Thirst for Justice Read online

  “About 330 million, I think.”

  “And how many drinks does each person consume each day, ballpark?”

  “I don’t know. Two? Maybe three?”

  “That’s a billion drinks a day! Times a penny?”

  “Ten million dollars a day. Over three and a half billion dollars per year.”

  “And that’s just the U.S. What if the program went global?”

  Maria was heartened to see Michael engaged again. She knew there were big problems with his idea. But right here, right now? The last thing she wanted to remind Michael was that Africa’s situation is incredibly complex, with more than fifty countries still struggling to flourish decades after decolonization. Somebody else could tell him that the most important factors in reducing child mortality are providing education for girls, offering health care to women, and improving the socioeconomic status of poor families. Achieving those advances required tackling even more daunting challenges. Ending civil wars with deep historical roots. Finding a cure for endemic corruption. Nurturing weak democracies. The list was long. If the solutions were as straightforward as throwing money at the problems, they’d have been implemented long ago.

  “Hey, what is it? Is there some kind of fundamental flaw, an Achilles heel that I’m overlooking?”

  “No . . . I think you might be onto something. You should think it through, talk to Dom.”

  “Yes!” His eyes blazed with excitement. The idea seemed like a shot at redemption.

  Chapter 7

  The week after their trip to the North Cascades, Maria set up a dinner party. Michael had tried to talk her out of it, to no avail. Four other couples, mostly Maria’s friends, but Dom and his new girlfriend, Amy, were the first to arrive. Like Dom, Amy was tall, lithe, and athletic. They brought organic beer from a local brewery and a bottle of Sea Star wine from a vineyard just across the border on Canada’s Pender Island. Michael was chopping vegetables for gado-gado salad. The spicy peanut sauce was already prepared, and the basmati rice was steaming away.

  “Oh no,” said Dom, “rabbit food!” Amy looked at him in fake horror.

  “New article in the British Medical Journal this week,” Michael responded. “Vegetarians have higher IQs.”

  “There goes your theory about the caveman diet,” Amy said to Dom.

  “The caveman diet?” Maria asked.

  “Sure. Mostly meat, and a few wild plants. The theory is that you get loads of protein and avoid all of the preservatives, pesticides, and stuff that’s in contemporary food,” Dom replied.

  “And that’s supposed to be healthy?” Maria looked skeptical.

  “That’s the theory. Not that I’ve tried it,” Dom admitted.

  “Hmm.” Maria smiled. “Cavemen had a life expectancy of what, thirty-two, thirty-three years?”

  “Yeah but they lived large.” Dom smiled as he uncorked a bottle of organic wine from California. “Multiple wives. Roaming the continent. Killing animals with their bare hands. Connected to Mother Nature.”

  “Speaking of hunter-gatherers, could somebody get some blackberries for dessert?” Michael asked, not giving away the secret that while Maria was at the university, he’d spent the afternoon baking her favorite cheesecake.

  “Sure,” Maria said. “Hey Amy, why don’t you join me? We’ll leave the men in the kitchen.”

  “Is that safe?”

  “Michael, we can trust. Dom, I’m not so sure.”

  “Hey, wait a second . . .” Dom shrugged. The truth was that his culinary skills were limited to can openers, barbecues, and microwave ovens.

  Maria and Amy carried a pile of empty yogurt containers out into the unruly backyard. As the other guests arrived, they helped pick the Himalayan blackberries from bushes that covered the cedar fence on all three sides of the yard. Juicy dark purple berries pulled the branches toward the ground, but were protected by vicious thorns and marauding wasps.

  Back inside, Michael grabbed Dom’s arm and began describing the vision for his project, sketching out how just a penny per beverage sold in wealthy countries would put a major dent in the water and sanitation challenges afflicting some of Africa’s poorest countries, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

  “Twenty billion dollars in five years, Dom. Billion with a B. It would be a massive undertaking, like the Apollo Project, but focused on saving millions of children’s lives.”

  “So you’re going to collect billions of pennies? Like the way UNICEF used to raise money by handing out those little orange boxes at Halloween?”

  “No! The plan would be to engage the big companies and get them to collect the money. They could raise their prices by a penny and nobody would even notice, let alone complain. They’d pass along the funds to the project, and we’d allow them to place some kind of endorsement on their products in recognition of their participation and contribution.”

  Dom looked curiously at Michael, as if reappraising his old friend. He took a few seconds to digest what he’d heard.

  “Hot damn, Michael MacDougall! You may be on to something. You’re right—it could actually save the lives of millions of children.”

  “I need to know if it could really work and if so, how to get started. I don’t have a clue. That’s why I’m asking you.”

  “Look. It’s a hell of an idea. It really is. But I’m gonna give you the straight goods. You need to be realistic. The world is full of brilliant ideas that are being ignored. The peace dividend. The financial transaction tax. Green jobs. So the crux of it isn’t whether it’s a bright idea or the right thing to do—you’re two for two there—but would people go for it and how do you implement it. Would powerful people support it, ignore it, or block it?”

  “Well, that’s why I’m asking your advice,” Michael said, color rising in his cheeks. “I know it’s a good idea. But I need help on the how.”

  “Okay, first of all you need to set up a charitable organization. With it you can issue businesses a tax receipt for their donations. Believe me, that’s absolutely essential. Otherwise, you’ll never get a dime from a corporation. You’ll have to find start-up funds to set up and staff the foundation. A CEO, a fundraiser, an accountant, and communications people. Website, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, all the social media. Oh, and you’ll need a board of directors, the more high-powered and high-profile the better. And all that is just for the United States. Going global multiplies the complexity by at least a factor of ten.”

  “Whoa. Does it have to be that complicated?”

  “All I’m saying is that turning your dream into reality won’t be easy. But on the other hand, it’s not rocket science. As you say, the solutions exist and the kind of money you’re talking about would go a long way to making them happen.”

  “What kind of timeline are we talking about, roughly?”

  “Well, it definitely won’t happen overnight. It’ll take years of hard work, determination, and persistence.”

  “Years?”

  “Yes. And we haven’t even discussed the challenges of getting the beverage companies onboard, distributing the funds to the right organizations, and ensuring that projects get implemented in places where they’re needed the most. I mean look at the Gates Foundation. It has an endowment of something like $50 billion. They’re doing incredible things but are only beginning to make a tiny dent in Africa’s gargantuan problems.”

  “Okay, I know it won’t be easy. But we don’t have years and years. Like I keep saying, millions of kids are dying this year!”

  “Michael! I hear you. I’m on your side already. But—”

  “Dom it’s a fucking emergency—”

  “I know, but—”

  Maria, Amy, and the rest of their friends came back in with overflowing baskets of juicy blackberries, ending their conversation.

  “I hope everybody’s hungry,” Maria said. �
�We’ve got enough food here to feed a small army.”

  Michael bit his lip, turned, and went down the hall to the bathroom to regain his composure before dinner. He felt like punching a hole in the wall, not sitting down to a meal of obscene abundance. As he washed his hands, he was transported back to Goma, prepping for another futile surgery. He looked in the mirror and thought about smashing his face into it. Never in his life had he felt this magma of anger bubbling so violently and close to the surface.

  Chapter 8

  Michael was splintering. One part of him was plagued by flashbacks, nightmares, and emotional turmoil. His thoughts even spiraled to considerations of suicide, quickly suppressed. Another side was relieved to be back to work, pulling four or five twelve-hour shifts a week at the medical center, and being on call every weekend. Surrounded by highly qualified staff, and with reliable access to the best diagnostic and surgical equipment money could buy, he found patients flourished under his care. If they were alive when paramedics, police, or family members brought them into the emergency ward, odds were good that Michael would pull them through.

  Nonetheless, Michael suffered flashes of asphyxiating rage. Despite their immense good fortune, Americans complained incessantly and vociferously. If cellphone reception at the hospital was fuzzy or the Wi-Fi signal was intermittent, people griped about it. If room temperature deviated from a narrow band, people thought it was too cold or too hot. Doing his daily rounds, patients bitched about the food. Compared to what the field hospital could feed people in the Congo, the hospital kitchen was cranking out food worthy of a Michelin-rated restaurant.

  His best moments were when he was in surgery, figuring out when to cut and where, what to prescribe or not, which tools he needed. All the steps in the medical process occupied his full attention, leaving no room for despair.

  When he wasn’t at the hospital, Michael either worked compulsively on what he had named the Blue Drop Foundation or was paralyzed by depression he continued to misdiagnose as fatigue. He had incorporated the foundation as a non-profit society and applied for official charitable status so that it could issue tax receipts to donors. The government’s estimated processing time was twelve to eighteen months, another source of acute frustration. A friend of Maria’s volunteered her graphic design expertise and came up with a striking logo, an aquamarine water droplet resting on a rainbow of colors from African flags.

  Dom had suggested that the idea could take years to build, but Michael was determined to have the project running in a matter of months. He sent introductory letters to the chief executive officers of every large beverage corporation in the United States, introducing the Blue Drop Foundation and requesting a meeting at their earliest convenience.

  Michael also sent letters to the president, vice president, secretary of state, secretary of commerce, Washington State senators, and his local members of the House of Representatives. Weeks rolled by without a single response. Michael stewed, simmered, and grew increasingly distant. Maria watched his deterioration with alarm and despair. She suggested that Michael see a therapist or another physician but this prompted dismissive, surly reactions, so she stopped nudging him.

  Remarkably, the president was the first to reply. Michael carefully opened the envelope. On impressively weighty stock, embossed with a golden White House logo, it said:

  Dear Dr. MacDougall,

  Thank you for your recent correspondence. The president is pleased that Americans such as you take such an active interest in the affairs of this great nation. Rest assured that your opinions are highly valued by our administration.

  The United States will continue to demonstrate international leadership in bringing freedom, democracy, security, and economic prosperity to the rest of the world, including the struggling nations of Africa to which your letter refers.

  God Bless America.

  Sincerely,

  A/Director of Correspondence

  The Office of the President of the United States

  Empty rhetoric. Michael barely refrained from tearing the letter into small pieces. More weeks went by. More form letters arrived. “Thank you for your interest. Blah, blah, blah.” Not a whiff of genuine interest in the Blue Drop Foundation or a hint that a meeting might be in the cards.

  Michael called Dom. “I wanted to ask you a couple of questions about Blue Drop. I’m not getting much in the way of responses to my letters.”

  “Have you followed up with phone calls?”

  “No, not yet.”

  “Get on it, doc! Remember that these are busy people, and they’ve never heard of you. You need to be like a rabid pit bull that bites them in the leg and refuses to let go until they capitulate and agree to a meeting.”

  “Rabid dogs are not really my style.”

  “Oh, come on! Dr. Michael ‘Ironman’ MacDougall? You’re as persistent as sea lice on farmed salmon.”

  “Yeah, thanks. It’s just that I don’t like being pushy, hassling people.”

  “Don’t think of it as hassling them. You’re offering them a chance to share in the spotlight of a brilliant idea, to be a part of history. People want to do the right thing. Leaders want legacies. You need to push those buttons to sell them on this.”

  “All right.” But he felt that he was play-acting in a world he didn’t understand. He was a doctor, not a pitch-maker or mover and shaker. He felt at home in the operating room, scalpel in hand, not sitting at a desk with a mouse or a phone. But what other choice did he have?

  * * *

  Michael tried cold calls next but could never talk his way past the corporate gatekeepers. The wall between elected representatives and the constituents whom they purportedly served was no more permeable.

  The rejection letters piled up, a tangible symbol of failure. His depression deepened, and fury festered in his heart. Despite his medical training he failed to recognize the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder in himself.

  And then a tiny crack appeared, a fissure in the world’s wall of indifference.

  After reading the email twice, Michael banged his fist on the desk and grabbed the phone. “Dom! We finally got a break.”

  “Whaddaya mean?”

  “Senator Piatkowski has agreed to a meeting. His chief of staff just emailed me to schedule it. Hallelujah.”

  “Piatkowski, eh? I’ve met him a few times. Former head of the state Cattlemen’s Association. Not exactly a bleeding-heart liberal.”

  “No, but he’s been a senator for what, twenty years? He knows D.C.”

  “Yeah, true, but he’s a Democrat in a Republican Congress. He can answer your questions, but he can’t solve your problems.”

  “I don’t expect him to solve my problems. I just want some answers, and I’m hoping that you’ll come to the meeting with me. As a founding director of the Blue Drop Foundation.”

  “Sure I’ll come.”

  “One strange thing—his chief of staff asked if I could bring along a stethoscope. Do you think he’s looking for some free medical advice?”

  “Of course not! He wants a photo op.” Dom continued to be amazed at his friend’s political naiveté. “Do you think he just wants to shoot the breeze with you? He’s a politician. There has to be something in it for him. The quid pro quo.”

  More weeks passed, more waiting for the meeting day to arrive. Dom and Michael met for coffee beforehand to plot their strategy. Michael was vibrating with excitement.

  “No coffee for you, my friend!”

  “Don’t worry, I’ve developed an immunity to caffeine.”

  “Yeah, right. That’s why you can’t stop tapping your toes. Look, this is how we’ll play it.” Dom walked Michael through meeting tactics.

  “Sounds good. Let’s go.”

  They called an Uber and were soon whisked to the senator’s office in a heritage building on the edge of downtown. They signed in at securi
ty, skipped the elevator, and ran up the stairs to the top floor.

  The receptionist, a young woman wearing a wireless headset, sat behind a gleaming Scandinavian-style desk bearing nothing but a coffee mug and an iPad.

  “Hi.” Dom flashed his winning smile. “We’ve got a date with Senator Piatkowski at eleven.”

  “I’m sorry, sir, but the senator is running a little bit behind schedule this morning. Please have a seat, and I’ll let you know when he’s ready.”

  Michael sat down in a well-worn green leather chair, picked up a newspaper, scanned the headlines, and put it back down. Then he fidgeted with his briefcase. Dom got acquainted with the receptionist. Part of his strategy was to befriend the gatekeepers. Soon a door opened and two burly men emerged, chomping on cigars. Michael recognized only the senator. Dom, on the other hand, swore under his breath.

  “What’s the matter?” Michael whispered.

  “That’s Steve Mason, CEO of the biggest clear-cutter left in the USA. He’s totally old-school and has never seen a forest that he wouldn’t happily turn into toilet paper.”

  “Save that lecture for another day,” Michael warned and stood as the senator approached. He was six-foot-six and weighed close to three hundred pounds, his body wrapped in an expensive-looking charcoal suit.

  “Gentlemen, welcome.”

  “I’m Dr. Michael MacDougall, nice to meet you, senator.”

  “Dr. McDonald.” They shook hands. The senator’s grip belied his advancing years, but he had become hopelessly addled with names.

  “Dominic Fiore, good to see you again, sir.”

  “Ah yes, Mr. Ford, still tilting at windmills, are we? Come on in,” the senator said, waving them into his office. “This is my chief of staff, Robert Mills, and my senior policy advisor, Janine Werbach.” Mills and Werbach were young, both dressed sharply in black, clutching their smartphones. “Now, Dr. McDonough, your letter mentioned that you have some questions regarding American foreign policy.”