…I remember it was March 16th eleven years ago.
His eyes popped wide open as he shot back up to his feet. The clock on his desk still only read 6:30. He dialed New York Presbyterian on his cell phone as he ran toward the elevators.
“Do you have a patient by the name of James Prescott?
“What room is he in?”
Ryan burst into Prescott’s room, moist with sweat, to find him propped up in bed, alone, his eyes half open, concentrating deeply on each arduous breath he took. A pair of thin plastic tubes stretched from his right arm to the IV pole next to his bed.
He looked up and gave Ryan a weak smile. “Good luck today,” he managed, in an almost inaudible whisper.
“Thanks,” Ryan said, still catching his breath from his run through the hospital. “But there’s something I have to ask you! You said that you clearly remembered March 16th eleven years ago.
“James, that was the day my parents died. But I was in protective custody of the state until the 18th. That’s when I went to the orphanage. That’s when I officially became an orphan. Please, James. Tell me you just misspoke.”
As Ryan finished speaking, Prescott’s smile widened slightly as his thumb slowly depressed the red button on the top of the control in his right hand, sending a bolus of morphine into his system.
His eyes almost immediately drooped the rest of the way shut, and the world faded to black. When it reappeared, he could see himself, more than a decade younger, picking up an insulin prescription at a Seattle pharmacy. He watched himself overpower Ryan’s sickly grandfather who had come to answer a knock at the door, and then jab the fatal dose of insulin into his stomach.
Next he saw the screen of his old laptop, his hand on the mouse closing a window displaying the location of Ryan Tyler, Sr.’s cell phone. Then he saw the headlights of a Honda Civic getting closer and closer to the camera mounted on the Chevy Suburban he was controlling remotely. Then finally, everything went black again.
“James!” Ryan yelled. Prescott’s breathing was no longer audible. His chest motionless.
“Nurse!” Ryan called out, rushing into the hall. “He’s not breathing!”
“I’m so sorry,” the nurse said empathetically. “It was his wish that we provide only comfort measures. He signed an order last night that we not attempt to resuscitate him. Are you a family member?”
“No. I mean yes. Kind of.”
The nurse smiled. “You favor him.”
Ryan stood just outside the door to the floor of the exchange, expressionless and motionless, as an aide dabbed the shine off his forehead with skin-toned powder.
“Are you ready, sir?” another aide asked skittishly seconds before his first big public appearance.
Ryan nodded determinedly without saying a word.
At 9:27, he stepped through the door and up to a podium above a throng of tipped-off media members and a few dozen traders on the floor below.
“I was the initial public offering on this exchange,” he started in a quiet voice. “I lost both of my parents in one tragic night eleven years ago.” The content and the tone paralleled the speech Prescott had delivered from the same podium eleven years earlier, almost to the minute.
“I found myself languishing in an orphanage with no family, virtually no stimulation and, the sad reality was, no hope. But that changed when I became a part of the Avillage family!”
Again the room filled with applause, just as it had eleven years earlier.
“Today begins the second volume in the epic of Avillage. I will no longer be a character in this story. Today, I become its author.”
More applause.
“It still takes money to raise a child. It still takes morals, ethics and intelligence. It will always take love. And, sometimes,” he paused, almost choking on the words, “it takes Avillage.”
Just as the clock hit 9:30, he raised Prescott’s antique wooden mallet and struck the opening bell.
Acknowledgements
A big thank you to my brother Adam, whose input — from concept all the way through publication — was absolutely invaluable.
Thanks also to my dad, without whose encouragement I almost certainly wouldn’t have completed this novel.
A heartfelt thanks to my wife for supporting me and being nothing but positive when I got the crazy idea to write a book out of the blue.
Finally to my pre-readers and secret-keepers-in-chief: Mom, Sis, Chuck, Linda, Maya and Hubert, thank you. Every single critique was helpful.
Contact with Author
Want more information about THE I.P.O. or its author, Dan Koontz? Have a comment or a question for the author? Be sure to check out www.dankoontz.net.
Copyright
Copyright © 2013 by Daniel Koontz
All Rights Reserved
This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of the characters herein to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.
Cover Art by: Gerome E. De Villa