That night my son held my hand in that Miami hospital, a small magnet with an American flag sat askew on the whiteboard above my bed. The heart monitor behind me was playing a slow rhythm, and the television in the corner was playing an old Sinatra song on a late-night station, the volume turned down low. A plastic pitcher of hospital iced tea was condensing on the shelf. The room smelled of disinfectant and overcooked green beans.
The doctor had just told him I had three days to live. Seventy-two hours. After a lifetime of building a sixty-million-dollar real estate empire, I would pass away peacefully, between shifts.
My son leaned in so close that I could smell his cologne—expensive, intoxicating, the kind you buy after examining the labels for ages. His thumb caressed the back of my hand in a gesture that, to anyone who saw it, looked like tenderness.
« At last, » he muttered, almost sighing, « that day has come, old man. Three more days and the sixty million are mine. »
I kept my eyes closed. I breathed slowly and shallowly through the oxygen mask. To the nurses in the hallway, I was an unconscious man in agony.
Inside, I felt something colder than fear settle inside me.
I’d taught him how to win for thirty-five years. He thought that was the end of my story. He thought I wouldn’t say another word.
Little did he know that I had already decided he would take home exactly one dollar.
If you read to the last page, you will understand why I let my only son believe I was dead for thirty-one days—and why the shock when the truth finally hit him was more intense than any sentence a judge could have pronounced.
My name is Dennis Blackwell. I’m 68 years old. I’m the founder of Blackwell Properties. I live in Miami, Florida, United States.
And thirty-one days before that hospital scene, I was sitting upright in Dr. Henry Caldwell’s office, instead of lying flat on my stomach in a bed.
Henry slid a brown paper folder across his desk as if it were a live wire. He’d been my doctor for fifteen years. Long enough to know him like any other nervous young manager.
He adjusted his glasses. Bad sign.
He looked at the wall clock even though there was no reason to. Bad sign.
Then he folded his hands.
« Dennis, » he said softly, « it’s stage four liver cancer. It’s aggressive. It’s already spread to your lymph nodes. »
His words sounded heavy and unbearable. I saw his lips moving as if we were in different rooms.
“How long?” I asked.
He hesitated. Henry, on the other hand, didn’t hesitate for a moment. « Six months if we start treatment right away. Maybe even less. »
The second hand of the wall clock passed twelve. Tick. Tick. Every sound seemed suddenly amplified. Precious.
Six months. Maybe I’ll see spring again.
I saw the jacaranda trees again, bathed in a purple glow, along Brickell Avenue, just as I used to, when my wife Anne and I drove to a restaurant with the windows open. That memory triggered another: ten years ago, on a Sunday morning, I walked into our bedroom with two cups of coffee in my hand and found my aunt—the one who had raised me after my parents’ death—lying motionless on the pillow. Peacefully. Gone.
Grief turned me into a machine. I dove headfirst into my work, as best I could. In less than ten years, I managed to increase Blackwell Properties’s net worth from thirty to sixty million dollars. I bought properties: from South Beach to Coral Gables, a former motel in Key West converted into a boutique hotel, a glass tower in Brickell overlooking Biscayne Bay. I hired staff. I traveled. I signed documents until my signature became automatic.
Winning made me no longer feel how empty the house had become.
« Dennis, » Henry said softly, « we need to talk about treatment protocols, options… »
“I need time,” I interrupted.
“We don’t have much,” he reminded me.
« I’ll call you, » I said.
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