Dead Certain

be one of the finest teaching hospitals in the country and a place where poor people receive first-rate care. Not only that, but every brick, every piece of equipment, every dollar ever paid out in salary was a donation—a gift.
    “When your great-great-grandfather Everett decided to donate the money to build the hospital, poor people were literally dying in the streets from influenza. There was no place else for them to go. And once it was built, he didn’t stop. He convinced everyone he knew, his family and all the other prominent Chicago families, to open up their wallets and adopt his cause as their own.
    “When your aunt Eleanor’s baby died, the family donated the money for the neonatal intensive care unit. When Freddie VanCott developed kidney disease, his children endowed the dialysis center. Now, suddenly, some big corporation rolls into town and figures it can use those gifts to make money! There is a reason that the donors’ names are on those buildings.”
    On some level I knew that she was right, but I couldn’t help wondering whether my mother would feel quite so passionately about it if it didn’t happen to be her name, too.
    “Everyone always says that Everett Prescott was a man of tremendous vision,” continued Mother, warming to her subject, “but I can tell you one thing for certain. There is absolutely no way that he could ever have foreseen this.”
    I was tempted to point out that I didn’t think he could have predicted cable TV, the AIDS epidemic, or cell phones either, but I held my tongue. The Prescotts all looked upon Everett as if he were a god and not just the source of their wealth and position. But I knew that, like most robber barons, my great-great-grandfather’s reputation had been rehabilitated over time. While the family was busy pointing to the hospital, there were still those who remembered that Everett had started out as little better than a pirate, running guns and opium into China. I had even heard it whispered that he’d murdered a business rival in order to take over his trade, and it was well known that he’d been quick to champion any cause that benefited his own purse.
    Despite my mother’s calls for sainthood, I suspected he endowed Prescott Memorial Hospital not out of altruism, but in an effort to buy his way into Chicago society. I had no way of knowing how he’d have seen the sale of the hospital that bore his name—whether he’d perceive it as an outrage or see it as he’d viewed the opium trade, a function of the times. However, I didn’t have the time to speculate about it right now. Cheryl had appeared at the door again, and this time she was taking the direct approach.
    “I’m sorry to have to interrupt,” she said smoothly, “but Kate’s client needs her urgently in the conference room.”
    “I’m afraid you’re going to have to go back and tell them that she’s already busy with a client,” my mother informed her.
    “Pardon me?” I bleated. Out of the corner of my eye I could see a look of horror spreading across my secretary’s face.
    “Why else do you think I came here?” Mother demanded incredulously. “I’m hiring you to stop the sale of Prescott Memorial Hospital.”
     

CHAPTER2
     
    I ended up saying yes just to get rid of her. There would be plenty of time to find a way to get out of it later. Besides, I told myself I hadn’t agreed to anything I wouldn’t have done for any prospective client—taking a look at the situation and offering an opinion. But in my heart of hearts I knew the truth: after thirty-four years I still hadn’t figured out how to say no to my mother.
    In the meantime I had to get back to the conference room and Delirium. By this I meant Delirium the client, not the state of mind, though after three days of caffeine and no sleep it was hard to be sure. Delirium was a computer company, a shoestring start-up on the cusp of either success or ruin, depending on whether I could keep its feuding partners from each other’s throats long enough to make the deal that would make them rich. The company was the product of an unnatural alliance between a visionary professor of computer engineering and a venture capitalist whose time horizon extended only as far as the bottom line.
    Normally, in my line of work, I expect to find my adversaries on the opposite side of the table, but there was nothing normal about Delirium. Even by the eccentric standards of the computer world, Bill Delius, the brains of