Karen Bender - Refund - Stories

One day, she asked him what he was most afraid of in the world.

“You first,” he said.

“Spiders,” she said.

“Snakes,” he said.

She looked dissatisfied. “Something better,” she said.

“Earthquakes.”

These were lies; he really had no idea.

“Ticking clocks,” she said.

“Why?”

“When my mother doesn’t come home,” she said, “I listen for ticking clocks. I can hear them through walls.”

“When does she not come home?”

“I hear them everywhere — in the walls, down the street.”

She covered her face with her hands in a small, violent motion and held them there a moment. When she lowered them, her face was composed. “What are you afraid of?” she asked him.

“Nothing,” he said.

“You have to say something.”

“Let me think,” he said, for no one had ever asked him this before.

THAT NIGHT, LENNY COULD NOT SLEEP. HE WENT TO THE KITCHEN at 2:00 AM for a glass of milk; again, he heard the girl’s footsteps. He watched her walk lightly through the foyer again. He waited until she had left and then followed her through the silent house. Aurora padded across the cold tile until she reached one of his coat closets. She picked up some of the favorite pieces in his wardrobe — his Armani loafers, his Yves Saint Laurent gloves. She did this quickly, efficiently, plucking up items and dropping them. She picked out two shoes and a glove, and lightly, like a ghost, she ran back to her room.

He did not move. He wanted her to take everything.

HE STILL HAD NOT FIGURED OUT WHAT HE WAS MOST AFRAID OF when, about a month later, she did not come to breakfast. He was surprised by her absence but thought she was just sleeping late. He called from work to check in.

“She has the flu,” said Rosita. “She’s sleeping. Children get sick.”

He found it difficult to concentrate on his work and came home early to see her. She was groggy with fever, but mostly she slept. Her fever was 105. The pediatrician told him to take the girl to the emergency room.

They were borne together on a stale, glaring current of fear. The children’s wing of the hospital was like a haunted house: babies screamed as nurses held them down to take blood from their arms, children were wheeled out from operations, tubes rising out of their mouths. The parents walked slowly, like ghouls, beside the gurneys rolling their children out of surgery.

Aurora was with him, and then she was in the pediatric intensive care unit. The flu had developed into myocarditis, an illness of the heart. The doctor brought the residents around to discuss Aurora’s condition, for it was so rare it had never happened in the hospital before. They stared at her with smug, glazed eyes. Lenny tried over and over to reach Charlene at the clinic, but finally an administrator got on line and said, primly, “She left. She ran away two days ago with another patient.”

“Ran away?” he said. “Why didn’t you call me?”

“We were waiting to see if she called us.” She paused. “We assume no responsibility once they leave the premises. There were mutterings about South America.”

“Find her,” he said, “Or I’m suing you for so much money your head will spin.”

“What do you propose we do, Mr. Weiss? Send our counselors to South America? She wasn’t ready. We can’t force her. We’ll let you know if she contacts us.”

During his life, he had commanded budgets of millions of dollars, negotiated with businessmen on every continent on the globe. Now he had to act as Aurora’s guardian, and he stumbled wildly across the hospital linoleum. He tried to make sure Aurora would get good care from the nurses by offering them spots on his show. “We’re having a special episode. Pot of $500,000. You’d have a one-in-three chance.” Standing at the large, smoky windows of the waiting area, he gazed at the cars moving down the freeways. Closing his eyes, he tried to will them to go backward, to change the course of this day and the next, but they pressed ahead, silver backs flashing.

WHEN AURORA HAD STABILIZED A WEEK LATER, THE DOCTOR called him into his office. The office was filled with diplomas and drab orange chairs. Lenny perched on the edge of the chair while the doctor read the chart that Aurora’s pediatrician had sent him. “She was in Thailand two years ago,” he said.

“Her mother took her there.”

The doctor read the name of a disease Lenny did not know. “She wasn’t treated properly. You shouldn’t drag children around on these treks to developing countries. Her heart suffered some damage then. This flu did more harm.”

Lenny remembered a postcard Charlene had sent from Bangkok: Having a super time. Aurora loves curry. River rafting next week .

He closed his eyes.

“Well, there’s no good way to put this,” said the doctor. “She needs a new heart.”

Lenny could not breathe. A sharp pain went through him, immense and shocking because its source was wholly emotional.

“We’ll put her on the transplant list,” the doctor said.

“List?”

“She has to wait.”

He had not waited on any list for over thirty years. Lenny stood up. His hair was uncombed and his face gray with exhaustion, but he felt the large, powerful weight of his body in his expensive suit. “What’s your job here, doctor?”

“I am the head of pediatric cardiology.” He was a slight man; his hair was thin. His eyelashes were feminine and curling. His desk glimmered with crystal paperweights.

Lenny put his hands on the man’s desk. “What do you need in your wing?”

“Pardon me?”

“Let me tell you how I see the new wing of the hospital,” said Lenny, glancing at the doctor’s nametag. “The Alfred A. Johnson wing. Twenty million dollars. A children’s playroom. Top equipment. A research lab. Endowed chairs.” He listened to the hoarse, meaty sound of his voice. “I am the producer of Anything for Money . Look at me.”

THE HOSPITAL SENT AURORA HOME. SHE WAS WEAK BUT DID NOT know how ill she was, and Lenny did not tell her. He did not allow himself to think about her physical state. Instead, he indulged in feelings of pride at his wealth and its ability to bend the rules. When he received the letter from the hospital a few days later, he almost wanted to frame it, for it seemed to reflect some magnificence in his soul. The letter said: Aurora Weiss is number one on the list for transplants of the heart .

Lenny called the doctor once, twice a day. He awaited the ghoulish harvest reports: a young boy killed in a car accident, a teen stabbed to death in a fight. But none of these hearts had the right antigens that would match Aurora’s; they had to wait for the correct heart.

Waiting was what fools did; he decided to take things into his own hands. He stayed up all night, making calls. He spoke into a phone that did automatic translating to doctors in Germany, Sweden, France. His price soared. Thirty million dollars. New wings. Top equipment. Huge salaries. High-tech playrooms. He shouted these offers into the phone at 2:00 AM, floating on the imagined gratitude of others. They would all talk about how Lenny Weiss had saved his granddaughter by calling every doctor in the world.

AURORA CAME INTO THE ROOM ONE NIGHT WHEN LENNY WAS MAKING his calls. She stood in her pajamas, staring, as he shouted into the phone.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

He put down the phone.

He told her that her heart was not well and, in more detail, how he was going to help her. “I’m going to find one,” he said. “People know me and they want to help—”

She saw through this immediately. “I’m sorry!” she cried out. “Sorry, sorry—”

He saw, at once, how his daughter had behaved as a mother.