Vengeance

“What makes you think I’m not?”

“When I go hang out with friends, I feel bad leaving you here. Some of the places in Atlanta are really hot. You need to check them out.”

Nikki was on point with one thing. I couldn’t simply go “hang out” anywhere without it being a big production. The paparazzi in Atlanta were nowhere near as bad as New York City and Los Angeles, but it wasn’t toned all the way down like Birmingham, Alabama, either. I had to fly private—not because I was bougie—but because the commotion it would cause walking through the terminal would have been insane. Many times I longed to be able to run out to a convenience store to get a hot dog or a pack of sanitary napkins. I longed to walk through a grocery store, aisle by aisle, and see what new food products were on the market that I might want to try. I yearned to go for a walk down the street and take in the fresh air without people rushing up on me to ask for an autograph. But the life of Wicket was the hell that I had created and there was no turning back.

Chapter Twenty-One

Monday, September 3, 2012

1:38 p.m.

Atlanta, Georgia

People look upon Mondays in different ways. Those like me could not care less. We work seven days a week if that is what it takes and there is little difference between the weekends and weekdays, with the exception of some of those who work with us, or for us, considering Saturdays and Sundays are times to get some errands out of the way, make special plans with loved ones, and laze around watching Netflix or Law & Order, Criminal Minds, Hoarders, or The First 48 marathons.

Then there are those who feel like the weekends are their Holy Grail. They aren’t a cup, dish, plate or stone in the biblical sense, but some do believe that weekends off from work are designed to provide them with happiness, eternal youth, and an abundance of food. They hate their jobs, so it feels like being let out of prison for the weekend. They get an opportunity to relieve some stress by taking morning jobs, playing basketball or softball in leagues, taking the kids to the neighborhood park or other child-themed places, and lie in bed late after a lengthy night of sex. Some curl up with books or the video game controllers, hit up the shopping malls. Then there is the food aspect of it. They can grill out, go have long, relaxed meals at restaurants—instead of adhering to breaks and lunch hours—or they can have friends or relatives over to laze around with them. But when Sundays start winding down, the stress of what happens on Monday mornings starts winding back up. Lunches have to be packed for the kids and/or leftover lunches for themselves because they don’t want to spend more money on their lunch than they actually make on their lunch hour. Clothes and/or uniforms have to be washed and ironed and hung in closets for the week. They may have to run out and fill up their gas tanks that were depleted over the weekend to make sure they don’t have to leave ten minutes earlier in the morning. In larger cities, they prepare to go to battle with the dins of other people who will be on the roads trying to get to work on time, for fear of being called on the carpet by their supervisors or docked of their pay. Or even worse, fired if this has happened before or sometimes fired if it is only the first time.

Last, there are those who love their careers. They thrive on their work and can’t wait until Monday mornings arrive. They hate having to shut down their offices or businesses for the weekends. They find it to be a ridiculous concept because their motto is “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.” The weekends actually bring them a great degree of stress. They can’t relax. Why the hell should they when money was out there to be made? They are the ones who look uncomfortable lingering by the bar with a beer in their hands while the rest of their buddies are joking and laughing and relaxed, completely appreciating their mini-sabbaticals from the office. They spend time with family and loved ones more out of obligation than a true desire to do so. While everyone is sitting around talking about the latest movies, or gossiping about who did what at their offices the

past five days, they are worrying about how they can make up for lost time once Monday gets there, and it can’t get there fast enough for them.

Based on Bianca’s descriptions of her husband, and my own observations over the past few months, Herman Hudson fell into the last category. Bianca definitely fell into the first. If Herman could’ve seen patients or performed surgeries every Saturday and Sunday, he probably would have. But orthopedic surgery was rarely an emergency or life-threatening intervention so sans a few people who didn’t want to take their sick leave off work—most embrace taking it—people preferred to have their surgeries performed during the week.

On any given Monday, Herman generally did in-and-out surgeries in his fancy-schmancy clinic in the Buckhead area of Atlanta in the mornings, followed by a lunch break from noon to one, and consultations in the afternoon. If he could’ve done away with a lunch hour for his staff, he probably would have, but they had rights. He didn’t take Mondays or Wednesdays off like many of his peers. The theory of having a three-day weekend or a two-day, one-day, two-day split week was beyond his comprehension. He hadn’t busted his ass getting a four-year undergraduate degree, a four-year medical degree, and spending five years in a hospital as a resident to not swallow up every dollar he could make. He’d decided on orthopedic surgery because they tended to be one of the highest-paid specialties, averaging about a half million a year in take-home pay, comparable to a cardiologist.

I had been joking with Bianca when I kept talking about him playing with feet all day. I was amazed that she had not corrected me that day at the restaurant. I was very aware that an orthopedic surgeon was not a podiatrist. That while they could treat hammertoes and club feet, they also treated patients with cerebral palsy, severe arthritis, fractures, sprains, spinal issues, and many other things. Herman was brilliant, and that was nothing new. He had been very smart back in school, especially in math. He was to be the one who explained what the teacher had said in class to the rest of us.

But Herman was also evil. I clearly remembered him being the ringleader homecoming night. He thought that shit was funny and cute. Now I was going to show him how you could be trudging along in life, with everything seemingly golden one minute, and then a single incident could change it forever.

Herman’s first consultation patient after lunch on this particular Monday was Louis Abbey—real name—a fifty-two-year-old Caucasian man who was complaining of back pain. Louis Abbey was about to do both of us a huge favor. It took me a minute to find the perfect person for what I had in mind. He and I had never spoken personally. In fact, I had put up a Chinese wall between us. An insurmountable barrier, especially to the passage of information and communication. I had utilized a business associate who I knew I could trust—because he loved money and knew that the better job he did, the more I would come back to him—to initiate the process. It trickled down to at least five or six more people before someone approached Louis with the plan.

Louis was a recovered drug addict but still had a serious gambling problem. He would often leave his wife at home alone, even though their four kids were grown, and head to Cherokee, North Carolina, to try his luck at Harrah’s. He was never lucky, and the decent wage that he made working construction was quickly swallowed up upon his arrival. His wife, Ivy, was on depression medication at that point, struggling to believe that the man who had once promised to love and protect her was now putting their home and hopes of retirement at risk. Ivy was a schoolteacher, and everything had started to affect her ability to deal with the students. I only knew all of this because I had them both watched carefully before I pulled the final trigger on Plan B. I needed to make sure that Louis would not cave under pressure when the proverbial shit hit the fan. The only concern that I had was whether he had shared what he was about to do with his wife. From what I had heard, unlike her husband, she had morals, and sometimes people with morals thought it was better to do what was right instead of doing what was easy. Either way, her life was about to change, and I hoped she could handle it. No one was forcing her husband to participate. He had been paid well and would be paid again after he filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against Herman.

Obviously, I wasn’t there in the office that day, or in the exam room, but things must have gone as planned. By the next morning, Herman’s face and name were plastered all over both the news and Internet. It was a breaking news item about a prominent Atlanta orthopedic surgeon who had been accused of sexually molesting another man during a consultation. The fact that Herman was black and Louis was white meant the racist media outlets went on the warpath, digging deeper into Herman’s business, interviewing staff, friends, neighbors, and other patients. It was a chance for several people to get fifteen minutes of fame that they never would’ve gotten otherwise. I was banking on that and it paid off in a serious way less than a week later.

Opportunists will always embrace an opportunity. There is an old proverb that goes: “Dear Optimist, Pessimist, and Realist: Thank you. While you guys were arguing about the glass of water, I drank it. —The Opportunist.”

I did not know the number who would come marching, but I was convinced they would come and boy, did they. At last count, there were at least eight other patients, both male and female, who claimed that Herman had done something to them when there was no nurse present in the examination room. Then one of the nurses decided to hop on the gravy train and accused him of sexually harassing her for years.

Herman was arrested, charged, and his bail was set at a million dollars. He was looking at hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees for the criminal charges alone. Then there would be all the civil suits. People claiming that he had destroyed them, and Louis would be leading the pack. He had already been set up with an attorney to file his case before he ever stepped a toe in Herman’s office. He would be the main plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit and the attorney, also acquired via a Chinese wall, would have a slate of clients that he would make a third off of and, like most class-action cases, he would walk away with more wealth than all the rest. It was a win-win for everyone except for Herman . . . and Bianca.

For a second, I almost felt like I had gone too far. Then I came to the conclusion, “Fuck nah!”

PART FOUR:

THE BRIDGE

Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.

—Mark Twain

Chapter Twenty-Two

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

2:37 p.m.

35,000 Feet Over the Atlantic Ocean