Winners (9 page)

They spent the day in the suite, resting and watching movies on TV. And the next morning, after breakfast in Lily’s suite, they went to King’s College Hospital, to meet with the first doctor her father had lined up. He looked old and serious as he examined Lily. He had already studied all of her records, and could have given them the prognosis without seeing her, but Bill had insisted on a consultation in person, and to have Lily seen by the experts. After the examination, Lily went to the waiting room to sit with Jennifer, while her father conferred with the doctor. Lily wanted to stay in the room, but her father preferred to talk to him alone. The doctor was somber and to the point.

“I’m very sorry, Mr. Thomas, but I concur entirely with the neurosurgeon who operated on your daughter. With a T10 complete spinal injury, she will not regain use of her legs. It’s medically impossible. I don’t want to hold out false hopes to you or Lily. She needs to focus on rehabilitation now and getting on with her life. Many great people have conducted productive lives as paraplegics and from wheelchairs. Your president Franklin Roosevelt was one of them. I think that’s important to stress to Lily now, rather than fostering false hopes that can only disappoint her.”

Bill was crushed and angry again at what he said. He thought he was old-fashioned and a defeatist, and Jessie had obviously influenced him with whatever she put in her report. He looked annoyed when he came out of the doctor’s office, and Lily said nothing. She had understood the doctor’s opinion of the situation from the questions he asked her, which were the same as Jessie’s in the past six weeks. Lily had no illusions now after talking to her. Only her father did. She asked if they could go to Harrods to do some shopping, since they had time before they left for Switzerland the next day. And she had been to Harrods before, and liked shopping there.

Her father dropped her off with Jennifer and said he’d wait in the car. He had some calls to make to New York. But Lily wasn’t prepared for how difficult it would be to shop from the chair. She was jostled by the crowds, and had people’s elbows and purses in her face. Salespeople spoke to Jennifer and not to her, and ignored her even when she asked them direct questions. She couldn’t try anything on—it would have been too complicated. It was frightening and upsetting and a taste of what life would be like now. It was the first time she had gone out in the world in her wheelchair, and Jennifer could see how upset she was when they went back to the limousine. Lily was near tears, and her father looked surprised at how rapidly they emerged. Lily had felt claustrophobic in the crowds and returned to the car empty-handed.

“Well, that’s a first,” her father said, smiling at her. “You didn’t buy anything?” She usually liked to shop, like other girls her age, and she and Veronica often went shopping when they had a day off from the team.

“I didn’t see anything I liked,” Lily said quietly, and asked to go back to the hotel, and Bill seemed surprised.

“Do you want to go out to lunch?” She shook her head.

All she wanted to do was disappear. Her first venture into the world at Harrods had been a disaster, and had brought the realities of her future home to her with the force of a wrecking ball.

They went back to Claridge’s and ordered room service, and Bill could see how unhappy she was, although he didn’t fully understand why. He hadn’t seen how difficult it had been for her at Harrods, and Jennifer was intimidated by him, so she didn’t say anything. She left Lily alone with her father and had lunch in her room. She didn’t want to intrude on them. Jessie had made an excellent choice in picking Jennifer for the trip. She was a good nurse, and very discreet. And Lily liked her.

“Baby, it’s going to be all right,” her father said soothingly as they waited for lunch in her suite. He had sensed that her attempt at shopping had not gone well. “You’re not going to be in that chair forever, and you can go shopping all you want when you get back on your feet.” He meant well, but what he said made it even harder for her. She felt like Alice in Wonderland in the dream, or Dorothy in
The Wizard of Oz
.

“Stop it!” she shouted at him, which stunned him. “Stop acting like I’m going to walk again! I know I won’t. You’re the only one who thinks I will,” she said and broke into a sob, crying inconsolably, as he tried to comfort her, to no avail.

“Sometimes it only takes one relentless person who believes,” he said to her. “I’ll never give up, Lily. I’ll do whatever I have to, to get you walking again.” He believed it, but Lily no longer did.

“You can’t,” she said, still crying. “My spinal cord is severed, Daddy. My legs will never walk again. I’m going to be in this stupid chair forever. Why can’t you understand it and accept it? I don’t want to go to all these doctors. They’re all going to say the same thing.”

“Until we find one who doesn’t,” he said quietly. “That’s the one we’re looking for.” He was looking for the holy grail. It sounded crazy and unreasonable to her.

“I want to go home,” she said miserably.

“We will. Just give me another week, and then we’ll go back to Denver.” But once they did, she would be in rehab for several months, and he hated that idea. But Jessie had insisted on it, and he’d agreed. All the arrangements had been made. They were waiting for her at the rehab hospital, where she was being admitted the morning after they got home. Lily was dreading it too. It sounded like prison to her, with everyone in wheelchairs, and probably no one her age. She missed her friends. Six weeks in the hospital in Squaw Valley had been enough, too much in fact. She just wanted to go home.

When their lunch arrived, Lily only picked at it, and afterward Jennifer distracted her by playing cards with her for several hours, and then they watched a movie on the TV in the suite. It was a long, boring day, and Lily was sad when she went to bed that night. Bill had gone to bed early too. He didn’t want to tell her, but he was depressed by what the British doctor had said. It was just more of the same and not worth the trip. He was determined to hear better news at their next stops.

The neurosurgeon in Switzerland said exactly the same thing. His examination was cursory, and his opinion had been formed before they got there, based on all Jessie’s reports and tests. Like the doctor in London, he couldn’t understand why they’d come. They were out of his office in less than an hour, and although they had two of the best suites reserved at the beautiful Hotel Baur au Lac, Bill decided to leave for New York that night, and had Angie move up their appointment in New York. She made it for the following afternoon. Bill was beginning to think they would do better with doctors in the States. They were too traditional and old-fashioned in Europe, and had nothing innovative to offer. He had high hopes for their meeting in New York, and the one in Boston. They had come up with nothing encouraging here.

He told Jennifer and Lily they were leaving that night, and after an early dinner in the suite, they left for the airport, and took off for New York, and landed at midnight local time in New York. The time difference was in their favor, so they gained six hours and were at the Carlyle in half an hour. Lily had slept for most of the flight, and she and Jennifer ordered dinner from room service and played cards when they arrived. Lily and the young nurse got along very well. Jennifer made everything easier for Lily and was good at distracting her with cards, games, fashion, or gossip magazines. She had made the trip much happier for her, and provided female companionship as they flew from city to city.

Later, Lily texted Veronica in Denver, to tell her they were in New York. Veronica texted her back right away. She was at a party with lots of cute boys, and she couldn’t wait for Lily to come home. Lily couldn’t wait either. It had been the longest, hardest two months of her life. And she missed her home, her old life, and all her friends, and told Jennifer how happy she’d be to see them again.

Chapter 8

The apartment was dark, as Joe Henry sat at his handsome English partner’s desk in the library of his home. He had lived in the same apartment in New York with his wife Karen for the past fifteen years, ever since their sons grew up and they had sold their townhouse on East 81st Street. And for the past six months, Joe had been alone. Life never turned out the way one had expected. The years of empty nest had taken a toll on Karen and their marriage. She had been lost without their boys, both of whom were now in their thirties. One lived in Atlanta, the other in Cleveland, and both worked for large corporations, were married, and had children of their own.

Karen had gotten into Eastern religions in order to fill the void in her life, while Joe continued to work on Wall Street and spend too little time at home. And once the boys left for college, he had spent even less time with her. He understood that now, but hadn’t before. He had used their children being gone as an opportunity to work harder and expand his business. He had taken on a partner, with disastrous results, while Karen began taking trips to India and spent first weeks and then months at an ashram. She had found a guru whom she followed devotedly, and had less and less and less in common with Joe. Then she had taken a film class at NYU, and had begun making documentaries to help expand the work and exposure of her guru, and by then she was traveling to Tibet and Nepal, and for the last ten years she had rarely been at home.

His business, a hedge fund, had expanded exponentially with his new partner. New clients had been added, they were handling larger investments than Joe ever had before, and then the roof fell in. His partner had invested badly, in ways that Joe knew nothing about, and concealed it from him. For months Joe had worried about being prosecuted, and narrowly escaped federal charges. His partner hadn’t been as lucky, and had been convicted of embezzlement and wire fraud. They had lost a fortune for their clients, but the FBI had realized that Joe was innocent. He had been gullible and naïve and trusted a man who was a brilliant sociopathic con.

They had settled countless civil lawsuits before his partner went to prison, and now whatever savings Joe had had were wiped out, his reputation shot forever, his career ended in disgrace. Karen had decided it was the opportune moment to move to Nepal. She had left six months before, after filing for divorce. All Joe had left was a small nest egg he was just barely able to live on, and he was planning to sell the apartment. He had virtually nothing to leave to his sons, and Karen had wanted nothing from him when she left, not even the photographs that were evidence of their history and long marriage. According to Karen, she had been resurrected and reborn into a new life and wanted nothing from her past. She didn’t even maintain contact with their sons. Joe thought she had gone a little crazy, but unlike him, she was happy, so who was he to say she was wrong? He hardly recognized her when he saw her before she left. She had a long mane of snowy white hair, which had been prematurely white since her twenties, and she’d been wearing a simple orange robe, like a Buddhist nun. She looked incredibly peaceful, and she had told him she was planning to make more documentary films about her guru. She had become a person he couldn’t relate to and no longer knew.

Since the previous August, Joe had been alone in the apartment. His business was closed, his debts had been settled, his partner was in prison, his wife was gone. And at fifty-eight, he knew there was no way he could rebuild any of it. His long-respected career in finance had ended in shambles, and he hadn’t had the courage to face or even contact his friends in nearly two years, since his partner’s crimes had been exposed, and his own gullibility and foolishness. He was just grateful he hadn’t wound up in prison with him. And it was inconceivable to him to find another woman, or even want to, or explain why his wife had preferred to become a Buddhist nun rather than stay with him. His partner had been dishonest, and his wife crazy with some sort of midlife crisis, after years of lack of attention from him, but whatever the reasons or the excuses, life as he had known it was over, and there was nothing left for him to look forward to. He would be remembered as a fool if not a crook, like his partner.

He saw his sons from time to time, but they rarely came to New York. They were married to nice women, had happy, stable marriages and children, and liked the cities where they lived and worked and the worlds they had there. Joe felt completely superfluous to them, and of no use or interest. They didn’t need him. He had visited both of them during the holidays, one at Christmas and the other one at Thanksgiving, and in both cases felt he had become an object of pity and not respect.

He hadn’t bothered to turn the lights on in the apartment on a dark night in February. He was sitting at his desk with nothing to do there, as he did so often now, out of habit. He had nothing to occupy his time anywhere, and no one to talk to now that Karen was gone. He had lost contact with everyone, even his closest friends. He didn’t return their calls, and eventually they stopped calling, which was a relief. He was too ashamed. He had just put the apartment on the market, he needed the money to live on, and he had no idea what to do, or where to go after that.

As he thought about it all, which he did every night now, and had for many months, he unlocked a drawer in his desk, and quietly slipped the gun he kept there out of its case and held the weapon in his hand. It was loaded, and he sat holding it for a long time. This wasn’t the first time he had done that, but he hoped tonight would be the last. He had had enough. Through force of circumstances, bad luck, and his own mistakes, he had become entirely redundant. He served no useful purpose, to his children, his clients, his ex-wife, or himself. His life was completely useless, and exiting now would be a mercy for him, and probably not even surprising to his children. They seldom called him, and he couldn’t blame them. When they did, he had nothing to say. He had no relationship with his grandchildren, whom he saw too seldom, and lived too far away for him to be engaged in their lives in a meaningful way. Nothing in his life mattered to him now. He was ready. He cocked the trigger, and slowly raised the gun to his head. And then, as in a very bad movie, the phone rang. It was after midnight, and the number that came up on his phone was unfamiliar to him. Probably a wrong number. No one ever called him at that hour. In fact, no one called him at all.