Within seconds of hitting the emergency room, after 21 minutes of CPR, 17-year 11-month old J’Quarius Jones was pronounced dead.
Back at the arena, Ryan and all the other media members, had been quickly ushered out of the locker room to give the Chicago team some privacy.
Ryan placed the Bluetooth earpiece back in his ear. “Did you see that?” he asked, in utter shock.
“Yep. Figures,” Dillon answered disappointedly, as if something had happened directly to him. “This whole thing was for nothing! We were so close!”
“I hope he’s ok,” Ryan said, not even considering the possibility that this youthful embodiment of physical fitness was already dead.
“Me too,” Dillon said. “But even if he is, I don’t have any idea how we’re gonna be able to make contact with him at this point.”
“I tried,” Ryan said, holding out hope that Dillon would still give him whatever information he had on his parents.
“Well, we’ll have to try again. Think. And I’ll be back in contact with you — somehow.”
“Wait,” Ryan pleaded. “What about my parents?”
“Sorry, I can’t give away my only leverage,” Dillon said heartlessly. “I need you.”
“What?” Ryan snapped back angrily. “If you think telling me whatever info you have is going to make me less committed to your cause, I don’t need it. Don’t contact me again!”
“Your dad’s friend Jared Ralston is a minority owner of your stock,” Dillon blurted out. “And he’s been on the board of directors since day one.”
Ryan shook his head and gritted his teeth. “I already knew that!” What a waste of time. He reached up for his earpiece disgustedly. He had to get back to the train station to meet Jasper.
“But he never purchased any shares,” Dillon added.
Ryan stopped mid-stride. “Then how did he…” It had been years since he’d last spoken to J.R.
“That’s all I can tell you. Really. That’s all I know,” Dillon said. “I’ll get back in contact you when the time is right.”
In the weeks following J’Quarius’s death, Bradford, desperate to exonerate Avillage of any involvement in the untimely death of the wildly popular student athlete and under heavy pressure from investors who’d seen their shares plummet to zero, filed suit against the University of Chicago Children’s Medical Center for failing to disclose the risks of J’Quarius’s condition.
The charges were reviewed by the hospital’s lawyers, who determined that Dr. Bennett, the treating physician, had meticulously documented his entire conversation, specifically detailing his warning that J’Quarius “could die with continued participation in sports.”
Bradford wouldn’t back away from his position that he’d never been given that information though — despite the fact that the electronic medical record supported Dr. Bennett’s account. And Bennett’s entry was time-stamped just minutes after he and Bradford had talked.
Lawyers from Bradford’s team, along with the hospital’s side, all urged Bradford to drop the baseless case, but he wouldn’t relent. He would, however, be willing to settle out of court, he announced.
Dr. Bennett pushed hard to stand and fight, but as a single physician in a multi-specialty group-practice employed by a self-insured hospital system looking to protect its bottom line, the decision wasn’t up to him. Bradford, only interested in winning in the court of public opinion, opened with an offer to settle the case for a ludicrous sum of one thousand dollars, on the condition that the amount never be disclosed publicly. The hospital, looking at the alternative of a legal fight, which they would unquestionably win but that would cost them potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars to defend against a client with Bradford’s resources, jumped at the offer.
CHAPTER 9
By 1AM, most of the guests had either departed or were heading for their cars, gradually giving way to a bustling cleaning crew, now diligently but inconspicuously engaged in vacuuming, blotting out wine stains, and shuttling empty cocktail plates back to the kitchen of James Prescott’s expansive Southampton estate. But Prescott, in a nostalgic mood on the tenth anniversary of the opening of his exchange, couldn’t quite bring himself to call it an evening. By any measure, tonight qualified as a special occasion.
After a quick survey of the dwindling crowd, he singled out Alec Alanson, a media member of all people, to join him in his study for a nightcap.
Alec wrote for the Financial Times and was the rare individual who Prescott believed actually “got” him. If anyone ever set out to pen his biography, Prescott tacitly hoped it would be him, with his style of interview that weighed heavily toward listening. A successful interview, Alec believed, was like a memorable photograph. Of course it had to have a compelling subject, and it had to be successfully framed, but if the one recording the beauty or the evil or the genius of the subject became even the slightest focus of the piece, then it was a failure. Alec’s portrayals didn’t center around getting answers to “the tough questions.” They involved unobtrusively peeling away layers and, hopefully, reaching the core. Tonight, he wouldn’t pose a single question.
The heavy wooden door to the study creaked open from its high arched frame as Prescott ushered his guest in ahead of him. Prescott had actually given his housestaff explicit instructions not to grease the door, as he felt the creak added character to the entrance to this most august room of the house.
Inside, a fire crackled within a cavernous stone fireplace behind a masculine wrought iron gate, flanked on each side by a stack of hand-split oak logs and heavy iron pokers. The opposite wall was lined with rare books that Prescott had painstakingly collected over the years. His most prized possession, an original field atlas illustrated by Audubon himself, lay on a glass-covered pedestal in the center of the room, illuminated from above by a focused beam of white light that somehow left the remainder of the dimly lit room under the influence of only the warm tones of the flickering firelight. Dark wood stretched up the windowless walls to the sixteen-foot beamed ceiling, and a hand-knotted oriental wool rug dating from the late 1800s covered the entirety of the floor. A bare desk at the back of the room and two worn leather armchairs toward the fore were the only furnishings.
Prescott discreetly tugged on the false spine of a three-volume set on one of the lower bookshelves to reveal a simple ovoid decanter and 2 stout crystal glasses. “Care for a drink?” he asked, holding up a bottle of 60-year-old Macallan Whisky.
Just sober enough to realize that another drink was the last thing on Earth he needed but also that this would probably be the only time in his life he’d be offered a drink from a bottle that cost more than his car, Alec Alanson politely accepted.
Prescott handed a generous pour to his honored guest, the most recent member of an exclusive club who’d seen the inside of his study, and he began to pace. He carefully studied a row of books at his eye level, as Alec sat in silence, hypnotized by the honeyed aroma of the whisky mixing with the campfire smells of the burning wood.
“You know,” Prescott started hesitantly, “when you’re young, your focus is on the question, ‘What are you going to do?’”
He plodded deliberately a little further down the row of books before continuing, “Then sometime in your 30s, you pop your head up from your work long enough to ask yourself, ‘What am I doing?’”
He paused again, having reached the end of the bookshelf, before starting back, “In your 50s, the question gradually evolves to, ‘What have I done?’