Chapter 4 - The Manhattan Transfer
Twenty minutes after Elena told me the truth, my two security guards carried her down the narrow stairwell of 1428 Elmhurst Avenue in a specialized transport chair.
I carried Mia in my arms, her small hands wrapped tightly around my neck, her soft face pressed into the crook of my shoulder.
Outside on the street, a black Mercedes medical van equipped with private cardiac monitoring equipment was parked at the curb, its rear doors open and waiting.
"Dominic, where are we going?" Elena asked nervously as the paramedics gently lifted her stretcher into the back of the white vehicle. "I can't afford a private transport... my insurance doesn't cover—"
"The insurance doesn't matter anymore, Elena," I said, stepping up into the van beside her, keeping Mia securely in my lap. "You are never going back to that apartment. And you are never going to worry about a medical bill again."
I turned to Ray Vance, who was standing beside the open rear door.
"Ray," I commanded, my voice cold and focused. "Call Dr. Paul Kaplan at Mount Sinai. Tell him I am transferring a priority heart transplant candidate to his unit in thirty minutes. I want the chief of cardiac surgery waiting on the helipad when we arrive."
"Right away, Boss," Ray said, pulling his phone from his coat.
"And Ray?"
"Yes, Sir?"
"Call my personal lawyer, Arthur Pendelton. Tell him to meet me at the hospital with the corporate governance files for the Moretti Group. And tell him to bring the trust dissolution paperwork for my mother's estate."
Ray's eyes widened slightly, but he bowed his head. "Understood."
The drive from Queens to the Upper East Side of Manhattan took nineteen minutes.
As the medical van crossed the Queensboro Bridge, the golden afternoon sun hit the glass skyscrapers of Midtown, turning the city skyline into a sea of brilliant, shimmering amber. Mia sat beside me on the leather bench, her nose pressed against the cool glass of the window, staring out at the city in wide-eyed wonder.
"Look, Mommy!" Mia pointed out the window. "It's the giant bridges!"
Elena smiled weakly from her stretcher, her pale hand reaching across the aisle to hold mine. "It's beautiful, sweetie."
When we arrived at Mount Sinai, the scene was entirely different from my lonely departure two days earlier.
A team of four cardiac nurses, two resident doctors, and Dr. Paul Kaplan himself were waiting at the private ambulance bay. Elena was wheeled smoothly through the automatic doors directly into the Intensive Cardiac Care Unit, while a private floor coordinator escorted Mia and me to a luxury family suite on the ninth floor.
Two hours later, Dr. Kaplan walked into the private suite, holding a thick stack of digital scans and lab reports.
Mia was fast asleep on the large velvet sofa in the corner of the room, her small stuffed bear tucked securely beneath her arm.
"How is she?" I asked instantly, standing up from my desk.
Kaplan adjusted his glasses, looking at me with a mixture of intense professional focus and genuine compassion. "She is in advanced stage-four heart failure, Mr. Moretti. Her ejection fraction is down to twelve percent. The damage to her left ventricle is severe."
"Can you fix it?"
"A repair is impossible," Kaplan said plainly. "Her only chance of survival is an immediate orthotopic heart transplant."
My heart sank into my stomach. "How long is the UNOS waitlist for a donor heart?"
"For a standard patient on public insurance? Six months to two years," Kaplan said. He leaned against the edge of the desk, looking directly into my eyes. "But Elena is no longer a standard patient. With your financial backing, we can list her as a Status 1A urgent candidate across three regional transplant networks—New York, New England, and the Mid-Atlantic."
He pulled a sheet of paper from his file.
"Furthermore," Kaplan added, "I ran her medical history through our national database. Because of her rare blood type—AB negative—she is actually at the top of the regional compatibility list for a donor heart that became available four hours ago in Boston."
I blinked, taking a sudden, sharp breath. "A heart is available now?"
"It’s at Massachusetts General," Kaplan nodded. "The donor match is ninety-eight percent compatible. But there is a catch."
"Name it."
"The transport window is six hours," Kaplan said gravely. "The donor heart must be harvested, flown to New York, and implanted before midnight tonight. The medical transport charter alone costs eighty thousand dollars, and the surgery team requires immediate, upfront clearance from a top-tier private guarantor."
I pulled my fountain pen from my coat pocket, grabbed the guarantee agreement from his hands, and signed my name across the bottom line in heavy, black ink without reading a single word.
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"Fly the heart in," I said, my voice echoing with absolute, unwavering authority. "Spare no expense. If you need a private jet, my company charter is sitting at Teterboro Airport right now."
Dr. Kaplan took the paper, a faint, respectful smile touching his lips. "I'll notify the surgical team immediately. We go into operating room four at eight o'clock."
