This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Under no circumstance should any portion of the content
of this book be construed as medical advice.
Copyright © 2019 by Debra E. Blaine, MD
All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced or
stored in whole or in part by any means without the written permission of the author except for brief quotations for the purpose of review.
ISBN: 978-1-7337955-7-9
Blaine. Debra
Edited by: Monika Dziamka and Amy Ashby
Published by Warren Publishing
Charlotte, NC
www.warrenpublishing.net
Printed in the United States
For my brother
Robert Kenneth Blaine
March 17, 1957 – October 28, 2000
I miss you every day.
“When I was young, I admired clever people.
Now that I am old, I admire kind people.”
–Abraham Joshua Heschel
PROLOGUE
September 22, 2000
“What the hell!”
The techie smacked his hand on the table, careful to avoid hitting his custom-crafted personal computer. It had never let him down like this. He had rebuilt his Compaq, installing a brand new 933 MHz Intel Pentium III Xeon Processor and added an additional four GB memory board. For his current project, the little machine was perfect. He even preferred it to the Cray supercomputers he used to work on, until he had been hired as a consultant by Financier, Inc. about a year ago. They were paying him ridiculous money—almost three times what he had gotten from Cray—to develop a specific software to create databases of medical records. They wanted theirs to be the first really viable electronic health record in the world and dominate the market.
He was in his early forties and had some serious health problems of his own, which had added to his decision to leave Cray Research. Creating an electronic health record, or EHR as it was being called, seemed more relevant than the work Cray was now doing in graphics and business, and he was sure computerizing health records would be the wave of the future.
Except for this sudden glitch, he had basically completed the project. He had no idea if they’d want him to stay on after the software was written, but he was not worried about income. He had been working on computers since high school, and he knew he was one of the very best in his field. He knew it as a fact, and not as something to boast about. Having started with the monstrosities that each took up an entire room in the early seventies, he intuited computers as if by instinct. If he weren’t such a rationalist, he would have said they had a “relationship” of sorts. In college, he had studied computer science in its infancy, had written a few languages himself, and had soon surpassed his professors’ knowledge. If there was no program that did what he wanted, he’d always just written one, so employment had never been a concern for him.
He hit search again, setting the criteria for all medical history recorded, and again the result set came up with data anomalies. The program had only pulled specific diagnoses, like organ failure needing transplant, with subsets for heart, liver, and kidney. There was a separate queue for dementia, divided into Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, and then STDs, or sexually transmitted diseases, were also highlighted. The search logic had obviously been linked elsewhere.
Why these disorders in particular? They seemed to have nothing in common. There was no mention of hypertension, diabetes, or any surgical history, which he knew he had inputted. The software was supposed to disclose all of the medical conditions of any patient entered into the system. As requested, he had set up the program to also collate by diagnosis, so it would have maximum usefulness for epidemiological research, but that was designed to function only in the background, so it would not be intrusive in the running of the software. Somehow, this selectivity had become a primary operation, and the application was defaulting to these diagnoses only. He had to debug the program immediately, he’d already told them it was complete. Where had this issue come from?
Everything had an electronic footprint, so he backtracked to find the source and how it had ended up on his software. It might connect to the previous guy that Financier had assigned to the project. Rumor was, that guy hadn’t worked out so well, and was gone now; maybe he had left behind a few stray lines of programming that still needed to be deleted.
As the techie traced the issue backward, the screen blinked at him: ACCESS DENIED. Now, why were they trying to keep him out? He was being paid a lot of money to write this program, and something was malfunctioning. He needed to fix it before Financier noticed the flaw. He inhaled sharply and hacked in, decompiling the dynamic link library, and was even more puzzled than before.
All the comments were in Russian. What had happened to Financier?
“Okay,” he said out loud. He often talked to himself when he was stressed. “What if I run this forward. Why are you looking for transplants, organ failure, STDs, and dementia? Let’s see …” He started typing rapidly.
Suddenly, he broke into a cold sweat and snatched his fingers from the keyboard as if it were a bed of burning coals.
“Holy shit!”
October 31, 2000
The piercing beeps slowly penetrated the deep fog in Tobi’s head. Again and again, they sounded off. She groaned as she reached for the alarm. It can’t be morning already, she thought, it’s pitch black. The noise stopped, and then it started again. Geez, that’s the phone! She sat up on her elbow and felt around for the little lamp next to her bed, and looked at the caller ID. It was her mother. Now what? She flipped the light off and answered the phone.
“Tobi! Reuben’s dead! He died!”
Tobi sat bolt upright and turned the light back on. Her heart sprouted wings and tried to fly out of her chest.
“What?”
“The police are here.”
Tobi waited. She waited to hear more, she waited to wake up—she wasn’t sure which, but she couldn’t speak. Her heart’s new “wings” smacked the inside of her rib cage.
“Are you there? I haven’t been able to reach him for three days, so I called his friend Ken and he went to Reuben’s apartment, but there was no answer, so Ken called the police. They broke the door down and found him … they said he’d been dead for at least a couple of days. I knew something was terribly wrong, I just knew it. My mother’s intuition again. Darn it!
“Say something, Tobi! Are you there?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m here,” she whispered, but she couldn’t seem to fill her lungs with air. “I just spoke to him a few days ago, or … what’s today?” She looked at the dutifully quiet alarm clock. It was 3:54 a.m.
“I did too, on Saturday. You know, he calls me every day. Or, he did. Tobi, what am I going to do without him?” Mom sobbed. “Thank God your father isn’t alive to see this. It would kill him!”
The room started tilting, and for a moment, Tobi thought it might turn upside down. She gripped the bed and clenched her eyes shut and willed her mother to stop screaming just this one time. She felt like she had just entered some eerie corridor, that space between the worlds of the living and the dead.
“What happened?” Tobi asked.
“Nobody knows. They think he had a heart attack, but they have to do forensics to rule out foul play. Can you imagine? That means an autopsy, right? I’ve had such a bad feeling the last three days! But an autopsy? Everyone loved Reuben. Who could possibly want to hurt him?”
; The wind suddenly kicked up outside and a branch brushed against the window. Tobi shuddered in the dim light of the bedside lamp.
“Tobi, talk to me! Are you coming down? You can’t leave me alone now. I’m all alone. And I can’t pay for a funeral, you know, it will have to be you.”
“Yeah, of course I’m coming down. Just … give me a few minutes, okay? I’ll call you later.”
“Later when?”
“Later today.”
“Tobi!”
“I’ll call you when I have reservations.” Tobi hung up.
Her heart was racing a million beats a minute and her chest hurt. She forcibly resisted the impulse to check her pulse rate, because knowing that number could only make her feel worse. Sometimes being a doctor was not an advantage.
She got up unsteadily and tried to slow her breathing. As she walked into the hall, she glanced into Benny’s room. Eight-year-olds can sleep through anything, she thought. But then, it wasn’t as if she had made much noise. She dismissed the urge to wake him up and hug him. They had that extra closeness that single mothers have with their only children, but that would be completely selfish, especially since he’d barely seen his uncle in the last few years. Not that Reuben had made much effort to be part of his nephew’s life, but Tobi hadn’t pressed it, either. The word “dysfunction” had been invented to describe Tobi’s family, and then she had married into more of the same. She’d read that people tended to unconsciously reproduce their childhoods in their choices of spouse. Now she tried mightily to keep Benny as shielded from drama as much as possible. She let him sleep. She would tell him in the morning. Gently.
She walked into the playroom where the computer was and tried to process what she had just heard: Reuben was dead. Just like that. She repeated it to herself, but she couldn’t hold the thought. And Mom had felt something was wrong for days but hadn’t called her. Right. She only called about inane things, like the price of shrimp being such a bargain, and acted like that was monumental. Whatever. Tobi needed to book flights.
She went to the American Airlines website. Last minute flights were a fortune, and she was exhausted as soon as she printed the boarding passes. She tried to lie down on the couch, but it was useless. She got up and paced the house for a while, and then went back to the computer and sent out an email blast to her friends.
I’ll be in Texas for a few days. My brother was found dead in his apartment. If you need to reach me, call
me at my mother’s, 210-555-7734. I’ll try to check
email occasionally.
She marveled at the technology of email. Who would’ve thought you could connect with so many people at once, and so quickly, without even waking them up?
A memory from eight years ago suddenly flooded her: Reuben showing her his first laptop and describing this thing he called the internet. He thought it was going to be the rage of the future. She had humored him at the time but hadn’t believed it would ever amount to much. Reuben was always at the cutting edge of his field.
She almost called Troy. She needed to call Troy. But his last words just two days ago burned in her brain. I’m sorry, my love, I cannot see you anymore. I cannot even tell you why, so please do not ask me. This is good-bye.
She had no clue what had prompted their sudden break up after three years together. He had just asked for her ring size. He wasn’t the type to get cold feet, he was always poised and self-aware. But there was something about his tone that told her it was for real. He and Reuben had been friends too, so she had included Troy in the email she’d sent, but the truth was, she desperately hoped it would prompt him to call her.
Reuben couldn’t be dead! Her big-little brother. He was almost four years older, but his soul was childlike and naive while Tobi’s felt ancient. There was too much unfinished business between them, but she had always figured there’d be time to make up and set things right.
The dog had been following her from room to room. She sat down in the dark and stroked him absently while the wind hammered eerily at the windows. Chewbacca’s tail thumped nonstop and comforted her, and at 6:15 a.m., she called her friend Pam, who worked in the same practice. Tobi obviously wasn’t making it in to the office today, and she needed someone to cover her shift. Unfortunately, she woke up her husband.
“I’m sorry to wake you, Pete. It’s Tobi. Is Pam there?”
“Do you realize it’s six o’clock in the morning?”
“I know, I’m … I’m really sorry. My brother just died. I was—”
“Oh! Oh, sure, let me get her. I’m very sorry.”
Suddenly, Tobi was drowning in a deluge of tears. She had wondered why she felt nothing, but as soon as she heard herself say those words out loud, she couldn’t stop crying. Chewy brought her a rope toy and pawed at her nervously when she wouldn’t play. She tried to keep quiet, because she didn’t want to wake Benny yet, but there was a knife stuck in her chest. Forever came and went, and finally, Pam got on the phone.
“Oh my God, Tobi! What happened?”
“I don’t really know, Pam. My mother called me a couple of hours ago. I’m supposed to work today, but I have to leave….” Her voice cracked.
“Of course! Which office? I can cover you until two. That should give them time to get someone else. He was young, wasn’t he? Was he sick?”
“Forty-three. Yeah, I mean, he had a-fib, diabetes, and congestive heart failure. But he was doing really well. My old med school buddy was taking care of him, and he never mentioned him being that sick. He’d lost weight—he even got off insulin. Pam, I had no idea he was sick enough to just—die!”
“Mommy?” Benny padded out into the living room. “What’s wrong? Why are you crying?”
Chewbacca bounded over to Benny, his tail whipping at everything in its path.
“Pam, I gotta go. Benny just woke up. I can’t thank you enough.”
“Don’t even think about it. Stay in touch, okay?”
Tobi hung up and turned to Benny. He was rubbing his eyes with his fists, incredibly keeping his balance even with the golden retriever bumping against him. Chewy actually weighed more than Benny did. She knelt down and put her hands on his little shoulders. “Benny,” she said softly, “I have some very bad news. Do you remember your Uncle Reuben? He used to carry you on his shoulders, remember?” Benny nodded sleepily. “He died last night.”
Benny touched her wet face. “I’m sorry, Mommy,” he said. “Is that why you’re sad?” His upper lip quivered.
“Yes, Benny, I’m very sad.” She took a deep breath and faked a smile. “So, guess what? No school today. We’re going to Texas to help Grandma.”
“No, Mommy, it’s Halloween!” Benny shrieked. “I don’t want to go to Texas! I want to stay home!” He twisted away and ran back to his bedroom.
Tobi fell back on the floor, stunned for a minute, and then realized she should have been prepared for this behavior. By the time he was four, Benny could name all the planets in the solar system and their order from the sun, including how many moons orbited each. Frequently, his intellectual precocity had made him seem older than he was, but he was still only eight. He’d been through hell with the divorce, and although she hadn’t told him yet that Troy was gone, she knew he sensed something was very wrong. He was becoming too adept at shielding himself from emotional pain, often with denial, and it broke Tobi’s heart. Somewhere in his brilliant little head, he must have already asked The Question: if Mommy’s brother can die, can Mommy die too? Way too scary for a little boy, and much easier to run away from than to face. She started to follow him when the phone rang. It was her best friend, Sally.
“Tobi, you poor dear! I got your email, I’m so sorry! What can I do? Who’s taking Chewbacca? I’ll take you to the airport, and then I can take Chewy home with me. What time is the flight and which airport?”
“Oh, Sally, I love you. I hadn’t even t
hought about that yet.” She looked guiltily at the dog, now pawing frantically at the closed door to Benny’s room. “It’s JFK, 3:00 p.m. I don’t know what to do about Benny. He’s … reacting. Not well. He needs time, I guess, and I feel so muddled.”
“Of course, you do, baby. Oy, and now you’ll be spending a week with your mother too. Benny will come around. Just breathe. I’ll head over as soon as the kids are off to school.”
Chewbacca had managed to open Benny’s door and was lying panting on the bed. Benny was hiding under the covers, and she heard his muffled voice as she walked into the room. “I’m not going!”
Chewy thought it was a game of hide-and-seek and pawed at the blanket. There wasn’t a lot of room for the three of them, so Tobi sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed Benny’s back through the covers. “I know this is very upsetting, Benny-Ben. Sometimes things happen that are very sad and very difficult, and we just have to help each other get through them.”
“But it’s Halloween!” Chewy sniffed at where Benny’s voice had come from and sneezed. He tried to pull the blanket off with his teeth, but Benny held fast. “We have a party in school and everything, and I want to go trick-or-treating!”
“There will be other Halloweens, Benny. We have to be there for Uncle Reuben’s funeral.” She didn’t mention they’d have to wait until the coroner was done with him. What had her mother said? They had to check for “foul play”? Tobi couldn’t fathom the idea that his death might have been intentional. That kind of horror only happened in movies, not in her life.
“I need you to be there with me, Benny. I’m very, very sad that I lost my brother, and I need to be with the person I love most in the whole wide world, and that’s you.” Tears were streaming down her face again.
Benny’s head peaked out from under the covers, and Chewy found him right away. He barked and licked Benny in the face, but Benny pushed the dog aside and stared at Tobi. His eyes were wide and frightened. “But if he’s dead, Mommy, he won’t even know if we go to his funeral.”
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