“I sure did!”
“A-and?”
“No infection!”
“Fuck yes no infection! I kicked its ass!”
“I’m so proud of you! The doctors here have done an amazing job.”
My brother turned more serious. “About that. I assume we have some private benefactor paying out bills.”
“Yes,” I said simply, unwilling to go into details. The subject was bothering her, too, but I wasn’t going to worry about until after Declan had been released from the hospital
“Is it a lot?”
“It’s at least twice more than a lot. The monitoring here alone costs more than what we have paid on our own.”
“Holy shit…”
“Yeah. But that doesn’t matter for now, right? We’ve been given this chance to heal you, so let’s focus on that.” I sat down next to him, looking at the TV screen.
Declan said, “Tell him I’m thankful. If you ever speak to him again that is.”
“Yeah, I will, one day.”
“You should look for him,” Declan said, matter-of-factly.
“What? No. He doesn’t want to see me. Otherwise he would’ve called.”
“He’s paying my medical bills, if that’s not an attempt to reconcile, I don’t know what is. I just can’t stand seeing you suffering. Let me worry about you, for once!”
I sighed looking at him. I did need to thank Owen for his help, if nothing else. “You know, you might be right. Thanks, I’ll try.”
“Please, do. For your own sake. And for mine, I can’t handle you moping around here anymore.”
I pushed him as he laughed. “Fine, I’ll find him, okay?”
+++
I got home that evening and did the only thing I could think to do.
Google Owen Hayes. And pray something of value came up. I saw dozens of articles surrounding both the company and person, but I ignored all that – all I cared about was how to find someone who didn’t want to be found. What I did look into was my company’s address and phone number.
I made numerous calls, but when one finally connected, the secretary said, “I’m sorry, I’m not at liberty to disclose phone numbers of my superiors.”
Which wasn’t a surprise on its own, but the way the woman spoke, it was as if she’d been trained to say exactly that sentence. I hung up and tried another number. Same result. The next number wasn’t much better. I had tried every number with every extension on the corporate website, but each time I was either denied the information or given another number that led
to nothing.
Finally, once I had exhausted the list, I tried to find something useful in one of the articles. I discovered that a lot of it was appalling speculation and straight up defamation, but I tried not to think about. After twenty minutes, I finally found the glimmer of hope I’d been searching for – Owen’s lawyer.
The man had been quoted in one of the stories, so I looked him up, and then found my firm. I made the call.
It went through to his assistant, of course, and I received the same treatment as I had at Owen’s offices.
“I have some information on Owen Hayes,” I tried.
“I’m afraid we are not interested in any tips on the matter at this time.” Another automated response.