Winners (16 page)

“It could be amazing,” Joe said, looking excited about it too. Bill was brilliant at solving difficult problems and achieving the impossible, excellent at execution, attention to detail, and follow-through. “I’d love to help, if you need someone to do research on the project or make contacts. I’ve got the time,” Joe reminded him. And Bill knew he had the skill in spite of the recent fiasco in his career. “I don’t know anything about hospitals, but I can learn, and business is business, whatever you’re selling. You’d need a great medical chief of staff, but there’s got to be a lot of administrative work with something like that.” Bill nodded, his mind going in a thousand directions, and the doorbell rang while they were talking. He had completely forgotten the meeting with the architect, to make the accommodations he needed for the house for when Lily came home.

Steve Jansen was young and had done projects like this before. He had been recommended by two other architects. He walked through the house, pointing out changes that needed to be made that Bill hadn’t even thought of. And they picked a spot for the new elevator. It meant losing a walk-in closet on each floor, one of which was full of files and luggage, which he could put elsewhere, and the other with Lily’s ski equipment which she no longer needed. It gripped Bill’s heart when he opened the door and saw her ski gear, and he closed it again quickly with tears in his eyes. He didn’t want Lily to see any of that either, so he was glad the closet would disappear. Steve assured him that he could get everything done within two months, and have it ready before Lily came home.

He suggested installing a discreet ramp in the foyer, with a handsome brass railing to match the decor, and a similar one in the living room, lowering the island in the kitchen and moving the sink, making easier access to the fridge, and completely remodeling her bathroom with a special shower and tub and a lowered sink. Bill wanted everything in the house convenient, comfortable, and accessible to her without making it look like a hospital ward, and Steve completely understood. Joe was fascinated as he watched the meeting proceed. They walked each floor of the house. By the time Steve was finished with the remodel, there wouldn’t be a single unmanageable feature for her. He even suggested lowering the stove and kitchen cabinets and counters. It wasn’t going to be inexpensive, but it was worth every penny to Bill. He had seen on the single night she was home how difficult the house was for her now. At first he hadn’t wanted to change anything in their home, because it meant accepting that Lily would be in a wheelchair forever, but he realized now that she would be, until something changed in the research everyone talked about. Making their home fully livable for her was his gift to Lily, and Steve was impressed, as was Joe. Bill had made an enormous shift in a matter of days, after seeing her blossom at Craig.

Bill poured them each a cup of coffee at the end of the meeting, and they stood in the kitchen, while Steve explained that everything was going to be high tech, state of the art, with black granite in the kitchen and pink marble in her bathroom. It was going to be beautiful when it was finished, not just functional, in keeping with the standards of the home they lived in, which was magnificently done. It was a high standard for Steve to meet, but he assured Bill he was equal to the job, which was what Bill had been told.

And then Bill had an idea. “What would you think of a live-in center for spinal cord injury kids, on a high-end scale? Does that sound insane to you?” Bill asked him out of the blue, and Steve looked intrigued.

“You mean like Craig?”

“Yes, and no. Same patient base, but younger and not as broad. Only spinal cord injuries, not brain injuries, and not all the hospital-based medical features they offer, and for younger kids, the ones who don’t qualify for Craig now. We wouldn’t hospitalize them during their recovery, but
only
for rehab. I mean a real inpatient learning center for young kids and adolescents, and maybe kids in their early twenties, entirely geared to them, a major sports program, arts, music, as well as rehab, and everything they need to know about how to reintegrate back into school or college, and find internships in the mainline workforce, everything for kids, only they’d have spinal cord injuries. I want it to have everything a noninjured kid would want, only designed just for them. Craig is geared for slightly older kids and adults, although they do a fantastic job, and I like the fact that they add so much fun to it. They have an incredible recreational program. But I would want ours to be
only
the activities that appeal to kids.”

“You mean sex and drugs?” Steve quipped, and they both laughed.

“No, I mean good clean fun. But their kind of fun. Craig has to offer a much broader range to appeal to everyone. I know there are activities there that Lily won’t be interested in, although they offer a lot that she’ll like too. I just want to narrow the focus here and lower the age. They have an incredible family facility too, and that takes a lot of space and real estate, and I don’t want to go there yet. Maybe with the young kids, we can have double rooms where their moms could stay with them, but it would take too much space to set up a family facility like Craig’s. They’ve been at this for forty or fifty years. I don’t want to compete with them, I couldn’t, and I wouldn’t want to. That would be pointless. I want to add some of what they can’t or don’t do, or do less of. And for the right patients, we could just refer them to Craig. And maybe they would want to send really young kids to us, other than for what’s offered at Children’s Hospital here in Denver. We could try to offer something different and more than either facility provides. I don’t know. Joe suggested it, and I thought about it. I got inspired last night. I just wondered what you think of the idea, and what kind of facility it would take.” Bill had no idea, but that wasn’t stopping him now.

Steve looked intrigued as he mused about it for a minute. It was an extraordinary idea, and he could sense that Bill was the kind of man who could deliver on it and who followed his dreams. The house he lived in, and the career he had had, and his enormous success, were proof of that, more than Steve even knew. Joe knew Bill more intimately and had no doubt that he would follow through if he fell in love with the project. To Bill, the dream was already real.

In Bill’s mind, it was not unlike a school, where you had younger children, older ones, middle range, high school, and a few college age, and maybe kids like Lily and others mentoring them, to show what you could achieve. They could have a program set up with Craig, where their patients could volunteer with the younger ones to give them hope.

“You can build anything you need, of course, from scratch,” Steve said thoughtfully. “We can design whatever you want and conceive of. You could get operative a lot faster, though, if we could use an existing structure and adapt it to your needs, rather than building it from the ground up.” And then he thought of something. “Have you ever been out to the La Vie resort?” Bill shook his head. He’d never heard of it, and had no idea what it was. “It was kind of a cool idea. It’s called La Vie, but their motto was ‘La vie est belle.’ Life is beautiful. It was built by a Frenchman. I met him a couple of times. He had a vision of a spa in the States, kind of like something in the Alps. I think he originally thought about building it in Wyoming or Montana but decided on Denver because it was easier to get to.

“It’s a rambling place, on thirty acres, and he spent a fortune on the structures. There are some gorgeous houses on it, big ones. He was intending for people to just come there and rest for an extended period of time. There was a fabulous spa, an enormous gym, some smaller houses, a good-size office complex that doesn’t look like one. I think he built it to house fifty or sixty guests at a time, and he wanted the spa and sports facilities to be a membership-only setup, like a health club for locals. It was a great idea, kind of nirvana in the mountains. He sank a bundle into it.

“And then the economy fell apart, here and in France. They closed a few months after they opened. It was really a shame, I loved the idea, and the structures are beautiful. It looks like a private estate. And it was standing empty the last time I heard. I’m not sure, but I think the bank was going to foreclose on it. I don’t know if it has by now. Last I heard he had hung on to it. I don’t know if it changed hands in the meantime or not. I always thought it would make a beautiful home for someone with a lot of adult kids, kind of like a family complex, or one of those art or writing colonies, something like that. Anyway, it’s an amazing place. If it’s right for you, it would be a great start and save you a lot of time. I don’t know who owns it now, but I could find out.” Bill looked mesmerized by what he said.

“I’d like that very much,” Bill said quietly, and Joe smiled. He could see the wheels of Bill’s mind turning a thousand miles an hour. “Where is it?”

“About ten miles out of town. I don’t think anyone ever realized it was there. It was a gorgeous piece of land, and it opened and closed so fast, no one ever knew about it. Kind of like Brigadoon. I’ll check it out. If nothing else, it’s a valuable piece of property, with some beautiful houses on it, and at the right price it would be a great investment. It may have been overpriced if he tried to sell it, which may be why it hasn’t sold. I think the French guy got the land fairly cheap at the time, but he spent a fortune on it, with beautifully built structures. It was his dream apparently. It’s a shame it didn’t work out. Bad timing more than anything, I think, although he sank so much into it, I don’t know how he would ever have amortized the investment. People do that sometimes, and get carried away, and then the bottom falls out.”

Steve had seen that with houses he had designed for people, where they just spent too much on it, and never got their money out when they sold. He tried to keep his clients from doing that, but some people had big dreams, and didn’t have the money to back them up. He knew that wasn’t the case with Bill. “If I remember correctly, the guy who built La Vie had a spa in France, and a hotel in St. Bart’s, so he should have known what he was doing. Maybe it’s different in the States, where a lot of people lost money on investments when the market plunged. I’ll let you know what I hear. And I’ll send the plans over for your remodel in a couple of days. It’s going to be great,” he said with a warm smile. He was sorry to hear about his daughter’s accident, but Bill was doing wonderful things for her, while respecting the look, feel, and quality of the house. There was going to be nothing institutional-looking about it. It wasn’t going to be depressing, just practical for her, and beautiful to look at. Steve was excited about the job, and so was Bill. But Bill was already thinking about what Steve had said about the defunct spa called La Vie. He couldn’t stop himself. As soon as Steve left, Bill called Hank Peterson, a commercial real estate broker he knew, and asked him to check it out.

He was working at his desk, when the broker called him back two hours later. “Interesting place you found,” he said to Bill. “I don’t know why I never heard of it. It could have a thousand uses. And it’s on a fair amount of land.”

“Who owns it?”

“I’m not sure. Apparently the bank was going to foreclose on it a year ago for unpaid mortgage, and the owner came up with the money at the last minute. I don’t know where it stands now. I think the original owner still owns it, although no one’s been there in three years. They closed almost as fast as they opened. I haven’t seen it, but someone in my office has and says it’s quite a place. It’s a little off the beaten track, but not that far. Do you want me to check out the status of the ownership?”

“Yes, I would,” Bill said coolly, not wanting to show too much interest, but his heart was pounding as he listened. He knew this was the right place, for a project he hadn’t even known he wanted to undertake a day before.

“Do you want to take a ride out to look at it?” Hank suggested.

“Sure,” Bill said, feigning a calm he didn’t feel. He felt like Kevin Costner in
Field of Dreams
when he hears the voice that says “If you build it, they will come.” He was usually more practical than that, but he felt as though it was destiny that Steve Jansen had told him about La Vie, at this particular moment in time.

“When do you want to see it?” the broker said casually.

“I’m free now. If you have some time.”

“I can meet you there in an hour.” He gave Bill the directions, and Bill went downstairs to find Joe, who was on his computer, writing to his sons, to let them know he was in Denver with Bill. He said he hoped they were well, and he was having a good time. He told them both about Lily’s accident, to explain why he’d come out. One of his sons had written back immediately to say how sorry he was about Lily.

“Want to go for a ride?” Bill asked him offhandedly. Joe smiled at him—he knew him better than that. Bill had something up his sleeve. He had a look on his face like a cat that was about to pounce.

“What are you up to?”

“I want to take a look at that spa Steve talked about this morning. The French guy still owns it. Or the broker thinks he does, he’s not sure. It must be costing him a fortune to service the mortgage. The bank almost foreclosed on it last year. Let’s take a look, before I get too wound up about it.” But they both knew he already was. And there was another call he wanted to make before he went out there.

“I’ll come with you,” Joe confirmed, as Bill went back to his office.

He sat down at his desk and called Jessie. He figured she was probably busy with a patient or in surgery, and he was surprised when she came on the line very quickly.

“Is Lily okay?” She sounded worried.

“She’s fine, or at least she was when I saw her last night. Thank you for taking my call so quickly.”

“I thought something might have happened.” Jessie always assumed the worst now, ever since Tim, especially about her kids.

“A friend of mine suggested something to me last night, and I wanted to talk to you about it.” He went right to the point. He knew that she was busy. “It sounds crazy to talk about, but I can’t get it out of my head. What would you think about a residential rehab center for SCI kids, really young ones, and adolescents, younger than the ones they take at Craig, and with their low age range as our higher age, with very specific focus and everything geared just for them? Not a major medical facility combined with it, like Craig, but just rehab, with everything a kid, teenager, or college age kid could want. Not with all the bells and whistles Craig can offer, that’s a real medical facility, but straight rehab with whatever medical care is needed, but no ICU facilities, for instance. If we needed acute medical care, we could transfer them to Craig or another hospital. This would be pure rehab for kids and young people, state of the art, high tech, with everything we could offer. What do you think? Other than that I’m crazy, I think that’s a given.” He laughed at himself, and she joined him. She was bowled over by everything he had just said.