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“He said I had ALS-amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.”
“I’m not familiar with that one.”
“You probably know it as Lou Gehrig’s disease.”
“Oh.” It was a more ominous-sounding “oh” than intended. She immediately picked up on it.
“So, you know what a horrible illness it is.”
“Just from what I heard happened to Lou Gehrig.”
“Imagine how it feels to hear that it’s going to happen to you. Your mind stays healthy, but your nervous system slowly dies, causing you to lose control of your own body. Eventually you can’t swallow anymore, your throat muscles fail, and you either suffocate or choke to death on your own tongue.”
She was looking straight at him, but he was the one to blink.
“It’s always fatal,” she added. “Usually in two to five years.”
He wasn’t sure what to say. The silence was getting uncomfortable. “I don’t know how I can help, but if there’s anything I can do, just name it.”
“There is.”
“Please, don’t be afraid to ask.”
“I’m being sued.”
“For what?”
“A million and a half dollars.”
He did a double take. “That’s a lot of money.”
“It’s all the money I have in the world.”
“Fu
Her smile was more sad than wistful. “Things change.”
“They sure do.”
A silence fell between them, a moment to reminisce.
“Anyway, here’s my problem. My legal problem. I tried to be responsible about my illness. The first thing I did was get my finances in order. Treatment’s expensive, and I wanted to do something extravagant for myself in the time I had left. Maybe a trip to Europe, whatever. I didn’t have a lot of money, but I did have a three-million-dollar life insurance policy.”
“Why so much?”
“When the stock market tanked a couple years ago, a financial pla
Jack nodded, seeing where this was headed. “You did a viatical settlement?”
“You’ve heard of them?”
“I had a friend with AIDS who did one before he died.”
“That’s how they got popular, back in the eighties. But the concept works with any terminal disease.”
“Is it a done deal?”
“Yes. It sounded like a win-win situation. I sell my three-million-dollar policy to a group of investors for a million and a half dollars. I get a big check right now, when I can use it. They get the three-million-dollar death benefit when I die. They’d basically double their money in two or three years.”
“It’s a little ghoulish, but I can see the good in it.”
“Absolutely. Everybody was satisfied.” The sorrow seemed to drain from her expression as she looked at him and said, “Until my symptoms started to disappear.”
“Disappear?”
“Yeah. I started getting better.”
“But there’s no cure for ALS.”
“The doctor ran more tests.”
Jack saw a glimmer in her eye. His heart beat faster. “And?”
“They finally figured out I had lead poisoning. It can mimic the symptoms of ALS, but it wasn’t nearly enough to kill me.”
“You don’t have Lou Gehrig’s disease?”
“No.”
“You’re not going to die?”
“I’m completely recovered.”
A sense of joy washed over him, though he did feel a little manipulated. “Thank God. But why didn’t you tell me from the get-go?”
She smiled wryly, then turned serious. “I thought you should know how I felt, even if it was just for a few minutes. This sense of being on the fast track to such an awful death.”
“It worked.”
“Good. Because I have quite a battle on my hands, legally speaking.”
“You want to sue the quack who got the diagnosis wrong?”
“Like I said, at the moment, I’m the one being sued over this.”
“The viatical investors?”
“You got it. They thought they were coming into three million in at most three years. Turns out they may have to wait another forty or fifty years for their investment to ‘mature,’ so to speak. They want their million and a half bucks back.”
“Them’s the breaks.”
She smiled. “So you’ll take the case?”
“You bet I will.”
The crack of the gavel stirred Jack from his thoughts. The jury had returned. Judge Garcia had finished perusing his mail, the sports section, or whatever else had caught his attention. Court was back in session.
“Mr. Swyteck, any questions for Dr. Herna?”
Jack glanced toward the witness stand. Dr. Herna was the physician who’d reviewed Jessie’s medical history on behalf of the viatical investors and essentially confirmed the misdiagnosis, giving them the green light to invest. He and the investors’ lawyer had spent the entire morning trying to convince the jury that, because Jessie didn’t actually have ALS, the viatical settlement should be invalidated on the basis of a “mutual mistake.” It was Jack’s job to prove it was their mistake, nothing mutual about it, too bad, so sad.
Jack could hardly wait.
“Yes, Your Honor,” he said as he approached the witness with a thin, confident smile. “I promise, this won’t take long.”
3
The courtroom was silent. It was the pivotal moment in the trial, Jack’s cross-examination of the plaintiff’s star witness. The jury looked on attentively-whites, blacks, Hispanics, a cross section of Miami. Jack often thought that anyone who wondered if an ethnically diverse community could possibly work together should serve on a jury. The case of Viatical Solutions, Inc. v. Jessie Merrill was like dozens of other trials underway in Miami at that very moment-no media, no protestors, no circus ringmaster. Not once in the course of the trial had he been forced to drop a book to the floor or cough his lungs out to wake the jurors. It was quietly reassuring to know that the administration of justice in Florida wasn’t always the joke people saw on television.
Reassuring for Jack, anyway. Staring out from the witness stand, Dr. Felix Herna looked anything but calm. Jack’s opposing counsel seemed to sense the doctor’s anxiety. Parker Aimes was a savvy enough plaintiffs’ attorney to sprint to his feet and do something about it.
“Judge, could we have a five-minute break, please?”
“We just got back from lunch,” he said, snarling.
“I know, but-”
“But nothing,” the judge said, peering out over the top of his wire-rimmed reading glasses. “Counselor, I just checked my horoscope, and it says there’s loads of leisure time in my near future. So, Mr. Swyteck, if you please.”
With the judge talking astrology, Jack was begi
All eyes of the jurors followed him as he approached the witness. He planted himself firmly, using his height and body language to convey a trial lawyer’s greatest tool: control.
“Dr. Herna, you’ll agree with me that ALS is a serious disease, won’t you?”
The witness shifted in his seat, as if distrustful of even the most i
“It attacks the nervous system, breaks down the tissues, kills the motor neurons?”
“That’s correct.”
“Victims eventually lose the ability to control their legs?”
“Yes.”
“Their hands and arms as well?”
“Yes.”
“Their abdominal muscles?”
“That’s correct, yes. It destroys the neurons that control the body’s voluntary muscles. Muscles controlled by conscious thought.”
“Speech becomes unclear? Eating and swallowing becomes difficult?”