Over the next few weeks, Carl worked with Luke’s assistant, Dwayne, to connect with other people who became instrumental in getting electronic information sorted, changed, and downloaded, so he could get the transfusion. He went to the local medical clinic, and once or twice all the way into Seattle, to receive tests and analyses that were then hacked just enough to make it clear he needed a bone marrow transplant. He decided to enter himself as a patient with a rare form of anemia that was treatable by grafting bone marrow, and his records were doctored to show exactly that by people he never met. He’d had to have his identity changed in the system as well; the name Sanders would have been a red flag, and it would be hard to keep his father from finding out. He’d had to wrestle with that thought; on the one hand, giving his dad a plausible explanation for his illness would have helped in many ways, but once he’d received the bone marrow, his post-treatment care had to be manipulated, and if his dad got involved, the subterfuge would be much harder to maintain. He could handle having Luke come in and praestige the staff, then have the records show he’d been transferred to a different hospital but actually come back to recover in the lab. If his father were involved, though, he’d check up on things and find that Carl wasn’t where the records showed him to be. Then, he’d come to the house, their careful deception would be wasted, and the real cause of his illness might be discovered.
Carl had decided to tell his father after the fact, and let the altered records corroborate his story. So, he was standing in front of his computer in the lab when the donor match data came up. There were several matches, most of them O-positive blood type, which wouldn’t work. Of the O-negative blood types, one was on the other side of the world, which wouldn’t work well. He had the match data on one screen, and beside it the hacked information of personal details on each match donor. He cross-referenced each before making a decision, but what caught his attention was one of the names in the personnel file. The location was listed as Baring, Washington. When he used the ID number to cross reference the donor file, it turned out to be Jordan. It wasn’t a full match, but it was a half-match, which could work. He stared at the record. If he could use Jordan, that would simplify much of the process. But was it worth going with a partial match, for a process that could be fatal, or debilitating, with even a perfect match?
* * *
“Why are you on the bone marrow transplant donor list?” Carl asked Jordan.
Jordan stared at Carl without answering for what seemed like an eternity, then turned away. “That’s personal.”
“And you updated the records to reflect your current location,” Carl pressed, wanting to get to the bottom of Jordan’s reluctance.
“That’s confidential, Carl. It shouldn’t matter whether my records show where I live, it isn’t supposed to show who I am. Who the hell are these geeks that hacked my personal file so easily?” Jordan shot back, angrily, pounding a piece of meat he’d removed from the upright freezer in the pantry.
“That’s not important,” Carl said
“The hell it’s not!” Jordan whipped around. “If one person can do it, so can the next, and suddenly I’m as easy to find as… as roadkill on a mountain highway!”
“Who would be trying to find you by checking transplant donor records?”
“Anyone who knew my mom’s health issues. Her health has been shot ever since the accident. That’s why I’m on the donor list.” He realized he’d just called it an accident, though Carl knew better. He felt like his entire life was going off the rails.
“So, you were tested in case your mom needed a transplant and you might be the best match?”
“And wouldn’t you know, I end up the perfect match for a man who can afford to buy an entire corpse!” Carl flinched as Jordan’s steel meat mallet went right through the frozen loin and hit the granite countertop so hard Carl thought he’d better check for cracks. Jordan cursed.
Carl forged ahead. “Not perfect, but surprisingly good considering we look like very different nationalities.” Carl was holding his elbows, ankles crossed as he leaned against the refrigerator.
Jordan flipped the loin over and kept pounding it. “It’s fucked up. I can’t be a match. Especially not if nationality is an issue. You’re a friggin’ Aryan, and my family is a bunch of Italians and Arabs. Your gene pool wouldn’t be caught dead anywhere near mine.” Jordan cursed the meat, dropped the mallet, and grabbed the loin with both hands. He whipped it over his shoulder, then slammed it down on the counter so hard he felt the vibration through his feet. Carl stared at the counter as Jordan left the meat where it sat for a moment, turned on the faucet to wash his hands, then poured himself a glass of water. Finally, he turned around and looked at Carl. “Are you really sure I’m a match?” He said, finally quiet.
Carl considered lying for a moment since this wasn’t going over well. But Jordan was a surprisingly good match, and using Jordan as a donor could put far more control back in their hands. He unfolded his arms and shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans. “Data doesn’t lie, Jordan.”
Jordan snorted. “Yours does.”
“The only reason my data lies is because we planned it that way,” Carl snapped. “No one else has any reason to doctor these records.”
“That you know of,” Jordan shot back.
Carl simply stood, in silence, until Jordan finally looked down at his feet. “Okay, I got it. I’m your perfect match.”
“Well, no, like I said there are other better matches, but if we use you, and Luke can get his hands on complicit physicians, we might be able to do this here in the lab and avoid a lot of questions.” Carl hated pushing Jordan on the matter, but he didn’t see any alternative. That didn’t make it easier. Jordan was clearly having a very hard time accepting that his body might hold what Carl’s body needed, and the best answer was that Jordan go through the marrow donation process so that his bone marrow went into Carl’s bloodstream. “Jordan, I’m going to give you some time to think about this. There’s no law that says you have to do this, you can say yes, you can say no.”
Jordan started pacing back and forth, staring at the clean, white vinyl floor. "No…” Jordan’s voice was strained. “Look, it's not that I don't… Carl, if something happens to me, what will happen to my family?"
"Family?” Carl said, shocked. “Are you talking about that girl in California?"
"God, no,” Jordan scowled. “I'm talking about my mom, my sister."
"I'm not following you," Carl said, slowly.
"I mean… she can't work, Carl!” Jordan said emphatically. “Disability benefits don't cut it. Not even if she didn’t need special medicine all the time, and she does. Just getting to the store is more than she can do most days. I've been paying for a nurse to come in and take care of her." Jordan started chewing a nail, still pacing.
"No wonder you didn't have any clothes. You mean you were taking care of me in exchange for someone taking care of your mother?"
"And setting money aside for any emergencies that might come up, and meat on the table every so often. My little sister has been growing like a weed." Jordan chewed a fingernail, frowning.
Carl's voice was quiet, slightly agonized. "Jordan, you never told me."
Jordan threw his hands in the air, frustrated. "Now you see why I can't do it? If I'm gone, what would happen to them?"
Carl spoke slowly. "Well, I can take care of that… "
Jordan had stopped pacing, now he looked up. "What do you mean, ‘Take care of that?’"
"I've been paying you off interest in my main investment account. A portion of the interest bleeds into a separate account, and I write you a check every month from the second account. It helps me keep the funds clear so I always have access regardless of any purchases my broker makes. I can put the proper amount in a trust fund in your name, with qualifiers, like ‘as long as you are working for me until death or severe injury' or some such, and you can write it into your will that the account will continue in your mother's name if something should happen to you. But—"
"You would do that?" Jordan asked incredulously.
"Yes, but—" Carl tried to interrupt him.
"That's great – I could stop worrying. That would be perfect!" Jordan exclaimed.
"Jordan!" Carl shouted to get his attention. He spoke in a normal voice then. "I don't want you to do this for money."
Jordan looked at Carl, startled. "You think I'd do it just for money? Are you kidding? I'd go back to my old job and my old closet before I sold my body, or any part of it. But I’m not gonna walk away as you die, knowing I could have done something. My family is my final obligation; if they're taken care of, I'm free to live as I choose, or die as I choose."
"Jordan… " Carl said slowly, fear creeping into his eyes.
"What?" Jordan waited for his reply.
Carl paused, searching for words, then asked, "Did it piss you off when I tried to commit suicide because that’s something you want to do?"
Jordan was shocked. "No! Shit, what pissed me off is that you placed no value on life. I don’t know. Giving up shouldn’t be an option." He paused for a moment, hands on his hips, looking at Carl. “God, Carl, you… your bones… they’re still sticking out. How long do we have? If we do this, how is it going to work? How much time does it take to set this thing up?"
Carl shrugged. “The sooner we get started, the sooner it’s done. If we know the donor, we just need supplies and staff. Have you ever acted?"
"What did you think I was doing when you came to tell me my revised true calling?" Jordan quipped.
Carl smiled wryly and nodded. "Then the next thing we’re going to do is prepare the lab, which will have to be turned into a sterile recovery room. So, you're going to act the part of a delivery man, and I'm going to place an order through Mednet for all the equipment we'll need. You pick it up and bring it here, then we’ll get it set up. There’s no way they’d be willing to deliver it to a home, that would raise flags."
“You can’t really mean to do it here. We don’t have the expertise or equipment to save your life if something goes wrong.”
“I thought about it Jordan: it takes several months to recover from a bone marrow graft, and they want me within an hour of the transplant center, which would mean an apartment in Seattle. What happens when I turn into a wolf?”
Jordan opened his mouth, then shut it, and suddenly swung around to pound his fist against a wall, driving a solid dent into it. He remained standing there, with his back turned to Carl, his fist not moving from where the blow had landed. Slowly his shoulders lowered, and he turned toward Carl again, defeated. “Fine. But if this is our only choice, I want a doctor here, in the lab with you, and a nurse at a bare minimum, on-site at all times, one way or another. If we have to scuttle you out into the trees three nights a month under her nose… damn, Carl, if you’re out gallivanting in wolf hide, and your immune system is shot, this is not gonna work!”
“One thing at a time, like you said. We don’t know exactly how the virus is going to interact with the graft. Maybe it’ll do that rapid-heal like after the bullet; we don’t know. We just need to be prepared for all possibilities.” Carl’s eyes suddenly had a far-off look and he started pacing. “We really don’t know what’s going to happen. It could be just like any transplant, or it could be way worse, but it could be way better. I hadn’t thought of that. This isn’t like any other transplant ever performed.” Carl whipped around “Jordan, this is groundbreaking research! This is the kind of thing that makes a doctor’s career—” Carl was almost laughing with delight, his eyes bright and wide open. “My God, I wish I could be the one doing the procedure. And this poor doctor will have no idea the miracle he’s involved in—”
“Stop it, Carl!” Jordan’s voiced grated through a nearly clenched jaw.
Carl stopped and looked at Jordan in surprise. “What?”
“You’re about to be a fucking guinea pig! You could die!”
Carl’s shoulders slumped in realization. “Oh yeah. That kinda sucks, doesn’t it?
“Yeah it does, you fucking moron.” Jordan pivoted and trudged out the door.