright, bottom line it for me. And I know you don’t have a crystal ball, and the numbers that you’re giving are by no means absolute, but I have a very important business to run, and I need to be physically and mentally able to run it for as long as possible. Between chemo and palliative care, which one would give me the more
meaningful
time.”
Chemo? That confirmed it. It had to be cancer.
“No way. Not a chance. I absolutely cannot miss that much time.”
Bradford had been with Prescott for over twenty years. His compensation had gone nowhere but up, and the number of employees reporting to him had increased exponentially, but he could never really be promoted. There was nowhere for him to go. Unless Prescott were somehow no longer around.
“No, Dr. Timmons,
you
don’t understand,” Prescott said forcefully. “Let me explain something to you. I’m not coming to work everyday, clocking in and out, to earn a paycheck so I can meet next month’s car payment or maybe take the family on a nice beach vacation. I haven’t taken more than a 3-day weekend off in over ten years. What I do is important. And my physical presence has broad implications for a lot of people’s lives – present and future – on an international scale.”
That sounded like he was leaning toward palliative care to give him more time at the office,
Bradford thought, almost giddy. Then an idea popped into his head. He knocked firmly on the door, intending to strike while the iron was hot.
“Thank you very much. I’ll get back to you with my decision in the near future,” Prescott said loudly into the phone before hanging up and calling for whoever it was at his door to come in.