“Fine by me,” I said mildly. “I quit.” I tossed the sledge hammer onto the roof of the car, making him flinch...and I walked away.
68
LOUISE
We were nearly too late.While we’d been away, Kayley’s condition had worsened and Stacey had rushed her to hospital. I ran up the stairs and burst into Dr. Huxler’s office just as he was telling Stacey something aboutkeeping her comfortable right up unto the end.
“Louise!” He looked up, startled. “Sit down. We should talk. It’s...time.”
“You’re goddamn right it is,” I panted. “I got the money. We’re going to Switzerland.”
When I pulled out my phone to organize everything, though, I started to panic. It hit me that I hadn’t considered all the things that could go wrong: what if it took days of paperwork to organize the treatment? What if the clinic in Switzerland didn’t have space for weeks? Everything we’d been through might be for nothing.
Fortunately, I’d completely underestimated the yawning chasm between the world of the super rich and the rest of us.
When I dialed the clinic, the phone was answered on the first ring—despite it being the early hours of the morning—by the most efficient woman I’d ever met. The conversation went like this:
Hello. My name is Stephanie. Please let me know if you would prefer me to speak in French or German. How may I help?
Um...hello. I need to arrange treatment for my sister at your clinic. I’m in Los Angeles.I gave her a brief history of Kayley’s leukemia.
We will require a fee of five hundred thousand Swiss Francs, payable in advance.She gave me some bank transfer numbers and I scribbled them down.Would you like me to arrange flights for you?
Flights? Um...yes. Yes please. You mean today?!
(The rattle of a keyboard) Can you be at LAX by 3 p.m.?
The entire conversation took less than four minutes. I called the magic number Isabella had given me and asked them, in a disbelieving tone, to transfer the money to the clinic. Moments later, Stephanie called back to say she’d received the money and gave us our flight numbers. I sat back in my seat, stunned.
Sean, Kayley, and I barely had time to pack our bags. I was about to call a cab to the airport when my phone rang to tell me that our limo had arrived. I winced, thinking of our rapidly-diminishing funds. Then winced again when we got to the airport and were told that we were flying first class. Of course the clinic’s clients would be the sort of people who wouldalwaysfly first class. But when I saw Kayley’s face as she sank into her huge leather armchair and cued up a whole list of movies to watch, it was difficult to stress about it too much.
When we landed, there was another limo to whisk us from the airport to the clinic. The place was nothing like the huge, bustling hospital in America. It was neat, compact, and, like Stephanie, very, very efficient. Kayley was examined and tested within an hour of our plane landing. Two hours, and she’d started her first round of treatment.
While we waited, I checked my email and started going through the information Stephanie had sent me. Since Dr. Huxler had last heard about the clinic and its $500,000 treatment, the exchange rate had plummeted. 500,000 Swiss Francs wasn’t half a million, anymore: we’d saved almost fifty thousand dollars. Plus we’d sold the weed for $100,000more than I’d originally intended. We had about $150,000 left in the account.
Stephanie wanted to check us into the same super-luxury hotel all of their visitors used, but this time I managed to reign her in. “We have very simple tastes,” I told her. She rattled away at her keyboard for a few seconds and checked us into a modest but comfortable place instead, frowning in confusion as she did it.
By the time they said we could see Kayley, she was sleeping. I sat down by her bedside, reached out, and touched her cheek. It was the first time I’d been able to stop and think for days and it all hit me at once: this was it, everything we’d been building towards. Either this would work, or….
Sean sat down beside me, wrapped his arms around my waist, and lifted me onto his knee, the warmth of his chest pressed against my back. We didn’t speak. We just sat there in the dimly-lit room, watching Kayley sleep, and hoped.
69
LOUISE
Her eyes.That’s where I saw it first. On the eighth day of treatment, the gleam came back to them, the one that had disappeared even before I’d taken her for those fateful first tests. It was like she was becomingheragain.
She was still pitifully weak, of course. She’d have to regain all the weight she’d lost in the last few months and her body would take a long time to get back to full strength. But that gleam in her eyes was the tipping point. I told Sean and he pulled me close, wrapping me up in his arms.
On the tenth day, the doctors started to agree. The test results were good enough to be cautiously optimistic, they said. What reassured me wasn’t the numbers but the sight of her chowing down on a breakfast of croissants and hot chocolate.
On the twelfth day, she started to quiz Sean on his history, his tattoos, and his intentions. Sean flushed and looked at me, lost for words. That’s when I knew she was back.
On the fourteenth day, the doctors said the words we’d been waiting to hear:reversal of diseaseand remission. I pulled Kayley into an enormous hug and, for once, she let me hang onto her good and long. But then she pushed me gently back.
“What?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”
Then I saw she was waving Sean forward. He glanced at me to check whether it was okay, and I nodded. Then all three of us were hugging, that huge strong body of his like a warm rock face that both of us could hang from.
