Dave Eggers - You Shall Know Our Velocity

– Lord God this is your last chance.

I was sure the Mexican treatment would cost exactly $80,000. This would work. It would be hard but it was possible. Sometimes there was work laid out before you and you had to thrust yourself into it and find your way out of it. I'd pay to fly Jack down there, however they did it. Was that some kind of helicopter? "A military plane," Jack said. That we'd hook onto a military jet already heading down that way. Or maybe the cargo hold of a regular jet. I'd never seen a gurney on a plane.

"It'll cost more than $80,000," Hand said. "All in all, the whole treatment will end up costing more like half a million."

"No, no," I said, so sure. "It'll be $80,000. It won't be more." There's a reason. This was when there would be a reason. He let it go.

It was only five o'clock in Hawaii so I called Cathy Wambat to make sure I could access all the money right away. It would take a day or two for the mutual funds, she said, and I'd be taxed. Fine, I said. How much in cash did I have? About twenty-thousand, she said, in a money market. We hadn't invested it yet. Good, I said. $20,000 would be enough to get us started in Mexico, for sure. They'd know we could afford the procedure, they'd know we were serious. What about cash? I said. How would I get that in cash? I thought they'd prefer to have it in cash, to be able to prove it, clearly and without hesitation. She suggested a wire transfer. They could do one within an hour, she said. I said okay but wasn't sure. Would we have that hour? We'd know once we got to Mexico.

The payphone rang. It was my mom. Cathy had called her and given her the number. It was two in the morning. I didn't want to talk to her yet. Cathy hadn't known why I wanted the money but called Mom anyway. I'm driving up, she said. I told her we were bringing Jack to Mexico and we'd be gone by the time she made it here. I begged her not to ask questions – the plan was still in the works. It would be hard but it could be done. She could fly, she said. I told her to wait until the next day – maybe she should meet us in Mexico. How would she get to Mexico from Memphis? she asked. I don't know, I said. You're wasting our time. I made her promise she wouldn't tell Jack's parents about our plans. They wouldn't understand.

Now how to get to Mexico? We knew it was too far for a helicopter. But how to get the military plane? Hand thought he had a connection outside of Kansas City, at Whiteman Air Force Base. So a chopper to Kansas? Too far. Hand remembered a guy he knew at the base in Peoria – someone in the Air Guard there. Peoria was much closer. A chopper to Peoria, then to Kansas? Or maybe a plane from Great Lakes Naval Base? No, no, we had no connections there. We'd have to drive part of the way.

Fond du Lac to Peoria

Peoria to Whiteman

Whiteman to Mexico City

But why Whiteman at all? Maybe we could skip Whiteman.

But did they have jets at Peoria, or were those all propeller planes? Hand was mulling. Hand made more calls. Soon we were sure the doctors were hiding something. We'd seen them talking among themselves, looking concerned, and one doctor raised his voice, angry at the rest of them, then was hushed. They avoided us. They avoided our stares! There was internal dissent. Someone had fucked up. Now it was too late for them to fix it. We had to leap in.

But the choppers and planes were falling through. Hand was calling his connections and getting no help. Regular people didn't get flown around on military planes, and we'd need to be family to get him on a commercial jet. Maybe bribe an agent at the airline? Too big a risk. We knew we might have to drive him all the way ourselves. We'd probably have to. We'd rent a mini-van. The drive would take about thirty hours, we figured. Maybe more? Forty hours. We'd call his parents from the road. They'd know it was the best thing. They'd know they'd given up but we hadn't and that it was worth a shot. We had the money, we'd tell them. We had $80,000 and that would cover it completely. We'd have to be vague enough so they wouldn't try to find us, stop us. They'd have lost their minds by then and couldn't be trusted. They'd thank us in the end. We'd save Jack so they'd have to thank us. Would we get stopped at the border? We didn't know. We could hide him. He could be sleeping. We'd lower the gurney so it looked like a bed. We'd bring lots of pillows.

We asked again but they said it would be at least another twelve hours before we could go in and see him. "He'd want to see us," I told the doctor, and she nodded, and agreed but then said it would be twelve hours. We'd lock her in the closet. They were working on some of the lower vertebrae, then had to relieve some pressure on the brain stem, and then -

It's 3 A.M. We went to the parking lot again, to race. We were so wired we needed to run. We raced from one end to the other, dodging parked cars, under the lights that give us each six speeding shadows. The finish line was over a low hedge, rough, black – we had to jump it to win. There was work to be done but not yet; the time would come. When Mexico wakes up we'd call and let them know we're coming; when Jack stabilized we'd take him. But for now we'd have to fill the hours without sleeping and we ran around the parking lot and Hand imitated the way Jack runs, chest first, chin jutting out like he was forever at the finish line.

At 5 A.M. we were back inside and Jack's mom came in from the ICU. She said Jack's mental activity was minimal and was diminishing hourly. What does that mean? I asked. She said it meant that he didn't have any noticeable cranial activity – did she say cranial? that's not even right – that he was fading. She didn't say brain dead. She said his mental activity was receding, something like that. Hand wanted more details but she didn't have them. She and her husband weren't asking the right questions. We needed to be in charge. So they did an MRI? Hand asked. Of course, she said. He's not responding to any stimuli, she said. That doesn't mean anything, I said. You can't measure mental activity. You can't! I said. You're right, Hand said. Jack's mom left and Hand said he'd once read some journals to the same effect and that I was probably right. No one knew anything about mental activity. Can't measure it. Inexact science. Hand and I gave her words almost no thought.

Hand went to the Walgreen's again and got an atlas and plotted the best route down. We asked a nurse, our age, black and sturdy, how long each IV lasted. We'd need at least six of them, we figured. We'd bring ten. We asked if they had any portable respirators, respirators that could run on some kind of generator and into a car. Hand had been sure that they had portable kinds of every machine, and all had to be able to function in case of a power outage. She explained that the hospital had something that might be able to work if rigged properly. They had them in ambulances, after all. We'd go to the hardware store for wiring in the morning. When did everything open? Hardware was usually at six. The hours went quickly until 5, then stopped. Between five and six we slapped ourselves to stay awake, alert. There was no news.

At 6 A.M. Hand went to the hardware store and came back with hundreds of dollars in extension cords, electrical wiring, copper cable – I didn't ask – and a small generator. At 7:30 I left to rent the minivan. We weren't that far from the Enterprise so they picked me up. It took too long. I waited in the parking lot for half an hour, cursing them, planning to ruin their van. A young bright cheerful guy with his polo shirt-collar turned up brought me to the office and twenty minutes later I was in the hospital lot, with a minivan the color of grape juice and we were removing the seats. The two back seats had to be taken out but to where? We left them on the sidewalk, planning to hide them in the woods across the street. So many other things had to be figured out. My car, which we'd driven up, would be found by the cops and they'd tow it and keep it once they knew we'd taken Jack. Did I care? I couldn't decide. No, I didn't care much. I moved it to the back of the lot, anyway, behind the building, near the dumpsters, still expecting to lose it. I grabbed what I could from the back seat and brought it to the minivan. The van was a strong car, and we could go fast. We could get a ticket in each state and still be fine. Just part of the trip. Wouldn't have to sleep or stop, with two of us driving. The terrain would be get warmer as we got closer to where we'd bring Jack to have him saved, to have him wake up and say Shit, guys, where the fuck am I? and we'd tell him the story, and he'd be so amazed, but then not so surprised. As he recuperated everyone would come down and visit, and eventually we'd wonder if we should, hell, maybe stay down in Mexico after all, the three of us. Land down there would be so much cheaper than even Phelps, right? Damn right it would be cheaper. Maybe Jack would be fragile afterward. He'd be like Kennedy, where he'd be playing touch football and be fine that way, but also brittle, never quite robust again. Kennedy! Damn, that's who he looked like! Or was it just his hair, that neat part he wore? Or was it just the name they shared? I was trying to think, and was shielding my eyes from the new sun, low and screaming at me, watching as Hand was jogging back from the woods, where he'd hidden the seats. It was getting hot already, so early, when Jack's mom came out of the hospital doors and toward us with her hands clasped over her head -