Now, two sleepless days later, she was sitting beside her father’s hospital bed in the middle of the night and staring into his exhausted, deep-brown eyes.
“How are you feeling, dad?” she asked as she grabbed his hand and squeezed it reassuringly. Her father shrugged with an indignant look.
“Physically, I feel fine…no pain at all,” he said slowly, his eyes wet with frustration. “It’s the symptoms that are killing me.”
Jeri nodded and looked away for a moment to fight back the tears in her own eyes. Less than a day after the diagnosis, the effects of her father’s tumor had continued to manifest themselves in terrifying new ways. Growing deep in the center of his brain at the critical juncture of tissues that control cognition, the tumor had created a condition her father’s neurosurgeon called transcortical sensory aphasia; a condition which, to her father’s horror, had now left him completely unable to comprehend written language. The irony that a man who’d spent his life as an economist and analyst was now incapable of understanding a single line of text was nearly beyond bearable. Realizing that her time with this brilliant, humorous and loving man was short, Jeri had stayed glued by his bed, vowing much to the irritation of the nurses on staff to stay by him until the end.
She blinked away the last of her tears and turned back to her father with a smile. “Would you like me to read to you?” she asked.
Her father closed his eyes and timidly shook his head.
“No, just talk to me, buttercup.”
“Oh god, Dad, you haven’t called me buttercup in ten years.”
He opened his eyes and smiled mischievously at her. “Has it been ten years? Wow… time flies, huh? Of course, from what little of my mind I have left, I seem to remember you weren’t a big fan of that name. What do you say we just blame that little slip-up on the tumor?”
“Deal,” Jeri replied, laughing with her father at his morbid joke. She stared down at his still handsome unshaven face and forced herself to remember every last detail of the moment, struck once again with the heavy weight of knowing these could be her last memories of their time together. As if reading her thoughts, her father’s warm laughter eased into a long, punctuating sigh. He squeezed her hand gently.
“It’s okay sweetheart, I’m not ready for this either. God knows I wasn’t expecting something like this… but I certainly don’t have any regrets about my life and how I’ve lived it. It’s been a wonderful ride. And how could I be any more proud of you?” He paused and wiped a tear away from her cheek. “My beautiful, brilliant daughter. Graduating summa cum laude with a Masters in Economics practically under your belt... just like your old man. You’ll be kicking some serious ass in this world before you know it.”
Jeri smiled and shrugged dismissively. Her father gave her a solemn stare.
“Just promise me something, Jeri. Promise me that you’ll always trust your own instincts and pursue everything you do with passion. No matter what you choose to do, just remember that if you follow your heart, it will always lead you to happiness. Okay?”
Jeri nodded her head in response to her father’s request, ignoring the fresh flow of tears on her face.
“Promise?” he asked, his voice deep and uncharacteristically serious.
“I promise,” she replied.
“Good.”
Her father smiled peacefully as he glanced over at the machines besides the bed. The bright green line of his heartbeat monitor raced frantically across the small screen next to him, rising and dipping in a life-affirming rhythm. He watched it keenly for a few moments before looking over at Jeri with a worried expression.
“Sweetheart, there’s something else I need to tell you… something about my work. It’s probably nothing, but… I’m… I’m being cautious.”
Jeri leaned in closer towards her father as he fidgeted uncomfortably under the thin blanket. “What is it, Dad?”
“Like I said, it’s probably nothing. I… I’ve made a lot of friends in my career, but, well… unfortunately a fair number of enemies too. Not that this should be surprising. I suppose you can’t analyze matters involving the world’s largest economies and corporations without occasionally gaining the attention of the men who run them, huh?” He looked up at Jeri and gave her a tired smile.
“The truth is sweetheart, I’ve collected a fair amount of information over the years from my work. Information which some would consider sensitive at the very least.”
“Like what?” Jeri asked.
Her father looked towards the door nervously. A moment later he looked up at her and began speaking in a low whisper. “All sorts of things. Top-level operational memos… unrecorded executive orders… buried procedural doctrines… even personnel files. You have to understand, after people began to know who I was, they started coming to me. Disgruntled employees with information, rich executives who suddenly grew a conscience, even corporate spies who wanted to seed negative information about their competitors. I became something of a priest of the corporate confessional. Of course, most of it is relatively benign if not completely outdated at this point,” her father shrugged dismissively, then stared at her with a grave expression. “But some of it… well, some of it is simply too dangerous to expose.”