Client from Hell: A Hellishly Magical Comedy (with a body count) Read online

  Secrets drove the legal world.

  Still, some questions needed to be asked. “And what if I’m pressured in court regarding something included in the NDA?”

  “You are expected to maintain all legalities, and you will be expected to be truthful under oath. The NDAs bar you from discussing the client’s matters outside of court to unauthorized individuals.”

  I could work with that. “Is it an unpaid internship?”

  Money made the world go round, and I had no idea how I’d be paying my medical bills once the grace period ended, assuming I survived. A lot hinged on my survival.

  “No, you will be paid for your work. It will be your responsibility to negotiate your hourly rate. I insisted on that, as it will be good experience for you down the road.” Dr. Lakset grimaced before opening his mouth.

  I held up a hand to prevent him from either apologizing or rambling about my current situation. “The chemotherapy could work. I’m not the kind to give up without a fight. I’ve just accepted I am in the situation I’m in now, and that means accepting I have limitations I simply cannot overcome.”

  “No, you’re not the kind to give up without a fight. Still, I feel I should have been more aware of your situation.”

  “The cancer hit fast, it hit hard, and I have a high tolerance for pain. The doctors are concerned that the cancer has somehow damaged my ability to sense pain, although they haven’t detected any signs of actual leprosy, for which I’m grateful.” I shrugged. “The client should be aware I’m a walking debt magnet at this point. My medical bills are extensive, and you know how student loans are, even with scholarships. If my credit is a problem for him, it is what it is.”

  “I will discuss the situation with the client. I will email you with any updates. If the client remains eager to move forward with you, would you be amenable to a phone call?”

  I pulled out my cell from my purse, opened up the contacts, and gave him my number. “Please text first from the number that it’s about the client if possible, otherwise leave a voice mail. I only answer when known contacts call.”

  “I’ll make sure to do one or the other, and I’ll let the client know you may not immediately answer until his number is added to your phone.” Dr. Lakset engaged in a staring contest with my cell. “I expect he’ll replace that for you. He is a technology snob. Can that even use a browser?”

  “Only if I want to wait thirty minutes for a page to load. I got it for emergencies. I didn’t see a point in getting a new phone when it’ll likely outlive me, and the one before this was used to death. It was old, and then it stopped working, so I got the cheapest one money could buy.”

  “Email me with a list of your personal tech, please. The client is, frankly spoken, rather elitist when it comes to technology. He has opinions.”

  “If he’s coming to the university to sponsor a paid internship, he likely has money to go with his opinions.”

  Dr. Lakset chuckled. “He absolutely does.”

  “That’s fine. It’s his money to waste. He can hand it off to someone else after I reach my expiration date.” At Dr. Lakset’s disapproving look, I added, “I’m just being honest about my situation. There’s no magic on this Earth that is getting me out of this alive, and even if I knew some divine to ask for a cure, I definitely can’t afford that bill. I’m under no delusions; I haven’t done enough good things in my life to justify that sort of charity. It’s really okay. I’ve come to terms with it. It’s okay if you come to terms with it, too.”

  “Your honesty is part of what makes you an excellent student in this field. There are a lot of people in this world who will sacrifice their integrity for a win. You want to win while maintaining your integrity.”

  Did burning the Devil’s house down count as an act of integrity? I supposed, as I’d made sure there had been nobody inside the house at the time, including even the smallest pet fish, I had some form of integrity or sense of justice. Their pets, no matter their nature, carried no blame or guilt in why I’d decided I wanted to go out with a bang and an act of arson. “I appreciate that, Dr. Lakset. Will the client have a problem with my condition?”

  “Oh, I really doubt that at all. You’ll find him to be quite an understanding fellow, and he has his ways of working around problems. I will discuss the matter with him, and I’ll talk to the dean about your situation. We have financial programs for people in your situation as well, although we’ll need medical information proving the diagnosis. We also have agreements in place with the CDC, which may prove to be useful to you. I’ll text you when I have more information. For now, go home and get rest. I will take care of notifying your professors of your situation, so you don’t have to deal with the protests and general arguments. Not everyone in this institution holds my general stance on how to interact with students with terminal conditions, so I will make certain you do not witness any of that ugliness while we make arrangements for your internship.”

  “You seem confident the client isn’t going to care about my medical debts, credit, or shortened lifespan.”

  “I know your client. He views obstacles like that as challenges to overcome.”

  “Life doesn’t work like that, Dr. Lakset.”

  “For him, it does.”

  Two

  Glasses made life better.

  Chemotherapy sucked.

  Thanks to the nature of my cancer, its enjoyment of spreading through my body, and my doctors’ general concerns of how the treatments would completely destroy my immune system, they opted to lock me in a special cancer treatment ward within the hospital. In some movies, I’d seen the plastic-shrouded rooms, although they’d been meant for containing various contagions.

  I spent a shameful number of hours pretending I was the index case of some badass virus to amuse myself while waiting to discover if I would kick the bucket or not.

  With my blessing, especially as I expected to die sooner than later anyway, I gave my doctors permission to use whatever combination of treatment methods they wanted. It might help somebody else down the road, even if I kicked the bucket a little sooner than anticipated.

  Method one involved flooding my bloodstream with a cocktail of drugs meant to kill cancer cells. In reality, it killed a lot of cells, including the cancer, part of why I’d been put in isolation.

  The drugs, a blend of five from different chemical family groups, couldn’t distinguish between good cells and bad ones, resulting in a destroyed immune system.

  Method two involved a ridiculous number of incisions across my body and implanting tiny wafers made of more chemotherapy drugs, also meant to help slaughter the cancer cells.

  And any cells the drugs wanted, really.

  Assuming I survived, I would be one big ball of pain and misery with a fuckton of healing ahead of me.

  Method three involved pills, which I got to take by the handful three times a day.

  In conjunction with their decision to assault my body through various chemotherapy methods, the hospital opted to knock my ass out for the first three days. I appreciated that. My first coherent day following treatment, I regretted my generosity thanks to the rather unpleasant dosage of pain to go along with the drugs.

  Pain sucked. The cancer had notified me of its presence with a hefty dose of misery, and it refused to go out without a fight, insisting on subjecting me to bone-deep flares of agony, the kind I expected to be dished out in hell.

  I could understand why people wanted to dodge hell through religion if hell involved even a fraction of the suffering I endured. The hospital’s pain management tactics helped some, although I questioned if the limited relief justified the ridiculous bill I would pay for the meds.

  By day six, I’d lost most of my hair, and I didn’t appreciate my scalp’s desire to set records. Had I been a little more normal, I would’ve had my hair for at least another week. It didn’t take me long to accept little about my situation counted as normal.

  On the seventh day following treatments, one
of the nurses cleansed a phone—a much newer and better model than the one I owned—and my glasses of any potential contaminates, and brought them into my plastic-wrapped medical prison. Upon closer investigation, the new phone had my old number, and someone had loaded in my contacts, including a new one named Internship Client.

  I thanked the woman, regretting I couldn’t address her by name. The staff changed often enough I struggled to remember their names. Thanks to the realities of chemotherapy, my vision barred me from casually reading name tags without my glasses.

  Glasses made life better, and I thanked her again before shoving the pair onto my face where they belonged.

  At least I could say the cancer had only worsened my preexisting problems on that score.

  According to her tag, her name was Marie, and she wasn’t actually a nurse, but a radiologist, one of the people who helped translate the readings from the fancy machines and turned them into something almost sensible. Not only had she brought the phone with her, she had a charger, too.

  “Am I in one of the fancy rooms that can use cellular without breaking the equipment?” I asked.

  “You won’t damage any equipment in here with your phone,” she confirmed. “We’re currently cleaning some other items for you so they can come into the room, but it will be another hour or two. It’s tricky making sure electronics can come in, and the practitioner can only purify one item at a time. You also have some letters and mail we can bring in once they’re cleaned, but I brought your phone so you had something to do while you wait. I’d like to discuss your latest test results with you.”

  “Well, I’m not dead yet, for which I’m grateful, so I’m assuming the treatment went better than expected. The odds of kicking the bucket were fairly high going into this. How am I doing, doc?” I’d taken to calling everybody, even the nurses, doc; I figured anyone who could make sense of the ridiculous number of wires, tubes, and other doohickeys in the room deserved the recognition. I suspected the nurses had clued in fairly quickly I couldn’t see jack shit without my glasses. “Also, thank you for my glasses. The cancer has beaten the crap out of my prescription, but at least they mostly work.”

  Assuming I escaped the hospital for any period of time, I’d need to go to the eye doctor for a new pair, adding yet another bill to the pile, albeit a payment I’d have to dish out for immediately if I wanted the luxury of sight.

  Oy.

  “Yes. The cancer has spread to your occipital lobe, so it’s no surprise that you have been suffering from vision impairment. In good news, the first treatments have been deemed successful. Unfortunately, the damage from the cancer is extensive enough we’re not sure what your odds of a full recovery will be. In addition to this, the specialists are concerned your chance of recurrence is fairly high. The initial tests are showing significant shrinkage of the cancer in all known locations, which is good news for you. And while resistant to the common drugs and magic, mixing them has done better than we projected possible. That means you have some important decisions to make. We don’t think the magical treatments will start working at this stage, but there are some options.”

  “Lycanthropy?” I asked, as someone from the CDC had proposed it as a potential option if the chemotherapy worked enough to buy me one to three years. There was no point in infecting me with the virus if the virus wouldn’t have time to take root so it could destroy the cancer.

  The CDC representative I’d spoken to hadn’t believed I’d survive any attempts to induce early onset lycanthropy. While early onset could happen during cases of injury bordering death, the known successful cases had been in good health prior to the experimentations. The sole cancer patient tested had been thought to have several years of life left in him before he became terminal.

  I had months.

  Marie sighed. “Yes. Like the rest of your treatments, it’s risky, but you might now be a candidate for an early onset lycanthropy treatment. Since your immune system is so compromised, you would be guaranteed infection, and the infection should replicate without requiring any drastic measures. The question is if the lycanthropy virus will attack the cancer before the cancer is able to replicate or if the virus works to restore organ function. Frankly spoken, we don’t know. Even with the lycanthropy infection, you would need to undergo future treatments. We do not know how chemotherapy and other treatments will impair the lycanthropy virus’s development. Your other option is to attempt a chain of similar treatments and hope the cancer is completely killed. If that is the case, you can potentially opt to pay for angelic intervention, but the cost is quite high if an angel agrees to give you the treatment. You have a great deal of damage that would need to be healed. Your age and financial situation might give you some opportunities. But angels can be odd about their offers when it comes to miracles. Once the paperwork is cleansed, I can bring your options to you.”

  “I appreciate that, doc. How bad is the organ damage?”

  The organ damage would determine how long I lived—assuming the cancer didn’t get me first. Or the drugs meant to kill the cancer didn’t get me first. Or some pesky virus the hospital worked hard to keep out of my plastic-shrouded room got me first.

  I put my bets on some random, pesky virus, including the common cold, sneaking into the room and having its way with me.

  Once again, Marie sighed. “During your last scan, we found damage in several places in your brain, your lungs are severely compromised, there is damage to your heart, and you may need to be put on dialysis until an organ donor can be found. And that’s assuming we can get you through the transplant operation. We’ll need to do more tests.”

  I expected the rest of my life, however long or short, would involve more tests. “Is lycanthropy my best chance of beating the odds?”

  “At current, yes, unless it is determined you’re a candidate for angelic intervention. Most angels view cancer as a mortal consequence and typically do not work with adults. It happens from time to time, but usually because a divine has an interest in the adult. You’re simply too old for their typical interventions. Lycanthropy has proven effective for some cancer cases that are resistant to magic or other treatments.”

  “What strain of lycanthropy?”

  “That’s an issue. We have a donor of a lycanthropy strain, but one of the conditions of the strain is a lack of disclosure of the species. This hospital does not typically treat or deal with lycanthropes, so we have no donors, and the CDC won’t provide a strain for experimental treatments they haven’t approved or recommended. Your case would take longer than you have to work through the courts to get approval. A wolf strain could potentially be found if you do the work to find a donor yourself. According to our scanners, the strain we have been offered is strong, the volume may be sufficient to induce early onset, and we have an offer of angelic verification to confirm you would not be mated to the donor. It will be far simpler for the paperwork if we can get approval from the CDC for the experimental treatment if we have all the pieces in place. The strain would be donated at no cost to you.”

  Becoming mated to a potential donor was a lecture the CDC had shoved down my throat when I had first been diagnosed but before the doctors had come to the conclusion I wouldn’t likely survive long enough for an infection to do me any good.

  Some chance was better than no chance, and being mated to some random lycanthrope but surviving seemed like a small trade-off to me. To have the opportunity without the man appealed, as men tended to get in the way of things like acquiring law degrees and pursuing difficult, time-intensive careers. “And my schooling should I be infected?”

  “There are no rules barring lycanthropes from practicing law, and we have confirmed with your school there would be no issues with you continuing your education should you survive the treatment.”

  “What are my chances at this point?”

  “That’s what we don’t know. No one has ever attempted to use the lycanthropy virus on someone without an immune system. At this stage, your imm
une system is completely dead; we may need to bring in a specialist to revive it. This gives us an opportunity to test if the lycanthropy virus can correct immune-deficiency disorders. This is where the good news for you comes in.”

  “Wait, there’s good news?”

  “Yes. Because there are so few patients with your specific cancer type in your stage, you’ll be compensated for all test treatments. Part of the compensation will be clearing out most of your medical debt. Everything you’ve accrued during this hospital treatment will be paid for in a mix of donations, CDC compensation, and the hospital waiving payments for testing treatments.”

  While I would be left with significant medical debt due to the diagnosis process, not having to pay for the critical final treatments would put me in a good place—and leave less of a mess for my family, who couldn’t afford to pay my cancer bills even if they wanted to. Necessity had dictated I notify my parents about my cancer, but I’d skimmed the details, including the low probability of my general survival.

  My cancer worried them, but because I hadn’t told them the complete truth, if I had died during the treatments, they would have believed I’d been one of the unlucky ones rather than fast-tracked for the grave. If I survived, I’d confess my sins and beg for forgiveness.

  If I didn’t, I would die knowing I’d minimized their suffering rather than making them believe they guarded me from death’s door, not that there was anything they could do to spare me from my fate.

  I’d even convinced the doctors to play along for their peace of mind, downplaying the severity of my situation.