THE DIAGNOSIS

THE DIAGNOSIS

The call came in the night while I was fast asleep holding Aretha. It was one of those rare moments where she had not thrashed all through the night. I checked that she was still breathing and quietly slipped out of bed making sure not to wake her. It wasn't every day I got to have the luxury of holding her close, so naturally I was upset when once I got into junior's bedroom, I picked the call.

"Hello, is this Mr. Moore?" The strange clinical voice asked.

After revealing my identity to the caller, he introduced himself as doctor Rogers from Almond hospital. I had a flash back of a medium sized man in a blue scrub underneath a white lab coat.

"I'm afraid the diagnosis doesn't look too encouraging, sir. Your secretary has blunt head trauma, five cracked ribs a fractured hip and a punctured lung. She might not last tonight. Even if she does, it will be extensive work to make her whole again; she will need physiotherapy to learn how to work again, she might or might not have breathing problems, and she will definitely not remember who she was before this whole accident, that is if she even recovers from this at the end of the day."

Something about the doctor's tone made me think he preferred her dead.

"Is she on life support?" I asked curtly.

"No, but-"

"Then she still has a good chance of making it out alive." There was silence on the other line, confirming my suspicions. "Let me reiterate this doctor, I will cover all the expenses there, and I want her to have a fighting chance. There might even be a bonus for you if she makes it out alive, but . . .if I found out there has been any hanky panky, however small, then. . ."

I left him to figure out what I could do if he decided to misbehave.

"Yes, sir, alright, sir, I will do all in my power to help her get a quick recovery." He blabbered on.

"See that you do." And I cut the call. Fatigue flooded my veins. I was tired, tired of having to fight off greedy people.

I knew for a fact there was a cabal of doctors that sold the parts of people who were on the verge of dying, or those it seemed that didn't have a chance at life. I also knew there were those doctors, the more cut-throat one's, who didn't mind going the extra mile to exterminate their patients in a bid to become rich. They sold these parts to people who were terminally ill and didn't mind paying through their teeth to get good health.

It was a hot dirty business, getting rich at the expense of people's lives, and I hated the thought of it.

I walked back to my room, ready to snuggle behind Aretha, when her body jerked and she began to moan. I checked her temperature and found out she was burning up. Peace was short lived. The saga had started once again. I sighed as I walked into the bathroom to get a wash cloth.

*

I was about ready to keel over when I walked into the meeting an hour late. With little time to spare after tending to Aretha, I hadn't had time to even open my wardrobe to pick a suit. The clothes I wore the day before beckoned to me from the chair where I had hastily thrown them, so in my haste I had donned them. Looking at the disapproving faces of the ten men seated before me, that was obviously a big mistake.

"Mr. Moore." Mr. Hendricks pulled his bifocal glasses down the length of his nose and fixed his steely gaze on me. "Your behavior recently has been very disgraceful. You waltz in here looking like you spent the night with a harlot, you stink of alcohol, and worse still, you act like you own the damn building."

I smirked on hearing this. "I do own this building."

He visibly swallowed and looked away, but not before I saw the disgusted look he gave me.

"What Mr. Hendricks is trying to say is, you lack feelings, Mr. Moore, how do you expect us to endorse your drug when you can't even get your life in check?"

"And who are you?" I removed the dark glasses from my face and squinted at him.

"Preposterous!" Another of the suit-wearing men exclaimed.

As if in planned sync, they all got up one by one, grumbling at the top of their voices and headed towards the door. One of them huffed as he passed me.

"You're not welcome." I shouted once they had left the board room.

I slumped into the seat Mr. Hendricks had just vacated and stared balefully at the table. The unopened water bottles were the only audience to how stupid I had just been.

Clap, clap, clap, clap!

The sound of someone clapping were like gunshots to my ears, and I held my hands over them. Kelly came into view. She stood with her hands akimbo watching me. The expression 'she could murder me with her eyes,' swam into my head, and I blinked rapidly to focus on her face.

"I do hope you're happy now, Mr. Moore. All the years of planning and you just messed it up in only a few minutes. You should be very pleased with yourself right now."

Never in all the ten years Kelly had worked for me had she called me Mister Moore. Matter of fact, I had insisted she call me by my name as well as the rest of my staff.

For her to use mister and my surname in the same sentence to address me, that meant she was pretty upset with me.

I should have said something, but all I did was stare at her, trying to figure out how I was going to solve the shit I had steeped myself into. No one knew about Aretha's illness, neither did I want to make it public. I was a very private man and I also hated pity. That was why I had never gotten a nurse to look after her. I paid the housekeeper extra to do the job, but even she had other duties to attend to, so for six months, I had been cutting back on work and going home to be with her.

Yes, yes, work suffered, it suffered terribly, but my wife came first. Last night had been the worst of it all, Aretha had groaned all through, and not even the morphine had helped dull the pain she was in. When I couldn't take her rising screams any longer, I had drowned out the noise by taking a shot of vodka. One shot turned into two, and then three. I later found myself downing the whole bottle.

Later on I drove Aretha to the hospital and had her checked into the ICU, like doctor Perry had initially advised. After she had been somewhat stabilized, I had driven like a madman to the office because Kelly called reminding me the representatives from the Department of Justice's drug enforcement administration had already assembled and were getting impatient.

It was only when I had driven halfway there that I forgot I had sent Eric to buy me some coffee and I had forgotten to alert him I was leaving the hospital.

I wouldn't even have come into work today had Kelly not called to remind me. I noticed she was staring at me like I was a wild animal from the zoo. I also knew she had been waiting for a response from me, but when I said nothing, she shook her head the same way someone would when they're disappointed.

"Well then, since you don't think you owe me an explanation, get ready to hire another assistant because I quit."

And she flounced out of the boardroom, heels clacking on the tiled floor.

That's right, Kelly, walk away like the others just did, like Aretha is eventually going to.

Everyone walks away from me eventually.

I wallowed in self-pity as I slumped further into the chair.