Wallace Stroby - Gone 'Til November

“And then?”

“You go down there, straighten that shit out, get my money, and bring it back here. Take your cut. Then we clear.”

“You make it sound easy.”

“It ain’t nothing you haven’t seen before, dealt with. It’s the same thieving bullshit, man. That’s all it is.”

Morgan scratched his elbow, looked at C-Love.

“You’re the only one I can trust with this,” Mikey said. “If you get down there and it don’t work out, then it don’t work out. I’ll pay you for your time.”

“How much?”

“Twenty K.”

“I’ll need to think on this.”

“All right. But one other thing. If you do find the motherfucker that got my money?”

“Yeah?”

“You need to put him in the ground. Cop, sheriff, judge, mayor, whatever. I don’t give a fuck. Put him in the ground.”

The machinery clicked, hummed, and Morgan slid into darkness. The plastic table was cold through the thin hospital gown. Wraparound safety glasses blocked his view, but he could sense the walls of the tunnel closing in around him. A steady hum grew louder, then faded. The table buzzed, slid him farther into the tunnel, stopped. Then the hum again, rising and falling like something in a science fiction movie.

He tried to slow his breathing, fight the gathering fear. He counted his breaths as the table juddered, moved, and the hum rose again. Four more times and then the last hum faded and the table slid back out of the tunnel. He was slick with sweat.

“Take your time getting up,” a voice said. “You might be a little dizzy.”

He blinked as the glasses were drawn away. A black woman in flowered hospital scrubs stood beside the table.

“All done,” she said. “How do you feel?”

He sat up. The room was dim, light coming through a window in the far wall. He could see two technicians behind the glass, neither of them looking at him.

“I’m fine,” he said.

“You can get dressed now.”

He went into the small anteroom, the tiles cold under his bare feet, pulled on his clothes. Soft music was being piped in, some white girl singing about rain on her wedding day.

When he was dressed, he went out to the main desk, stood at the counter. The woman in flowered scrubs was typing on a computer.

“You’re all set, Mr. Morgan,” she said. “Dr. Kinzler will get the results this afternoon.”

“How do I pay?”

“We’ll bill you,” she said. She peered at the screen. “Are you still at this same address?” She gave the name of the hotel.

“I may be moving,” he said.

“I’m sure we’ll catch up to you,” she said without looking up. “We always do.”

Outside the hospital, he used his cell to call a cab. He hadn’t wanted to drive the Monte Carlo around Newark in daylight. Around him, a half-dozen people, some in scrubs with no coats, smoked cigarettes, shuffled in the cold. None of them seemed to notice him.

It was nine o’clock, and he was watching cable news with the sound low, stretched out on the motel bed, the Beretta beside him. On the nightstand, his cell began to buzz. He reached for it.

“Mr. Morgan? Dr. Kinzler.”

Morgan sat up, used the remote to mute the TV.

“Sorry to call so late, but the MRI results got back quicker than I expected. I’m tied up here in the office anyway, so I thought I’d give you a call.”

“What did you find?”

“I know Dr. Rosman probably explained to you how goblet cell manifests itself. It’s a slow grower. If we diagnose early and get all the tumors out, we have a pretty high curability rate.”

“What are you saying?”

“That pain you’re having in the abdomen. The MRI shows a series of tumors in your small intestine. They’re confined to that area, though, from what we can see. That’s good.”

On the TV, a woman anchor mouthed words, stock market prices crawling along the bottom of the screen.

“Mr. Morgan, are you there?”

“How many?”

“What?”

“Tumors.”

“Maybe seven in all, from what I can see. They’re small. I wouldn’t say any are more than one centimeter in diameter, though we won’t know for sure until we get them under a microscope. At that size, there’s a good chance they haven’t metastasized yet.”

He laid a hand on his stomach, thought about what was there, beneath the skin, beneath the muscle. His body betraying him.

“What do we do?” he said.

“We go in there as soon as we can. Take them out, have a closer look. If we get them all and there’s no immediate recurrence, you’ll be in good shape. However, there’s always the chance of undetected microscopic cells remaining, though they might not show up for a number of years. We’ll keep you on a steady program of surveillance, testing.”

“Then what?”

“If they occur again, we’ll go to the chemo. But Mr. Morgan, all this is speculation until we get in there and have a look. Have you been having issues with diarrhea or difficulty breathing? A flushing of the skin maybe?”

“No.”

“If you do, let me know. We need to move on this as soon as possible. Until I can examine the tumors, we can’t decide the best route to go with treatment. I can’t overestimate how important time is here.”

Morgan heard a warning tone. The phone was nearly out of minutes.

“I need to leave town for a little while,” he said. “Do some business. Couple, maybe three weeks.”

“Can you postpone it?”

Morgan took a breath. “No.”

“Then that puts us into mid-November, and, as I said, we don’t want to hesitate too long here. There are other things that need to be handled as well. Pre-op testing, paperwork-”

“I know. Do what you need to get it started.”

“Have you looked into any of the things I mentioned, as far as insurance is concerned?”

“No.”

“You should. This could turn into a long and costly process.”

Another tone, only a few seconds left.

“Set it up,” Morgan said. “When I get back I’ll call you, and we’ll do this thing. I’ll have the money.”

“Call my office as soon as you get back, Mr. Morgan. And I mean that day.”

“I will,” Morgan said, and then there was a final tone and the phone was silent.

Sara was in the kitchen, drying the last of the dishes from dinner, when her cell trilled on the counter. She looked at the display. Billy’s number.

It was a little after eleven, Danny asleep, JoBeth home. After leaving Tiger’s, Sara had driven aimlessly, until the crying stopped, not wanting JoBeth to see her like that. She felt tired, drained.

The phone trilled again. She wiped her hands on a dish towel, picked it up. Thought about pushing the SILENCE button, setting it back down, ignoring it.

She hit SEND.

“Hey, Sara. I’m glad I got you.”

She leaned back against the counter, closed her eyes.

“Sara? Are you there?”

“I’m here. What is it?”

“I’m really sorry about that. I don’t know what to say.”

“You don’t have to say anything.”

“It’s Lee-Anne. Sometimes she’s just… I don’t know.”

Something flared inside her. When she’d seen them in the truck, she’d felt only shame. Now came anger.

“Billy, I don’t want to have this conversation.”

“I embarrassed you, and I’m sorry about that. I shouldn’t have let that happen.”

“It’s none of my business.”

“I’m trying to apologize, Sara. Can you let me do that? Just this once?”

There was something in his tone, almost a pleading, and she felt herself soften. She shifted the phone to her other hand.

“I don’t know what to say, Billy. I don’t know what you want me to say either.”