An Invisible Client (10 page)

19

That night, I drove home without any music. I felt like thinking. I reached the stop sign by my house and stopped. Up east was the hospital. Again, I had an urge to go up there, though I didn’t know why. Normally, after a client signed up, I did everything I could to avoid that person. New clients had a tendency to eat up all of a lawyer’s time with irrelevant nonsense if allowed.

I started turning toward home, then stopped. I veered away and drove up to the hospital.

Joel was awake when I got there. Rebecca was out in the hall, knitting. I sat next to her.

“How is he?”

“He threw up a lot today. He’s really tired, poor thing.”

“I won’t stay long.”

“No, he likes you. You can stay as long as you like.”

“You knit?”

“Need something to occupy the time.”

She kept knitting, and I watched her for a moment before I rose and peeked into Joel’s room. He was just lying there, staring at the ceiling. I pulled up a chair and sat down. He smiled when he saw me. He looked much worse than he had two weeks ago. The dark circles under his eyes had turned black, and he looked thinner.

“That girl, the one that’s a twin, she’s cute. She been down here lately?”

He grinned. “No.”

“You like her, huh?”

“She comes down and plays music for me sometimes. She really likes the Killers.”

“Oh, yeah? I don’t think I’ve ever heard ’em.”

“You wouldn’t like them.”

“Why, ’cause I’m old?”

“No, I see you liking classic rock. The stuff my mom listens to.”

“I’ll have you know, Mr. Whiting, that I was pretty hot stuff when I was your age. I had the denim jacket and the Bon Jovi T-shirt that all the girls dug. I even had a Walkman that was always strapped to my hip.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s the equivalent to rocks and sticks for you, but at the time, it was a cool way to play music.” I noticed the TV was on, but the sound was turned off. “How you feeling today?”

“I can’t eat or drink anything. I keep throwing up. I miss pie. My mom makes apple pie with ice cream.”

“You’ll be eating it again in no time.”

He took a few labored breaths. “I wanna go outside one more time.”

“You’re going to go outside a lot. There’s no rush.”

He looked at me. “I’m dying, Noah.”

I didn’t know what to say. It was hard to be a kid after realizing you were going to die. Much harder still was knowing it was going to happen soon.

“They won’t let you outside?”

He shook his head slowly. “No.”

“Well, I’ll tell you what: what time you wake up in the morning?”

“Like nine or ten.”

“Okay, I’ll be by around nine or ten tomorrow.”

“What are we doing?”

I rose. “It’s a surprise.”

When I got home, I showered, then sat on the couch and tried to watch a Lakers game on the television. I couldn’t concentrate. So I got a beer out of the fridge and went onto the balcony. I stared out over the city and the bright headlights of the cars coming up the road. I heard a click from next door and looked over. On their balcony was my neighbor, Jim. He was a retired professor from the University of Utah.

“You still up?” I asked.

He blew out a puff of smoke. “Not much difference between night and day when you’re retired.”

“That sounds like buyer’s remorse.”

“Worst mistake I ever made. I should’ve been teaching until I died. I loved those kids.” He blew out another puff of smoke. “How you doin’? I haven’t seen you around lately.”

“Just a big case I’m working on. That Pharma Killer that’s been in the news.”

“They caught him?”

“No, we’re suing the company that makes the medicine.”

“What for?”

“I think the medicine was contaminated before it went out, and they covered it up.”

He whistled. “That is a doozie if it’s true.” He paused. “You’re too young to remember, but doctors used to smoke in hospitals. Sometimes, they’d recommend it to patients. You can still see the ashtrays that are bolted into the walls at the U of U hospital. The cigarette companies were so powerful, they convinced doctors to poison their patients.”

“Aren’t you smoking right now?”

“No, it’s weed. You want some?”

I chuckled. “No thanks.”

“Now that sounds like a man who needs a hit. Hang on. I’m coming over.”

The front door opened half a minute later, and Jim walked in. He sat on the deck chair next to me, packed a pipe, then handed it to me. I took it.

“I haven’t smoked this stuff since college.”

“It’s for the young and the old, but you sound like you need it right now.”

I took a small puff, and it gave me a hacking cough that made Jim laugh. I leaned my head back and watched the stars.

“So who’s your client?”

“A little boy who got sick, Joel Whiting.”

“He okay?”

“No. And those dicks are gonna get away with it like it never happened.”

“Well,” he said, taking another puff off the pipe, “nothing’s written in stone.”

20

In the morning, I bought two pairs of scrubs and texted Olivia to meet me at the hospital. Then I rented a van from Enterprise and drove up to the hospital parking lot. I saw Olivia sitting in her car, waiting for me. I got out and handed her one package of scrubs. I was already wearing mine.

“What is this for?”

“Go to the bathroom and change. Then meet me by the elevators.”

“Why? What’s going on?”

“We’re busting out a prisoner.”

When I’d first approached Rebecca about this late the previous night, she hadn’t even hesitated to say yes. She had been trying to take Joel out for weeks, but the doctors wouldn’t allow it.

I grabbed a wheelchair from the front entrance, then waited by the elevators. Olivia came out wearing scrubs, her clothes in her hand. I pushed the button, and we went up to ICU. Rebecca was already waiting in front of Joel’s room. Her eyebrows rose when she saw our outfits.

“I don’t know about this,” she said.

“We won’t do it if you don’t want to.”

She thought for a second. “No, let’s go. Hurry up, the nurses are all hanging out at the nurses’ station.”

We went into Joel’s room. Olivia helped me lift him into the chair. He was so light, she could’ve done it herself.

“Where we going?” he asked.

“Surprise, remember?”

I pushed him down the hall, Olivia walking next to me, trying to act as casual as possible. Though the nurses had to buzz people into the ICU, they didn’t buzz anyone out. We quickly went through the double doors leading to the elevators.

“Noah,” he whispered, sensing we were doing something naughty, “where we going?”

“You’ll like it. Trust me.”

We got on the elevators and went to the main floor. Hurriedly, we left the hospital and loaded the wheelchair into the van before all of us piled in.

“Where are we going?” Olivia said.

I just grinned as I pulled out of the hospital parking lot.

About twenty minutes from Salt Lake was an amusement park called Lagoon. Even from a mile away, Joel saw it and turned into a four-year-old kid. He squealed, and the look on his face as he stared out the windows at the giant roller coasters was something I’d never seen. In an instant, he changed in a way that adults may have forgotten was possible.

We parked and helped him down the ramp. Rebecca and I had talked last night and decided riding the roller coasters was too dangerous, so I hoped I could still show him a good time without riding the actual rides. His mother held his hand as we walked to the front of the amusement park, a smile so wide on Joel’s face I thought it might hurt his cheeks.

After I got the tickets, I pushed Joel in his wheelchair, and he talked about the last time he was there. He’d thrown up cotton candy on one of the roller coasters that turned riders upside down.

We played some of the carnival games, and he tossed softballs at milk bottles to knock them down. His throws were too weak to get the ball far, but he didn’t seem to mind. The sunshine, the people, and the excitement were enough. He wore a smile from one ear to the other.

A ride called Rocket Mouse occupied one end of the park near the kids’ section. Joel kept asking his mother if he could ride it. She said no, then he said, “But Noah will ride it with me. Right?”

He looked at me, and I just nodded. As far back as I could remember, I had never ridden on a ride at an amusement park.

The rocket was two seats, and Joel sat in front of me. It was a kids’ ride and didn’t go very fast, but he still turned to me and said, “Don’t worry, it won’t make you sick or anything.” He whistled to his mother, letting her know he was okay, and she whistled back.

The ride took off, and we spun up into the air, then leveled out. The entire rocket tipped upside down—I hadn’t been told that would happen—then spun right side up again. Joel was howling with laughter, but I felt the slow rise of pressure from my stomach into my throat. I swallowed as the rocket spun again.

By the end of the ride, I must’ve looked green, because Olivia was laughing when she helped me out of the rocket.

“You poor thing,” she said.

“I think you better go on any more rides with him.”

The next ride, Olivia took him. They were both laughing and screaming like toddlers. When they stepped off, Joel held her hand. It was a casual gesture, a little thing that showed his affection, but I watched her eyes and saw them well up with tears.

Joel asked for cotton candy, and his mother bought him some. He had a couple of bites, and that was all he could handle. He was sweating profusely.

“I think it’s time to go,” Rebecca told me quietly.

We’d only been there for a couple of hours, but when we left, Joel looked exhausted.

“Can we come back tomorrow?” he asked me as I wheeled him out.

“I think I’m going to still be vomiting from that mouse ride tomorrow.”

We loaded up in the van and headed back to the hospital. Joel fell asleep on the way over.

I hurried to the office after the hospital and had Jessica send out subpoenas and schedule depositions for me. I didn’t know where the Pharma-K employees were going to be in a month, and I wanted to get them on record. And if I was going to overcome Bob’s motion, I needed as much evidence attached to my response as possible.

Jessica and I scheduled the first depositions quickly, which was surprising. I’d assumed Bob would fight me on it, schedule them at odd times, then reschedule at the last minute several more times—a common defense-firm tactic.

Instead, we had five depositions scheduled for the next day. Two of them were executives at Pharma-K—one was the head of quality control, and two were employees in the warehouse. It was unheard-of to schedule that many depositions in one day. The most I’d ever done in one day was two. That made me nervous. Had Bob already put the fear of the Almighty into them, and were they just going to clam up and not tell me anything? Or maybe they had been coached from the beginning to outright lie. Whatever was going on, I didn’t trust what they were going to say tomorrow or the few days afterward that I would have them if I needed more time. I texted KGB and asked if he could be there, and he said he could. If they lied to me, he could follow up, and we could have them called out on perjury in front of the judge. Witnesses weren’t allowed to lie during a deposition any more than they were during a court hearing.

I prepared an outline of my questions. The great thing about depositions was that there was no judge there to tell anyone to hurry. I could ask about anything and take all the time I wanted. I had to pay a court reporter or stenographer to take notes and a videographer to film it, and sometimes, I had to fly out to wherever in the country the witness was, but that didn’t apply to this case. Everyone I needed was right here.

I looked up in the evening and saw Marty standing by the door.

“You okay?” I asked.

“It’s this Pharma-K case. I’m not comfortable with it.”

“Why?”

“It’s something about it. I know, I was the one who pushed you to look into it. But I think you’re getting too attached.”

“Too attached?”

“You told me once that the worst thing for a lawyer was to be attached to a case or a client. That it clouds your thinking and you can’t think of the bottom line. I see it happening with this.”

“See it happening how?”

He came into my office but didn’t sit. “Noah, I’ve seen you talk clients into taking deals they swore up and down they would never take. You didn’t take the million dollars, because you’re internalizing this case.”

I sighed and leaned back in the seat. “I think they know a helluva lot more than they’re telling us.”

“Every case has a victim. And sometimes, we don’t get to win. We compromise so that both sides can move on. This company’s not going anywhere, and even if they did, Joel would still die. It doesn’t help anything by fighting this out over the next few years and blowing our money on it. He’s still gonna die. I’m sorry, but you need to accept that and detach yourself from it.”

“That’s what I’ve done my whole life, man. Detach. Detach from my parents, from my friends, from my wife . . . detach so I can focus on money. That was the only thing that mattered.”

“It’s still the only thing that matters. There are almost seventy employees at this firm relying on you, Noah. They put food on the table with the money you bring in for them. They dress their children and pay their insurance because of you. That’s not valueless. Focusing on the money is important. Don’t forget that.”

I watched as Marty left. Then I swiveled my chair around and stared out at the sky. The sun had nearly set, with darkness coming quickly behind it. I wanted to leave, to go somewhere outside. A park maybe. Or the canyons. And even as I thought it, I knew I wouldn’t go. I turned back around and continued writing questions for the depositions. I worked faster than I had before Marty came in, and I didn’t know why.

21

That night, I stopped at the stop sign again. I let the driver behind me honk several times before he swerved around me and flipped me off. Finally, I headed toward the hospital.

Rebecca was asleep in Joel’s room. She was on the recliner, a blanket covering her. Joel was asleep, too. I stood at the door, which was open, and I was about to leave when Joel whispered, “Noah?”

“Yeah,” I whispered back.

“What’re you doing here?”

“I, ah . . . I don’t actually know.” I leaned against the door frame. “Just thought I would pop in. Get back to sleep, though. Sorry I woke you.”

“Thank you,” he said quickly as I turned to leave. “Thank you for today.”

I nodded. “You’re welcome.”

As I was heading out, I stopped at the nurses’ station. A nurse with short blonde hair was sitting at a computer, typing away. She didn’t look up when she said, “How can I help you?”

“Do you know much about transplants?”

She looked at me. “Why?”

“I was just curious about how they decide someone can get an organ transplant. I mean, who’s the guy on that? The final say?”

“Well, it’s actually a program we have. The algorithm takes into account something like a hundred different variables and tells us if the potential recipient should be transplanted.”

“A computer decides whether people are going to live or die?”

“Well, we don’t think of it that way. The doctors and counselors have the final say.”

“And the insurance companies.”

“Yes, whether someone can afford it is a huge factor.”

“What are the variables the algorithm uses?”

“Oh, a lot of different things. Age, occupation, other diseases, are they drinkers or smokers, income—”

“Income?”

“Yes. People with higher incomes tend to be able to take better care of transplanted organs.”

I grinned and shook my head.

“Something funny about that?” she asked.

“No, it’s just that the law has a similar formula to determine what someone’s worth. It screws the poor, too.” I looked back to Joel’s room. “He’s a good kid.”

“Joel? Yeah. He reminds me of my son. It’s so sad seeing him go through that every day.”

I exhaled. “Thanks for your time.”

When I left the hospital, I wasn’t sure where to go. I didn’t feel like going home. I texted Olivia.

Have you eaten yet?

No
.

Within a few minutes, I was at her house, and she was walking out. She got into my car, and the smell of her perfume hit me. It wasn’t overpowering; it was subtle, almost as if she were embarrassed to be wearing any.

“That was really sweet of you to take Joel out today,” she said as we pulled away from her house.

“I’ve never actually been to Lagoon.”

“Really? But you’ve been on roller coasters and stuff, right?”

I shook my head.

“Wait a second. You’ve never been on a roller coaster?”

“No. My dad would never take me anywhere, and by the time I could go on my own, I was too old.”

“Our stamps on our hands are still good. Go there now.”

“For what?”

“That is like the saddest thing I’ve ever heard. We’re going there right now to get you on a roller coaster.”

“Olivia, it’s fine. I just want—”

“No, we’re going. Right now. I never got to go either. I was always at home taking care of my mother. We’re two people who have never been on a roller coaster, Noah. We can’t let that stand.”

I rolled my eyes and turned the car around. It seemed pointless, but if that’s what she insisted on doing—well, it was better than sitting home alone.

Lagoon looked a lot different at night. All the rides were lit up with multicolored lighting, and the people, mostly adults, were squealing and screaming on the rides. We went inside, and Olivia put her arm around mine. She led me to the first roller coaster we saw—the Skycoaster. As we waited in line, she didn’t let go of my arm, and I was glad.

We got on the roller coaster, and I felt butterflies in my stomach.

“You okay?” she said.

“Yeah. Why?”

“I think you actually look nervous. You don’t even look nervous in court.”

“I’m fine.”

The roller coaster jolted forward and began a slow climb. We seemed to climb right into the night sky. The higher we got, the more silent it became. We were at least two hundred feet in the air, and I could look down and see everyone walking along in the amusement park. I could see the freeway beyond the parking lot, but I didn’t hear the traffic.

And then, in an instant, it was done. The roller coaster reached its apex, then rocketed downward. My stomach jumped into my throat, and Olivia screamed. I tried to hold it in, but I couldn’t help it—I hollered, too.

The roller coaster twisted upside down, then did a hard right before doing a hard left and spiraling upside down again. It sped up, then stopped suddenly, throwing everybody forward. My heart was pounding, and I couldn’t get the smile off my face.

“See, everybody likes roller coasters,” Olivia said as the car pulled back in to the platform.

“Let’s go again.”

We rode rides until the park closed at midnight. Then we got giant fruity drinks in glasses the shape of trumpets and sat on the curb as people left the park. I watched her, the way she looked at people. She didn’t look at them the same way I did. Something was different in the way we approached the world, and it came out in the way we viewed people. She saw them with this bright look in her eyes, like each person had the potential to be a friend. I didn’t see them that way. Perhaps the opposite: each one was a potential new enemy.

“I used to get so jealous of the other kids in high school,” she said. “How they got to do stuff like this and I couldn’t.” She leaned in and kissed me on the cheek. “Thank you for taking me.”

We sat on the curb a while longer, until almost everyone had left, then we strolled to my car and leaned against it, talking about nothing that seemed important. Time slipped away and when I realized how late it was, I kept it to myself because I didn’t want this day to end.

When I dropped her off at her house, all we said was good night. I watched her walk to the door. If she turned around, just one glance, I’d know she felt the way I did. All it would take was one glance.

Just one glance. That’s it. Just one. Come on . . . come on . . .

She got to her door and unlocked it. Before the door shut, she turned around and smiled at me.

“Yes!” I nearly shouted.

I waved to her, and then drove home smiling the entire way.