A Day at the Races (3 page)

“Hold on Mike just hear me out, I am not talking about printing five pound notes and paying them in at the local supermarket. I am talking about printing fifty-pound notes and laying them off at the races in one day, bang, end of story. Just a one-day fling no more, get rid of the evidence and leave it at that. Do it on a day when there are a lot of race meetings like Boxing Day. There are dozens of meetings on that day, we could swamp the bookies with fifty-pound notes for five, ten, and twenty-pound bets. That way we get thirty to forty five quid back of kosher money, plus we back every horse in the race, so we are bound to win.

Those thieving bastards have taken enough off me over the years, I would have no compunction in robbing them, especially as Miller owns the bookies group Happy Larry’s, I would love to sink that swine.”

Mike looked at him in horror.

“Moxie in all the years I have know you, this has to be the most outrageous pile of crap I have ever heard you come out with. It beats the one about selling Guinness labels for car tax stickers. Do you have any idea of the kind trouble you could get into, even thinking about this, never mind doing it?”

“So I guess from your reaction it’s a no?”

“Too bloody right it’s a no. I realise you have financial problems, but if you go ahead with anything as hair brain as this, you wont need to worry about money where you will be, because you wont need any.”

Moxie looked at Mike, with disappointment written all over his face.

“I think it could work and I hope you will sleep on it, if only out of pity for me, because I am at my wits end about what I am going to do, as I have never been without a job before?”

“I have to get back to work Moxie, we are very busy and I don’t want to have to go in on Saturday.

Look, I know things are probably tough at the moment, but something will turn up, it usually does. There’s no point in getting involved with anything like this, you will only make your situation far more serious. Anyway I have to go, I will talk to you tomorrow, assuming you are not locked up.”

Mike hurried back to work, and as he entered his office, his phone rang.

“Hello Mike, Brenda rang while you were out, she is at St Swithins General Hospital and she wants you to ring her there as soon as possible, she is in with Mr Mohammed, she says its urgent, will I call the hospital for you?”

“Yes please love, that would be great.”

Mike’s youngest daughter Rachel, who was ten years old, had been attending the liver unit at the hospital every two weeks for the past year and a half, and had been very sick at various intervals. They had tried her on numerous drugs, none of which had done very much to improve her condition.

“Hello Brenda I got your message, is it Rachel?”

“She is very sick Mike, and Mr Mohammed doesn’t think she’s responding to any of the medication – just hold on he wants to talk to you.”

“Hello Mr Ireland, I wondered if you could come down to the hospital or to my rooms, whichever is the most convenient for you as soon as possible? I don’t like discussing these kind of matters over the telephone, and we really need to talk.”

“O K Doctor I will leave right away, I should be there in about thirty minutes depending on the traffic, can I just have a quick word with Brenda please?”

“I am leaving work right now love, don’t worry I am sure everything will be fine, I’ll see you shortly.”

Mike spoke with Tony to tell him he would be out for the rest of the day, and to make sure they could carry on the production without him, and he would re-arrange for the following morning to go through the new magazine for Reg Prentice.

As per usual, traffic was very heavy on Manchester Road, every lorry and tanker seemed to be ahead of him, all doing about five miles an hour. Eventually he reached the turning for St Swithins Hospital. He drove in past security and parked in the nurse’s parking lot.

“I am Mike Ireland here to see Mr Mohammed, it’s very urgent.” He explained to the doorman.

“That’s ok Mr Ireland, he is expecting you, do you know where his office is?”

Mike nodded and raced up the stairs to the second floor.

Mr Mohammed was the senior Consultant at the hospital, specialising in liver and kidney problems. He was originally from Karachi in Pakistan, but had received all his training in America before moving to England some fifteen years previously. He had married an English woman and was now firmly settled in the UK.

He was a tall thin elegant man, extremely well mannered, and was liked by staff and patients alike.

Mike knocked on the door and walked straight in, only to see Brenda in tears, and obviously very upset.

Mohammed held out his hand.

“Hello Mr Ireland good to see you, thank you for coming so quickly. I hope I didn’t alarm you, but I think we have to look seriously at Rachel’s condition?

We feel that by now there should have been some kind of improvement in her condition. As I told you previously, Rachel has a very rare liver condition and what we have prescribed so far we felt she would improve, but she does not seem to be responding to the medication. The type of treatment she has been on, has had a very high success rate with other patients, but sadly it doesn’t seem to be working for Rachel, so my associates and I think we should look at the alternative’s.”

“And what are they?” Mike asked.

Mr Mohammed looked first at Brenda, then at Mike.

“We have to look seriously at a liver transplant, as I think we have exhausted most of the other avenues. Your daughter is not really having any quality of life, despite all the love and attention she gets at home, and despite our best efforts to help her.”

Mike looked stunned as they both felt that long term she would be alright, but now to hear this, it was a severe shock and a bitter blow. In all the time Rachel had been attending the hospital, this had never been mentioned before, although it was probably always at the back of their minds. He looked at Brenda and she was distraught, pain was written all over her face, and he felt sick to the pit of his stomach.

Brenda was Mike’s first real love; they had been friends with one another since they were at school. She was almost as tall as Mike, very slim and elegant with long raven black hair. She was extremely attractive, like a model from “Vogue”, but at this moment in time, her tear stained face didn’t do her justice.

“Unfortunately this can’t be done in this country at the moment, as it is a pioneering type of surgery for Rachel’s condition. So far it has only been performed successfully in the United States, but has had a very high success rate in the procedures done so far.

A colleague of mine, Naseer Ahmed at Princeton North Medical Centre in New Jersey pioneered the surgery. We both attended the same medical training hospital in Washington, he is a brilliant and gifted surgeon, and has pioneered a whole range of revolutionary surgical techniques over the years, that have been adopted by the medical profession as standard procedure. I am sure he would take Rachel as a patient. I have followed his career with great interest and we keep in constant touch with one another, and I know he would be more than willing to help Rachel.

It will not be cheap though, this kind of operation is one of the most expensive procedures there is, coupled with the fact it will have to be done in America. I think the cost would be somewhere in the region of £350,000.00 - £400,000.00 for the operation and the aftercare costs of say another £75,000.00 - £100,000.00 but obviously I will confirm this if you decide to go ahead.”

Mike stood up, walked over to his wife, and put his arm round her to console her

“Come on Brenda, don’t upset yourself, we have to face up to it for Rachel’s sake, where is she by the way?”

“She is in the playroom with Nurse Whelan.” Said Mr Mohammed.

“Could you not do the operation here at this hospital?”

“Unfortunately Mr Ireland at the moment I don’t have enough of an experienced team here at St Swithins. We do a number of kidney transplants here at this hospital each year, and I have a good team who are trained in this field, but because of the complexity of the procedure in doing a liver transplant, I wouldn’t feel comfortable going ahead doing this kind of operation.

I would need about three or four experienced Surgeons familiar with liver transplant procedures, as well as four support nurses and whilst it could be possible in the future, I am afraid it would not be feasible at this point in time.”

“Can we talk to you about this in a day or so, I can’t take all this in at the moment, and as you can see Brenda is very upset? If we go away and talk about it, we might feel better and more able to accept what she has to go through. We both felt that with all the treatment you have given her, that her health would improve, it’s a major blow to hear this, we need time to come to terms with it.”

“Sure, I know it’s a blow and we had hoped the treatment that she has been on, which incidentally is quite radical, would do the job and we would not need surgical intervention, but I think we have reached the point were we have to decide a change of tactics.

Here is my card, call me at anytime if you want any further information. When you have discussed the matter fully, get back to me, if you are in agreement, I can start the ball rolling. It’s not going to happen overnight, a donor has to be found and this could take some time.

First we would have to put Rachel’s name on a register for cross tissue matching to a potential donor, and of course the finance will have to be arranged.

This will no doubt, be the biggest problem as I am sure you know, because this probably won’t be covered under the National Health Service.

Meanwhile, we are going to try her on a new drug that has just become available to us, and we will see how she responds to it. It might just help her until a donor becomes available.”

At this point, Brenda just broke down completely and Mike tried to console her. It was just too much for them to grasp, it was their worst nightmare come true.

Mike comforted his wife, when she regained her composure; they stood up, thanked Mr Mohammed for all his help, then left to collect Rachel.

The drive home was terrible, as Mike considered the implications of what the Doctor had just told them. Brenda was just too upset to talk, but she tried not to alarm Rachel. Mike wondered how they could possibly afford, such a massive amount of money for the surgery.

They were not particularly well off, they still had a £40,000 mortgage, a small loan on the family car, and could only afford to take two weeks holiday a year.

He felt he was well paid for the job he did, under normal circumstances they managed quite well, and enjoyed a good standard of living. But such a massive financial burden that the operation would mean, would have major implications on their lifestyle.

However it would have to be faced for Rachel’s sake, and they would have to try and work something out, but he felt that there was no point in talking to Brenda until she calmed down, and could accept the enormity of it all.

Mike did not sleep at all that night, between Brenda constantly sobbing and thinking if they went ahead, how would they ever raise that kind of money.

He went down stairs to make some tea and to check his various insurance policies and bank statements.

The most he could raise without taking a second mortgage on the house was about £20,000 between their small amount of savings and cashable insurance policies, considerably shorter than the £500,000 they would need.

He thought about what Moxi had said to him earlier in the day, about printing money. Maybe it was not such a bad idea after all, if it was organised properly with reliable people, and not some of the dead beats that Moxie used to roll up at the Old Duke with, it might well work.

Just then Brenda came into the room.

“Would you like some tea Brenda, it’s just freshly made, I was just going to bring some up to you?”

“What are you doing with all the paperwork?”

“They are our bank statements and insurance policies, I was just seeing how are finances are and to see what we could find towards the surgery.”

“And do we have much?” she asked.

“Not very much at the moment, but I am sure I can improve on it. I have a couple of policies that have matured and one that is about to do, plus I thought about asking Clarkie for an advance on my salary.”

Brenda looked at him with tears in her eyes.

“How much can we raise at this time?”

“About twenty grand, but we could always take a second mortgage on the house, plus if I put in extra hours at work.”

Brenda interrupted him.

“We never see you as it is.”

“But how else can we expect to raise that kind of money?”

“Not with you working yourself into an early grave, there has to be some other way. I have been thinking, tomorrow I am going to see if I can contact my MP to see if he can do or suggest anything.”

“Who Charles Rathbone, he only helps himself, we have about as much chance as a snowball in hell?

Remember my mother going to see him, about the time she fell down the steps of the double decker bus?”

This was an incident when a public bus had lurched forward, before boarding passengers had got to their seats. A number fell down, and his mother had fallen from the top of the stairs.

“He promised all kinds of help and in the end did absolutely nothing, he’s the next best thing to fucking useless. The bus company wouldn’t accept liability, the best they could come up with was to fire the driver.”

“Mike please don’t use that kind of language in this house, you know I don’t like you using the ‘f ‘ word.”

“Sorry Brenda, but that bloke really gets up my nose, and he only helps his mates in the golf club, I’m afraid we don’t fit into his circle of friends.”

Rathbone was the Tory MP for Salford East, who was very strong on promises especially coming up to election time, but was very weak on action.

He was a balding fifty six year old graduate from Cambridge, who stood for election to the local County Council, after a few years in local Government he progressed into Parliament.