Crash - Part Three

by Dawson, Miranda

  “Did she come and visit you in prison?” I asked. It was a stupid question. She must have, otherwise he wouldn’t have seen the signs of her drug use. But I couldn’t help but dwell on the two of them having conjugal visits in some seedy trailer.

  “At first,” Carter said as the waiter brought out our food.

  He had skipped the appetizers, which was for the best as I wasn’t a fan of French starters. He had ordered two steaks—medium-rare for his, by the looks of it, and medium for me. I couldn’t recall ever telling Carter how I liked my steak, but he had ordered perfectly.

  “Even just seeing her once a fortnight, I could still tell that she was in a bad way. Her eyes, her skin—she had all the signs of a junkie. It was painful to watch, and I felt completely helpless.”

  “Sounds like she didn’t deserve you,” I said, unable to understand how Carter had ended up with a druggie. Carter was smooth and sophisticated and didn’t look at all like the type to get mixed up in all that.

  Carter shook his head slowly. “It wasn’t like that. She wasn’t like that. When we first met, she was wonderful. You know those people who have energy all the time? She was one of them, and she used all that energy to make people’s lives better. When we first met, she was volunteering in an old folk’s home and a homeless shelter. Admittedly, she was from money, so she didn’t need to work, but still…”

  “People with money don’t always use it so selflessly,” I said, finishing Carter’s thoughts when he trailed off. His words didn’t sting as much as the look in his eyes did. When he thought back to Bella there was a glow behind his eyes like he was remembering better times.

  “But all that money meant a continuous stream of temptations were thrown her way. We would go to expensive bars and get treated like royalty, but with regular offers of drink and drugs. Eventually that took its toll.”

  “You stayed with her, though,” I said, sounding a little more accusatory than I had intended.

  Carter nodded. “Yes, but we were drifting apart. If it hadn’t been for the accident, then we would have probably split up within the next few weeks, anyway.”

  I probably shouldn’t have been so quick to trust Carter after recent events, but the pain in his face didn’t look fake to me. Just having this conversation was taking a lot of the energy out of him, almost as much as it was me.

  “So why did you take the blame for her? Why not just be honest with the police? She should have gone to jail, Carter, not you. Now everything is messed up.” Deep down, I knew I shouldn’t be mad at Carter—in some ways, he had done an honorable thing—but the rational part of my brain was losing out to raw emotion again, and I couldn’t control it.

  “It all happened so quickly. It’s not like I knew your brother was going to die. I got out of the car, and she moved into the passenger seat. The police and ambulances showed up within minutes, and before I knew it, the lies were pouring from my mouth.”

  “You should have told the truth,” I said again, sounding less angry and more defeated now.

  “I don’t regret going to prison,” Carter said. “Bella had to be punished for what happened and watching me go to prison was more painful to her than if she had gone herself.”

  I could feel tears building up inside. I took a quick sip of water and then some wine. Neither worked. My mouth opened to say something, but my lips were quivering and I knew any words would set me off crying.

  “Emily, there is a lot more I need to tell you, and I will, but I can’t keep going like this. Can we finish this off another day? How about I cook for you Friday night?”

  I nodded. Carter still had many more questions to answer, but I wasn’t ready and neither was he.

  After a few minutes of silence, he asked me about work and I told him about our new project. He even managed to feign a basic understanding. By the end of the dinner the mood had lightened considerably, and I was even able to laugh a few times. I still welled up whenever I pictured Carter with his wife, but somewhere inside I let myself believe there might be a light at the end of this wretched tunnel.

  Chapter Seven

  Before Carter, my life had revolved around either studying or business. I had friends too, but they were distractions from achieving other goals in my life—or at least, that was how I treated them. Even when my career was going well, there was still a touch of emptiness inside me and I tried to fill the void with more work.

  With a man now in the picture I knew I could be truly happy, however when things were going well with Carter the business would be struggling and vice versa. If I ever got both parts of my life in sync and going in the right direction then I would be walking in the clouds.

  Things with Carter had hit rock bottom. In fact, they had crashed through rock bottom and had melted in the molten core of the Earth. But even though he hadn’t explained everything, I had a strange feeling of confidence in our future. Something deep inside me felt that we wouldn’t end things as they stood, and that perhaps maybe we could somehow make it work.

  Unfortunately, while one part of my life may have been on the up, the other part was a disaster. Any hope or expectation of pulling away from PharmaTech disappeared with a phone call from our lawyer. Once John and I were on the line, he broke the bad news.

  “There’s been a problem with your new patent application,” Scott said. “The one you emailed over the other day.”

  “You need more information?” John asked. “I’ve taken a closer look at the technology now, so perhaps I can do a better job with the description.”

  “No, it’s not that,” Scott said. “I had all the information I needed and I submitted the application to the Patent and Trademark Office. You’re in patent pending status.”

  “That’s good, isn’t it?” I asked, waiting for the bad news that Scott was supposed to deliver.

  “The problem isn’t with your patent as such it’s with someone else’s. Before I go on, I just want you to know that my firm filed your application incredibly quickly. I prepared an initial draft the same day I received your email and sent it to a partner for review. We then filed it electronically the next day.”

  “That’s fine, Scott,” I said. “A couple of days to turn around a patent application is quick, in my book.” I didn’t add that it often took me a few days just to reply to an email from my mother, let alone respond to every client at the drop of a hat.

  “Well, someone else filed a patent the day before we did. It must have been the same day you sent me the email. Anyway, this other patent is for a similar technology to yours.”

  “How similar?” John asked, unable to keep the panic out of his voice. “Could our patent be declared invalid because this other one was filed first?”

  “Probably not,” Scott said. “I’m going to email you the details after this for you to have a look at it. You have a more technical mind than me, so you are in a better position to judge. I think there are a few differences in yours, so you should be okay,”

  “Phew,” John exclaimed. “I suppose that’s not so bad. We may have to incur legal fees once again to defend our patent, but it’s better than the alternative.”

  “John, I think we’re missing the bigger picture here,” I said, putting a dampener on John’s blossoming enthusiasm. “Someone else has had a similar idea to us. That means they may develop a competing product. I have a bad feeling I know who filed that patent.”

  “Oh, shit,” John muttered.

  “Emily’s right,” Scott said. “I did some digging, and the company that filed the patent is a new subsidiary of PharmaTech. They won’t let this one go without a fight.”

  ---

  “Oh, this is bad,” John said, as he poured over PharmaTech’s patent application. “This is really bad.”

  “Please don’t tell me that we are infringing on their patent, which they filed one day before us?”

  “No,” John said, with a slow shake of the head. “No, I don’t think we are. PharmaTech is approaching this in a slightly dif
ferent way. In essence, they are combining the wearable data and the data from the limbs and crunching it in the cloud before sending the analysis back to the limb. It’s not a bad approach, but it won’t work as consistently as our method of having the wearable and the limb talk to each other directly.”

  “But they are definitely doing the same thing as us?”

  John nodded, and I saw the disappointment in his eyes. LimbAnalytics was far from dead, but the idea around wearables could have sent us into the stratosphere. I knew that if PharmaTech cracked this problem first, then it would completely twist the information to suit its own ends. Our technology would be more likely to end up enhancing athletes than it would helping those who had lost limbs.

  John went into the kitchen to make some lunch while I just sat at my desk, lost in thought. When it came to passion and technical prowess, John and I had all the bases covered. We had built this company from the ground up with our own hard work. We’d had some funding along the way, but that was more in recognition of our success than it was any kind of handout or charity.

  What we needed was some help dealing with the big boys. Companies like PharmaTech didn’t work like startups. Perhaps once it’d had noble aims, but those ethics had disappeared long ago.

  “John,” I yelled into the kitchen, “I’m going to speak to Carter. He might be able to help.” John still had no idea I’d met him for dinner the other night. If the next dinner went well, then I would tell him, but otherwise I didn’t see the need to go through all that right now. He would just ask questions that I wasn’t ready to answer.

  “Are you sure?” he asked, walking back into my room. “You don’t have to do that.”

  “I know. I know. And to be honest, I’m not sure what he will be able to do, but he is much more accustomed to dealing with big companies like this. We may need to get dirty at some point, so it’s best to be prepared.”

  “Well, I’m certainly glad you suggested it. I had the thought myself, but it was your decision to come to.”

  “You think he can help, then?” I asked. I had no idea what Carter might be able to do, and the suggestion was just partly an excuse to speak to him again before Friday.

  “Maybe. Investment bankers have access to a metric shit-ton of information on companies like PharmaTech. Most of it’s public, anyway, but I wouldn’t have a clue what to do with it. He may know their intent behind all this, or what they will do now that we have a conflicting technology out there.”

  I nodded, grateful for the opportunity to hear Carter’s voice again without the conversation being about his wife. More than his looks, his eyes, and even his ability in bed, the voice could captivate me like a drug, a drug I was well and truly hooked on.

  Chapter Eight

  “I know I have no right to ask this of you, but do you think you can help?”

  I had called Carter completely out-of-the-blue, and he had answered the phone with more than a hint of trepidation in his voice. He probably thought I was calling to cancel our dinner plans on Friday night. Instead I spewed out everything about the new wearables idea, how we had filed a patent, and how PharmaTech seemed to have beaten us to it.

  “You have every right to ask, Emily, but to be honest, I’m not sure what I can do for you. You’re right about this being a potential problem, but I wouldn’t let it affect what you are doing now. Just keep going, and if a lawsuit comes, then deal with it. If not, well… if not, then there is no problem.”

  “You don’t think we should just abandon the idea? I mean, we can’t compete directly with PharmaTech. If they decide they want to go after this, then who are we to stop them?”

  “Emily, I mean this in the nicest possible way, but that is one of the stupidest things I have ever heard. You’ve scared them already. They tried to buy you out, for Christ’s sake. Businesses don’t do that unless they have to. Think about this: who are your customers?”

  I thought for a few moments before answering. At the moment, LimbAnalytics didn’t really have any customers. We had those beta testers who had agreed to test the product, and they consisted of a variety of people missing a limb. There were a fair few from the military, of course, some young children, and even a handful of others who had been injured in car accidents like me.

  “People,” I answered eventually. “Our customers are people. Human beings who need help.”

  “Exactly,” Carter said. “And do you think PharmaTech cares about people? They see those customers as test subjects. You treat those people with respect, and that makes a lot of difference when you are asking someone to be a human guinea pig. It helps that you are one of them, so to speak, but it’s more than that.”

  “You’re right,” I said. Something clicked in my head. “I don’t think PharmaTech has a big pool of people to work with on this. That’s why they wanted to buy the business. They need our beta testers.”

  “And it’s safe to assume that they are not doing all this to improve the lives of these poor people. I don’t want to stereotype, but people with artificial limbs are often not all that wealthy. PharmaTech might be testing this on that group now, but you can bet they have bigger plans for the product.”

  John and I had always had the same suspicion. It was that suspicion which kept us from considering PharmaTech’s offer to buy us out. It came down to trust, and we didn’t trust that company one little bit.

  “Thank you, Carter. I needed to hear that.”

  “Happy to have helped, I guess, although all I did was speak the truth. You are an amazing person, Emily, and you are working hard to improve people’s lives. That sort of attitude and commitment always gets rewarded in the end.”

  I let out a short laugh. “You can be awfully sentimental for a banker, you know. If people always get their just desserts, then you lot will go out of business.”

  “We aren’t all bad, you know. Okay, most of us are pretty dubious, but there are some good eggs too. Keep doing what you’re doing, Emily. It will pay off. I’ll see you on Friday, okay?”

  “Thanks. See you Friday.”

  I still didn’t feel like giving John too many of the details about my relationship with Carter, so I just said that Carter couldn’t help, but recommended we persevere with our plan. John looked a little disappointed, but it wasn’t long before Carter was proved right. Being a nice person really could pay off in business.

  ---

  “It seems too good to be true,” I said, reading the email on John’s laptop. ”How do we know is even real?”

  “It comes from legit a military email address,” John said. “Those .gov domains are hard to fake. For what it’s worth, I traced the IP address back to a military base in San Diego. That’s hardly conclusive, but the email seems genuine enough. He’s also offering to meet us, so it’s not like we have to send them money.”

  Carter was right. What you put out in the world really could come back to help you. Some of the beta testers for LimbAnalytics’ technology were military personnel who had lost limbs in conflicts. In fact, they made up our largest single group of beta testers. In most cases, these people had been given a cheap limb and told to make do.

  When LimbAnalytics first started advertising for beta testers, we got a few responses from former military personnel. Both John and I were little nervous about going to meet with them. Being Stanford University students, we were not exactly accustomed to the military way of life. In the end, I just acted normally and the people we spoke to really appreciated it. One guy called Sam remarked on how refreshing it was to have a normal conversation with someone. Apparently, everyone who came to speak to him in the hospital spent the whole time thanking him for his service and getting overly emotional. I spoke to him as I would speak to anyone else, and we got along just fine.

  Sam was doing well with the technology we had given him, but I hadn’t spoken to him in a couple of weeks. Obviously he was happy with how things were going, because he recommended us to his former boss who was still active in the Army. Next thi
ng I knew, John got an email from someone important in the Army who wanted to discuss a contract with the company.

  “This could be huge,” I said. “Contracts of the size he is talking about could be what it takes for LimbAnalytics to explode.”

  “No shit,” John said. “This contract is a game-changer. And even better, we don’t have to worry about PharmaTech stealing this one from us.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “We were chosen for this contract in part because we are a small business. There is an attachment on this email that we have to fill out to give information on our company size, but given that we are a two-man operation, we shouldn’t have a problem meeting the definition of ‘small business.’ The federal government has lots of programs to ensure that small businesses get government money. I didn’t think we would ever benefit from them, but it looks like we will now.”

  “Are we ready for this?” I asked. “This is huge with a capital ‘H.’ You have to be extra careful when working with the federal government.”

  “This is what we set out to achieve,” John said. “We want to improve people’s lives, and this will help us do exactly that. You’re right about being careful, though. We might want to consider bringing the bookkeeper on full-time; will need our financial records to be one hundred percent accurate.”

  John and I read the email about five times each before it really sunk in. The Army officer wanted to meet us to discuss the details, but it sounded like the contract would include a research element. That meant we would actually be paid for additional research and development and wouldn’t have to find the extra money to fund it ourselves.

  I forwarded the email to Marissa. No doubt she would pass the message on to our elusive investor, who would now be seeing a return on his investment a lot quicker than he or she had initially anticipated. Best of all, I could now go to dinner with Carter tomorrow night without having to worry about the business. I could focus on worrying about his wife and why he had kept her a secret.