Miracle Cure Read Free

for a run, and then maybe hook up with some of the kids playing touch football in the park. They loved having him in their game, especially when he sent one of them deep and threw a fifty- or sixty-yard bullet spiral to him. But one glance at Jack had changed his mind. The man who had been Brian’s football coach from Pop Warner to high school and on to college was wrapped in an afghan in his favorite chair, where he hadbeen sitting up for most of the night. On the table next to him were several cardiac medications and others for pain. He looked drawn and in need of a shave.
    “Got any plans for the day, Coach?” Brian asked.
    “Yeah. The sultan of Brunei is supposed to stop by with his harem. I told him just three for me, though.”
    “How about I make you some breakfast?”
    Jack’s gray crew cut, chiseled features, and lingering summer tan helped him look younger,
and healthier
, than he was. But Brian knew that his cardiac condition was worsening. Portions of his six-year-old quintuple bypass were almost certainly closing. Brian picked up the small vial of nitroglycerin tablets and checked inside. More than half were gone.
    “How many of these did you take yesterday?” he asked.
    Jack snatched the vial away and put it into his shirt pocket.
    “To tell you the truth, I don’t remember taking any.”
    “Jack, come on.”
    “Look, I’m fine. You just tend to your business and let me tend to mine.”
    “You are my business, Jack. I’m your son and I’m a cardiologist, remember?”
    “No. You’re a bouncer in a bar. That and a car salesman.”
    Brian started to react to the barb, then caught himself. Jack was probably operating on even less sleep than he was.
    “You’re right, Coach,” Brian responded, willing his jaw to unclench. “When I’m back to being a cardiologist again, then I can give advice. Not before. Let me toast you a bagel.”
    The living room of the first-story flat that Jack had owned for the ten years since his heart attack was, like therest of the place, devoid of a woman’s touch. There were sports photos on the walls and trophies on almost every surface that would hold one. Most of the awards had Brian’s name on them. They were the trappings of a man who needed gleaming hardware and laminated certificates to pump up his self-esteem. When Brian had first moved in, being surrounded by all those trophies had been something of a problem for him. But Freeman Sharpe had helped him deal with his issues.
Remember, your dad loves you and he always wanted more for you than he ever wanted for himself. And if he pushes your buttons, just tell yourself that he’s a master at doing that because he’s the one who installed them in the first place
. And in the end, as with so many other things that had seemed like a big deal, the trophies meant nothing more than Brian chose to make them.
    As he headed into the small kitchen, he glanced at one of the photographs on the wall by the doorway. It was the official photo of the UMass team taken just before the start of his fateful junior season. He was in the middle of the next-to-last row. Number 11. Then, for the first time that he could remember, his eyes were drawn to a face at the right-hand end of the very last row. Dr. Linus King, the team orthopedist. Brian had looked at the photo any number of times before—where it hung, he had no real choice. It was curious that he had never noticed the man until now. Over countless therapy sessions and countless recovery meetings, Brian had come to accept responsibility for his addiction to prescription painkillers. But if there was anyone else who bore accountability, it was King.
    Brian repressed the sudden urge to slam his fist into the photo. Over the year following his reconstruction of Brian’s knee, Linus King, a sports-medicine deity, was always too busy to conduct a thorough reevaluation of his work, to say nothing of sitting down to talk with hispatient about persistent discomfort in the joint.