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Boss?"
I tried a grin and attempted to put reassurance in the middle of it. "Well, if
I'm not, I'm certainly in the right place."
"Maybe you better let me drive you home."
"Seriously, Olive, how are you getting home?"
"My sister will drop me off."
"I can wait."
"I won't leave while she's here. If necessary, I'll be her excuse to go home
before she's totally exhausted."
I reached out, located her shoulder, squeezed gently. "How bad is it?"
I think she shook her head. "It's killing black people."
"What?"
"Mr. Haim!" A new voice derailed the conversation before I could make sense of
what I thought I
had just heard.
"What do you mean " I was saying when another dim blob emerged from the haze.
As my hand left
Olive's shoulder, it was enveloped by another and shaken vigorously.
"Lou Rollins, Mr. Haim; I sent you a letter last week!"
"I'm afraid I don't "
"BioWeb Industries," the voice continued, filling the emptiness of the
corridor like an auditory tidal wave. "My people are very keen on joining your
client list!"
"Client list," I repeated.
"Sam, I'd better get upstairs," Olive said, excusing herself.
Lou Rollins maintained a firm grip on my hand. He added another to my upper
arm. "I'll check in on you before I leave," I called after her retreating
form.
"Say, this is perfect!" Lou-from-BioWeb exclaimed. In fact, every sentence
from Lou's lips had sounded exclamatory so far. "I'm on my way up to Pedes to
work another handshake deal and this way I
get to kill two birds with one stone!"
Two birds with one stone. I grew less fond of that old saw with every passing
day.
"Let's walk this way . . ." He released my hand but steered me toward the
elevators with an arm that hovered dangerously close to my shoulders. "Now,
the area hospitals pay you how much per unit of blood?"
Ah. A light clicked on at the end of my tunnel vision. "Mr. Rollins "
"Lou!"
"Lou," I amended; "that is privileged information between my blood bank and my
clients. And the client-list is very short because I simply don't do enough
volume to service all of the local hospitals.
We're really more of a boutique as blood banks go."
"We can help you change that!"
The elevator doors slid shut behind me as I pondered that. My Glock was neatly
holstered and zippered and locked in the glove compartment of my car while,
for the briefest of moments, I considered the odds of being trapped in this
metal box with a homicidal maniac.
"Oh, Sam
may I call you Sam? Your expression!"
I could now see that Lou Rollins had a face like my Uncle Harry: round and
capped with a fringe of curly brown hair, large eyes with smile crinkles at
the corners, and a wide mouth that perpetually alternated between laughing and
grinning.
I never did care much for Uncle Harry.
"I'm talking about a combined fundraiser and blood drive!" he continued.
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"BioWeb is hosting a big bash at its conference center this weekend and I
think you'll find it very profitable to come on board with us!"
"What does your company want with my blood bank?"
"Product, of course! Blood!" The doors slid open and I stepped out, not caring
if this was the right floor or not. "We do research, Sam, and we've embarked
upon some new trials that require more than double nearly triple the volume of
blood, plasma, and platelets that we utilized last year!"
"Well, Mr. Rollins "
"Lou!"
"As scarce as my resources are, I would rather my 'product' go to the people
who need it the most:
the sick, the injured, the dying."
"I respect that, Sam, I really do! But let me tell you a little story . . ."
With some alacrity I suddenly realized that I wasn't so much affecting a
retreat from Lou as he was herding me toward his destination.
"Once upon a time there was this town that was situated near a cliff that
overlooked the sea. Now, from time to time on a pretty regular basis people
would get too close to the edge of the cliff and fall off. The fall usually
wasn't enough to kill them but it would bang them up pretty good! So the town
council held a bunch a' meetings and came up with two plans."
"I think I've heard this," I said.
"The first involved getting a fancy ambulance and parking it at the bottom of
the cliff. It would be outfitted with all the trimmings: life-saving gear,
specially trained paramedics, the works! And a specially paved road that would
get the ambulance up to the hospital in record time! That was Plan A!"
Dramatic pause. "And do you know what Plan B was?"
"A wall," I answered.
"A wall!" he continued with no indication of having heard me. "A plain and
simple wall to be built so as to keep people from getting too close to the
edge at the top!"
"Prevention versus treatment," I observed. "With the town choosing the more
expensive and painful back-end solution."
"So, with the estimates running to five-thousand dollars for the wall and
five-hundred-thousand for the ambulance and stuff, which do you think the town
council decided to fund?" He looked at me expectantly.
"Lou," I said, "I think you're telling me this story to try to make the point
that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure and that your research is
going to save a lot of lives down the road. Of course,
to make the analogy more truthful you'd have to add the stipulations that the
ambulance could be in place tomorrow while the wall couldn't be built for
another year or two."
"Yeah, the ambulance . . ." He looked at me curiously. "Say, have you heard
this one before?"
"I used to belong to an HMO. Look, Mr. Rollins, I'll consider your request if
you can send me some info on this research project of yours. Diverting already
scarce resources for research is a gamble. A
worthy gamble, but a gamble nonetheless. Before I roll the dice on an
expectant mother hemorrhaging in the delivery room, I want a sense of the
stakes for future lives."
"You think we're playing God, Sam?"
"One way or another, we're all playing God, Lou. Most of us just won't own up
to it."
A thin wail pierced the conversation and I noticed that we had ambled into the
maternity wing. The neonatal unit was to my left and I caught sight of a dozen
tiny beds and four closed incubators beyond a large glass window. Five babies
rested or squirmed in their hospital cradles while a sixth shrieked its pain
or anger from the back of the room.
"Well, I'm sure I can get the company to send you some information," Lou was
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saying, "but I gotta warn you it'll probably be pretty technical."
"That's okay," I said absently, "I've been reading a lot of medical research
papers of late."
A nurse was carrying the screaming infant against her shoulder, walking back
and forth, trying to soothe it into restfulness.
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