Chapter 3

"Moscha"

I AWOKE SUDDENLY, FLINCHING AT THE SHOCK OF UNEXPECTED SOUND. CRIPPLES DO THAT A LOT, I THINK, ESPECIALLY THOSE OF US WHO EXPERIENCE CHRONIC PAIN.

WHEN I'M STARTLED BY THE UNEXPECTED, MY INSTINCTS REACT QUICKLY TO PROTECT THE LEG, AND I FIND MYSELF ALWAYS GUARDING AGAINST BEING HURT AGAIN AT THE SPOT WHERE I'VE BEEN HURT BEFORE. I'M CONVINCED OF THAT THEORY. ACTUALLY, I MAY BE THE ONE WHO FIRST CAME UP WITH IT. "ANTICIPATION OF PAIN", I CALLED IT ONCE. EVEN WORSE THAN THE ACTUAL PAIN, BECAUSE I KNOW WHAT COULD HAPPEN, AND I'M ALWAYS AFRAID …

I looked around and straightened a little in the seat. I had no sense of time elapsed, no idea how long I'd been asleep, or what startled me into wakefulness. The plane's cabin was cool and dim and quite comfortable, and the ongoing drone of the engines just a low hum in the background. Other passengers were relaxing; sleeping, talking quietly, reading, or looking out their ports at wispy cloud formations and patches of ocean and small islands below.

My attention wandered to the row of seats opposite me, and to the aisle between. The pain in my leg and foot had morphed to a rhythmic ache that made me hitch with every other drumbeat. I knew it was part of what awakened me. I needed to take a pill. In an effort to contain it I gripped the thigh muscle hard.

In the aisle, half hidden by the seats in front of me, stood a kid: a boy, maybe ten years old. His skin was the color of mahogany, and his hair a mass of ringlets that framed his face like a snarl of tangled black fishing line. His eyes reminded me of two eight-balls on a pool table, except maybe three sizes smaller. He stood looking at me with a frown, as though I might be the most puzzling creature he'd ever seen.

I frowned back, willing him to go-the-hell away. He didn't move, except to step a little closer to the line of seats I occupied. He glanced from my shoeless foot, atop the pillow, to my face and back again. His large eyes were full of questions and a shielded empathy that was hard to ignore. Our eyes locked and held. "Did you want something?" I asked, figuring him to be just one more dumb kid, curious to know: "what happened to your foot?"

He paused for a moment, and I saw the consternation in his eyes. Could he approach me? Or not. Then his hand rose from his side and he held out a black cell phone that I instantly recognized as mine. "Is this yours, sir? It was in the aisle and I was afraid somebody would step on it."

*Oh shit!*

I nodded. "Yeah, it's mine. Must have dropped it. I drop things a lot. Thanks."

His voice, with a soft Jamaican lilt, was pleasantly melodic. He nodded. "You're welcome."

I looked at him a little closer. The tone of his voice did not coincide with that of a ten-year-old, and I was suddenly gripped in the intrigue of a puzzle. I watched him deciding how to get the phone to me. The man and woman in the seats behind me were both asleep, judging from the buzz-saw sound, and I sensed he was reluctant to come anywhere near my foot. It was sort of a standoff.

He stood there. I sat there. Finally I sighed like the most put-upon cripple in the world, and pulled myself upright against the pillow and the bulkhead, which freed up the aisle seat for him to enter the row and sit down. Which he did.

He was a little guy. I mean little! Too small, even, for his body to match his voice. When he settled himself in the seat, his feet still dangled off the deck. Also, his face told me he was older than he looked. "How old are you, pal?" I lightened up on the frown and appraised him with interest.

He sighed, as though he'd been waiting for the question. He stared hard at my sock foot, then lifted his eyes to my face. "I'm almost fourteen, sir." He reached across and extended my cell phone with a quick, shy smile. I took it and nodded in appreciation. He continued to look at me, unabashed. The shyness turned to expectation in his eyes.

*Congenital hypothyroidism, a thyroid hormone deficiency. Wilson's disease … check copper levels. Audrey's medium-chain-acyl-CoA dehydro-genase deficiency. Sickle cell disease?* My inbred mental encyclopedia of diagnostics took over my brain for a moment.

He tilted his head and stared at me. "Are you a … doctor?"

I felt my eyebrows coming together in the middle. Total surprise. "Why do you ask me that?" I was intrigued. This was getting interestinger and interestinger.

He smiled a little. "Because my dad is a doctor, and sometimes he looks at me exactly the same way you just did. I know … I'm too short to be thirteen, and I can feel your little wheels turning. Dad says I'm 'in transition'. I'm either going to have a growth spurt soon, of if not, he's going to start taking me for more tests.

"So I'm small. That's okay. Maybe I'll be a jockey when I grow up. I don't mind being the little guy. I get away with murder sometimes … and you wouldn't believe how fast I am."

"Oh, I believe you," I said. "You're pretty smart too … for a kid. And you're right; I am a doctor. So what's your name? Mine's Greg." I decided to get the formal stuff out of the way so I could pick his brain …

"I'm Moscha … and you're pretty sore, aren't you?" His eyes grew darker as he looked into my face, still unabashed. He was looking for honest answers.

It wasn't like he had no clues to go by, since my crutches were leaning against the bulkhead beside me, my right foot had no shoe on it, and the contours of the elastic bandaging showed plainly through my jeans. "Nope," I finally said. "Doesn't hurt at all."

He ignored me as though I hadn't spoken. "How bad?"

He was not only smart, but brazen. Not asking the nonsense questions another kid might ask. No wide-eyed look of immodest childish curiosity. No eager need to know of bloody accidents or traumatic, crippling injuries. I had the feeling he was on a mission, and for some reason I answered honestly.

"Bad enough."

"I can help, maybe. Your foot looks like it's trying to spasm."

He was right. The tendons were tightening, and my big toe was lower. He had noticed.

"You're obviously not a doctor," I said.

"No, but my dad taught me some cool stuff …" Slowly, he reached across to touch my foot.

The defensive instinct grabbed me and I began to lurch away from him.

His palm settled on my instep. "Don't scrunch up. It'll just hurt worse."

I backed off, resettled on the pillow, reappraising. "Okay …" Don't ask me why, but I allowed it.

"You think because I'm a kid, I don't know anything."

"Nope. You've already proved otherwise. What are you going to do?"

"Can I touch your foot? I think I can make it relax."

I hesitated a moment. The infarction had given me intermittent foot problems which were slowly worsening, and about which I had told no one. "It's sore."

He nodded. "I can tell."

I nodded back. "Be careful please …"

He placed my foot across his lap and I held my breath. I saw him concentrating. I tensed; balled my hands into fists. Couldn't help it.

Moscha's left palm settled more securely across my instep.

The large knuckle of his opposite thumb settled perfectly against the arch of my foot, and I knew what was coming. A grown man would have used both thumbs, but Moscha's method was almost as effective. He sensed I was having neuropathic pain. I froze. The discomfort was intense, but only momentary. His small, strong hand made a hard fist and pressed relentlessly into the flexor brevis, centered between the abductor minim and the abductor hallucis.

I moaned with relief as the numbing sensation rushed through the nerves of my foot, up into the calf and on to the troublesome thigh. It was as liberating and releasing as an orgasm, but I couldn't say that.

Moscha released the pressure just as quickly. There and gone, leaving my senses heightened and the pain in my leg almost nonexistent. I buckled in the middle like a deflated balloon, and my sore ribs gave me hell for that. But it made Moscha smile.

I remembered a long time ago when Wilson had done the same thing for me during a nasty bout with break-through pain. I had buckled on him then as I had done with Moscha now. I had since forgotten. Wilson did many good and kind things for me over the years that I never gave him credit for.

Moscha left me awhile to go back to tell his father where he was, and to no-doubt brag that he had just helped another doctor. I turned in my seat and pulled myself upright, enjoying the temporary respite as long as it lasted. When he came back, I was sitting up with my leg stretched out on the seat. He laughed and called me a "Big Faker", and I pretended to be insulted.

After that he launched into his life story … which I couldn't wait to hear … telling me about his life in New York City and his father's position at Sloan Kettering Hospital. Moscha had been born in Jamaica, hence the accent. His dad had taken the position soon after his mother died in an automobile accident the year before. It was just the two of them now. Once a year they visited his maternal grandparents in Kingston so Moscha could spend time with family and reunite with friends. This year they had taken a side trip to San Juan. They would soon debark and register at their hotel.

As it turned out, when he was much youngerhis father had been approached by members of a drug cartel and offered a lot of money to transport drugs in and out of Jamaica. His father had turned them down and laughed in their faces. They threatened him and he went to the authorities with dates, places and names. Now some of them were in jail. His dad changed their surname to "Rodriguez" and they'd fled to New York.

I suggested that Moscha might not want to be running around telling total strangers any of those things. Not all strangers could be trusted … and how did he know I wouldn't go right out and tell the drug lords who he and his dad were, and where they had gone, and what their new name was … ?

But Moscha laughed again. "Oh Greg, you are so funny. You are not a stranger. You are hurt and you cannot run fast. My dad and I would catch you and hurt you more if you told. You cannot betray me, for I have touched your foot. Now you are better and we are friends. One must sometimes trust one's gut, no?"

I let him run on without comment, surprisingly impressed with his wisdom. He told me how his father had showed him a video of the ligament and muscle procedure he had used on me. His dad was worried about him being small, and began taking him for tests; even to the point of inquiring about growth hormones and other breakthrough treatments.

At that point I assured him that experimental procedures were dangerous, because I had tried it once, and was still suffering the consequences. "Depending on how you feel about yourself on the inside, being a little guy isn't a bad thing …"

He shrugged and laughed. "I don't mind being a little guy," he admitted. "Because little guys can get the pretty girls too, sometimes. It's my dad who's worried about it. He thinks I'll get picked on and beat up by big guys the rest of my life. But I don't. I don't try to make a big deal around the other guys, and I don't have a problem. It's just as easy to be nice as it is to be a jerk. Sometimes little guys get beat up because they're jerks … not because they're little."

I looked at him with a great deal of admiration, feeling a little picked on sometimes myself. How had he figured out at such a tender age, some of the stuff I'd been trying to figure out my whole life? He didn't know he'd hit a nerve with me. I'm admittedly a jerk, but he couldn't have known that going in. We'd never seen each other before an hour or so ago, and would probably never see each other again. I guessed I just looked like a jerk to the rest of the world, not to Moscha.

It was another puzzle. The kid was a lot smarter than he looked. He'd said some very valid things that I should probably take a look at. Like getting the hell out of Dodge and adopting a whole new identity. Maybe I could figure out who Gregory House was by looking at him from the perspective of someone entirely different.

*Hmmmmm …*

A thought occurred:

Maybe if I changed my name … "Dr. Somebody-Else". I could write some brilliant articles for JAMA … get a new name out there. Maybe Wilson would eventually catch on … catch up. Then I remembered when he had told me about his childhood friend, Kyle Calloway, (who had the hair, the mustache, the car … and got all the girls.) Was Wilson that smart? Maybe. Couldn't hurt to try. I had to admit I missed the hell out of him, dammit!

I met Moscha's father when we landed in San Juan. Alfonzo Rodriguez was slender and handsome and a much larger, lighter copy of his savvy son.

I was back in the wheelchair again to disembark, but I asked the attendant to borrow the chair for a short time so I could talk with them. I got my way, of course, because I'm such a delightful cripple.

We went through the line while our passports were stamped and we passed through the security gates. At least Moscha and Fonzie did. The security people took one look at me in the wheelchair and the crutches attached to the back, and my sock foot and my backpak with the cane sticking out the top, and passed me through without comment while father and son watched and laughed.

We shook hands and parted only when a Citibus arrived to take on passengers and they had to leave. Moscha's face was in the rear window and he was still waving as the bus disappeared in traffic and they were gone from sight. I had a strange feeling that I had not seen the last of them.

I returned the wheelchair and picked up the crutches. Stomped my way slowly back into the terminal. I needed to collect my suitcases and check them somewhere until I could locate a private pilot for the trip to Barbados.

When the grunt work was finished, I stopped by one of the customs offices and picked up paperwork and an application for a formal name change. I decided to sit on them awhile until I could think it out. No use jumping into this until I had some idea what I was doing. It might be ripe for Gregory House to disappear into thin air for a while and be replaced by some dude who looked at life a little differently than old Greg did. Or it might not. I had a lot of time to kill while things calmed down in Princeton, New Jersey. No one needed to know what rabbit hole the bastard had jumped into …

While I was there I inquired about a cashier's check made out to Gregory House. It was there, of course, and I showed my I. D. and passport and signed for it. Would this make me traceable? I didn't care. I was surprised to find the voucher was in the amount of $45,000 and change. I endorsed it; asked for cash. American. I shoved the huge wad of money deep into a side pocket of the backpak, nodded and turned away.

It took me a half hour of phone calls to find the right pilot. The man sounded like an intelligent sort. He told me to take a taxi and meet his plane on the beach near the golf course in an hour. Three hundred bucks, American. Up front. Agreed.

I cleaned myself up and shaved in the nearest rest room. I checked the bandages on my leg and was relieved to see that after three days of no weight-bearing, the edges of the wound were pinked up as they should be, and showing less edema. I was so relieved that my eyes began to water. I wondered whether I would dare resume use of the cane.

I replaced the gel pad and the gauze pads and adhesive tape with new ones, along with peroxide and Merthiolate. This time I wrapped only a single elastic bandage, leaving myself the ability to bend my knee again … if I were very, very careful.

I donned fresh jeans, underwear, socks, and my sports jacket. I dug the right sneaker out of the backpak and slipped it loosely onto my foot.

When the time came, I summoned a taxi, paid the driver to rescue and load my luggage, and I met the grizzled pilot and his ancient pontoon plane on the beach beside the golf course at the specified time.

Behind me, in San Juan's air terminal, in the men's rest room just off the concourse, a pair of dilapidated aluminum crutches leaned forlornly against the wall in one of the toilet stalls.

The backpak was a lot less clumsy without the shoe and cane to weigh it down.

My leg hurt a lot more with only the cane for support, but by damn, it was worth it!

19