I sometimes wonder how this whole thing would have played out if I hadn’t glanced down at that exact spot at exactly that second in time.
But, of course, I did.
It happened as we were passing through the reception area on our way back to the garage, keeping our heads down as we’d done the whole time we’d been inside. Making sure our faces weren’t captured by whatever cameras might be hidden.
And so, because my head was down, my attention was caught by a bit of paper so small it almost didn’t register. A corner, a shiny triangle of white, peeking out from under the back corner of the desk.
“Hold on,” I said.
Aki stopped and looked back at me just in time to see me crouch down and reach underneath. It was a tight fit because the drawers were in that part of the desk, leaving just a couple of inches space between them and the floor. I stretched my fingers as far as they could reach and managed to guide the paper toward me until I could get a hold of it.
As I picked it up, I could see it was a brochure, the kind that’s folded in three. The front panel was facing me, glossy and professional, with the words, “The Wonder Treatment They Don’t Want You to Know About.”
A cold feeling of revulsion shuddered through me.
“Let’s go,” I said to Aki. “We can look at this when we’re out of here.”
Aki nodded. He hadn’t seen the brochure, but my reaction had to have told him it wasn’t good.
We left the way we’d come in, back through the garage, and out from under the partly open door. Once in the open, we made a quick scoot across the driveway and ran to the cover of the wooded area. Not a word was said between us as we hurried to the car and began the drive back.
When we’d nearly reached the city, I finally made myself admit out loud what I’d just discovered.
“It’s a medical scam,” I said. “They’re conning money out of sick people with some phony miracle cure.”
Aki kept his eyes straight ahead. You’d have thought he was a super conscientious driver, focusing on the road, but I knew he was being respectful by not looking at me. No doubt what he’d heard in my voice had already told him plenty.
I can’t describe what I was feeling but there was a tidal wave of emotion rushing through me. I was angry — furious actually, and ashamed, disgusted, shocked, and a whole lot more. At some point I realized I was clenching my teeth, and I forced my jaws to relax.
“You want to stop at my place for a while?” Aki asked suddenly. “My mom is working and won’t be home until after midnight, so we could just hang out, give you time to think.”
Time to think was exactly what I needed. I agreed without hesitation, and we were soon driving through a neighborhood that had once been a familiar part of my world.
As we passed places I’d formerly known so well, it hit me that I hadn’t been in this district in years. In fact, it was probably the only part of the city I could say that about.
I don’t suppose I had to wonder why. The answer was obvious enough although it made me uncomfortable to admit it, even to myself. As Aki guided his car along the streets there was a growing sense of unease stirring in me.
I used to belong here, but that was in the past. My life now was so different in almost every way.
A random memory flashed through my brain. Playing with rocks and sticks and pieces of broken stuff I couldn’t readily identify. Not because I had no toys but because it was natural and interesting to create things back in those days.
There’d been no pool in our yard, no grand house full of expensive furnishings and pricey gadgets. No shoebox full of money I didn’t need to spend because pretty much anything I wanted was bought for me.
In a strange way, it felt as though the two lives I’d experienced had happened to two different people.
I pulled myself back from these thoughts as Aki parked his car, carefully maneuvering it to the left side of a driveway that was shared with the unit next door. Home to him was a duplex, a dull yellow brick box, with tired lawns.
Once inside his place, Aki tugged open the fridge and, after a slight hesitation, asked me if I was hungry.
I wasn’t. Or, rather, I’d been hungry a little earlier but the pamphlet I’d stuck into my pocket had pretty much killed my appetite.
At the same time, it was a safe bet Aki wanted a snack but might not want to make himself something if I wasn’t eating too.
“Actually,” I said, “I’d kind of like to order something. What do you feel like?”
“I could handle a sub,” he said. “There’s a deli just a couple of streets over that beats the chains hands down. And they’ll deliver, or I could go pick up an order.”
“I’d kind of like us to look at this together,” I said, sitting the brochure on the table. “Let’s get delivery.”
He called an order in and then sat cornerwise from me at the table, read the front flap, and unfolded the brochure so we could look at the inside panels.
It was bad.
It was one of those scams claiming a miracle cure that could work on a long list of medical conditions. Claims were made about “big pharma” wanting to keep this information from people because those companies only care about profits, not patients.
There were a number of testimonials from people they had supposedly helped. A man whose cancer had disappeared, completely mystifying the doctors. A woman whose blood sugar went from uncontrollable to normal. A young person with an autoimmune disorder, now symptom-free. And more, each with a remarkable claim and glowing endorsement.
Aki looked up at me after reading through them.
“Do you think it’s possible —”
“That any of this is true? Not a chance.”
I flipped the brochure over, which is when we saw the “experts.” There were two of them, almost certainly the men I’d seen my dad with that first fateful day. Each had a string of credentials after his name, which seemed to cheer Aki.
“Look!” he said. “It would seem your father is working with experts.”
“Except, it’s easy to get a so-called degree online,” I said. “They aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on.”
“That’s true,” he said. “I suppose if they had bona fide qualifications, we’d have seen certificates displayed somewhere.”
“Yup,” I said. “I wonder what they charge for this ‘wonder treatment’ scam.”
“Your dad’s picture isn’t here,” Aki said. “Maybe he’s not that involved. Is there any way the other guys could have conned him?”
I let myself consider that for less than a minute. I would have liked to believe it, but I knew it wasn’t true. If anything, my father would be the one who put it all together. His name didn’t appear anywhere on the pamphlet, but all that meant to me was that he was protecting himself.
The subs arrived and I folded the page and slid it back into my pocket. Then I thought better of it and asked Aki if he could put it somewhere for safekeeping. He paused from attacking his foot-long and promised to take care of it. Before I left, he ran a copy off for me on his printer.
I was glad to have the copy to show Owen the next day. He whistled low and, unlike Aki, didn’t attempt to make excuses or whitewash my dad’s involvement. He did, however, have a question.
“What are you going to do about it?”
It was like a jolt, hearing him ask that way, like he assumed I had some kind of plan.
“What can I do?” I said. “I mean, seriously. Confront him? Tell him it’s wrong? He already knows that. It’s not like I can stop him.”
“Are you sure?”
“About — what, about stopping him?” I almost laughed, but Owen’s face told me he was serious.
“Dude, he’s stealing money from sick people.”
“I know that, Owen. You think I don’t know that? It disgusts me. But what am I supposed to do?”
Owen’s eyes shifted away from me, focused on the floor.
“Yeah, I dunno. It’s a tough one all right.”
And it wasn’t like I hadn’t been thinking about it. What my own father was doing, cheating people out of their money. How he could do it, knowing he was taking their money for something that was a complete lie.
A swarm of thoughts and questions buzzed around in my brain that night when I was trying to get to sleep.
Were these people refusing conventional treatments — things that could actually help them, believing they’d found something better? The secrecy of the whole thing — was that because he was ashamed on some level, or was it because what they were doing was actually illegal? You’d think it would be against the law to be making bogus medical claims, but the brochure hadn’t said what the treatment was. Maybe there was a line they hadn’t crossed.
How much money were they taking from each person they were “treating?” Aki had been recording license numbers for a while by then, so we knew at least some of the people were scheduled for repeat appointments. It had to be extremely lucrative, to be covering the overhead and leaving enough profit to make it worth their while.
I wondered how the profits were divided. Knowing my father, it seemed likely he was paying the “experts” with the phony degrees a set amount and keeping a larger share for himself. But what did that actually amount to? Were we living on money Dad made in his legit business, or were we mainly supported by this disgusting setup?
It was at that point I had the first solid idea about how Nora’s mom was involved. Working at a critical care center would put her in contact with an endless stream of people being treated for exactly the kinds of medical issues the brochure claimed to cure. There had to be some kind of arrangement where she was doing something to connect patients with this scam.
Something else that occurred to me was that I was responsible for them meeting each other in the first place. Back when Nora and I hadn’t been dating for too long, before things went downhill between us, her folks had spent a couple of evenings at our place.
I tried to remember exactly how that had come about, and vaguely recalled a time when Nora’s dad was there to pick her up and got chatting with my father. If I have it right, her folks came over for a barbecue later that week, and then there was a second visit a few weeks later. How my father turned that short acquaintanceship into a chance to recruit Nora’s mom I couldn’t guess, but it wouldn’t be that hard for someone as slick as him. Not if she was open to earning some easy money.
I can’t describe my fury as I thought about this. Knowing my father had used my relationship with Nora to build a contact for his sleazy con enraged me more than anything I can remember in my entire life.
It overwhelmed me with disgust.
And it brought to mind Ms. Abboud’s words of warning the first time I met with her:
Once you know something, you can’t un-know it. Whatever you find out is something you’ll have to carry for the rest of your days.
Part of me almost wished I’d just dropped the whole thing then and there.