Authors: K. J. Janssen
Siblings (9 page)
When it comes to human development, some experts say that of all the factors that shape a personality (genes, parents, peers, and siblings) siblings have the greatest influence. A contrary group of scholars says that the familial situation regarding siblings has no bearing on whom or what a person ultimately evolves into.
Richard Symington is characteristic of the first school of thought. As the firstborn child of Ron and Marilyn Symington, he would be expected to have a slightly higher IQ and achieve greater success than his younger siblings. In both these areas Richard was spot-on; a reality that he never ceased to rub in the faces of his younger brother and sister during their formative years together.
Notwithstanding his aforementioned eventual decision to follow his father’s career as an OB/GYN, Richard nonetheless exhibited a high degree of independence. As he grew up, he tried to mimic his father’s mannerisms, even his speech style, but he soon found out that all that earned him was the ridicule of his peers. He finally came to the realization he was not his father and any attempt to emulate him was an exercise in futility.
His first three deliveries, two boys and one girl, occurred during a busy night during his second month at Wallington General Hospital. A staff OB/GYN assisted, but let the beginner do most of the work. There was no time for bedside manner or soothing talk. All he needed to say was “push, Adrian,” next time, “push Ginny,” and finally “push Maya.” After that he didn’t get the opportunity until a month later. That was his first cesarean and his first case of the jitters. He watched the staff doctor perform the cesarean and assisted by sewing the patient up. Now, years later, he had twelve C-sections under his belt, almost all planned.
***
Richard did have one major fault. He liked to gamble. The gambling bug bit Richard hard when he became a staff OB/GYN at Wallington General. Once he decided to be his own man, Richard began to relax and socialized more with his fellow interns. He started to play poker and discovered he had a proclivity to games of chance. Games cropped up and broke up with the tempo of activity in the Emergency Room. The significant salary bump provided a large amount of disposable income. Temptation came easy. The pressure of the job and the desire to outperform his father pushed him into high stakes games held at rotating sites in undesirable locations in town. There was no fear of being raided since the game was often attended by the assistant Chief of Police and the town’s Assembly leader.
There was more for Richard to fear than being arrested for gambling and that was the shady reputation of the people sponsoring the game. Occasionally a regular stopped coming and would be seen later with an arm or a leg in a cast. This reality was not lost on Richard, but the bug had already bitten. He had lost all his savings to the tune of twenty-two thousand dollars and was taking out loans from credit cards that were rapidly reaching their maxes.
As if losing heavily at poker wasn’t bad enough, Richard visited a casino fifty miles away, in the hope of winning some of his money back. He was convinced that if he could win back at least ten thousand dollars, he would cut his losses and stop gambling. The money for the casino, charged against his credit cards, was quickly won by the slots, roulette machines, and crap tables. Three visits to the casino and fifteen thousand deeper in debt, Richard was getting desperate.
He returned to the traveling poker game, which this particular week was in the backroom of the casino. Before he got in a hand he was asked by one of the guards to step into the manager’s office, where he was greeted by a tall, burly man with firm grip.
“I’m Mike Steele, the manager of this casino.” He made a gesture toward a chair in front of his desk. “Have a seat, Dr. Symington. So, you’re Ron’s son. I can see the resemblance. I haven’t seen him for years. He used to be a regular at our games, only he knew when to walk away from the table. How is your father?”
“He’s fine, sir,” Richard said impatiently. “What did you want to see me about?”
The man sat back in his chair. He looked straight at Richard. “My people tell me that you want to sign a marker for five thousand in chips. Is that correct?”
“Yes, sir, but you know I’m good for it.”
“What I know, Doctor, is that you’re into our bank for over sixty thousand dollars and you’ve only made one three thousand dollar payment toward it in the last thirty days. We will need to see a much larger payment against that balance. With the interest accruing, as it is, you’ll owe us close to a hundred grand before you know it.”
“I’m doing the best I can,” Richard answered nervously.
“Well, Doctor, that’s just not good enough. I’ve seen lots of people like you. They don’t know when to stop. Let’s face it, some people just aren’t meant to gamble. It appears to me that you fall into that group. Now, don’t get me wrong, that’s what my business is all about and I’d be happy to continue taking your money. The problem is that it’s not your money anymore; it’s mine and that, I’m sure you know, is no way to run a business. So, Doctor, as of this minute you’re cut off from any more credit, permanently barred from any of our games and tables, and before you leave this office, we’re going to work out a plan for you to repay what you owe me and my associates.”
Richard’s eyes darted toward the door, which he just noticed was blocked by the guard that had escorted him to the office. He fidgeted in his chair. He could feel perspiration forming on his forehead. “Look, Mr. Steele, I’m good for it; you know how much I make. You also know that I’m not going to skip out on what I owe. I can give you three thousand a month. I’ll have it to you in cash on the second of every month. I promise.”
“Doctor, we’re not running a savings and loan here. This isn’t a mortgage we’re talking about. Interest accrues very quickly in this kind of business. We don’t have any laws to restrict us. Unless you can pay me seventy-five hundred a month, we’re going to have to make another type of arrangement. How about your father? He should be good for the sixty grand.”
Richard was alarmed at the mention of his father. “Leave my father out of this. I made this mess and I’ll work things out. I can’t give you seventy-five hundred a month. That’s impossible.”
“That’s a shame, Doctor. Impossible is a word I don’t like to hear. You should have known what you were getting yourself into when you started playing. Of course there is a way you could work off the debt; very quickly too.”
Richard leaned forward in his chair. “What do you mean?”
“I have some associates who represent a group of women, and once in a while one of them comes down with an unwanted pregnancy. It’s not in their interest or my associates’ for them to have a baby, so they need to get an abortion. That’s where you can help. We have connections at several clinics that make sterile operating rooms available to be used for abortions.”
“That’s not legal, they must be board certified and supervised.”
“Some forms of gambling are illegal too. Get my drift?”
“I’m a staff OB/GYN. I can’t be involved in performing illegal abortions for prostitutes.”
“They’re not prostitutes. They’re escorts; very high class, and don’t get so high-and-mighty with me, Doctor. I happen to know you guys at the hospital mess around with women and drugs all the time. Unless you’re queer or overly religious, I’m sure you’ve had your share of both.”
He received no reply from Richard, just a sudden look of concern.
“I’m not asking you to do anything but the procedure. We’ll make the appointments, set up the sterile operating room, and all you have to do is show up, do your thing, and thirty minutes later you just leave. No one will know your name. You will be known as Dr. Parsons.”
“Best of all, we’ll freeze your debt at sixty thousand. You won’t have any more monthly payments to make and no more interest will be added. We’ll credit your account twenty-five hundred dollars for each procedure. When you’re paid up, you walk. Now, what could be more generous than that? Of course, you can always refuse, but my partners wouldn’t like that. They tend to express themselves by breaking arms and legs. Now of course in this case, that would be counterproductive, but I don’t have any control over them. So, Doctor, what’ll it be? Door number one, where you eventually walk away a free man with no debt, or door number two, where you get busted up a little and maybe never be able to operate again? My guess is that you value the use of your hands. What if something happened to them?” He looked at Richard and smiled. “The choice is yours, hot-shot. Which will it be?”
Richard took out a handkerchief and wiped his brow. “I don’t seem to have any choice, but what guarantee do I have that you’ll hold up your end of the bargain?”
“You’ll just have to trust us. After all, we trusted you when we let you use our money. It’s not our fault you weren’t very good at gambling.”
“Okay, I’ll do it, but the minute that debt is clear, I’m washing my hands of this deal.”
Steele laughed. “You doctors wash your hands a lot, don’t you?”
He got up, extended his hand and said, “We have a deal, then. You’ll be given at least two days’ advance notice for any operations.”
Richard turned and walked past the guard, who stepped aside and opened the door for him. He exited the building and headed for his car. His legs were wobbly and he felt a little dizzy. He collapsed into the driver’s seat and took several deep breaths.
I swear I will never gamble again.
Maggie ignored the coffee and nibbled on a danish. The man sitting opposite her was busily eating away at the Hungry Man’s breakfast he had before him. He was paying more attention to the food than he was to Maggie; a situation that was not lost to her.
“Can’t you come up for air long enough to answer my question?”
“Hold your horses. This is good grub and I intend to eat every morsel.”
She assented, but she didn’t like it. He was this way every time they met, but that didn’t mean she’d gotten used to, or even approved of, his method of dealing.
Dealing was what this meeting was all about. Maggie was meeting with a drug dealer. Not just any drug dealer, but one with whom she had a personal relationship; one who was a fellow employee at the Barrington Community Hospital where she has been an RN for several years. Her companion and supplier, Jason, had even been her boyfriend for about four months, which was time enough for him to show her the pleasures of recreational drug use.
Jason Miller earned his Doctor of Pharmacy degree from the University of North Carolina and was an Assistant Pharmacist at the hospital. He discovered, early on, that the hospital did not have an effective control system for the drug samples liberally provided by an army of pharmaceutical representatives. The reason he was given was that the state and federal governments were only concerned with providing guidelines for drugs that were purchased and sold by the hospital pharmacy.
The procedure at Barrington was for the reps to drop of their brochures and samples at the information desk. The receptionist signed a receipt and sent the brochures to designated doctors and the samples to the Pharmacy Center, where as part of his job, Jason received them and stocked them alphabetically in bins set up for that purpose. Since the number of new drugs added to the Pharmacy each year was only five to ten percent of the hundreds of samples dropped off by the pharmaceutical representatives, there would be too much paperwork involved in entering the details for each of them into the hospital’s system. This gap provided Jason the opportunity to take some of the samples for his personal use and to make some easy money selling to friends.
The question Maggie had posed to him just at the time his Hungry Man plate arrived was about to be answered. They had an arrangement. Once a month, he would supply her with one of his samples and she, in turn, would pay him a flat fifty dollars. He made this deal exclusively with her at the time they were together, and even though things didn’t work out between them, he decided to keep the price unchanged; this despite the fact that he could get far more from other buyers for most of the drugs he sold to her.
“Well,” he said finally, “I have something very special for you this month.” He reached into the pouch lying next to him on the seat. He extracted a baggie with a dozen large purple capsules, reached across the table, and placed it in her open hand.
Maggie took a quick look at the pills and put them into her handbag. “What are they?”
“Those, my beauty, are anti-depression pills for suicidal patients called MMLD. On the street they’re called ‘Marco.’ They’re in short supply, but I set those aside for us. The instructions say to take only one capsule during a twenty-four period. I don’t think you should try them alone, though, at least not the first time. What if I come over to your place and we can try them together?” His suggestion was not unexpected or unwelcomed. Since they broke up, Jason and Maggie had gotten together several times to share some of his new samples; a “friends with benefits” type of thing.
She thought about his proposal for a minute. “How about my place at eight tomorrow night?”
“That should work.”