I looked at the Duchess. Her mouth was hanging open. She seemed to be frozen solid, staring off into the distance. And then she fainted.
Up in the fifth-floor isolation unit, it was sheer bedlam. Carter was flailing his arms wildly, kicking and screeching, and the Duchess was pacing back and forth, crying hysterically. Tears were running down her face and her skin was an ashen gray.
One of the doctors said to her, “We’re trying to get an IV in your son, but he won’t remain still. At this age it can be very difficult to find a vein, so I think we’re just going to stick the needle through his skull. It’s the only way.” His tone was rather nonchalant, entirely unsympathetic.
The Duchess was right on him. “You motherfucker! Do you know who my husband is, you bastard? You go back there right now and get an IV in his arm or I’ll fucking kill you myself before my husband has the chance to pay someone to do it!”
The doctor froze in horror, mouth agape. He was no match for the sheer ferocity of the Duchess of Bay Ridge. “Well, what the fuck are you waiting for? Go!”
The doctor nodded and ran back over to Carter’s hospital crib, lifting up his tiny arm to search for another vein.
Just then my cell phone rang. “Hello,” I said tonelessly.
“Jordan! It’s Barth Green. I just got all your messages. I’m so sorry for you and Nadine. Are they sure it’s bacterial meningitis?”
“Yes,” I replied, “they’re sure. They’re trying to get an IV in him, to pump him with antibiotics, but he’s going crazy right now. He’s kicking and screaming and flailing his arms—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” said Barth Green, cutting me off. “Did you just say he’s flailing his arms?”
“Yes, he’s going absolutely crazy, even as we speak. He’s been inconsolable ever since his fever broke. It sounds like he’s possessed by an evil—”
“Well, you can relax, Jordan, because your son doesn’t have meningitis, viral orbacterial. If he did, his fever would still be a hundred and six, and he’d be as stiff as a board. He probably has a bad cold. Infants have a tendency to spike abnormally high fevers. He’ll be fine in the morning.”
I was bowled over. How could Barth Green be so irresponsible as to create false hope like that? He hadn’t even seen Carter, and the spinal tap was conclusive; they’d checked the results three times. I took a deep breath and said, “Listen, Barth, I appreciate you trying to make me feel better, but the spinal tap showed that he has some sort of rare org—”
Cutting me off again: “I really don’t give a shit what the test showed. In fact, I’m willing to bet it was a contaminant in the sample. That’s the problem with these emergency rooms: They’re good for broken bones and an occasional gunshot wound, but that’s about it. And this, well, this is absolutely egregiousfor them to have worried you like this.”
I could hear him sigh over the phone. “Listen, Jordan, you know what I deal with each day with spinal paralysis, so I’ve been forced to become an expert on giving bad news to people. But this is complete horseshit! Your son has a cold.”
I was taken aback. I had never heard Barth Green utter so much as a single curse. Could he possibly be right? Was it plausible that from his living room in Florida he could make a more accurate diagnosis than a team of doctors who were standing at my son’s bedside using the world’s most advanced medical equipment?
Just then Barth said in a sharp tone: “Put Nadine on the phone!”
I walked over and handed the phone to the Duchess. “Here, it’s Barth. He wants to speak to you. He’s says Carter’s fine and all the doctors are crazy.”
She took the phone, and I walked over to the crib and stared down at Carter. They’d finally been able to get an IV going in his right arm, and he had calmed down somewhat—only whimpering now and shifting uncomfortably in his crib. He really was handsome, I thought, and those eyelashes…Even now they stood out regally.
A minute later the Duchess walked over to the crib and leaned over and put the back of her hand to Carter’s forehead. Sounding very confused, she said, “He seems cool now. But how could all the doctors be wrong? And how could the spinal tap be wrong?”
I put my arm around the Duchess and held her close to me. “Why don’t we take turns sleeping here? This way one of us will always be with Channy.”
“No,” she replied, “I’m not leaving this hospital without my son. I don’t care if I have to stay here a month. I’m not leaving him, not ever.”
And for three straight days my wife slept by Carter’s bedside, never leaving the room once. On that third afternoon, as we sat in the backseat of the limousine on our way back to Old Brookville, with Carter James Belfort between us and the words It was a contaminant in the sampleringing pleasantly in both our ears, I found myself in awe of Dr. Barth Green.
First I’d seen him shake Elliot Lavigne out of a coma; now, eighteen months later, he’d done this. It made me feel much more comfortable that he’d be the one standing over me next week with a scalpel in his hand—cutting into my very spine. Then I would have my life back.
And then I could finally get off drugs.
CHAPTER 33
REPRIEVES
(Three Weeks Later)
Just when I actually woke from my back surgery I’m still not sure. It was on October 15, 1995, sometime in the early afternoon. I remember opening my eyes and muttering something like “Uhhhh, fuck! I feel like shit!” Then all of a sudden I started vomiting profusely, and each time I vomited I felt this terrible shooting pain ricocheting through every neural fiber of my body. I was in the recovery room in the Hospital for Special Surgery in Manhattan, and I was hooked up to a drip that released titrated doses of pure morphine into my bloodstream each time I pushed a button. I remember feeling deeply saddened that I had to go through a seven-hour operation to get this sort of cheap high without breaking the law.
The Duchess was hovering over me, and she said, “You did great, honey! Barth said everything’s gonna be fine!” I nodded and drifted off into a sublime state of morphine-induced narcosis.
Then I was home. It was perhaps a week later, although the days seemed to be melting into one another. Alan Chemical-tob was helpful—dropping off five hundred Quaaludes my first day home from the hospital. They were all gone by Thanksgiving. It was a feat of great manhood, and I was rather proud of it—to average eighteen Ludes a day, when a single Lude could knock out a two-hundred-pound Navy SEAL for up to eight hours.
The Cobbler came to visit and told me that he’d worked things out with the Drizzler, who had agreed to leave quietly with only a small fraction of his stock options. Then the Drizzler came over and told me that one day he would find the Cobbler in a dark alley and strangle him with his own ponytail. Danny visited, too, and told me that he was just about to cut a deal with the states, so there were definitely Twenty Years of Blue Skies ahead. Then Wigwam came over and told me that Danny had lost touch with reality—that there was no deal with the states—and that, he, Wigwam, was out hunting for a new brokerage firm, where he could set up shop just as soon as Stratton imploded.
As Stratton continued its downward spiral, Biltmore and Monroe Parker continued to thrive. By Christmas, they had completely cut ties with Stratton, although they continued to pay me a royalty of $1 million on each new issue. Meanwhile, the Chef stopped by every few weeks—giving me regular updates on the Patricia Mellor debacle, which was still in the process of winding down. Patricia’s heirs, Tiffany and Julie, were now dealing with the Inland Revenue Service, Britain’s equivalent of the IRS. There were some faint rumblings that the FBI was looking into the matter, but no subpoenas had been issued. The Chef assured me that everything would end up okay. He had been in touch with the Master Forger, who had been questioned by both the Swiss and United States governments, and he’d stuck to our cover story like glue. In consequence, Agent Coleman had hit a dead end.