First Thrills - Lee Child [61]
A mere twelve months after placing my initial wager on the stage IVA John Doe, I had blown not only my winnings, but a second mortgage on my house and a chunk of my kids’ college fund. Lee Anne hadn’t found out just yet, but she was suspicious, that’s for sure.
Confessing to her my involvement with The Dead Club would be akin to signing my divorce papers. Just when I thought my luck had officially run out, I saw the January bet.
The unimaginable had happened.
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. The name of a consulting neurologist for a terribly ill man had been left in at the bottom of his note. Ivan Dworsky, a neurologist I knew well. Barring an incredible coincidence, the case was a patient at my hospital! All I had to do was determine and confirm the identity, and that I was quickly able to do. The gondolas were floating again.
Richard Generoso—sixty-seven years old with invasive glioblastoma multiforme, a grade-four malignant brain tumor.
I had only three days to place my bet. This was like betting blackjack while seeing the dealer’s hand. It was one thing trying to predict the outcome by reading a medical record, but another thing entirely to have access to the actual patient. I could review his CT scans with the best radiologists around.
It was no problem tracking Generoso down. I was standing by his bed when in came my second pot of gold. His doctor, whom I happened to have played racquetball with on a few occasions, entered the room with his patient’s latest lab results. I explained that Generoso and I were acquaintances. The invasive radiologists had just performed a spinal tap, I was told, and the results were bad—very bad. Cancer cells were filling the spinal canal—a quick ticket to heaven. The news was as good as gold, because it was fresh and not something included in the medical records the rest of The Dead Club had reviewed. It was better than seeing the dealer’s cards. This was knowing I had blackjack on my next hand.
Three weeks, that’s what I gave him—no more than twenty-one days to live. The cancer itself wasn’t that large, and sure enough, I was the only one to bet his end would come so soon. I took out a third mortgage on my house, forged Lee Anne’s signatures, and put the money in the kitty. If I lost, I’d be over a hundred grand in the hole. But I had no intention on losing this one.
Fast-forward nineteen days. Richard Generoso is beginning to fail, but not that rapidly. He has finally been readmitted, but he is hanging on and still conscious most of the time. I’ve checked on him enough so that he thinks I’m his new physician and his doc thinks that he’s my long- lost uncle.
“How’re you feeling today, Richard?” I asked. It was less than forty hours before I was going permanently under water if he didn’t die.
“Feeling okay,” he replied dreamily. “My daughter is looking into hospice care.”
Richard’s eyes were rheumy with memory.
He knew he was going to die and I knew he was going to die, but for him to pointlessly pass away three days or a week or a month from now in hospice care would have thrown my life into an unrecoverable tailspin. The money was already gone, and trying to find The Dead Club, let alone trying to blow the whistle on them, was fruitless.
The next day, with less than twelve hours remaining on my bet—make that life as I knew it—Richard was still alert most of the time.
It simply wasn’t going to happen.
I went to my office and returned with just fifteen minutes left, as panicked as I had ever been about anything.
Generoso’s doctor and nurse had just left. I walked nonchalantly down the hall and into his room,