by Luke Allnutt
It is nothing, though, nothing to what I have done to Jack. Human plasma. Unlicensed drugs. “An astounding negligence of care.” And now a new fear, that keeps me awake at night: that Dr. Sladkovsky’s treatments might have hastened Jack’s death.
Re: Dr. Sladkovsky arrested
by Rob» Sun May 14, 2017 4:39 am
Hello everyone, I haven’t been on Hope’s Place for a while and just wanted to reply to Chemoforlifer’s post, as I am one of those people whose son was treated by Dr. Sladkovsky.
I am disgusted with myself. My wife was adamant that we shouldn’t do the treatment but I went against her wishes and took my son Jack there. (Jack was diagnosed in spring 2014 and died in January 2015, not long after we left the clinic.)
I am full of so much guilt and so much pain. I have been drinking since Jack’s death, drinking myself into the ground every day. I have stopped now but I just don’t know how I can keep doing this anymore.
I hate myself for what I have done to my son and to my wife. I am so ashamed I feel like killing myself. I don’t give a shit about anyone else other than myself. To everyone that I have hurt, I am so sorry.
Re: Dr. Sladkovsky arrested
by Chemoforlifer» Sun May 14, 2017 7:40 am
First, Rob, I hope you’re okay. And please, if you want to talk about any of this, do send me a PM or give me a call (number in my sig). Please don’t suffer alone and remember your friends on Hope’s Place are all here for you. Regarding Dr. Sladkovsky, well, it takes guts to say that, to admit your mistake. We all live and learn. I wish you peace.
Just as I am logging out of Hope’s Place, I receive a private message through the forum.
Subject: Re:
Sent: Sun May 14, 2017 3:21 pm
From: naws09
Recipient: Rob
Are you okay? I know I don’t know you but I don’t like to see someone in distress. Please don’t kill yourself. There is too much sadness in this world. I lost my little girl, Lucy, a few years ago and understand exactly how you feel. I know how dark it can get and I know how long that darkness lasts. Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that you have a friend if you ever want to talk.
Subject: Re: Re:
Sent: Mon May 15, 2017 8:45 am
From: Rob
Recipient: naws09
Hello, naws09. Thanks so much for your kind note. I feel like a bit of an idiot, to be honest. I was feeling very down and detoxing from all the alcohol when I wrote that post. Sorry, didn’t want to alarm you.
I was humbled by the amount of strangers, like yourself, who sent me PMs saying they were worried about me and offering their support. So thank you so much. It means a lot to me.
I think, deep down, that’s what I really want—to talk—because I have kept everything inside me for so long. I remember when my wife was telling me I needed help after Jack died and I knew I needed it but I just couldn’t do it, wasn’t brave enough I suppose.
I hope you don’t mind me asking, but how do you do it? Staying alive, I mean. Once again, thanks very much for your kind note. I really do appreciate it.
Best Wishes,
Rob
Subject: Re: Re:
Sent: Tue May 16, 2017 7:06 pm
From: naws09
Recipient: Rob
Hello, Rob, nice to hear from you and I’m glad you’re feeling better now. Well done, by the way, on the drinking, or lack of drinking, rather.
You asked me how I do it. Well, I certainly don’t have the formula. And I’m not sure I have any decent advice. As mundane as it sounds, I keep myself busy: I work a lot, I run, I go to the gym. I try to take an interest in things: new books, the TV series that everyone is talking about at work.
I can’t say I’m happy but I’m surviving. It’s only a temporary solution, though, and I have hit the bottom so many times. I have wanted to slit my wrists, jump off a bridge. I have wished terrible things, things that make me ashamed to be alive. I have wished that this happened to other children and not mine.
So, that’s my story. There is one thing I do, which I think helps a great deal. I try to help people on Newly Diagnosed. It breaks my heart to see these desperate people suffering so much, so I try to help them, offer them support, just be their friend.
When I started doing this on Hope’s Place, I began to notice this world of support that I never knew existed, where people were contacting each other privately and PMing each other, becoming friends on Facebook or whatever. They do it quietly, without fanfare, all these hundreds and thousands of personal connections and bonds that others don’t know about. It is a small thing but it is a beautiful thing. I’ve become very close friends with several people from Hope’s Place and it has meant so much to me. I’m not a particularly touchy-feely person and find it difficult to open up. These friendships, with people who have gone through the same, have helped me so much.
It’s not going to bring your little boy back...but then nothing will.
Take care of yourself and do stay in touch.
* * *
As I am running, I watch the water hens and seagulls wade across the mudflats, drinking water from little canals in the sand. I jog past the yacht club on the estuary, the veterinary clinic and the old Methodist church, and then start to accelerate up the path that snakes along the river.
It is late spring, but the sun is blazing, hotter than it should be for this time of year, and my T-shirt and shorts are wet with sweat. I power into a slight incline, through a tunnel carved into the rock, until I get to the railway bridge, a Victorian viaduct that spans the valley. I overtake two swans, slowly gliding, their heads pointed downward, scanning the surface of the water for food.
I come here every day now. To the bench under the viaduct. Perhaps it is the solitude, the calming effect of the red rock, but it is easy to think up here, without the booze clouding everything.
The world has a certain crispness now, like a morning frost, so delicate and pristine you are afraid to take a step. I am noticing things around me, details I haven’t seen before: the worn-away edge of a sideboard; the way the sun, reflected through a lampshade, makes a rainbow of light on the carpet. Because now, when I really listen, when I sit in the calm under the viaduct, feeling the breath of the wind, the tang of river-salt in the air, I am feeling, seeing, hearing the world with a new hypersensitivity, as if a blockage has been removed from my ear and I can hear the crash of a dropping pin.
I should have listened to my dad. He liked a drink, but hated drinkers. It’s all about them, son, he had told me, boring old bastards, always droning on. All them clever thoughts, son, but the boy could hardly stand. Because it gets you like that, the booze. It makes you think you’re unwrapping the world. But you’re not. The world is unwrapping you.
* * *
I come home and sit in the silence of the kitchen and drink a glass of water. The woman I have been speaking to—naws09—was right. Keeping myself busy has helped. Before, my whole day was governed and punctuated by drink, propped up, like the pillars of the church, or the call to prayer. I have had to find things to replace that, mostly chores around the house: organizing the spoons by size in the drawer; preparing elaborate lunches; spending a week reading various review sites on the best studio speakers to buy for my laptop. I have been doing some extra work for Marc, more than I can handle, but I know I have to keep myself occupied, keep myself off the booze.
The things I have started to remember are still so hazy, I cannot be sure if what I am remembering is true. Because they tease you, memories, revealing a little bit here, a little bit there, and you are never quite sure if they are real, like an imagined spit of rain.
I remember Anna telling me how I had pissed over her sunflowers. How I pissed over the memory of our unborn children. I shudder. There are no mitigating circumstances, no equanimity of blame, but just the sordid tru
th of how awful I was.
I remember what she said, when things were bad at the end. How I would never live up to my father. She was right. He faced tragedy like a man. He was not weak like me. He looked after his family to the end.
For the first time in days, I feel an overwhelming urge to drink. I could get in the car and be back home in twenty minutes with fresh supplies. I can think of nothing better now than to open a bottle of vodka, or wine, and hear that glug, that little dog’s cough, as the liquid is poured into a glass.
No, I will not. I will go for a shower; I will clean the filter on the dishwasher. I will not drink. It is the only thing I can do to try to make amends.
Subject: Re: Re:
Sent: Thu May 19, 2017 3:21 pm
From: Rob
Recipient: naws09
Thank you so much for your message, naws09.
I’ve been trying to follow your advice and stay busy and I really think it’s helping. Just having a project to do each day, even if it’s organizing a cupboard or something.
I know you’re right about the Newly Diagnosed thing. I would love to be able to do that, to help people in that way, but I’m not sure I can. I just don’t think I have enough to give. Also, given that I took my son to Dr. Sladkovsky’s, I’m not exactly the right person to advise people.
How are you, by the way? I always talk about myself but I don’t know anything about you...
Subject: Re: Re:
Sent: Fri May 20, 2017 8:50 pm
From: naws09
Recipient: Rob
Of course you’re the right person to help people on Newly Diagnosed. You’ve gone through all of this, you’ve lived it. You know how it feels better than anyone.
You asked how I was, well, if you must know, I have been going through a bad patch recently. Every little thing seems to be setting me off. I was watching one of those 24 hours in Casualty documentaries and there was this mother whose son was hit by a car and she was so distraught and beside herself and I had this horrible feeling of guilt that I was never like that, was never like that mother.
I’m sure there was more I could have done to make it easier on Lucy, to help her enjoy her last few months. Sometimes I am paralyzed by fear that she knew: that she knew that she was dying and she was scared and I wasn’t able to take that fear away. Some days are worse than others, but I feel like I let her down.
I suppose deep down, I feel like it’s my fault—that I deserve it and what happened to my daughter must have been because of something I did. That’s probably just me being stupid, but it’s how I feel. Thanks for asking though...
Subject: Re: Re:
Sent: Fri May 20, 2017 10:23 pm
From: Rob
Recipient: naws09
Well, of course it’s you being stupid. :) Of course of course of course it wasn’t your fault and you should never torture yourself like that. The problem is, though: I can say that, I can advise that, because objectively, as you and I both know, that’s sound advice. But knowing it’s a bullshit feeling still doesn’t stop me from feeling the same sometimes, especially in those dark times, when it’s so hard to see the light, to even imagine the light. So you’re wrong to feel like that, but I understand you feeling like that, if that makes sense. (And, I know I don’t know you, but I’m sure you were a wonderful mother.)
Subject: Re: Re:
Sent: Fri May 20, 2017 11:45 pm
From: naws09
Recipient: Rob
Thank you. You see, this is what I’m talking about. You’re good with the advice. You should definitely help out on Newly Diagnosed. Really. :)
I wanted to ask you, by the way, and please don’t take this the wrong way, but why did you go to Dr. Sladkovsky? There are so many parents on Newly Diagnosed going down these awful paths of alternative treatments (much worse than Dr. Sladkovsky) and I would like to help them, dissuade them, but I never really know what to say. Well, it’s late now. Good night.
I sit upstairs in my little office drinking coffee. I have been trying to work today, but I cannot stop thinking about Anna. I still have not heard from her. I did write to her again in more detail, apologizing and begging for her forgiveness. I do not expect a response. I know I deserve nothing from her.
I long for her, though, and I think a part of me was always longing for her. The Anna who, with such glee, made me go to the all-night Star Wars marathon at the Ritzy. The Anna who fell asleep in my lap on Brighton beach. And then the time we played squash. Those wonderful Bobby Charlton shorts. The look on her face when the animals closed in.
I could watch Anna for hours, the minuscule changes she could make to the expressions on her face. How she would very slightly stick out her lower lip when she was contemplating something, a cartoon version of The Thinker. Or how her eyes would dart to the ground after she said something she was not sure of—a moment of modesty, insecurity—and then she would look up again and continue, somehow fortified by the slight movement of her head.
I want to look at some photos of her, but I have deleted them all. They had been everywhere, once. Digital flotsam, dormant in the memories of half-forgotten devices. Badly framed photographs, videos taken too late. But then one night, not long after I had moved to Cornwall, after I had had too much to drink, I deleted them. I remember the phone’s question: Are you sure you want to delete?
I suddenly have frantic need to see those photos of Anna once again. I download some hard-drive recovery software that claims it can retrieve files that were deleted years ago, but it doesn’t work. My drive has been written and rewritten so many times, the digital imprint is long gone.
And then I remember. My backups. Old habits die hard, and I have always backed up, fastidiously once a week, connecting my computer to an external hard drive.
I open up the backup software and scroll through all the old versions of my computer on the laptop that Anna and I used to share. I choose one, from a few months after Jack died, and hear the fan start to kick in as the drive begins to restore.
I go downstairs to have some lunch and when I return, the restore is finished. I start looking through the directories, and then I find what I am looking for. Anna on the beach, her sun hat casting a shadow over her face; Anna in a Cambridge pub, poking out her tongue; Anna looking exhausted and flushed, a tiny newborn Jack held closely to her breast.
She was so beautiful, never entirely comfortable being photographed, always with a little smile as if she knew something you didn’t but wasn’t going to tell you.
As I am looking through the photos, I see some pictures of Josh that I must have downloaded and put on my desktop in the last few days in Hampstead. I flick through them: Josh wearing his Manchester Utd uniform; Josh at a birthday party; that video Nev had sent of him wearing his Robin mask; the picture of him sitting on a rock. Despite everything I now knew about Dr. Sladkovsky, it still didn’t make any sense. Nev and Josh were not bots. They were not the creation of a Czech intern working in Dr. Sladkovsky’s marketing department. They were real. I had spoken to them, seen pictures of them in flesh and blood.
I know I have to find them, to find out if Josh really died. In recent weeks, I have dug around, trying to track Nev down, and there is one more thing I have been meaning to try. I open up a penetration-testing program I have in Linux and test the URL of Nev’s blog.
wpscan—URL [nevbarnes.wordpress.com]
The program looks for weaknesses, backdoors, spewing out lines of code. Nev is using an old version of WordPress, unpatched and riddled with vulnerabilities. I search for his user profiles, but they are hidden and password protected.
I guess that “Nev” is his username and try to find the password by brute force.
wpscan—URL [nevbarnes.wordpress.com] wordlist [root/desktop/Nev]<27<1
More lines of code and then a ticker, a little hourglass, as the script tries to
crack his password with thousands of different combinations, all within milliseconds of each other. Then, a cursor, and there it is. I let out a little sob when I see what he has chosen for his password.
Josh2606
I log in to Nev’s WordPress account and go straight to his billing information. Underneath one of his listed credit cards there is an address. I find it on Google Maps: a house in Preston.
3
There is a sheen to the red brick of the road, as if it has recently been hosed down. The mock Tudor houses, with brown beams and overwrought gables, are arranged in a semicircle around the cul-de-sac. The planners have tried to break up the monotony of the new builds, adding features to each property: a rockery, climbing ivy, a rustic wooden fence.
It is more upmarket than I imagined, not the sort of place I thought Nev would live. Too middle class, a road for real-estate agents and marketing executives, a road where people read the Mail and the Times and send their children to minor private schools.
I am tired as I park my car outside number 36. The drive, nearly seven hours, was longer than I thought, and I am glad I have booked a hotel for the night.
I walk up the drive, gravel scrunching under my feet, and then follow a neat concrete-slab path through the grass. I ring the doorbell and it is an electronic chime, a deep baritone that echoes around the house. I wait for a while, but no one comes. I am just thinking about leaving when a man opens the door. For a moment, I think it is Nev—a smarter, monied Nev—but then I look again and see that this man is older and wearing some kind of cravat.
“Hello?” he says in what I think is a well-to-do northern accent. “Can I help?” He looks at me askance, and I realize I must be staring.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” I say, seasoning my accent with a little Cambridge. “I’m looking for Nev Barnes. I’m an old friend and we lost contact, and this is the last address I have for him.”
My palms are sweating, and I can sense the man taking me in, my voice, clothes, furtively glancing over my shoulder at the Audi.