Page 87 of Don't Go
The eleventh floor had Cross Foundation in chrome lettering on the wall opposite the elevator.
The intake coordinator was at her desk. Margaret. I'd been told her name was Margaret about thirty seconds after I had become her boss, and the name had stuck because her face had been stuck. Margaret had been at the foundation longer than I had, and she had been the woman fielding calls from desperate parents for the better part of a decade.
"Mr. Cross."
"Margaret."
"I have your messages on your desk. The Kessler call is on top."
"Thank you." I went past her.
My office had a window on Madison and a door that closed quietly. The desk had on it: Margaret's stack of messages, my father's pen — the fountain pen, the one I had taken from the drawer of his desk at Mom's house and put on my desk at the foundation because I hadn't been able to leave it in the drawer — and Simon Kessler's folder.
I had taken the folder out of the car this morning and told myself the lie that I would open it before lunch.
I put the folder in the corner of the desk, turned to my computer, and logged in. I went to the database.
Ever since Mark Olin said her name in the conference room, I hadn't looked at her file. I kept telling myself I didn't need to. I told myself it was the right thing to do — not to misuse my access, not to turn a personal connection into a database search, not to become the kind of man who looks up the file of the woman he loves.
I'd been lying.
I looked.
VELA, BONNIE. AGE 8.
The file gave me her birthday. The file listed her birthday, and it was approaching.
DIAGNOSIS: HYPERTROPHIC CARDIOMYOPATHY (OBSTRUCTIVE), SEPTAL.
CARDIOLOGIST: DR. ALEJANDRO REYES.
WAITLIST: 14 MONTHS. ORIGINAL SURGICAL WINDOW: AUTUMN. REVISED TO LATE AUTUMN. REVISED TO SPRING.
MEDICAL REVIEW COMMITTEE NOTES, MOST RECENT: ACUTE DETERIORATION; DOCUMENTED SYNCOPE EVENT; CARDIOLOGIST REQUESTS EMERGENCY ACCELERATION OF SCHEDULING. RECOMMENDATION PENDING REVIEW. NEXT COMMITTEE MEETING: THREE WEEKS.
I read it three times.
The file was the one Sabrina had carried in her purse, on her calendar, and in the back of her mind for months — the dates recopied in red marker on her fridge, the answer to the question she had asked the foundation —we are processing the request— and Dr. Reyes's three letters lined up in chronological order in the medical review committee inbox, the most recent of them datedlast week.
I didn't need to be a doctor to know she didn't have three weeks. I had read Dr. Reyes's note. The note used the wordsacute,syncope, andemergency.
I pulled the surgical schedule, and it was on a shared calendar. The calendar had names in some slots andPENDING — REVIEWin others. The slot that mattered was the slot in nine days.
The slot was at Memorial for a septal myectomy — the exact procedure Bonnie needed, with the exact surgeon Dr. Reyes hadrecommended, on a date that would get her there in time for the operation.
I shut the screen and sat with the math.
There was a slot, and the foundation had it. I was the chairman of the foundation, and the medical review committee had been sitting on Dr. Reyes's letter. The committee would, when it met, vote to accelerate Bonnie.
I knew this because the committee hadn't, in the history of the foundation, declined a Dr. Reyes acceleration request that had documented syncope, and he didn't write syncope on a request unless he meant it.
I could call Aldridge tonight.
Aldridge was in charge of scheduling surgeries. She’d worked at the foundation for eleven years. She always answered my calls. I could call her at home and, using the firm voice of a chairman or the commanding voice of my father — or any of the authoritative voices I'd learned to use — tell her there’d been a paperwork mistake. I could say the surgery slot had actually been promised to a patient whose cardiologist had flagged them for fainting. Then I could ask her to fix the mistake before morning.
Aldridge would do it.
Aldridge would do it because she had already done two of these in the last year for board members’ grandchildren, and neither occasion had presented a problem.
