Dana Potter paced in the hallway outside his son’s hospital room. Every two minutes, Potter thumbed Redial on his phone. SpoofCard, an app that disguised a caller’s number, took over and placed the call.
He heard ringing somewhere in St. Petersburg, Russia, but he got no answer and no voice telling him to leave a message. Hanging up, Potter wanted to hurl his phone against the wall, see it shatter into a million pieces.
But anger was useless, he told himself. Anger said you were out of control and feeling like you were cornered.
I am cornered, Potter thought. They’ve got all of us cornered.
Fighting against that idea, willing himself to be brave, Potter entered the hospital room and tried not to weep at the sight of his son wasting away in bed. Jesse’s eyes were closed, and Potter thought once again how much his boy resembled a baby bird fallen from its nest, all skin and sinew.
He looked to his wife, who sat by Jesse’s bed. She gave him a questioning raise of her eyebrow. Shaking his head, he wondered if God had inflicted this punishment on the poor innocent boy as payback for his father’s sins.
Jesse had been born just fine, ten fingers, ten toes, a healthy cry when the midwife delivered him. And he’d thrived through the age of five.
Then he started falling a lot for no apparent reason. Soon after, he was diagnosed with Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Duchenne, the deadliest form of muscular dystrophy, caused muscles to waste away. Boys around five or six were the most likely group to develop the disorder, and those boys usually died in their early twenties.
If we had until his early twenties, we could beat this thing, Potter thought bitterly. But here’s my Jesse dying at fifteen, and there’s hope, but there’s nothing I can do about it. Nothing.
Potter cursed himself for a tactical error. He should have insisted on more of a payment up-front, enough to hire a private jet to fly his son to Panama and pay a doctor millions to administer a radical, controversial, and illegal stem-cell treatment that some said could stop the muscle wasting in its tracks. Even give Jesse back his strength.
Potter went to his son’s side and stroked his face before looking at his wife. “I don’t know how to think of life without him,” he choked out. “And they won’t answer the phone. They’re leaving us hanging in the wind, and I don’t know what to do.”
Mary had tears in her eyes when she nodded. She was barely able to say, “I know.”
Potter took his attention off his son. He could not bear to watch him just slip away in his sleep. He glanced at the television on mute. His wife had it turned to CNN.
The anchorman was jazzed up about something, but Potter had no idea what until a chyron appeared on the screen:
CHIEF JUSTICE RULES TALBOT RIGHTFUL SUCCESSOR TO PRESIDENCY. LARKIN MUM.
Potter looked over at his wife in disgust. “Was it for nothing?”
Before Mary could answer, their son moaned and stirred. The burn phone in Potter’s pocket began to buzz.
He yanked it out, saw a number like the one from St. Petersburg, and surged toward rage as he stomped back into the hallway and answered.
“My son is dying,” Potter said in a tense whisper. “We had a deal, and you aren’t paying, and—”
“Is this Mr. Marston?” a woman said in a slight Eastern European accent.
He stopped ranting. He’d never talked to a female before.
“Who is this?” Potter said.
“The woman hired to eliminate you and your wife. I suggest you destroy the phone you are using, find another, and call the number I’m about to give you if you want any chance of saving your son.”