Free No Accident by Dan Webb Page A

turned up the volume he heard her telling a reporter what a shame it was that her husband cancelled a grant he had pledged in their name to a local children’s hospital.
    You bitch , he thought. We both agreed to rescind the gift, and now you throw the fucking cancer kids at me?
    The sensors on the treadmill handles showed his heart rate spiking. Luke forced himself to calm down. Sheila had some sort of scheme in mind. But what?
    * * *
    “No one here deserves to be here. No one deserves cancer.”
    The pretty young television reporter nodded attentively as Sheila Hubbard answered the question: where does your passion come from?
    “Every time I look at these kids, I realize how blessed I am.” Sheila said.
    “How blessed we all are,” the reporter said.
    “Yes. That’s why I got involved and joined the board.”
    The two women were walking side-by-side down a bright, tiled hall at the Children’s Oncology Institute. The walls were adorned with large framed pieces of colorful juvenile art. In front of them a cameraman walked backward, filming them.
    Sheila led the reporter down a side hall and pulled back a heavy sheet of plastic draping to reveal a large, unfinished chamber. Before entering they each pulled their hair back and donned orange plastic hardhats. Sheila’s voice echoed off the concrete floor as she described the features that would be built there.
    “The genomic diagnostic lab will go here,” she said. She stretched her arms toward a dusty corner of the room partially enclosed by a drywall barrier. She moved on immediately. The heels of her shoes clicked loudly on the concrete floor and the reporter and the cameraman hustled to keep up. Sheila stopped in front of an array of upright wooden beams that framed a series of planned interior walls.
    “These will be the private rooms,” she said, and stepped through a future wall into a future room. She looked around and inhaled deeply, notwithstanding the dust. “We’ll be done with crowding. There will be room for family. There will be privacy. We’ll even have facilities for pets to stay overnight.”
    “Pets are very therapeutic,” the reporter said.
    Back in the children’s playroom, the two women continued their conversation. Sheila’s thick blonde hair showed no hint of having been matted under a hardhat minutes before. Children played on the floor at their feet.
    “For children for whom life itself is . . . precarious,” Sheila said, “this new wing will be something solid, something permanent.”
    “But it takes money,” the reporter said.
    “All worthwhile things do.”
    “Let’s talk about that for a minute,” the reporter said. “There’s been some controversy around the fundraising for this new wing.” Sheila nodded ruefully, and the reporter continued. “At the beginning of the fundraising campaign, you and your husband, a business executive who also sits on the hospital’s board, made what the hospital called a ‘signature gift,’ and it was substantial —five million dollars. All to great fanfare. Then, a month ago, you quietly withdrew the gift. Why?”
    Sheila wore a subdued smile as she listened to the reporter’s long question, and she responded with pleasant equanimity. “My name was on the gift, Carla, but it wasn’t my money, or my decision.”
    The reporter hurried in with a follow-up question. “People have speculated that the gift was announced simply to draw in other gifts, then withdrawn when the money wasn’t needed. ‘Priming the pump,’ they’ve called it.” The reporter stared intently at Sheila.
    “I guess gossip wouldn’t be gossip if it wasn’t hurtful,” Sheila said. “And besides, it’s untrue the gift was withdrawn because it was no longer needed. We still need money to finish this project. People withdraw gifts all the time for reasons no more mysterious than simple selfishness.”
    “Is that why your husband withdrew the gift—selfishness?”
    “As you know, my husband and I