You Can Let It Go [ZARRY]

Four

Harry:

Dr. Webb looked miffed. He was a board certified neurologist who’d pioneered gene sequencing therapy for Alzheimer’s patients and was clearly not used to being spoken to like a servant. But you’d be surprised what people would put up with when you had the kind of money we did. The kind of money that made a world class neurologist’s salary look like minimum wage.

“I am interviewing the candidates personally,” Dr. Webb said. “Two excellent prospects. One of whom comes especially highly recommended from a friend at Virginia Mason—”

“Fine. Get on it.” I turned to Cesar who looked politely embarrassed on my behalf.

“I’m going to see him before I head to the office to try to keep the hyenas from barking. Is he awake?”

“He was as of a few minutes ago.”

Without a word, I strode through the first door to the sitting room of my father’s suite, past a roaring fire, and then to the bedroom that smelled of disinfectant and urine.

A female nurse—Nina, I guessed—was there, making notes on an iPad. She smiled at me warily as I came in.

“I was about to go find you,” she said, whispering. “He’s been asking for you.”

I nodded and approached, still marveling that the figure in the bed was my father. He’d been larger than life only a few short weeks ago. Tall I’d gotten my height from him imposing, with a voice that snapped and whipped and sent people scurrying to do his bidding.

Styles Pharma had started as a tonic and elixir shop at the turn of the twentieth century and had grown over the decades into a family-run corporation, specializing in diabetes meds. But it was Desmond Styles who’d taken the company into the stratosphere with its labs’ production of OxyPro. Millions of dollars became billions in profit over the course of the last ten years, and Dad became a giant among men.

Now he looks like a scarecrow someone forgot to bring in for the winter.

I pulled up a chair. The chair my mother would have been sitting in had she still been alive. Dad’s silver hair was thin and brittle, his beard yellowed around the nose and mouth. Even in sleep, his brows were furrowed, and his lips were drawn down in a scowl.

“I was told he’d be awake,” I said irritably to cover my uncertainty about waking him.

Even now, even as sick as Dad was, I second-guessed every word that came out of my mouth, every decision, every movement I made in front of him.

I coughed into my fist and Dad stirred. His eyes clear and green like mine and still sharp opened and took me in.

On a spasming, jerking neck, he turned his head to me on the pillow.

“Hey, Dad,” I said in a quiet voice. “How are you?”

“D-d-don’t be a f-fucking idiot,” he hissed, each word a challenge to enunciate. “Time is. . . wasting. . .”

I sat up straighter. “I’m going into the office,
business as usual. I’ll run interference with Bradley and keep Vera off our backs. The latest line is you’re taking a few days off—"

He shook his head and spit a word that might’ve been bullshit. Spittle flecked the bedsheets. “I d-don’t take d-days off"

“Fine. You’re meeting with investors at. . . I don’t know. Our Tokyo compound? Or New York? Pick a place, Dad. We can’t hide this forever. It’s not going away.”

“They s-said it c-comes and g-goes,” he managed. “It’ll g-go. T-Toe the line.”

“That’s not going to be enough.”