We Own the Sky

by Luke Allnutt

  When I get back home, after a taxi ride from Penzance, I collapse on the sofa with a vodka and switch on the news. The Russians are still bombing in Syria, and there has been an earthquake in Pakistan. Then, something about tax credits, and I start to drift off.

  I don’t know if it is hearing his name or seeing his face that wakes me. But I suddenly jump forward in my seat, and I can feel my heart beating out of my chest, as if I have woken startled from a nightmare.

  Dr. Sladkovsky, his face more jowly than I remember, is being led out of a villa into a haze of flashbulbs.

  It takes me a while because I am so drunk, but I finally manage to rewind the report back to the beginning, unsure what I have just seen.

  “The allegations are shocking,” the reporter says. “Investigators have accused Dr. Sladkovsky of injecting his patients with a substance that contained human plasma.”

  * * *

  The next morning, I reach for the bottle of vodka by my bed. Human plasma. Did I dream it? A warped fantasy from my booze-addled brain. I grab my laptop from the bedside table and see it is one of the top items on the BBC.

  PRAGUE—A controversial cancer doctor has been arrested on charges of medical malpractice in the Czech Republic.

  Zdenek Sladkovsky, whose clinic based in Prague attracts thousands of patients each year, was arrested on May 12 by Czech police.

  Prosecutors allege that Sladkovsky was using human plasma in his controversial immuno-engineering treatments and giving patients unlicensed drugs without their knowledge. They also allege that Sladkovsky was fraudulently advertising cancer products, a violation of the European Drugs Code.

  According to Jan Dundr, a spokesman for the Czech Prosecutor-General’s Office, Sladkovsky has been under investigation for five years. Dundr said that investigators from the Czech Republic and the European Union started working with US law-enforcement agencies after numerous complaints to the US Food and Drug Administration about Sladkovsky’s treatments.

  As a result of the investigation, the European Medicine and Healthcare Regulatory Agency has banned the use of his immuno-engineering products and suspended Sladkovsky’s medical license.

  Dundr said that more than one thousand vials of drugs were seized in a police raid on the clinic. They said that Sladkovsky, who has declined to comment on the charges, was cooperating with investigators.

  Sladkovsky has attracted controversy in the past for his expensive and untested therapies. While many of his former patients have claimed that they have been cured by the doctor, others have publicly criticized the clinic...

  A prickle of cold sweat on my back and I can feel the panic rising, the palpitations of my heart, a numbness in my left arm that makes me want to crush my fist or scratch out my eyes.

  I look for more online, but the stories just parrot the BBC report, so I click on Hope’s Place to see if there has been any discussion.

  It is strange coming back here again. It was a bookmark in my Favorites for so long, a place that I checked fifty, sixty times a day. I look down the list of posts and do not recognize any of the names: Motherofanangel, glioblsurvivor, strength, pleasegodhelpus. The board has a high turnover. Children die and their parents don’t come back.

  I start scrolling and halfway down the page, there is a thread.

  Dr. Sladkovsky arrested

  by Chemoforlifer» Fri May 12, 2017 7:39 pm

  As some of you have no doubt seen, Dr. Sladkovsky has been arrested. I’m posting the link to the BBC news story.

  http://www.bbc.com/news/europe-sladkovsky-35349861k

  I am angry that so many have been tricked by this man. I am angry that children have died in his clinic, children who would have lived longer under standard medical care.

  I am angry because over the years there have been many discussions about Sladkovsky and his treatments on this board. It would be nice if these people who supported him came out now and said that they were wrong—wrong to support this treatment that has cost countless families inordinate amounts of money and time that would have been better spent elsewhere.

  Chemoforlifer

  Re: Dr. Sladkovsky arrested

  by TeamAwesome» Fri May 12, 2017 9:14 pm

  Disgusted to hear that but happy this man has been arrested. How can he even call himself a doctor? Just terrible.

  I hope this will finally put the disagreements we have had here to rest and Hope’s Place can continue doing what it does best. PROVIDING SUPPORT and COMMUNITY to everyone going through this terrible journey.

  I still don’t understand. Human plasma, medical malpractice? Did that mean immuno-engineering didn’t work? What about children like Josh?

  I read down the thread on Hope’s Place to see if there were any more details about the charges against Sladkovsky, but there was nothing. Just outrage, peacocking, a stream of I-told-you-sos, the people who said they always knew Sladkovsky’s treatments were too good to be true.

  But where is Nev? It is strange that he has not posted. Because on every thread concerning Dr. Sladkovsky, he was always there, linking to academic papers or testimonials, sometimes just posting pictures of Josh. In recent months, I have read all of his messages again. There were nearly fifty of them and, even though they were painful to read, I was always looking for clues, something I might have missed, any explanation as to why Nev suddenly stopped writing to me. Perhaps he had just moved on, sick of being in the cancer world, fed up with the attacks and the threats, the people who called him a liar.

  I search Nev’s username on Hope’s Place, but it says “account inactive.” So I decide to do something that I haven’t done in a very long time. I hack the forum.

  There is an easy exploit using Perl that should work. At Cambridge, we used it to hack into the college message boards, high on Red Bull and vodka. We never did much: a bit of ghost posting, a few puerile jokes.

  I upgrade my Perl distribution and drop the exploit file into the main directory. I open up the command prompt and try to crack Nev’s password. While his account is inactive, I am hoping that all his posts and private messages will still be archived.

  ipb.pl http://devasc/forum Nev

  Letters and numbers appear on the screen as the exploit pings the forum, trawling through lines and lines of code. It takes longer than I remembered, and I worry that the password might be wrapped in layers of encryption. Then, to my surprise, a hashed password appears.

  4114d9d3061dd2a41d2c64f4d2bb1a7f

  The encryption is relatively simple and uses a standard algorithm. I search around on the web for a password cracker and find one I haven’t heard of called Slain and Able. In about ten seconds, it gives me Nev’s password in plaintext.

  Grossetto

  I log into the forum again, reactivate Nev’s account, and reset his password. In his mailbox, there are 15,462 messages.

  Subject: Can you help?

  Sent: Thu Jul 10, 2010 3:27 pm

  From: Htrfe

  Recipient: Nev

  Dear Nev,

  I’m writing from Australia. In 2007, my daughter was diagnosed with a medulloblastoma that has spread to her spinal cord.

  I have been reading about your experiences at the clinic of Dr. Sladkovsky and wondered if you could help get us an appointment. The waiting list currently seems quite long and we don’t have much time.

  I look at the date. 2010. Seven years ago. I click on another message.

  Subject: options

  Sent: Mon Jan 20, 2011 3:36 pm

  From: BlueWarrior

  Recipient: Nev

  Dear Nev,

  Hi there I’m Marnie from Utah in the United States. I’m writing you because I am very interested in the protocol that your son took and the drugs he has been given at Dr. Sladkovsky’s clinic in Prague. My daughter has recently been diagnosed with...

  A breeze
chills the bedroom and I start to shiver. I click through the inbox, scanning the contents. There are emails from all over the world: Utah, Madrid, Arbroath, Rapid City, Bratislava.

  I sit up in bed and put on my reading glasses. Did the treatment really work? That was what they all wanted to know. They had heard bad things about the clinic—but then they read about Josh. There was a waiting list, though. Could he put them in touch with someone at the clinic who could get them bumped up the list? Because if it worked for Josh, then surely, surely, it could work for...

  I keep reading, trawling through the messages, refilling my vodka glass again and again. Nev wrote back to all of them. He wrote page after page, telling them about Josh, immuno-engineering, the clinic in Prague. He told them to never give up, to never take no for an answer, because what, after all, did these doctors know. He asked about their mothers, their children’s schools, the troubles they were having with the in-laws. He knew the name of the family dog and the state of their lawns.

  I carry on reading, and soon it is night and the moon is lighting up the room. As I click through various folders, there is something that catches my eye. In his Drafts, there are about twenty messages that look like templates Nev has used. In one, he introduces himself and tells Josh’s story; in another, he gives details about Dr. Sladkovsky and the clinic. As I am reading, certain passages and phrases jump out at me and I am sure that I have seen them before.

  Joan, every day it’s like watching planes crashing. Planes full of children that could be saved...

  I just wanted you to know, Kevin, that I’m thinking about you all and crossing fingers and legs and toes and everything really.

  There is hope, John, there is always hope. Never give up, my friend.

  I always knew I wasn’t the only one. I knew that he wrote to other parents—he told me as much—but as I look through my own emails from Nev, I find those same exact sentences, the only difference being mine or Jack’s name.

  I click on another message in his Drafts.

  Matilda’s probably a bit young for Minecraft but Josh is really into it at the moment. He’s just built this castle and said he wanted to send it to Matilda to cheer her up. (I told him Matilda was poorly.) I’m sending you a screenshot. I hope Matilda likes it.

  Attached to the message is the 8-bit Minecraft image I remember so well: the blocky portcullis and turrets, the sign that, this time, says “Matilda’s Castle” and not “Jack’s.”

  I click on the next message in the Drafts folder, and it is blank except for an image. I open it and it is a drawing I instantly recognize, a drawing I think I still have somewhere on my laptop.

  The drawing is of a little boy, with a bandage around his head, sitting in a hospital bed. Two dinosaurs dressed as nurses are carrying a tray. I remember how much Jack liked the dinosaurs. I remember how he asked if his bed could be moved outside, so he too could sit under the fiery yellow sun.

  Anna had been right all along. Nev was a shill for the clinic, a con man preying on the desperate. I’d been had.

  * * *

  I am still in bed, reading through Nev’s messages. I pour vodka into a toothbrush glass and drink it straight down. It stings and I retch in my mouth, but I do another shot and all I can taste is minty antiseptic and vomit.

  It all seems so obvious now, when I look back, when I unpick all the details. I never thought that I would fall for such a scam: taken in by a screen name, an avatar, like one of those poor fools who give their life savings to a foreign bride they met online.

  From my bedside table, I reach for Jack’s camera and I lie down, squinting my eyes so I can focus, scrutinizing every picture as if I am seeing them for the first time. I can feel a vein or artery in my neck starting to pulse, but it is too deep within my body and I wish I could reach it, cut it out and touch its sinewy texture, and feel the throb of my heart.

  I inhale and exhale, catching my breath. What I want now is to run outside into the inky blackness and jump from the edge of the cliff and feel my face smash onto the rocks beneath. Because grief, it smells very much like shame, and I cannot tell the difference anymore. Shame that I couldn’t save him, that I didn’t do enough. That I fed human plasma and God knows what to my dying son. Shame that I am still alive, that I do not have the courage to end it all.

  I am trying to remember exactly what Jack looked like on the Greece holiday, with his thick blond hair and his Spider-Man shorts. But every time I try to picture him, I cannot remember the exact contours of his skin, the constellation of his freckles, the glint and hue of his eyes. It is as if he has been pixelated out of my memory, his identity protected, like an abused child.

  I can remember other things from that holiday, though: the wisp of the waiter’s mustache; the code for the hotel-room safe; the convex curve of the aerobics instructor’s ass. How could I think like this? To betray him like this. Every moment of every single day, I should have been scanning every line of his face, every inch of his pale skin.

  You never forget, they always say. Never forget. Their touch, the smoothness of their fingers; their smile, sweet and disarming; a laugh you suddenly hear echoing around the room when you’re doing the washing up. Never forget.

  But you do forget, and it comes quicker than you think and in that there is shame—shame that you never really loved, that you are nothing but a fraud. Sometimes I cannot picture my dead son’s face, but I do remember, in graphic detail, the breasts of the last girl that I fucked.

  “Jack, Jack, Jack.” I say his name out loud, over and over again, and another torrent of tears comes from deep down, beyond my ribs, my lungs, the walls of my chest. It is as if the tears are being pumped out of my heart.

  “Jack, Jack, Jack.” I want to open the window, climb up to the rooftop and scream his name, to write those four letters in the sky. Jack, my beautiful Jack.

  I think I can see him in front of me, at the end of the bed, crouching on his knees next to his wooden garage, quietly pushing a Matchbox car up the ramp. Yes, it is definitely him. I can see strands of his unruly hair silhouetted against the light from the window. He puts his finger to his mouth and then bites his lip in concentration, just how he would when he was trying to write the letters of his name.

  “Jack,” I whisper, but he does not stir and continues winding up the handle of the lift, moving the cars from floor to floor.

  “Can you hear me, sweetheart? Can you hear my words? Please answer me, Jack, please.”

  I keep on saying his name, rocking myself against the side of the bed, wringing my hands together. I want to tell someone about the lilt of his breathing as he slept, the bemused expression on his face as he woke, how he always placed his hands over his eyes to hide from me as he sat on the toilet.

  I need to find someone, anyone. I want to tell them how Jack was learning numbers and could never get six, and I tried so many ways to get him to remember—drawing it like a snake and hissing out the s. I want to tell them how he was convinced that Batman lived in the backyard and how he babbled himself to sleep at night. I want to tell them about Jack’s yogurts in the fridge, how neither Anna nor I could bear to throw them out, so we just left them on the top shelf, their lids bulging, their best-by dates long gone.

  I open my laptop and go to a folder in my email called “Anna.” I have written many drafts to her over the last two years, but I have never sent any of them. Some of them are particularly venomous. I call her a bitch and a whore and say she killed our son. I list my grievances against her in bullet points: how she refused Jack’s further treatment at Sladkovsky’s, how her pride was more important than our son’s well-being.

  I shiver, not from the cold, but because it is jarring to suddenly discover you are frail. That what you had thought was robust can so easily disintegrate, like an old parchment crumbling into dust. Anna was right all along. About everything. She always said Dr. Sladkovsky was a fraud, that Nev was n
ot what he seemed. And I have cursed her for that, treated her like dirt, because I was too arrogant to listen to reason, so enthralled by my own hubris, my feeling that anything—even my own son’s biology—could be hacked. I have lived in disgust for so long—repulsed by everything around me—and now I know that the only person that deserves my disgust is me.

  Subject:

  Sent: Sat May 13, 2017 10:18 pm

  From: Rob Coates

  To: Anna Coates

  theres no other way to say this but im so so so sorry. I know I donyt deserve your forgiveness for what I did and I treated you and Jack terribly and I am so very vry ashamed of myself I am so sory anna.

  london eye

  watching that sunset, i wanted to tell you more about heaven, jack, but I was too scared, didn’t want to say the wrong thing. i should have told you, though, but i just didn’t know how. did you know where you were going, jack? i hope not. i hope you imagined yourself flying through the night with the snowman. i hope you found the winter air thick with love.

  2

  I lie on the sofa in my boxers and watch an American talk show. I cannot sleep at night without my usual anesthetic, so I stay up until the early hours, tossing and turning, my mind racing. I can deal, I think, with the cravings; I expected that. But what I did not expect is the constant film of sweat on my back, the needles that crawl under my skin, my heart stuttering and leaping like an old roller coaster.

  I shudder, suddenly freezing, and pull a blanket up around my neck. What have I done? Perhaps the fragments that I remember are just the beginning. Perhaps I lashed out at Anna when I was drunk, or said even more unspeakable things. I remember the morning I woke up with a bruise on my arm, and I have no idea how I got it.