Chapter 9
Across town, Maggie is raving to Willa.
“There were Golden Globes on her mantel! Oh, and her fit! She had that cozy cashmere Fifty Shades of Beige thing,” Maggie says, reporting every detail.
“I love a rich bitch in beige.” Willa plops onto the couch, handing Maggie her glass. They’re drinking Willa’s quick-and-dirty sangria—red wine, Sprite, and cut-up oranges—and toasting Maggie’s incredible luck. “That’s what I want to be when I grow up, thank you very much!”
“Oh, and she has the sweetest husband!” Maggie adds, thinking of Kyle and what a gentleman he was, offering to pay for a doctor.
He was more thoughtful than any boyfriend she’s ever had.
She still remembers the time in college when she had sex without a condom.
Getting the guy to cough up the measly forty-eight dollars for Plan B had been a battle.
“Was he hot?” Willa asks, smiling wickedly.
“No, ew, he’s like sixty!”
“Hey, don’t judge! Bro can Viagra it up!” Willa giggles.
“Will you stop? They’re good people!” Maggie throws a couch pillow at her. “You know what she said? She said she was tired of feeling old and invisible. Of having people cast her aside like she’s done. Like her biggest hits are behind her.”
“She said that?” Willa looks like she might turn into a puddle.
“Yes. The Ingrid Parker. She makes Estelle look like an ant. And she’s telling me about her crisis of confidence as a creator.” She grabs Willa’s hand. “Willa, this is the sign! This is what I’ve been waiting for!”
Willa gulps down the sangria and nods wholeheartedly.
“I told you! You just had to manifest the money!”
“It’s not about the money! Even without the money, I’d do it,” Maggie insists.
Sure, that part was amazing. Astounding, actually.
Who offers that much for a simple blood donation?
Something people do for free during their lunch hour?
Clearly, these nice rich white liberals have only been hanging out with other nice rich white liberals.
But that’s not the part that has her gasping for air—it’s the opportunity to spend time with the legendary Ingrid Parker! To learn from her!
“Naw, girl, you’re taking the three million,” Willa instructs.
Maggie had felt marginally bad for violating her NDA as soon as she got home. But she had to tell someone. And she’s certainly not telling her parents. Oh no! Not your blood! Your qi! Your sacred energy! she imagined her mom saying. What’s left of her gums would explode if she knew.
“You don’t think it’s too much?” Maggie asks timidly.
“They offered!” Willa says. “You have to step into your power! Own every drop of it! If they need this thing so bad that they’re comfortable dropping three mil, you take that!
All the way to the bank!” Her roommate gets up and starts slow dancing on the couch, rubbing her thumbs with her index fingers.
“But it’s the chance to learn from someone who knows story. Who turns out blockbusters. Can you imagine having access to someone like that?” Maggie asks. “A feminist icon? Who’s helped usher diversity onto the screen?”
Willa continues dancing, swaying her hips in her sweatpants.
“All that’s dope. But you also deserve to be financially secure,” Willa says. “And now you will be!”
Willa’s right. Maggie’s got to stop feeling weird about the money.
She spent every waking moment of her childhood acutely aware that she didn’t have it, and now, as an adult, when she’s finally being offered it, she feels embarrassed about it.
She closes her eyes and lets herself indulge in the possibility of having $3 million in her bank account.
It almost overwhelms her to breathe. All her problems would be solved.
She could pay off her student loans! She could afford to take her mom to the dentist!
A real dentist! She could afford to write full-time!
She wouldn’t have to spend another minute wallowing in this sad, dark crevasse of wondering if she has what it takes to make it. She can just make it.
“So what’s next?” Willa asks.
“What’s next is I have to go see this doctor. He’s going to explain everything to me and make sure I’m cool with it. I think they’ll do some blood tests…” Maggie puts her glass down, suddenly afraid she won’t pass. “Will you come with me?” Then she remembers. “Oh wait, but there’s the NDA.”
“Hell yeah, I’m coming! The doctor’s not going to tell her if I’m there. They have their own patient confidentiality thing. Trust me, I’ve watched all of Grey’s Anatomy. I know exactly what to ask!”
—
Maggie and Willa arrive at Dr. Stephen Samuels’s office in Century City. A luxe high-end clinic, the kind of place where you can get a pap smear while sipping a pineapple biotin beauty shot.
As Maggie’s sitting in the waiting room, she sees a little girl with her mom.
It blows her mind that this kid is in this posh spa of a medical practice—that this is her normal.
Maggie’s mind wanders to when she was nine.
She had the chicken pox so bad she rolled around on the carpet like a dog.
Still, her parents weren’t sure about going to the doctor.
“How much is urgent care?” Mom asked Dad, looking down at the little cash she had in her wallet.
“Gotta be two hundred dollars,” Dad said.
“Should we go?” Mom asked.
Dad scooped Maggie up in his arms and put a blanket on her, as though that would make the itching better. “How bad is it?” he asked.
Maggie wanted to rip off her skin. Wanted to claw her flesh raw. Still, she shook her head, because even at nine, she knew enough of their family situation to lie. “It’s not that bad…”
“Really?” Mom had asked excitedly. “You sure? That’s great.”
They had taken her to get an ice cream that day instead. It was the only ice cream cone she’d ever gotten that wasn’t a free sample. She remembered licking it, wishing she could slather it all over her body because it itched so bad, while still firmly believing it was the best day of her life.
“Maggie? Dr. Samuels is ready for you!” the receptionist, a brunette with a perfect blowout, announces.
She and Willa get up. They follow the receptionist down the hall to a glass office. She introduces them to Dr. Samuels, a tall, good-looking guy with a five-o’clock shadow.
“Thanks so much for coming in,” he says. Dr. Samuels is distractingly cute when he smiles, and Maggie has to stop herself from staring at his dimples. “Have a seat!”
The two of them sit. Maggie crosses her legs.
“Well, Maggie, your lab work looks great! You have B positive blood, so you’re compatible with Ingrid.”
“That’s great!” Maggie says. “I’m surprised the result came back so quick.”
“We’re a concierge practice,” Dr. Samuels says. Another smile. Maggie notes his perfect white teeth and wonders if he has in fact been on Grey’s Anatomy. “Everything comes back quick here. Plus, I know this is very important to Dr. Hayes.”
“Dr. Hayes?”
“He’s Ingrid’s doctor. I spoke at length with him this morning, and he walked me through the research.
The therapy he’s proposing is a revolutionary way to slow aging, with a cutting-edge blood transfusion machine, and I think it’s pretty exciting.
It’s being used in bespoke medical practices in the Bay Area, and I’ve talked to the doctors there. ”
Maggie’s relieved to hear him say that.
“Now, there are definitely some risk factors, as with all experimental medical procedures,” he says.
“Like what?” Maggie asks.
“We’ll get into all that, but first let’s go over your medical history,” he says, picking up Maggie’s questionnaire. “Have you ever done drugs?”
“Nope,” Maggie reports.
“Really,” he says. “Not even once?”
She debates whether to explain that when you’ve literally grown up in apartments where neighbors have lost their lives to it, getting high doesn’t quite have the same appeal. Instead, she says, “Not really much of a partier. More of a stay-home-and-read kind of girl.”
Dr. Samuels looks relieved. “That’s great. That’s a top priority for Ingrid—no drug use. How about alcohol? How many glasses per week?”
Maggie hesitates. She’s not the biggest drinker in the world, but what happened with Bryce definitely sent her into a spiral.
There were the three shots of tequila on Monday while sobbing over her breakup.
The two whiskey sours while FaceTiming with her mom—absolutely mandatory when her mom opened her mouth and tried to shove her phone camera inside to show Maggie her diseased gums. Then there was the sangria with Willa last night.
“Like, max two,” she insists.
Willa backs her up. “She’s very responsible.”
“Any medical history of viral diseases like HIV, hepatitis…”
“No, never.” She’s caught plenty of other things from men—trust issues, trauma, a heart that feels physically heavy—but never an STD, thank God.
“Any family history of heart disease?”
“Nope.”
“How about cancer?” Dr. Samuels asks.
“No.”
It continues on like this until Dr. Samuels finally puts his pen down, satisfied.
“Good. Now let me show you how it’s going to work.”
He walks over to a whiteboard next to his desk.
Maggie watches, fascinated, as he draws out the procedure.
Maggie can’t get over it. A doctor is drawing for her.
How is this possible, when the few times she’s seen a doctor in her life, they’ve dashed out of the room afterward like they were in a silent evacuation?
“Now, I know that looks like a lot of arrows, but it’s only going to be two needles. One taking blood out of you, and one going into you. It’ll be like donating blood, except Ingrid will be right there, receiving your blood.”
Maggie nods.
“It’ll be like you guys are one person for a few hours.”