Chapter 11 Logan #3
“Well, I went to school to study herbal medicine. And then I got into nutrition and became a certified nutrition specialist. I knew I wanted to study holistic medicine. Western biomedicine just wasn’t for me.” She says it carefully, like she’s bracing for me to dismiss it.
I say, “Nutrition is extremely important. I see it every day—what diet and exercise alone can do for heart health. A lot of what ends up on my table could have been prevented earlier with the right lifestyle changes. Not everything,” I say pointedly, “but a lot.”
“Exactly!” She relaxes a little. “So I had this plan. I wanted to open a wellness center—but not the usual kind. Yeah, yoga, meditation, breathwork, workshops, all of that. But I wanted it to be mostly pro-bono, or at least have two sides to the business—profit and non-profit, so one side could support the other. I was working with a consultant to find a way to break even, pull state funding, so I could actually treat people who needed it. Unhoused people. People without insurance who couldn’t afford a regular doctor.
I’d prescribe herbs, diet plans—help balance nutrition, boost immunity.
Treat minor conditions for people who just couldn’t get that kind of care otherwise.
I even partnered with a shelter nearby, and some farms upstate—we’d work with CSAs to get food into people’s hands.
You can give someone all the information in the world, but if they can’t afford groceries, it’s useless. ”
She goes quiet, but as she tells this story, something about it feels achingly familiar.
“So what happened?” I ask. My throat suddenly feels dry. I shift my grip on the wheel and check the clock. Three hours out. The wind has settled some, but we’re driving back into the thick of the rain now, and it hammers the windshield in sheets.
“Then… I don’t know. I poured every penny I had into it. Dad always made sure Mom had money set aside. When she died, it came to me, and I used all of it. Plus whatever he’d given me over the years—graduation money, that kind of thing. A few thousand here and there.”
“You don’t have a trust?” I ask in shock. I know Pearl does.
“Mom wouldn’t let him give me one. I get where she was coming from…
money changes people—she wanted me to earn what I had.
It never really bothered me before.” She pauses.
“When everything was falling apart, I went to my dad for a loan. He said no. Which, fine. Except he’d just lent Pearl something like half a million for her business, and she does have a trust. He’s rich, but he’s not—” she glances at me, “you know, you rich.”
My chest is tightening. This past summer, Pearl had laughed about Rose over drinks—how she couldn’t hold a job, then how angry she was at her sister for borrowing money from their dad, then torched all of it along with her savings on some get-rich-quick scheme.
All of it was a blatant fucking lie.
“So, anyway, I went to these investors. It wasn’t a profitable concept, so it took a lot of convincing, but I sold them on the optics.
I’d make them first in line for repayment from the revenue side of the business.
I’d already secured grants and state funding for the pro-bono work.
I even had nurse practitioners lined up for rotating volunteer hours, so we could order blood work, have more on-site health care, that kind of thing.
” She turns to look out the window, pensive.
“What happened, Rose?”
“I signed all the paperwork. I put the down payment on the property—all my money. The building had to be big, for all the plans I had. The investors’ money was supposed to go into fixing the place up, marketing, first six months of payroll.
Then, once everything was in place—” she stops.
“God, I’m such an idiot. I should have locked them in. Made them sign something before I did.”
She wipes her face with the back of her hand. “Something spooked them. They said they’d gotten a letter. From a few prominent doctors who had—” she makes air quotes, “heard about my reputation. That my plan was a fantasy. That I was a fraud, in over my head, unqualified.”
“What was it called?” I croak. “The business.”
“Oh.” The corner of her mouth turns up, just barely. She sits a little taller, turns toward me. “The Resilience Project. Like—resilient people, resilient community. Immunity. Health.”
I keep my eyes on the road.
I have thought about The Resilience Project three times before.
The first time, Pearl had called me and my father to get us out to a new golf course she wanted to check out—which, at the time, I thought was a nice gesture.
We played for about an hour before she started fidgeting, nudging us along.
Then she struck up a conversation with a couple ahead of us, as though she knew them.
They were talking about some new venture they were investing in—The Resilience Project.
Pearl seemed to know all about it. My father and I were half-paying attention; we were just playing golf.
Pearl, in that careful, measured way of hers, told them to be wary. She’d heard bad things about the owner.
A week later, she came to my office. I had just finished an eight-hour surgery and was exhausted, ready to go home.
She told me she’d spoken with the investors again, that she had serious concerns—that the project was being run by someone unqualified, pretending to be a doctor, that people could get hurt.
She had a letter of concern drafted, stating the misconduct, and she needed my name on it.
A prominent surgeon’s name. I didn’t think twice. I trusted Pearl.
I signed it.
She got my dad to sign it, too.
A week later, we were having dinner, and I brought it up with Pearl. She was practically glowing. We’d done a public service, she said. Shut down a scam artist before anyone got hurt.
“Anyway, the day I got the news about the investors backing out, I went to my dad’s office to tell him, to ask for help, for a loan, and he…
Well, he basically called me lazy. Said I was trying to game the system.
That I should have gone to medical school like him, and that maybe it was for the best.” She sniffs.
“He didn’t believe in me. Not even a little.
And it’s not like I was out there telling people to skip their vaccines or drink their own piss.
I just wanted to teach people how to take care of themselves by eating well, exercising.
Offer a nice facility with free showers, herbal medicine for aches and pains, bruises, sores.
Treat blood pressure, inflammation. I mean, Jesus, do you have any idea what a fucking haircut does for someone living on the streets? ”
My heart feels like it’s shattering in real time.
Why didn’t I look into the business? Why didn’t I read the proposal and talk to the investors? Why did I trust Pearl so implicitly?
Rose leans down and digs into the gas station bag, coming up with a fistful of Twizzlers, blissfully unaware that she’s sitting right next to the man who tanked her fucking dreams.
I feel sick.
Nauseous.
And I’m horrified Pearl could have done this. There has to be some explanation. Some reason.
“Your dad…” I start, though I don’t even know how to ask the question.
She picks it up easily, though. Her voice is steady, like the worst has already happened, and she’s going to be just fine.
“We’re okay. Better than we were, anyway.
He apologized. Pretty quickly, too. Came by the next day and admitted he was out of line.
Which I appreciated, but it still hurt. It was a terrible, horrible, very bad day, compounded by him, and also finding Greg balls deep in our neighbor—”
“That was the same day?”
“Yup.” She chews on her Twizzler.
“Why didn’t Easton lend you the money?”
She shakes her head vehemently. “No way. Crashing at his house and getting a few bucks for scrubbing the place is one thing. No way am I gonna borrow that much money from my best friend. He offered. Tried to give it to me, but I refused.”
I nod because I don’t know what else to do with my body. My ears are ringing.
“Right now, I’m paying taxes and bleeding money I don’t have on a derelict warehouse in the Meatpacking District.
I’m trying to sell it, but for the first month, I was in denial.
The second, I was trying to find other investors, but apparently the last ones made some calls about me, so now no one will touch me.
” She shrugs. “I’m trying to sell the place, to get my shit together, then maybe I’ll find some under-funded clinic to take me on.
I freelance for some of the football players on Easton’s team, but I can’t order blood work.
That’s why I wanted the practice, so I could get more help.
I’m not trying to inflate what I can do, you know?
That’s what my dad thinks. I just—” she takes a deep breath, slumping her shoulders against the seat on the exhale.
“I know I can help people. Whatever. I’ll figure it out. ”
She trails off into a story about one of Easton’s teammates, a massive offensive lineman, and how she spent an hour teaching him how to breathe properly into yoga poses, how his diaphragm works. She laughs while my mind continues to race. The uncomfortable pit in my stomach never goes away.
“Hey,” Rose’s voice pulls me back. “You okay?”
“Yeah.” I clear my throat. “We’re almost there. You want to stop, or just drive straight through?”
She looks at me for a moment. “Straight through is fine.”
“Great.”
I put my hand back on the wheel. We drive the last two hours mostly in silence—Rose occasionally trying to fill it, and me counting the mile markers, wanting to get out of this car for a wholly different reason than yesterday. Feeling like I don’t deserve to breathe the same air as her.