“Jesus Christ.” She shook her head. “This can’t be right. Five thousand dollars a day?”
Jacob remained silent.
“A day?” she mouthed again in Nick’s direction.
He came to look over her shoulder as he opened the coffee bag, and his jaw dropped. She wasn’t kidding. Between all the various services and scans and monitoring thus far, it was costing that much or more to keep Jacob’s grandmother in the hospital. He leaned closer.
“It kind of puts our price tag into perspective, doesn’t it?”
From the way she went still, he thought he’d fucked up enough to have another angry tirade in Spanish. But when she turned her head, there was something new in her eyes.
Hope.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, it does, doesn’t it?”
Nick stared at her for a moment before he straightened abruptly. “Oh, you can’t be serious.”
Amber had turned to look at the pods. “It’s climate-controlled,” she said carefully. “The oxygen levels can be adjusted. It’s made to allow easy monitoring of brain waves, heart rate, blood pressure… And what’s the one thing people have tried to figure out how to do for coma patients? Re-engage them. Wake them up. A game, an interactive game that breaks through all their outer perceptions—”
“You can’t be serious,” he said again and couldn’t seem to think at all. His mind whirled.
But Jacob had looked up with the first real human emotion they’d seen from him in days. “She could come here,” he said. “She could—she could come here. Guys, you’d do that for me?”
Amber began to laugh. “For you, for…anyone. Jacob, don’t you get it? If your family can’t afford this, how many other people can’t afford it?” She looked at Nick. “I’m not crazy, right? We found our target market.”
“And…” He slung an arm around her shoulders. “I don’t want to be too on the nose here, but it looks like you may have found a way to help people and cure diseases.”
“Holy shit.” Her eyes widened. “Okay, Mr. Hopeful Selling Person. You gotta get ready. We need to make a lot of calls, and you are the most personable one of us.”
Even Jacob laughed. “She’s right. She’s—hang on, my mom’s calling.” He stood and headed into the offices as he took the call. “What’s up, Mom? You won’t believe what we thought of.”
“We could do this.” Amber leaned on her chair and a smile broke through on her face. “We could actually do this!” She smacked the table. “Investors, ha. Who needs ʼem?” Then, she leaned sideways slightly. “Jacob?”
He stood in the doorway. “She, uh…she passed.” He slid his phone into his pocket. “She’s gone.”
“Jacob.” Nick stepped to his side and Amber joined them. “I’m so sorry, buddy. Why don’t we get you home? We’ll get a meal in you, see if your family needs help with anything—”
“No.” Jacob stood a little straighter. “They have it under control and we have work to do.”
“The quarterly statements can wait a while,” Amber said.
“No,” Jacob said. “Not that.” He looked at them. “There are so many people in ICUs all over the country right now. That means numerous families trying to find a way to pay for it. The sooner we get this thing up and running, the better.” He looked at Nick. “Start making calls.”
Chapter Two
“It’s a Valkyrie,” Tina said.
“Huh?” Justin looked at her in confusion.
“My tattoo?” She looked at her arm, where something peeked out from under her t-shirt. “I thought you were looking at my arm.”
In point of fact, he had stared into the middle of nowhere and wished he was literally anywhere else.
He hadn’t wanted to come on this date. His past experiences with dating hadn’t exactly inspired confidence, and there was something hopelessly awkward to him about striking up a conversation with someone he didn’t even know as if there were a simple, easy way to get from Point A to Point B.
Point B, of course, being marriage, babies, and a house with beige carpets.
Unfortunately, after several weeks of browbeating from his mother and dark comments from his father about how someone who couldn’t even afford his own apartment shouldn’t ignore simple requests from his parents, Justin was there and he did have to find something to say.
The amusing part of this was that however his parents had pictured Tina Castro, he was fairly sure it wasn’t anywhere close to reality. There was no way they would have gone from almost constantly getting on his case about his job, his prospects, and graduate school to setting him up