This time, however, was different. Jessica sat there alone, and when she heard the diagnosis, she remained mute and still, as if in a catatonic trance. The words reverberated in her head. She understood their urgency, of course. Yet at the same time, she knew that the moment she acknowledged them, Owen would, once again, be dying.
“I know that this is not the news you were expecting,” Dr. Goldman continued, “but you shouldn’t lose hope that Owen can still go into remission again. There is an experimental treatment in Manhattan, at Memorial Sloan Kettering, and I think he’d be a very suitable candidate. They’ve been having great success over there.”
If hearing the word cancer made Jessica sick to her stomach, experimental treatment made her want to vomit. Still, this was some sliver of hope. She grasped it with all her might, like it was a branch overhanging a raging river, knowing it was the only thing preventing her from going over the falls.
“Okay,” Jessica said, surprised at the sound of her own voice, almost as if she were hovering above the office, watching the scene unfold. “When can that start?”
Dr. Goldman pursed his lips. Jessica could not imagine that there was still bad news to come, but she recognized this tell. Even the slim branch he had extended would not keep her from the plunge ahead.
“It’s a process, I’m afraid. First we’ll need to do some more tests to confirm that Owen is a viable candidate. I think he will be, but I can’t be sure without the lab results to back it up. But the greater hurdle, I’m sorry to say, will be the cost. Because it’s an experimental protocol, insurance won’t cover the treatment.”
“What’s the cost?”
“It’s significant. I don’t know precisely how much, but at a minimum, it will be in the low– to mid–six figures to complete the entire protocol.”
Jessica found it pretentious to talk about money this way, like dropping foreign words into a conversation. Everyone in the real estate world did it, though, and even James sprinkled his art talk with the same lingo. It always forced Jessica to translate the amount in her head. If six figures meant it cost at least $100,000, then low– to mid–six figures meant anything between $100,000 and . . . what? Half a million?
Jessica understood why Dr. Goldman was using such imprecise language. He was saying that no matter what the final tally ended up being, it was beyond her means.
Haley was late for her 10:00 a.m. appointment with Dr. Rubenstein. She had no excuse for her tardiness, of course. She had no job and no other place she had to be.
As always, when she arrived after ten, Haley immediately apologized. And as was his custom, Dr. Rubenstein told her that she should seek not his forgiveness, but her own.
“I get paid for the full session whether you use it or not. You’re only hurting yourself by being late.”
Dr. Rubenstein was a hard-core Freudian. He insisted that these sessions take place with Haley supine on the couch. Insisted was strong, as he said it was her choice, but he made it clear that he thought his approach was better. “To block out anything that might interfere with our work,” he’d explained.
So that morning, Haley did what she did each Monday at 10:00 a.m. (or a few minutes after). She removed her shoes, lay on his sofa, and stared up at the ceiling tiles.
She had been under Dr. Rubenstein’s care for almost a year. Oddly enough, it wasn’t James’s leaving her that sent her to therapy, but a work crisis.
Shortly after her marriage ended, Haley was assigned to a deal in which Maeve Grant was advising the acquirer in a huge merger between two aerospace conglomerates. The transaction involved the usual complex structure of share swaps, leverage, and cash. It was the largest deal in Maeve Grant history, and no fewer than seventy people had spent time on it during its various phases.
The closing was scheduled for year-end, tax considerations requiring that it be finalized before January 1. Haley worked through the Thanksgiving holiday—which suited her fine, given that she had no one to spend it with now that James was with Jessica. Afterward, however, she often thought that if James hadn’t dumped her for Jessica, she would have been eating turkey with him instead of discovering the problem that would ultimately end with her being unemployed and unemployable.
Amid the millions of pages of due diligence documents that she had pored over, Haley saw that some of the target’s defense contracts would be invalidated after the merger for some arcane regulatory reasons having to do with joint ownership. The loss would be in the $300 million range, which even on a deal this size was meaningful for Maeve Grant’s client.
Haley brought the problem to the attention of her direct supervisor, Lawrence Chittik. He told her that she was wrong, that she didn’t understand the regulations like he did. That he’d actually worked on the Senate subcommittee that had drafted them.
But she knew she was right. So she put her analysis down on paper and sent it to Chittik, copying the partner in charge of their team, Sean Keener, and pretending that this was the first time she’d raised the issue so as to not make Chittik look bad with his boss. She even claimed that Chittik had asked her to look at the question, so he could share credit in her discovery.
Keener called Haley and Chittik into his office a minute after the email hit his in-box. “What the fuck?” was literally how he started the meeting.
“I didn’t know she was sending it to you,” Chittik said, immediately throwing Haley under the bus.
“I’m sorry,” Haley said, unsure why she was apologizing for doing her job well.
“Get out,” Keener said to
