Free Stolen by Daniel Palmer Page A

know if I believe in karma. We didn’t do anything wrong, and you got sick.”
    “That’s not how karma works. It looks at what you do with the hand you’re dealt. It doesn’t deal out the cards. It’s the circle of cause and effect. Karma is the consequence of our actions.”
    “Didn’t know you knew so much about it.”
    A fresh look of concern crossed Ruby’s face. “I can’t help but feel that we’re stockpiling a whole lot of bad karma by doing this.”
    She turned her back to me and shrugged off my touch.
    “No, it’s not your fault. It’s mine. I screwed this up, and I need to make it right. Please. Just stick with me on this. We’ll get through it together.”
    Ruby flipped over to face me. For a while we just stared at each other.
    “We’re going to have to make it up to Elliot Uretsky. Somehow, we’re going to have to make it up to him.”
    “He’s not being hurt by this,” I said.
    “No, UniSol Health is,” Ruby replied, disgusted.
    “Do you think UniSol is the good guy here? You want to talk karma? How many claims do they deny unjustly on a daily basis? I’m sure they’ve done their fair share of wrong.”
    “Two wrongs don’t make a right,” Ruby said.
    “No. But this wrong is working out right, and we’ve got to keep going to the end. That’s all that matters.”
    “That’s not all,” Ruby said. “Karma. That matters, too.”

CHAPTER 10
    W e were sitting in Dr. Lee’s office, which looked a lot like Dr. Adams’s office, with the exception of a well-stocked saltwater fish tank, hoping the karma gods were on sabbatical or something. We were holding hands and waiting as patiently as could be.
    “The waiting is the hardest part,” I said into Ruby’s ear.
    She shot me a surprised look. “Really?”
    “Yeah,” I said. “I’m used to fixing buggy software. When something is broken, all I have to do is write a few lines of code and I can see right away if it’s been fixed.”
    Ruby shook her head dismissively. “No, I mean, are you really going to give me a softball like that to hit?”
    “What do you mean, softball?”
    There were others in the waiting room, so Ruby sang in a whispered voice the lyrics from the tune made famous by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. I knew the song well enough to have performed it myself at karaoke, if I ever sang karaoke. Ruby held up her finger. One more point for her. Add one to the tally that could not be counted. Ruby kissed my cheek and smiled.
    A door opened to our right.
    “Mrs. Uretsky?”
    Neither of us looked up.
    “Tanya Uretsky?” the woman announced again.
    Ruby jumped a little as the recognition sank in. I did, too, and we both stood a bit shakily. The woman speaking was the receptionist, and she motioned us to the window.
    “Dr. Lee can see you now,” she said.
    For a place that dealt with cancer on a daily basis, the receptionist’s manner was surprisingly upbeat. I figured she was cheery for everybody, but decided to see her sunshiny demeanor as a sign that Ruby’s results would come back positive.
    Dr. Lee, a stylish Asian woman who wore hipster black horn-rimmed glasses, had the films of Ruby’s latest imaging work.
    “How are you feeling, Tanya?” Lee said, giving us both a friendly handshake hello.
    “I’m doing okay,” Ruby said.
    Ruby’s strained expression told me that the identity theft was eating away at her, same as her cancer.
    “Well, I have your CT and PET scans here,” Lee said. “I was looking for signs of active disease to compare it to the first sets of scans we took.” She illuminated her light board so we could see the images clearly. Not that we could understand them; they looked like a Rorschach inkblot test to me.
    “And?” I asked, my voice dripping with anticipation.
    “And”—Lee’s voice rose in pitch, another positive sign in my book—“the amount of activity has definitely decreased. I would say, being cautiously optimistic here, that the nodes are definitely