REVELATION: Book One of THE RECARN CHRONICLES (10 page)

Of course, this policy only
really applied if you weren’t wealthy. Money talks in any language,
anywhere in the world. If you were from a wealthy family you could
buy the surgery you needed. The world was full of children who had
contracted serious life-threatening illnesses at a young age, only
to be bailed out by their well-off parents. Those families had
never had to face the heartache that the Boone family was now going
through. It was a given that moneyed families would buy their way
out of problems – including medical problems – just as they had
been doing for centuries.

And there was no shortage of
doctors and surgeons willing to line their own pockets at the
expense of others’ misfortunes. Indeed, it was a major reason why
the numbers of applications for medical universities were
increasing year by year. Doctors knew that they could augment their
already substantial incomes by offering private, off-the-record
services to those that could afford it. On the streets the
Hippocratic Oath had become known as the Hypocritic
Oath
. Doctors were still obliged to swear the
Hippocratic Oath before being allowed to practice medicine, but
nowadays this was a mere formality; it was lip-service. Nobody
expected to have to adhere to the oath that they had sworn, nor
were they expected to do so by the system. Private health plans
still existed for those that could pay the monthly instalments but
these payments were now so high that medical insurance was well
beyond the resources of the average citizen.

So, many people were forced
to sell their prized possessions in order to find the funds to pay
these medical expenses. If they had no possessions of any real
value to sell, they would be forced to call upon the services of
loan companies, many of which were not officially recognised and
were certainly not averse to physical brutality if their clients
didn’t keep up with repayments. The irony is that many of these
unscrupulous companies were set up by small syndicates of doctors
and surgeons, who gained on two counts; they lent the money – at a
very high interest rate - to pay for medical services that they
themselves provided, again at a high cost. It was the perfect
income stream.

The Boone family wasn’t
poor, but they weren’t rich either. Maurice, an accountant, didn’t
earn enough to pay for private medical insurance, and even with the
addition of his wife’s income as a call-centre manager, their joint
annual income couldn’t sustain medical insurance as well - not if
they wanted to feed and clothe their family.

Dr. Stefansson closed the door
to the ante-room. He made a great play of ensuring that he and Mr.
and Mrs. Boone could not be overheard, but it was just an act.
Everybody in the hospital was in on the scam. Operations needed
operating theatres so hospital administration staff had to be paid
off. Surgical staff were required, and they cost money. Except for
the surgeon, the
anaesthetist
was the major
expense as he or she literally held the patient’s life in their
hands. One miscalculation in dosage (deliberate or not) would end a
patient’s life, and the patient’s family knew this. The
anaesthetist
would be paid handsomely for his or her
services, and payment was always required in advance. Once payment
had been made, obstacles miraculously fell away and surgery could
often be performed within a matter of days.

“There is an alternative to
medical termination, of course. For a sum, we can organise a kidney
transplant for your little girl to take place within a matter of
days.”

Maurice looked directly at
the doctor. He had been expecting this.

“What kind of sum are we
looking at, doctor?”

“You may want to sit down,
Mr. Boone.”

“I’ll stay standing thank
you very much.”

“The cost of the surgery
would be seven hundred and eighty-three thousand pounds. It’s a
fair price considering the risk that I would be taking, defying the
government health policy.”

The risk that Dr. Stefansson
would be taking was, in reality, non-existent. Blind eyes were
turned all over the world to this corruption. It was accepted both
by those who held positions of political power and those in
corresponding positions in the medical fraternity. They all ate
from the same trough. Maurice almost wished that he had been
sitting down to hear the price. Karen slumped back in her chair.
They had expected the price to be steep but seven hundred and
eighty-three thousand pounds was far more than they could lay their
hands on.

The doctor preferred that
families agree to this not-so-clandestine surgery as he would
receive a lot more money this way than if compulsory termination
was enforced. The obligatory organ harvesting would provide some
money, but this had to be split 50/50 with the team who did the
actual organ removal; his time was far too valuable to spend it on
such a mundane task as removing viable organs from the dead. The
organs of this unfortunate child would garner a good price on the
black market (children’s organs were always in demand) but this was
nothing when compared to the income that was to be earned from
performing a kidney transplant.

“Seven hundred and
eighty-three thousand pounds. Seven hundred and eighty-three
thousand pounds. Seven hundred and eighty-three thousand
pounds.”

Maurice kept repeating the
figure to himself, as if doing so would decrease the
price.

“Where are we going to find
seven hundred and eighty-three thousand pounds?”

Karen’s eyes welled up with
tears again. She looked pleadingly at her husband. She knew in her
heart that it would be nigh on impossible for them to raise that
kind of money. They needed a miracle.

“I don’t want to lose my
little girl,” she wailed. “I can’t lose another one.”

Two years before the birth
of Caitlin, the Boones had suffered another tragedy. Karen had been
almost nine months pregnant when she was involved in a traffic
accident. The doctors had found no signs of life in her womb and
had had to induce labour. She had given birth to a stillborn baby
boy and so Caitlin had become even more valuable to the couple when
she was born. Maurice looked at his sobbing wife and then at the
doctor.

“How long have we got to
decide?”

“
I can give you one week,
that’s one working week. Don’t forget that your daughter’s
condition could worsen during that time. Today is a Wednesday, so I
can give you until 8pm on Tuesday 31
^st
. After that, it’s compulsory termination I’m
afraid.”

Maurice walked over to where
Karen was sitting, her shoulders rising and falling rhythmically as
she silently sobbed. He took her hand and helped her to her
feet.

“Come on honey. Let’s go
home. We’ve got a lot to talk about.”

He turned once more to the
doctor.

“We’ll be in touch. I
promise.”

Maurice and Karen Boone sat
facing each other across the kitchen table. Their eldest daughter,
Michelle, was staying the night at her friend Sarah’s house. The
Boones thought it best to discuss their options without having to
worry about being distracted by Michelle. They were both looking at
the forty centimeter computer screens projected vertically before
them. Maurice was entering figures using a holographic
keypad.

“I don’t know what we’re
supposed to do, Karen. The more I look at the spreadsheet the more
impossible the situation seems.”

“
What if we cut down on
electricity? If we can somehow
economise
on our energy bills, maybe we can afford the
repayments?”

“Our energy settings are at
the lowest possible, Karen. Any savings would be a drop in the
ocean. I mean, we’re already doing all we can to keep the bills
down. You’re even washing the dishes by hand. The dishwasher is
disconnected. Your mother would kill me if she knew I was letting
her daughter wash the dishes by hand.”

“Is there anywhere else we
can get a loan?”

“Remember, we’re trying to
get a loan for an illegal act. It’s not as if we can ask for a loan
from a bank. They’d be obliged to tell the police and we’d end up
in jail. We have to think of Michelle too. I don’t want someone
else – or worse – the State raising our child. If we get a loan for
this it has to be off the record. And you know as well as I do,
that these bloody doctors have a stranglehold on this stuff. They
prey on people like you and me to pay for their latest ocean-going
yacht, or yet another beautiful house on a tropical beach
somewhere. I fucking hate the ONP and their fucking rules. What’s
happened to compassion? What’s happened to helping each other out?
My parents told me that when they believed that this was the only
life we got, rich people were much more inclined to help the less
advantaged. There was something called the Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation. This was a mega-rich couple who spent billions of
dollars trying to reduce world poverty and improve health all over
the world. And they weren’t the only ones. There were others. But
since The Revelation, the ONP have got their greasy little claws
into everywhere and any research is only done to help the rich. The
rich hang onto their money in the hope that they can use it in
their next life. We regular people, the so-called middle class and
the poor can just go fuck ourselves as far as they’re concerned.
The NHS was stretched but it did its best to help anybody. Yes,
anybody! Now it’s just another way for the rich to get richer – at
our expense. In the old days doctors would have done everything
possible to save Caitlin. Although cost was still an issue, they
would try to find ways to save people. Nowadays they hide behind
the rules, with their hands out, expecting people to line their
pockets with gold. If you can’t pay, you die. It’s as simple as
that. If they had their way they’d give this ultimatum to everybody
who is ill or injured. It’s only because society needs healthy
workers in order to function that they don’t apply the termination
criteria to everyone. Fucking New Perfectibilists. The world was
pretty fucked up before The Revelation, but it’s way worse now. No
wonder self -terminations have become common-place now. It seems
like ST Centres are on every bloody street corner. At least that’s
how it seems. My dad told me that in the old days you couldn’t walk
two minutes without seeing a beauty salon. Then it was clinics. Now
it’s these bloody ST Centres. They don’t even have the guts to put
the proper name over the doors. It’s like saying self-termination
takes the edge off the reality.”

Maurice didn’t even feel
like adding his usual postscript to emotional monologues such as
this. Saying ‘rant over’ would only serve to add a modem of
flippancy to his words… and this time he was deadly serious. This
wasn’t just a political diatribe, but an outpouring of frustration
and anger at a system that held the life of a six-year old girl so
cheaply. He could see the look of concern on Karen’s
face.

“Don’t worry my love, I set
the anti-bug sweeper to ‘seek and replace’ at five millisecond
intervals. Only you can hear me. The last thing I want to happen is
that I get dragged off during the night and disappear. If that were
to happen we’d never be able to save our little girl”

The anti-bug sweeper was a
smart gadget that swept the home environment looking for listening
devices. When it found one it would replace the offending bug with
one of its own devices that broadcast innocuous conversations
recorded earlier, so all the person who was listening would hear
would be conversations about daily routine, television programmes
and the like. As well as sweeping the house for listening devices
it would change its own electronic signature at the same rate,
making it extremely difficult for someone other than the homeowner
to locate. It was expensive and could only be bought on the black
market but it was a godsend to Maurice as he hid his true feelings
well when outside the house but, when in the comfort of his own
home, he was prone to display his true contempt for those in
authority. He looked at the figures before him on the display
screen.

“If we borrowed seven
hundred and eighty-three thousand pounds over ten years that would
mean monthly repayments, at 20% interest (fixed rate) of over
fifteen thousand pounds a month.”

“Is that the lowest
percentage rate we can get?”

“Well, even if Stefansson
had a heart – which I don’t believe he has – and dropped it to 15%
the payments would still be about twelve and a half thousand pounds
per month. Both of those figures are over ten years.”

“What if we took a loan out
over a longer period? We’re both in our mid-thirties. Maybe over
twenty-five years?”

“OK….. Let’s see what
happens if I change the loan period to three hundred months. Just a
few seconds. Thirteen thousand per month at 20% and ten thousand at
15%. We’re still screwed.”

Selling the house wasn’t
even an option. Once in power the government had decided to reduce
everybody’s salary by fifty percent. Of course, the recession had
been orchestrated by The Order, and the various world governments’
responses had been at the behest of The Order too. To reduce the
inevitable protests the government had paid off everybody’s home
mortgages. Those who didn’t already own a home were given a basic
home. Most people were initially better off financially, no longer
losing a large percentage of their salary to home repayments but
this was short-lived. As prices rose, salary levels fell behind.
But a clause had been inserted in the new agreement with the
government that homes could not be sold. They could be passed on to
sons and daughters when the parents died but selling a home to
raise funds was prohibited. Nobody had found a loophole in this
deal to date, although many had tried.