Dying Wish

She really didn't help me at all with that example.

We made love that evening. It was slow and sensual, and I managed to hold on long enough for Theresa to have an orgasm this time. I was proud of myself, and eventually I fell into a deep and happy sleep.

I got a lift with Mum again the next morning, and I tried to bring up the fact that I was able to fix it if she did have cancer. She wouldn't discuss it at all, and just changed the subject every time. Eventually I gave up.

When we got to the hospital I had expected some excitement, but what actually happened was we were intercepted by security guards and swiftly taken away. We were told to wait in a small office, and then, after more than half an hour, some bigwig administrator named Nigel Witherford, accompanied by a couple of goons, came in and immediately launched into a ridiculous tirade.

According to this pompous ass, I was an 'unqualified practitioner' practicing 'unauthorised medical procedures' in his hospital. I was undermining the good work the hospital was doing by claiming to have made their patient better when really it was the good work done by their qualified, experienced and competent medical staff. Effective immediately I was banned from ever entering the premises again. He did, however, gleefully present me with a bill for almost $800.00 which was for the room I was put in when I passed out the previous day. If I did not pay within thirty days they would launch legal action.

Then he went to town on Mum. He said she had breached her duty of care to the hospital and its patients by bringing me in and allowing me to practice my reckless and dangerous pranks. She was immediately suspended without pay and she should expect at best a demotion, with the associated pay cut, at her contract review on Tuesday afternoon. And that would only be if they were feeling generous.

Needless to say we were stunned. Foolishly, in my haste to help, I hadn't considered how the medical profession would react to the reality of a miracle cure for cancer. It was something they couldn't understand, they couldn't compete with and, most of all something that would take away their revenue. I had been a fool; I had thought they would be more interested in patient outcomes than money.

We were escorted back out to the car park and told to leave the premises. Mum was shaking, and she would not talk to me at all. I tried to take her keys and drive but she wouldn't let me. As she tried to fit the key in the ignition her phone rang, but she ignored it. It connected to the Bluetooth and I pushed the answer button.

"Felicity, where are you?" a female voice said. Mum didn't answer.

"Felicity? Are you OK?" Mum was crying now, the teardrops flowing down her face and landing on her uniform.

"This is Edgar," I said, "Mum can't talk right now."

"Where are you?"

"In the carpark, level three," I replied.

"Stay there, we're coming." The call disconnected.

Mum tried to move the car, but I held the shifter in park until she gave up. She still would not say a word to me as we both sat there shell-shocked by the events of the day.

When the cavalry arrived there were four of them, and they were wearing white and blue uniforms. Three of Mum's friends stayed with her and Lozza, the fourth, took me away from the car.

"What happened?" she asked, and I told her.

"They have suspended Sally too, and I'm pretty sure they are looking for me at the moment," she said grimly.

"What can we do?" I asked. It looked pretty hopeless.

"I want you to talk to Andrew Forde," she said.

"Who?"

"Timothy's father."

Shit, I thought, now I am trouble with the family too. Lozza must have seen my expression, and she quickly jumped in.

"He is furious at what they have done to you, and he wants to help," she assured me.

"How can anyone help?" I asked. She grinned.

"Can I bring him over so he can tell you?" she asked.

"Sure," I replied. Anything would be better than what we had. Lozza raised her arm and I saw movement from a discrete distance away. The man who I now knew as Andrew Forde came over. Quickly Lozza filled him in, and I could see his anger grow.

"That pompous prick is playing politics with my son's life," he growled, and then he turned to me.

"First," he said, "I want to tell you what I do, and what I propose, I need you to be fully informed before you decide if you want to do this."

"OK," I agreed.

"I am the research manager for Coverup," he told me, and I gasped. Coverup was the highest rating current affairs program at the time. They had a reputation for aggressively standing up for the man on the street, and despite plenty of corporate and government complaints, they had never been successfully sued.

"The thing I most want at the moment is for Timothy to get better," he explained, "but that won't happen without you."

"I just..."

"You might not know this, but before you got involved the hospital had said they couldn't do anything more for Timothy except give him painkillers. They gave him less than three months to live. Now, thanks to you, it looks like he can be saved, and that idiot wants to claim the glory? He can go and get fucked." I nodded, this was one angry man, and I would much rather have him on my side than against me.

"But what I really want to do to shut down that asshole is pretty much the same thing as you did yesterday. I want you to come onto the show, look at some people and tell us which ones have cancer, and what type." He looked a little doubtful. "Can you really do that?"

"Sure," I replied, "but how will that help Timothy or us?" He smiled maliciously.

"Timothy I can help by dragging him out of this useless hospital and asking you to continue the treatments privately," Andrew said, "and you could do that without going on the show if you prefer. But I think I can only help your mother by proving that you are not a fraud, which is what the hospital is basing their claim on." I nodded; I could actually see that working.

"They are doing a review for Mum on Tuesday," I said.

"Then if you are happy to do this we go to air on Monday evening," he replied. But then he got very serious. "This will give you an awful lot of publicity that you won't want," he warned me, and I nodded. I knew I had to fix what had happened to Mum, because that was obviously my first priority.

"I understand," I replied, "and we go ahead."

As soon as I said that Andrew went into action. Within five minutes Timothy was being helped from a wheelchair into the back seat of a Lexus, despite the protests of a gathered group of hospital management who were also glaring daggers at me. Mum was driven home in her own car by Lozza, and Andrew got on the phone and set up the whole concept of the Coverup show while I rode next to Timothy in the back seat of the Lexus on the way to their home.

I got to like Timothy more on that trip. He grinned and giggled as he mimicked his father faultlessly, getting all of the body language and hand movements just right. He was a bright kid, and I felt humbled by the fact that I had been trusted with the power to allow him to live.

Andrew set me up in a small room with a comfortable couch. They positioned me on the couch so I could rest there afterwards, and then they wheeled Timothy in and put him next to me. Without fanfare I reached across and placed my hand on his head. This time I got rid of about three quarters of the remaining tumour before I ran out of energy, and I finally surrendered to my exhaustion.

When I woke I was alone, and I slowly swung my legs off the couch. I was sure I hadn't made any noise, but within moments Lozza came in.

"How did it go?" she asked.

"Almost gone," I said, "just one more now."

"Great," she exclaimed eagerly, "want to recharge?" Maybe I had died all those years ago after all, and I had finally reached heaven?

Lozza went out to update Andrew, who was apparently madly barking orders over the phone with Timothy trailing behind him with a walker copying him again. Timothy had said he didn't need the walker, but they still made him use it just to be sure.

Then Lozza came back, and as she entered the room she unzipped her uniform and let it drop to the floor. Today's underwear was the sort you would expect to find only in an upmarket porn magazine. It was brief, beautiful and sexy and it got me hard just by seeing it. Lozza grinned.

"Let's get to work," she said, and work we did. With a bit more time available to us Lozza really stepped up. For a very inexperienced kid like me she was the perfect teacher. She made me slow down; she asked me what I liked and told me what she liked. We tried different positions, and discussed the pros and cons of them from the male and female point of view. With Theresa we had been blindly, and of course extremely pleasantly, working things out as we went, but with Lozza it was sort of like doing a prac in the university of sex. It wasn't better on an emotional level, with Theresa sex had been a very personal and emotional thing. With Lozza it was still, by the nature of the act, intimate but was also much more clinical for want of a better word. That said, I was also starting to feel a strong emotional attraction to her.

Timothy's final treatment was easy, and I didn't pass out, although I did lose my colours. Andrew was so ecstatic when I pronounced Timothy to be cancer free, that he did a quick happy dance. What I really liked about that was Timothy jumped up and mimicked him perfectly. He really didn't need that walker any more, and nobody pressured him to keep it this time. Lozza and I disappeared for another nice slow fuck, and when we eventually came back out Andrew sat me down for a very serious talk.

"Edgar," he said, "I really don't think we can go ahead with the show." My face must have shown my disappointment. He explained. "If this program goes to air then you will not have a single moment of peace for the rest of your life. There are millions of people with cancer, and you cannot possibly cure them all. Let's say you can do four treatments a day, five days a week, and the average case needs three treatments. That's less than seven cures a week, and with four weeks holidays a year and two weeks off for illness that's less than three hundred and ten a year.

"What you will end up with is a heap of desperate people who see you, quite correctly, as their best and sometimes their only hope for survival. People will try to buy your services at astronomical prices, and if you accept that then only the very rich will be cured.

"There are other types of people who would threaten you, your family and your friends to try and get you to cure them or their loved ones."

I nodded; this was an angle that I hadn't even considered.

"Add to that," Andrew said, "the fact that you can never have a love relationship."

"What?" I exclaimed incredulously.

"At the rate I suggested you would need to have sex twenty times a week, and not due to desire but due entirely to necessity. No normal woman is going to want to, or be able to, provide that, and they aren't going to want you to get that outside of a relationship either." I nodded again, and I pondered. I knew that Theresa accepted me having sex with Lozza if it was to benefit sufferers, so maybe he had got that one wrong. Wisely Andrew stayed silent while I digested all of the new information and pondered my choices.

Finally I looked up at Andrew resolutely.

"The only reason I am alive now is because I made a wish to be able to cure cancer. What I meant was discovering a cure, but this is what I was given. This is now my task in life and it is my responsibility. I can see there will be a lot of negatives that I need to deal with, but regardless of that I have to do it."

"But how will you handle it?" he asked.

"Let's work that out," I said, and we called Lozza back into the room and the three of us sat down until the small hours discussing possible problems and possible solutions.

"Welcome to Coverup viewers," Anton Davis, the host bellowed, "the show that gives you, the real people, a voice." It was the same line he used to start the show every weeknight.

"In tonight's show we get to meet a young man with an amazing claim." Anton paused and looked around, letting the tension grow. "He says he can see the presence of cancer and even more than that he says he can cure it." There was a stunned silence for a moment and then a murmur of discontent started. Skilfully Anton let it rise for a short time, and then he spoke again.

"According to our Research Manager he has witnessed this himself when this young man cured a child with what our own Empathy Hospital here in town said was an incurable brain tumour." The murmur gave way to a quiet rumble of reluctant and sceptical interest.

"So," Anton announced, "we want to give this young man a chance to prove his extraordinary claim is true. Please welcome to the show six brave people who have been diagnosed with cancer..."

Anton went on to introduce the six people, but of course he didn't explain their diagnosis. The he brought me in and introduced me to what was still a very sceptical, and in a small minority hateful, studio audience. I went down the line, and immediately, and correctly, identified every cancer. The documentation of their diagnosis and medical records for each person was brought up to confirm my claims, but there still was a lot of doubt, and who could blame them? I was claiming to be able to produce miracles.

We then brought up the next step for proof. He announced that over the next couple of weeks I would treat every one of the members of the panel to prove my claims. That got a lot of attention, and Anton said that Coverup would be providing status updates as things progressed. Then finally I got to say my bit at the end of the segment.

"I am sure there are many desperate people who want to see right now if my claims are true. After all with a terminal disease what is left to lose?" I said. "But even though I have been given an amazing gift I cannot possibly treat everybody, and this means that my friends and I have had to find a way to effectively choose who will live and who will die. Please believe me; we did not take that task lightly.

"Here is how it will work. Physically I can only provide an absolute maximum of four treatments a day, and I will do this five days a week for forty six weeks a year. This will be my 'job'. My preference would be to only treat the people who need it rather than those who can afford it, but there is a reality to the situation, so for three and a half days a week I will treat people who are drawn from a ballet. Anyone who has, or who has a loved one with cancer can be entered into that ballet and it will be drawn randomly. There will be no bias given to the person's age, gender, ethnicity, religion, education or location. There will also be no bias on the type and stage of their cancer. I have only successfully treated the one brain tumour and one case of breast cancer so far, but I think I will be able to treat all forms of this despicable illness. All of the treatments in this first category will be entirely free, and when we are up and running my foundation will even cover the costs of transport and accommodation if that is needed.

"Because early detection of cancer is critical in successful treatment by conventional methods I will also have a 'walk through' detection session for half a day every week at a location that is yet to be decided, but which will by necessity be close to me. I will also do this, but no treatments, when I am travelling while on holidays.

"Now because there will be some significant costs involved, and because I also have to live, for the remaining one working day a week I will treat private patients who will pay for the treatment. For these patients it is all about the money, and I will prioritise according to who is the highest bidder for my services. This totally goes against my politics, but it is a necessity, and I will use the income from these jobs to finance my assistance to the first group and to cover my costs. Any leftover funds will be channelled into conventional research and a medical cure.

"There is just one thing more. If there is any attempt to blackmail me, bribe me in any way, or if there is any form of dishonest queue jumping or manipulation of the system, I will not start treatments on any new patients at all. Then I will publicise it on this television show and in the broader media. I will not resume new treatments until the matter is satisfactorily resolved. So before you decide to kidnap or hurt any of my loved ones or team members, remember that it won't just be the authorities that are after you, it could be anyone. That is because everyone has known someone with cancer and countless numbers have lost loved ones to it. The vast majority of people will want my ability to cure cancer to be true, and I can promise it is, and those people will hunt down and bring to justice anyone who prevents it from happening.

"But proof is needed and over the next couple of weeks I aim to provide it." There was a desultory round of applause after I finished and Anton walked over to me and handed two white cards and a marker to me.

"There is one more thing we want to do to provide proof," Anton said as I scanned the audience for red dots and used a small seating chart to identify the locations. I wrote down the seat numbers of the two largest dots, and pushed the cards away from me.

"Edgar has just written down two seat numbers of people in the studio audience who he believes have cancer. I am going to read those numbers and ask anyone who has cancer, and who is prepared to say so on television, to stand up. For the sake of privacy there will be no cameras on the audience when anyone is standing. If Edgar has written your seat number down, and you stand up, you will be added to the group for the first treatments to prove he actually has this ability." There was a much more interested murmur at that stage.

Anton took the cards, making sure the numbers weren't seen.

"I can't show you these," he explained, "because there may be people who have not told loved ones, or who have not yet been diagnosed, or even some who do not wish to be cured." He paused to let this sink in. "Stand up now if you have cancer and you are prepared for it to be cured, but be aware that if you are selected this will be done in very plain public view."

Both of the audience members I had chosen stood up, and with great fanfare and encouragement Anton brought them down to join the rest of the group. Then he introduced Andrew.

"My son Timothy was the boy with the advanced brain tumour that Edgar here cured," Andrew said. "He was the Empathy hospital, where his mother works, trying to prove to her and the staff there that he had the ability to cure cancer. Timothy was in a trolley being wheeled past him, and Edgar immediately identified his cancer and said that he could cure it. I was walking behind the trolley, and Edgar didn't even know I was there, let alone that I am Timothy's father, or what I do for a living. As a desperate parent who had been told by the hospital that Timothy's cancer was terminal and untreatable I immediately asked Edgar to try. We had absolutely nothing left to lose.

"The first two treatments were done there at the Empathy hospital, and the improvements were immediately seen and medically confirmed, but before any more could be done the hospital administration intervened to stop it. Also they have now presented Edgar with a bill for the use of a bed he used when recovering from the treatment, which is very taxing on him. They have also suspended his mother's employment, and that of two nurses involved, and are reviewing the situation with the threat of demotion or even dismissal tomorrow.