Informed Consent (9 page)

G
reta’s nerves
jangled as if she’d had too much caffeine when, in fact, she’d had none. Her heart had been racing for more than twenty-four hours, ever since the call from Virgil. She’d been distractible, absent-minded, and irritable. After a night of fitful sleep, she’d steeled herself and called Dr. Kayser’s office twenty minutes before his scheduled office hours began. And she’d called a second time. But he had failed to return either call, and it was clear from his receptionist’s tone that she’d been instructed to put Greta off.

Ordinarily, Greta’s social anxiety would have compelled her to retreat into silence in the face of such an obvious snub. But, in this particular instance, she couldn’t afford to indulge her solitary leanings. If she couldn’t get Dr. Kayser to back off she’d have to seriously consider contacting the Alpha Fund. And that horrifying thought made her stomach churn and her galloping heart pound even faster.

So she’d spent her afternoon pacing the halls at Golden Village and pretending not to notice the quizzical looks Athena shot her way every time their paths crossed. By five-thirty, her energy was flagging and she’d begun to suspect that Dr. Kayser was so committed to avoiding her that he was going to skip his patient visits. She was pulling out her phone to make one final, no-doubt futile call to his office, when the flash of a stiff, white doctor’s coat fluttering behind its owner caught her eye.

She stowed the phone and scurried down the hall. “Dr. Kayser,” she called as he disappeared around the corner.

She was about to break out into a full run and chase the man, when Troy, the graduate student tasked with taking today’s blood samples, rounded the corner coming from the opposite direction.

“Dr. Allstrom,” he said in an urgent tone as he skidded to a stop a few feet away from her.

She stifled a groan and turned her attention to Troy. Kayser had given her the slip, but at least she knew that he was in the building. He couldn’t avoid her forever.

“Yes?”

He tried, but failed, to catch his breath. “It’s Mrs. Chevitz. She’s … expiring.”

Greta nearly snapped that the woman wasn’t a carton of milk, but, after taking a closer look at Troy’s gray face and wide eyes, she restrained herself.

“Adina Chevitz? Isn’t Dr. Kayser her treating physician?” A plan to turn the situation to her advantage was forming in her mind even as she asked the question.

“Yes,” he panted.

“He just headed the other way, we should go get him.”

She started down the hallway but Troy grabbed her sleeve and yanked her back.

“Wait.”

She stopped, and he continued. “He knows. Mrs. Ray knows, too. They’re going to meet her children and husband in the lobby and bring them back to her room for the
Vidui.
”

“The what?”

“It’s like”—he paused and pursed his lips in thought for a moment—”it’s kind of like the Jewish equivalent of last rites. It’s the prayer you say before you die.”

“Oh.” Suddenly, the woman’s impending death was something more substantial than an excuse to chase down Dr. Kayser. Greta felt as though her feet were rooted to the ground and a heavy backpack were dragging her shoulders down.

“Dr. Allstrom?” he asked uncertainly.

“Sorry. I’m fine. We should give them their privacy.”

He tilted his head and gave her a curious look. “Well, sure. But, Dr. Allstrom … she’s enrolled in the study, and she’s not on the dementia ward. This is big. I mean, isn’t it?”

The import of his words broke through the fog of anxiety that had fallen over her mind. “Yes! It is.”

Relief and something akin to joy flooded her body. Mrs. Chevitz’s unfortunate passing would deliver
exactly
what Greta needed. Adina Chevitz would be the first enrolled control patient to die without showing any signs of dementia. The comparison of her brain tissue with that taken from the most recent deceased dementia patients—both those who’d received the supplement and those who hadn’t—would provide the last missing piece of information she needed for the nano-robot programmers. Her death was the answer to a prayer. Greta wouldn’t miss her deadline, and she’d never have to know what fate the Alpha Fund had in store for her if she failed.

“How do we handle this? Should I wait until after they’ve completed their prayer to ask her if we can autopsy her brain?” Troy asked.

“She’s in the research group. We don’t need any additional consent.” Greta said the words with a confidence she didn’t feel.

“Are you sure? She’s still competent. There’s no harm.” In contrast to her authoritative tone, his voice was hesitant, unsure.

The harm is she’ll say no,
Greta thought. She simply could not allow this opportunity to slip through her hands. It was unthinkable.

“I’ll talk to Dr. Kayser,” she said. His patient’s impending death would be the perfect chance to convince him of the importance of the project. She’d make him see how close she was to a breakthrough.

Troy nodded his agreement. His relief was apparent on his face. For a moment, she wondered if Virgil had said something to her team about the informed consent issue. But she dismissed it immediately. If nothing else, Virgil
always
followed protocol. He would never discuss her project with her students.

She set her jaw. “Head back to the lab and get everything ready. I want to be able to rock and roll as soon as we get the green light,” she told him. Then she set off at a brisk pace in the direction of the lobby.

A
l Kayser saw
Dr. Allstrom approaching out of the corner of his eye and frowned. Surely she wasn’t going to accost him
now
. Had she no sense of decency? He had his arm around the shoulder of Adina Chevitz’s weeping daughter, who’d needed to leave her mother’s room to gather herself after the prayer.

“Shhh, Ruth, shh,” he soothed her. “Excuse me for a moment,” he said in a near whisper.

Then he hurried down the hallway to confront Allstrom at a reasonable distance from the dying woman’s room.

“Dr. Kayser,” she said, holding up a hand as if she knew he was about to castigate her. “Please. Let me talk.” She spoke quickly, excitedly.

He knitted his eyebrows together but nodded. “Make it quick, please. I have a patient to attend to.”

“I know. I heard about Mrs. Chevitz. I’m sorry.”

Although her tone reeked of insincerity, he decided to take her condolence at face value. “Thank you. If you know about Mrs. Chevitz’s condition, then I’m sure you’ll understand that this isn’t the appropriate time to talk about your research. I need to be with the Chevitz family.”

She glanced over his shoulder at Ruth, who was no longer wailing but was sniffling into her handkerchief. “Of course.” She paused. “I wonder if I could speak to Mrs. Chevitz or, in the alternative, a member of the family. Mrs. Chevitz is one of my research participants and—”

An unfamiliar anger blazed in his chest. “Not now, Dr. Allstrom. Have some sensitivity.”

She flinched as if he’d slapped her but persisted nonetheless. “Of course. Perhaps after Mrs. Chevitz is … gone?”

Al counted to ten before answering her. “I admire your commitment to your work, Dr. Allstrom. Perhaps more than anyone, I can appreciate how important the fight against dementia truly is. That said, this simply isn’t the time.”

He crossed his arms and stared hard at her until she lowered her eyes.

“Of course,” she mumbled. She started to walk away and then turned back. “Please convey my sympathies to the family.”

“I will,” he promised, softening just a bit in his views toward the researcher. “Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

He rejoined Ruth Chavitz to see whether she was ready to go back into the room. When he glanced up again, Dr. Allstrom was gone.

L
eo stood
at the front door of The Blue House, stowed his gun in its holster, and smoothed his jacket over the top. The house was, unsurprisingly, blue. Not a bright blue, by any means; rather it was a weathered and faded blue, the peeling paint showing the effects of time, saltwater, and wind. He took one final astonished look at the dense forest that surrounded the house, obscuring it from the road and shielding it from the water below. Anyone out on a tourist cruise who scanned the cliffs would almost certainly be unable to see the blue house in the woods.

He lifted the brass knocker and let it fall heavily against the door. As he waited for someone to answer the knock, he wondered again what—or who—Doug Wynn was hiding from up here. Despite having uncovered his host’s trap, Leo was remarkably unconcerned. He was confident in his ability to draw his weapon faster than almost anyone he might encounter—
punji
pit or not.

After several minutes, he raised his hand to the knocker again but stopped when he heard rustling on the other side of the door. Then then rasp of rusted deadbolt scraping as it was unlocked. Finally, the door edged open and a thin, haggard man peered out at him.

“Leonard Connelly?” he creaked.

“Yes. Is Doug Wynn home?”

Leo assumed the man was a caretaker of some kind. He judged the man to be in his mid- to late-sixties. Vietnamese. And clearly unwell. He had the gray pallor and hunched, too-thin look of a man battling illness.

“Come in.” The man opened the door wider and shuffled aside to let him pass. After Leo crossed the threshold, he closed the door and relocked the deadbolt with a tremoring hand. Then he faced Leo and appraised him slowly, from head to toe, before announcing. “I’m Doug Wynn. Thank you for coming.”

Leo kept his expression neutral and regarded him closely. Despite his frail appearance, Doug Wynn had hard edges and cold eyes. He extended his hand. “I guess it’s nice to meet you,” he said cautiously.

His adrenaline was still running high from the discovery of the trap but he didn’t sense that he was in any physical danger from Wynn. Even if the older man were armed, he was too slow and unsteady to get the drop on Leo. He allowed himself to relax incrementally.

The man shook his hand gingerly. “Come. Sit. I didn’t see a car. You walked?”

“Yes.”

He followed Wynn through a dimly lit corridor to a large sitting room to the right of the door. Two overstuffed chairs faced a dusty fireplace. On the other side of the room, a sofa and a coffee table faced the window. There was no television, but the walls were lined with bookshelves groaning under the weight of books. Hardbacks, paperbacks, all manner of books were piled on the shelves. Not standing in tidy rows, organized by size, but in haphazard collections, some piled horizontally, some doubled up in two rows. Leo lowered himself into the chair next to Wynn as he craned his neck and tried to make out some of the titles.

The older man watched him. “You like to read?”

Leo turned his attention back to his host. “I do. It looks like you do, too?”

“Ah, yes,” Wynn said. He smiled. “I guess the apple doesn’t fall far, eh?”

It took a long moment for Leo’s brain to process the sentence and spit out its meaning. He sat back in the chair and eyed the man. “Excuse me?”

Wynn nodded. “I’m your father. My name is Duc Nguyen. I Americanized it when I came to this country.”

Here it was. The scam. The shakedown.

“Oh, I see,” Leo said, letting his skepticism drip from his voice.

Wynn rocked forward and braced his palms on his knees. “You don’t believe me.” It was a statement, not a question.

“That’s right. I don’t.” Leo stood. His heart pounded, and he barely kept control of his seething anger. He’d allowed himself to be dragged all the way up here, had dragged his entire family up here, and had spent the past twenty minutes traipsing around a booby-trapped yard in the cold for what had turned out to be worse than a wild goose chase. “I don’t know what your con is, Mr. Wynn. But I’m leaving.”

“Leonard,
con trai.
Wait.”

Con trai.
Son.
It was one of the handful of Vietnamese words Leo knew.

The summer he’d gone to Vietnam in search of his father, he’d practiced two sentences until he could say them flawlessly: ‘I’m looking for a man named Duc. I’m his son.’ He mumbled the phrases to himself under his breath.

“Yes. You came to the village. I was already living in New York then. But my cousins heard about your visit, long after you had left, and got word to me.”

Leo narrowed his eyes. “Let’s say you
are
my father. You sure took your time trying to find me. I went to Vietnam in 1985,” he said dryly.

“That’s true,” Wynn conceded.

“So why now? Why did you come looking for me now?”

The older man thought for a long moment. He steepled his fingers as he formed his response.

Seeing him make the gesture hit Leo like a gut punch. From the time he was a small child, he would do that with his hands when he was deep in thought. His mother used to smile when she caught him at it and would say, wistfully, ‘Just like your dad.’ And, just like that, he believed the man. Doug Wynn, Duc Nguyen, whatever he called himself, was his father. He heard his breath coming fast and ragged and steadied it with some effort.

Oblivious to his reaction, his father nodded to himself. “I believe you deserve the truth, so I’ll be honest with you. I never planned to contact you. But, as it turns out, I need a favor.”

Leo blinked. “A favor?” he echoed.

“Yes. I have cancer, and I’m dying.”

He paused, and Leo wondered what his father expected him to say. ‘I’m sorry,’ seemed both trite and disingenuous, so he said nothing.

After a brief moment, Wynn continued, “It’s in my liver, and I’m too sick for more chemotherapy. The medications aren’t working. The doctors say I have weeks, maybe a couple months at most. Unless …”

“Unless what?”

“Unless I get a liver transplant. My tumors are too big for me to go on the transplant list for a cadaver liver.” Wynn stared hard at Leo. “But if I don’t get any sicker, I could qualify for a living donor transplant.”

“Okay?”

“I need to find the donor, Leonard. Not them.”

Leo sank back down into the chair. “You’re not seriously asking me to give you my liver. Are you?”

“Just part of it,” his father hurried to reassure him. “They take, you know, just a portion of it. The liver regenerates. So if the operation succeeds, after just a few months, you will have a whole, healthy liver, and I will have a whole, healthy liver. It’s my only chance, Leonard.”

“It’s Leo. Of course, you’d know that if you’d ever bothered to have a relationship with me.”

“Let me very clear. I don’t want a relationship with you. I want part of your liver.” His voice was hard and expectant.

Leo barked out a laugh. “Why exactly would I do this for a stranger?”

“I’m not a stranger. I’m your father.” Wynn’s spine stiffened.

“You don’t want to have a relationship. Did you even know that
I’m
a father? I’m married, and we have twin infants. You’re a grandfather.” The muscle in Leo’s right cheek began to twitch, a sure sign that he was in danger of losing his grip on his rising anger.

“Congratulations to you.”

“But you don’t even want to meet your grandchildren?”

Wynn sighed. “It’s complicated. There are reasons—important reasons—why I can’t be involved in your life, and you can’t be involved in mine. But our culture would require a son to do this for his father. I know you’re American, but I am hoping that somewhere inside you, there’s a part of you that’s Vietnamese enough that you will do what I ask. You must understand, though, that this will be a gift, and after the surgery we’ll go back to living our separate lives.”

Wynn finished speaking and searched his face.

Leo shook his head. If nothing else, he had to give his father credit for his ruthless honesty. “I don’t know what you want me to say. This is a lot to take in.”

Wynn coughed into his fist, a dry, hacking cough that rattled his chest and set off a round of trembling.

“Do you need a glass of water?” Leo asked, concerned despite himself.

“Please,” his father croaked and pointed toward the back of the house.

Leo made his way to the kitchen, found a glass, and filled it with tap water. He returned to the sitting room and placed the glass on the table between the two chairs. Wynn lifted it to his lips and took a small, slow sip.

“Thank you,” he said faintly.

Leo abandoned any plans he’d had to confront Wynn about the
punji
pit he’d found. The man was dying. Despite the callous attitude he displayed, Wynn was asking his son for help. Leo could tell that dynamic didn’t sit easy with the man. He tamped down his own feelings and crouched in front of his father. “I need time to think. Give me a phone number where I can reach you. I’ll call you after I’ve talked to my wife.”

Wynn closed his eyes and seemed to gather strength. When he opened his eyes, he sat up straighter. After a moment, he rose and crossed the room to an old telephone stand that occupied the corner near the windows. He pulled open a drawer and pawed around until he located a pen and notepad. He scrawled a telephone number on the pad, then ripped the sheet off and held it out toward Leo. “Here.”

Leo walked over and took the sheet from him. His father placed his dry, papery hand on Leo’s arm. Leo looked down at the man’s pale skin, almost translucent, the blue veins so prominent.

“Talk to your wife. Consult your conscience. Call a doctor if you want to know more about the risks to you. But don’t take too long. I don’t have much time.” He released Leo’s arm and turned both of his palms upward as if to say it’s out of my hands.

Leo shoved the paper into his pocket. “I have to go.”

“Wait,” his father rasped. He reached into the drawer and removed a set of keys. “There’s a car in the woodshed. Take it. Leave it at the dock. Someone will come for it later.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, take it.” He dropped the keys into Leo’s palm.

“Okay. Thanks.”

He pressed a smaller key, the type that would fit in a padlock, into Leo’s palm. “Go out through the kitchen. You’ll see the shed at the end of a stone path. Leave the padlock unlocked and put the key on the shelf inside the door. I’ll lock it up later. I’d see you out, but I need to rest.” He lowered himself carefully onto the sofa and closed his eyes.

Leo stared down for a long moment at the father he’d been longing for, off and on, for decades. The emotions running through his mind were a jumble of disbelief and joy, regret and confusion, sorrow and anger. He opened his mouth to say something in case this was the last time he saw the man but closed it quickly because he had no idea what to say.

He swallowed. Then he walked to the kitchen and let himself out of the house. On the back porch, he stopped to text Sasha to let her know he’d meet her in about fifteen minutes. As he was stowing his phone in his pocket, he heard the unmistakable click of a lock tumbler sliding into place behind him. He turned, and the flutter of a curtain inside the kitchen window caught his eye.

He squared his shoulders and proceeded down the path.