St. Luke's would not permit its staff to comment about specific patients, despite Corey's willingness to sign a release. But it did allow general interviews with Waller and Penny Powers, who recently retired but was the transplant director at the time.
Waller says that her interviews are designed to educate the potential donor about the risks involved, and to make sure he understands them — as well as to gauge his mental and social situation, as she did in her report. Without having someone come right out and admit that he had been offered compensation, she says, challenging his motivations "would just be supposition on my part. I wouldn't have any proof."
Mike Giglio
Corey spends most of his time at the downtown library, playing video games or checking his MySpace.
Mike Giglio
Corey Black did his own follow-up blood pressure work after testing too high during his evaluation at St. Luke's Hospital. He considered lying about the results.
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Powers does not remember an instance of compensation having arisen in her 24 years in the hospital's transplant department. If one did occur, she says, she would refer the problem to the hospital's risk management and legal teams.
By law, donor and recipient teams are kept separate, to make it easier for donors who feel pressured to opt out. What the transplant community terms "coercion" — which can be anything from offers of compensation to guilt-tripping — can take place even within families. If a donor decides to opt out, the recipient is told only that he wasn't a suitable candidate.
But this separation means that the appearance of a suspicious unrelated donor such as Corey would not put any red flags next to the recipient's name the next time around.
(Corey thinks there were other employees of Kalas's trying to donate for money. He believed that he was competing with a woman who had been ordered to lose weight in order to be approved as a donor.)
"I think you have to say that every donor is treated equally," Powers says.
Its blood pressure standards notwithstanding — at Methodist, for instance, potential donors needing follow-up are given a machine to ensure accurate results — the screening process at St. Luke's mirrors those at other major hospitals.
Dr. Matthew Cooper, the director of kidney transplants at the University of Maryland, who chairs the Living Donor Committee at UNOS, says he has seen potential donors ruled out for trying to sell their kidneys.
"We do our best as a transplant community to try and weed that out when we have someone that comes forth as a donor that has no biological relationship and no significant emotional relationship to the recipient," he says. "As you can imagine, it's a very difficult thing to prove."
Hospitals are usually content, he says, with stopping the process.
Zeledon didn't tell Corey about any problems with his evaluation. She called to let him know about the cadaver, and left it at that. By Wednesday evening, Kalas's relative is said to be recovering nicely. Corey finally gets a call back from Gilbert. He tells him a cadaver came in. Gilbert is confused.
"A dead body showed up and they're taking a kidney from the dead body and giving it to [the relative]," Corey says.
"Soooo, we're out of money." Gilbert sighs loudly into the phone. "We ain't going to get paid now."
"What do you want me to do?"
"There ain't nothing we can do," Gilbert says. "So, I don't know. We're fucked. They're just gonna pay us for the time we did put in it."
_____________________
The next day, Corey fans five crisp $100 bills in front of his face, like a rock star.
Kalas called him over to Joystix about 3 p.m., Corey says. They went back to his office. Kalas pulled out a white piece of paper and made Corey sign it, to confirm that he'd been paid. Then Kalas put the paper on his desk and sent Corey off with the money.
Corey ignores repeated calls from Gilbert, because he owes him a meal at Burger King. And he says he's through with Mary.
Corey imagines how his life might change. He calls his online girlfriend, who lives in Massachusetts. He can take a Greyhound to meet her, and they can get a hotel room together, and he can look for work. He figures out the next morning's bus schedule.
Corey knows a hotel near the highway where he'd like to spend the night. But he can't take the bus, because he has no idea how to get change for a $100 bill. He eventually makes his way over, checks in and decides he's hungry. He orders three pizzas.
A few days later, Corey is back with Mary, still in Houston, and on the street. After the hotel and the pizzas, $30 or so for Mary and Burger King for Gilbert, Corey spent the rest of his money at GameStop on a Nintendo DS and some new RPGs. He's already finished more than 60 percent of Final Fantasy XII.
After Kalas is contacted by the Press, Corey says he has been fired. He and Mary await her next disability check. The night before it arrives, Corey and Mary stay in a tent near the George R. Brown Convention Center with some other homeless people. Corey takes a sleeping pill. He wakes up to learn that Mary had sex with two of the men while he slept. When she cashes her check, he steals the money and holes up for a week in a roach motel near the North Loop. Someone takes his Nintendo.
