LITMIR.BIZ

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and now he seems like he’s gone all the way to stage four. Have you talked him into seeing the specialist yet?”

      Hank tapped his beer bottle on its coaster. “You managed to do that your last visit.” He took a deep breath, his barrel chest broadening under a short beard just starting to grizzle, his craggy face grim.

      “Thank God. One more trip to that witch doctor and I thought he’d start howling at the moon.”

      “He’s dyin’, Jess.”

      I waited a few seconds for him to add just kiddin’. Or to say that we’re all dying and Scooter is seventy-four, after all, so he’s just a little ahead of the game.

      But when he continued, Hank said, “The doctors gave him a cocktail that was supposed to help the Parkinson’s, but it’s damaged his heart.”

      “Okay, so they can fix that—”

      “It’s irreversible.”

      Tears stung the backs of my eyes. “Is that what the cardiovascular surgeon said?”

      “It’s what a team of specialists—heart surgeons and neurologists—said.”

      “They took an oath,” I protested. “What happened to ‘do no harm’?”

      “They did their best.”

      “No, they didn’t. They broke him.” My gut tightened. I knew the question to ask, but waited until I wouldn’t cry when I asked it. “How long?” I said finally.

      “A month at the outside.”

      After the next wave of pain passed, I asked, “What are they going to do?”

      Hank shook his head, squeezing my hand once before letting go. “Nothin’. He’s too old.” Before I could get up a good head of steam, he added, “He wouldn’t let ’em do anything about it now even if they wanted to. You know him.”

      “Yeah, I do. He’d rather waste his time and money carrying around rabbit’s feet and drinking herbal concoctions Old Lady Fenster cooked up in her backyard than take a vitamin.” I shoved away from the table and stood. “I need to have a talk with that old bat.”

      Hank grabbed my arm. “Don’t, Jess. There’s nothin’ wrong with what she was doing. It may not have helped him, but it didn’t hurt him none, neither.”

      “Didn’t hurt him? You mean when he didn’t go to the doctor early enough to get help or when she gave him false hope that she could stop the Parkinson’s?”

      “It’s Scooter’s choice. It always has been.”

      His grip felt like iron, completely unlike Scooter’s feeble grasp earlier. The contrast made my throat ache. “She had no right filling his head with that crap,” I said. “If he’d listened to me years ago and gone to a doctor then, they could have prescribed L-dopa to slow the symptoms.”

      “It’s more complicated than that,” Hank replied, his voice soft. He let go of me as I sat back down to listen. “This drug treatment they gave him is in trials.”

      I stared at him for a moment while my brain struggled to work. “He let them experiment on him?”

      “Only because he’s already so far gone. But now they know more about the side effects—”

      “Let me get this straight,” I snapped. “The doctors turned a non-life-threatening disease into a death sentence because they wanted to test a cocktail that hasn’t seen FDA approval yet. And when that clinical trial failed, they decided to wash their hands of him and let him die because he’s old. Is that what you’re telling me?”

      Hank’s shuttered expression told me I was wasting my breath. He was a bottom-line kind of guy, but I guess the bottom line I’d reached didn’t sit well with him.

      “Look,” I argued, “I just wanted him to see if anything could be done. Not to throw himself into a bad science experiment.”

      Hank nodded thoughtfully with the air of a parent letting his ten-year-old finish up a tantrum. It pissed me off. I clutched my sweat-slick beer bottle as he said, “He’s a grown man, Jessie. He’s gonna do what he’s gonna do. It’s not up to you to go tearing up Old Lady Fenster or parade over to San Antone to yell at the doctors. Especially since he’s been workin’ with ’em ever since you left.”

      My radar went off. San Antonio wasn’t the Parkinson’s capital of Texas. Houston was.

      “Talk to me about San Antone,” I said, shedding my anger a hair. “Why’d he go there?”

      Hank toyed with a coaster. I knew I wasn’t going to like what came out of his mouth. “Your great-uncle decided last year he’d check into a cure on his own. He found a lab that was workin’ on one and talked to ’em.”

      My heart sank. “Don’t tell me. They agreed to make him a guinea pig.” At his nod, I added, “And he chose them because they’re using an extract of some damned insect saliva in the formula.”

      Hank looked at his hands as he said, “They’re still workin’ on the cure. The head guy at the lab, Dr. Thompson, he said the drug had been tested on mice okay. The San Antone fellas just need a little more time.”

      I got mad all over again. “It doesn’t sound like they have time. What’s this outfit called?”

      “Cradion Pharmaceutical.”

      “And they’re hooked up to Scooter’s regular doctors how?” I demanded.

      “They offered the trial drug and assigned Dr. Thompson to his case. His G.P. just oversees his checkups.”

      “Did his insurance pick up the cost?”

      “Not much of it. The Slapdash is mortgaged up to its neck.”

      I bit my lip. Damned old fool and his damned fool ideas. “He should’ve paid a hit man. It would’ve been cheaper and faster.”

      “Ever’body did their level best, Jessie. Sometimes it just don’t work out.”

      “I should have tried harder.”

      “We all could have.”

      “No. I mean I should have gone to court, got him declared incompetent, and then put him in decent care when he was first diagnosed. I should have been here to make sure the doctors were going to help him, not hurt him.”

      Hank stared at me, mouth tightening with what might have been anger. “He’d never forgive you for doing that to him. You got no call to be trying to run his life when he’s still kickin’ around like a mean old hoss.” His bearded chin stuck out a little as he said, “He wouldn’t have tried to tell you what to do.”

      I waited for Hank to finish. Behind him, the band’s guitar player slipped the strap over his head and twanged a string, prompting a pretty brunette in tight jeans and boots to drag her man onto the scraped-up dance floor. A group of cowboys in the corner laughed over a hand of cards.

      When Hank ran out of things to say, I stood. “See you around.” I headed for the door.

      “Jessie,” he warned.

      “It’s okay. I won’t bother anybody.” I threw a few bucks on the bar for Marian on my way out.

      On the porch, cool wind brushed my cheeks. Only then did I feel the sticky wetness of tears. The man I knew as a father was dying because he was too stubborn to do anything else. A homeopath had given him false hope and some bogus pharmaceutical company had made him a guinea pig and thanked him for it by killing him.

      But I was the one who hadn’t been here. I hadn’t done what needed to be done.

      If anybody had put the first nail in Scooter’s coffin, it was me.

      Chapter 2

      Hammarbya

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