Free Primal Estate: The Candidate Species by Samuel Franklin Page B

they had been battling with the healthcare process ever since. The current government system required certain drugs which Rick didn’t agree with. He’d read the literature. He’d familiarized himself with all the studies relevant to Carson’s type of cancer and knew what the government required wasn’t the correct way to treat it.
Many doctors agreed with him, but they weren’t the ones with the government who made the decisions. What Rick had researched wasn’t important to administrators. Only the government protocol was acceptable, and if he didn’t comply within six months, he would be required to pay twice the amount for both Carson’s insurance policy and his own, since he was the legal guardian now.

It was an impossible decision. He could continue to treat Carson as he knew, intellectually, was the proper treatment, and lie about complying with the government’s treatment so he could keep his current insurance coverage, and if discovered, lose all coverage for himself and Carson. Or, he could outwardly abandon the government’s required treatment and pay twice the amount for anything that might be needed in the future. And he would give Sarah an opening to take Carson back. He felt like he was being blackmailed.
So far, Carson was responding to his diet change. But whatever had started his cancer had been a long time coming. It would take a while to get him out of it. The question is, would the government bureaucrats allow them the time.

Rick was determined. He had Carson on a wild game and vegetable only diet, restricting his carbohydrates to vegetables only, with rice very rarely as an occasional treat. His son was in a ketogenic state that provided little blood glucose, the cancer’s favorite food. With his body able to use fats and ketones as energy and the cancer being starved, his tumor had been reduced in size over a period of six months while they waited for the mandatory operation followed by chemotherapy, if they chose to cooperate. The only good thing about socialized medicine was that the lousy treatments the government required arrived at the end of a long waiting period. Meanwhile, Rick’s ex-wife knew of his real plan for Carson’s health and tried to derail it at every juncture.
As Carson and his dad finished getting the bags and the spreader in the truck, the sun began to show on the horizon. “You’d better get ready for school.”

Rick would drive out to his land during lunch and spread the seed. That was one of the advantages of working for the government in a small town in the remote southwest. He could take an extra-long lunch, especially if he wasn’t eating it, to do some of the things he wanted to do. But this morning he was intent on taking another look at something he’d noticed Monday evening, just before he’d left for home.
Rick worked for the National Security Agency; as he saw it, hopefully the last step in an undistinguished career with the federal government. It had all started with the Marine Corps, then the Defense Intelligence Agency, then the NSA. All he wanted now was to retire. He was four years away and just hoped to serve his time in this quiet little town and be done.

Lately, Rick believed he was either paranoid or someone was following him, though he knew it was probably both. He’d gotten this feeling only rarely, but he’d never been wrong about it. Rick did operate at a covert offsite and his front for the office was that he worked as a computer networking consultant. Actually, that’s what he really did, except it was for the government regarding satellite communications, mostly of the heavily encoded foreign type that were picked up by some radio telescopes in that Four Corners area. Rick shared his office with two others who assisted with their work, both good people. He could have done his work anywhere in the southwest, but he’d chosen that area for its diverse natural habitat, archeology, and culture. Nowhere, so far as he was concerned,