"What do you mean?" she
"It's a long story," said
Henry, "that I'll tell you later. So, they were drunk."
"Yes."
"She was a virgin at the
time." "Yes."
"Oh, my God, this is surreal," said Brandy.
Henry laughed and said, "Did they have sex after that?"
"No. They got married the morning after. They'd been together for three years when she lost her virginity to him."
"Boy," said Henry, "you are a member of a family of the nineteenth century."
Paola laughed and replied, "Well, this tradition of waiting until marriage, it didn't stop so far back. It stopped around the seventies, the hippie era."
"Paola's right," said
Brandy.
"Oh, yeah," he said, "I
totally forgot that complete sexual freedom didn't start until the seventies. I was born in 1979 and my mom, well, let's say that when it came to premarital sex, she got stuck in the nineteenth century."
"Your mom is a one of a kind woman, Henry."
"Yes," replied Henry, "she's just like your grandmother." Paola smiled and Brandy laughed and said, "Henry, you're sweet! So, have you set a date?"
He and Paola looked at one another and Henry said, "Well, no, we haven't."
"What are you waiting
for?"
"I say it's a good idea for
us to wait until," said Henry and then said the name that would open Brandy's deepest wound, "Noah Spears gets married."
"Oh, yes, Noah Spears, it would be awesome if two identical men got married the same day at the same church, wouldn't it, Brandy?" said Paola and looked at Brandy and saw her sad face. "Brandy, what's wrong?"
"Noah Spears is Brandy's impossible love," said Henry.
"Henry, please," said Brandy. "You don't have to remind me time after time that another woman stole the love of my life."
"She stole him because he's not the love of your life, Brandy," said Henry, calmly, to avoid upsetting the baby. "The love of your life is the man that I'm about to introduce you to. Paola, we want you to take care of the baby while we go out and get Brandy's man."
Paola smiled and said, "Sure." The baby had already extracted ten ounces of breast milk. He would always eat a lot and he was hungry like the wolf this morning.
"My man?"
"He's not what you want right now, physically, but he is your man, and he's going to give you everything that you want and more."
"Well, I told you not to hook me up with a pretty boy, so he is what I want, physically."
Paola was amazed with Brandy's attitude toward the way that men looked.
"Trust me, Brandy, this man is too imperfect for you. He crosses the line between physical imperfection and ugliness. Just wait until you meet him."
Two hours later, Brandy and Henry were dressed up, and they arrived at the Galloway mansion. The gates opened as Henry's car entered. They parked right behind Steven's van. They undid their seatbelts, opened the doors, got out of the car, and closed the doors simultaneously. Then, they walked to the entrance and rang the bell as the gates were closing. Hugh, the servant, he opened the door for them. "Welcome," he said as they walked in. "Mr. Galloway has been waiting for you. My, this lady's more beautiful than we imagined."
Brandy blushed, smiled, and said, "Thank you."
"This way," said Hugh as they kept walking. Twenty minutes later, they arrived at Galloway's office. Yes, this house was as big as the Spears mansion.
They knocked the door and Galloway yelled, "Come in!" He was on the computer, writing his autobiography, a sure bestseller to be.
They went in. Brandy said, "Mr. Galloway?" just to get his attention. Galloway turned around. She expected to see the modern version of the elephant man. When she took the very first look, she smiled, walked closer to him and said, "Aww," and walked around his desk until she leaned over on it, right in front of him, so close to him that he could touch her without extending his hand. "I expected a lot worse, no offense intended."
Henry gasped and looked at Galloway, stunned. "No, she did not say that," he said and she looked at him, smiling.
"Yes, she did," said Galloway, "and although it would be offensive for most people, I liked it. No woman has ever said that to me before. All that I've ever heard of a woman were screams of horror, no words at all, not even, 'Oh, my God, you are so monstrous I could vomit!' and believe it or not, I would've loved to hear even that from a woman."
Brandy turned around, sat on his lap and said, "Well you won't hear that from me, ever. You are just the guy that I dreamed of. I'd rather you be beautiful on the inside and become beautiful on the outside than be born beautiful on the outside and become monstrous on the inside."
Galloway was on the current of his life, on the computer, in his autobiography. He was on the moment that he'd just finished, saying what he had lived before they arrived. He turned around, wheeled the rotating chair back to the computer, with Brandy on his lap, and typed, SHE SAID TO ME, "I'D RATHER YOU BE BEAUTIFUL ON THE INSIDE AND BECOME BEAUTIFUL ON THE OUTSIDE THAN BE BORN BEAUTIFUL ON THE OUTSIDE AND BECOME MONSTROUS ON THE INSIDE." SHE IS THE
LOVE OF MY LIFE. Brandy was astonished. She looked back at him and smiled.
Chapter 37
In the meantime, Noah was in what would be his bedroom tonight. He was getting ready to take the shower that he usually took every night and every morning. He was preparing the clothes he would wear, what would be his pajamas for tonight. Because of all of the skin plastering, Steven seemed to be over seventy years old, but to his surprise, his pajamas were the pajamas that Scott, his younger brother, would wear. He wasn't as old as he seemed to be, although he had the mind of a healthy seventy- year-old man, but he wasn't a twenty-year-old either. He was wearing a wild boy's pajamas for some reason. The reason was that Steven thought that the clothes that were made for a man his age, that they made him look even older than he already did thanks to the epidermis pasting.
Hugh came into the room as Noah placed his pajamas on the bed. He surprised Noah by saying, "Those pajamas are brand new."
Noah let out a short, deep sigh and put his hand on his chest when he saw Hugh. "Hi," he said, "you scared me."
"Mr. Galloway hasn't worn those pajamas. He probably doesn't even like them. He must've bought them just because he felt like it at the moment. He's like that with his money. He buys things that he doesn't like, need or want, and then he gets sick of seeing them there, unused, and gives them away."
"Is that right?"
"The most expensive item that he bought that he gave away was a $150,000 gold and diamond watch."
"God, that's crazy!" "Yes, well, he rarely does
that. He only does it when he feels down."
"When does he feel sad?" "He gets upset every time
that a handsome man passes him by on the street. The fix is an expensive gift. Luckily, that only happened twice in his entire life."
"He was born in a golden crib, wasn't he?"
"Yes, he was."
"It's too bad that a guy that would be a carbon copy of me if he had the disease that I have, that this guy did this to him. He must hate me every time that he looks at me."
"He doesn't hate you. He somehow knows the difference between you and that other guy."
"I sure hope so."
"Do you have any other children, Mr. Spears?"
"Yes, I do. I have three other children."
"Did they inherit this condition?"
"Apparently they didn't because the condition appeared in me and it was evident when I was only two years old. My muscles were abnormally big. My parents didn't know why. They thought that they were feeding me excessive and unnecessary hormones."
"Wow. You know, it's not time to sleep yet. Actually, depending on the time that you usually go to sleep is twelve to twenty hours away."
"I know," said Noah, "but I don't want to think about what I'm going to wear tonight when it's time for me to go to sleep because I'll be too tired to choose something to wear and fall asleep in the clothes that I went to work with."
"You're going to work today?" said Hugh and looked at the clock right in front of him, on the opposite wall from where he stood at the entrance. "I thought that it was a little too late."
"Yes, well, I can go to work whenever that I want."
"You're lucky."
"Yes, I am. My life turned from a living hell into heavenly bliss in just a couple of hours."
"So this disorder took over you because of a mutation."
"That's right. A mutation took place while I was conceived and well," said Noah and extended both arms, "this is the result."
"Your muscles look normal, though. I mean it seems that you've been lifting weights for ten to twenty years and that's why your muscles are this big. There are no bulging veins in your arms or anything. It seems like you're perfectly healthy."
"My muscles look normal because of surgeries that I had when I was thirteen. At the time, my muscles were growing out of proportion and my parents, they got worried, took me to the doctor, and they performed an operation where they stopped my muscles from becoming too big for me to carry. I thought that my muscles would be the muscles of a healthy wild boy, but no, they weren't, they kept on growing."
"Where in your body is this disease notable?"
"It's in my heart." "Huh?"
"When you take an x-ray of my chest you see it. My heart's too big, and that's why I had to lift weights for my chest to grow bigger, so that people didn't see me as a freak. I have trouble breathing sometimes."
Steven was behind the door, listening to the entire conversation! "Haven't you told a doctor?" said Hugh.
"Yes, I have, but all of the mediocre cardiologists here say that it's useless to even try to help me because if they operate on me, I'll die."
Smiling evilly, Hugh
asked, "Haven't they ever been tempted to kill you during surgery, get away with it in the end of it all, and then getting mad bucks for 'trying to save your life'?"
Noah smiled and said, "Actually, they have," as he remembered a horrifying event in an operating room back when Noah Bryan had just come into this world. They were operating him without sending him to the twilight zone, and he was suffering so much that he had a massive heart attack that sent him to the Intensive Care area. Jennifer was forced to take care of her newborn for the next nine months because for Noah, recovery was anything but easy.
Just when the doctors were about to give him another heart attack by forcing an important muscle out of its place, a nurse came in, intervened, and yelled horrors at them, making them stop and forget the monstrous and deadly procedure. Finally, she reported those doctors and sent them to jail for forty-five years for four counts of attempted murder. "However, I survived, and recovered while they suffered the most horrible terror in jail."
"Oh," said Hugh, literally flabbergasted and gasping in disbelief.
"Now, each one of them is serving forty-five years in prison for attempted murder."
"Who got the money?"
"I did, and I enjoyed every penny of it."
Steven turned his power chair back on and moved the joystick in different directions to go back to his office. As Brandy explored everything that was inside of it, including his autobiography, which she had already printed a copy of to read at home, he picked up the phone to call someone. All of the programs on the computer were closed. It was on the desktop and it was in stand-by mode.
The phone rang at the office of the person that Galloway was trying to contact. To everyone's surprise, Ira was the attorney of Scott and Steven. It seemed that all of the multimillionaires in the State of Florida turned to Ira Hamilton for representation. Throughout his career, with every client, he'd gotten better and better, until he became the absolute best in the entire Sunshine State. Ira answered the phone almost immediately. "Hello, Mr. Galloway, how are you doing?"
"I need you to open a case for Noah Spears."
"Do you want me to open a case for him or against him?" Ira was unsure if Steven meant what he said because he had trouble speaking, and because of all of the morphine that he was given to control his facial pain, his brain was starting to malfunction and sometimes, he spoke incoherently. Fortunately, the brain damage had stopped. All of the zones that the morphine had damaged would damage it no more. Only illicit drugs could do harm to his brain now, and luckily, he wouldn't ever take any of them because his only brother, Sam Galloway, died of a drug overdose. Sam was the older brother and Steven was the younger brother. It was because of the brain damage that Steve couldn't walk.
The morphine caused his brain to be deprived of oxygen the day after his first surgery, in an emergency operation that he'd had to correct a complication that had taken place with his facial inserts, due to a sudden rejection. This evidently caused Steve to get cerebral palsy. This had caused speech problems and taken off his balance to be able to walk. Right now, he couldn't even sit in a chair that had no back support because if he did, he'd fall. All of the chairs that he sat in were recliner-type chairs. Those chairs were more comfortable for his back than dining room chairs were.
Luckily, he didn't have to sit in a dining room chair.
"I want you to open a case for him."
"Oh," said Ira and gave away a big sigh of relief and then smiled. "What case is this?"
"His heart is out of control, physically and literally, and all of the cardiologists in the State of Florida, they refuse to do anything to stop it from growing."
"Why?"
"They say that if they operate on his heart, he will die."
"That's a justifiable reason for them to refuse to do the procedure."
"Yes, I know, but I called you to see how you can help Noah. Don't get me wrong, I don't want you and Noah to sue those doctors. The suit would immediately be dismissed even before it is attended to. Therefore, we have to look another direction."
"We?"
"I'm going to do everything that I can to help him."
"Well, you already started to help him by calling me," said Ira as he wrote down everything that Steven said to him.
"If Noah's operated, he'll die, and if he's not operated, he'll die, too."
"I'll think of something to stop this." "His heart, it won't stop growing, and he's continually lifting weights to make his chest and pectorals bigger so that the heart doesn't show outside the inner chest. It's so big that it's already grown outside his chest, inside of his skin."
"Lifting weights to conceal a literally aching heart, that's dangerous. He's literally pressing on the heart. Since it's already grown outside his inner chest, it no longer has protection, and if someone presses on his chest, he or she will cause him a cardiac arrest," said Ira, hoping that none of Noah's enemies were listening to his conversation.
"We have to find the way to reduce the size of the heart without literally breaking it."
"That's heart, but we have one of everything in God's vine, so I'm going to be searching for an extraordinary cardio-surgeon that will perform this difficult task."
Hours later, Ira stopped everything that he was doing and filling out and signing papers for the cases that he was working on, just to search for that extraordinary cardio-surgeon that Steven was talking about. He had already found uncommon cardio-surgeons that could do everything that Noah needed them to do and a whole lot more. The problem was to choose the right one, and the closest one.
He'd found multiple doctors in Europe that did things for patients that there weren't even names in the medical dictionary for, but none in the United States. He had no choice but to call Scott and give him the bad news---Noah would have to travel outside the United States, just to receive the proper treatment, and after this, very much likely, even his wedding plans would be ruined.
The phone rang twenty times at Scott's office. He was revising the contract of a new product between he and one of his chemists. It was upsetting to hear the phone ring so many times, but Ira would not give up. This was way too important. Finally, Scott picked up the phone, while he was still looking attentively at the document. "Hello, this is Scott Spears."
you?"