Justin looked around at the games. “Sega Rally Championship.”
“Maybe on the second date,” Tina said. “You know, depending on how this one goes.”
He flushed and hoped she wouldn’t notice. “So, what do I have to choose?”
“You’ll decide which beach we go to.” Tina pulled a twenty out of her pocket and put it on the table before she beckoned to him. “Come on.”
“I downed two beers and you want me to drive—”
“I’ll drive, come on.” She took his hand and towed him away. He hadn’t realized before how short she was. “So, which beach?”
“Why are we going to the beach?”
Tina stopped so suddenly that he collided with her. She stood on her tiptoes to whisper in his ear. “We’re going skinny dipping.”
“What?” Justin straightened abruptly.
“Yup.” She gave him a grin and yanked him out into the spring night.
“I can’t—wait—” He stopped. “Are we doing this?”
“What are you worried about?” she asked him, her arms folded.
“Uh—I don’t know. Getting arrested?”
“That’s what makes it fun,” Tina retorted. She caught his hand again and towed him to a car in the corner of the lot—a beat-up turquoise vehicle that might very well have been made before either one of them was born. “Get in.”
Justin was about to protest until he thought it through. Really thought it through.
Skinny dipping.
Both of them.
He got in the car.
“Ha,” Tina turned the car on and backed out. “I knew you had a wild streak somewhere.”
“We’ll see about that.” He grasped the handle above his seat as she pulled out onto the empty street at high speed and the tires squealed. “Hang on a second. I still need to put on my seatbelt—”
She grinned, turned the radio up, and danced in her seat as she drove. “So, which beach?” she called over the sound of the music.
“I don’t know.” The beer was beginning to hit. Justin leaned his head back against the seat. “You choose.”
“Okay.” She made a sharp turn, so close to oncoming traffic that they left a series of angry horns in their wake. “God, people are so stuffy,” she commented and laughed.
“Holy shit,” Justin muttered.
“Oh, come on. You didn’t get hurt, did you?” Tina grinned at him and stretched her hand to take his. “Just you wait, preppy boy. You’re gonna find out how awesome it is to get a little wild, and our parents will regret ever setting us up.”
She turned the wheel and the car skidded around a corner. The tires squealed again. She cast a glance at him and laughed. “Now you’re getting into it. Choose some music.”
“Right.” He leaned forward and pressed the radio. “Uh, rock?”
“Whatever you want.” She drummed her hands on the steering wheel. “Wait, shit—”
His head jerked and his gaze immediately focused on the puppy. A ball of fluff that couldn’t be more than a couple of months old stood scared and frozen in the middle of the street.
Only for a moment, though, because Tina had jerked the wheel to the side in a desperate effort to avoid it. Justin’s head had begun to turn to make sure it wouldn’t run the wrong way—not that he could do anything about it, of course—before a massive bang shattered conscious thought and something hit him hard all across his body.
In the street, the puppy cowered, stared at the smoking pile of metal, and whimpered. It could hear its name but didn’t know where to go. The world was too big and full of fast things and loud noises. When at last footsteps stepped close behind it, the animal looked at its owner and knew something was very wrong.
“Oh, no,” she said. She scooped it up and cradled it against her chest, but her hand was over her mouth. “Oh, no. Sam—Sam! Call 911!”
Chapter Three
“All right.” Nick laid out two spiral-bound folios of information in front of Amber and Jacob. “Who’s ready for the sales pitch?”
“Did you say you needed a day and a half because you wanted to get it all put together nicely?” Jacob asked. He looked at the cover and binding. “I suppose it looks nice, but you don’t need to impress us. We’re all in, buddy.”
“It’s my job to make things look nice,” he replied serenely.
The truth, of course, was that he had claimed it would take a day and a half because it meant Jacob could go home and sleep. In reality, he could have whipped up most of this presentation in a couple of hours, but his friend looked like warmed-over oatmeal and frankly, they all needed sleep and food as well.
And, as it turned out, it was lucky he’d asked for the extra time.
“Should we get started?” he asked.
“Sounds good.” Amber lifted the remote and turned down the volume on the TV in the corner, which displayed a market report on the tech sector. “Okay, Mr. Salesman. Dazzle us.”
Nick grinned. “So, as you both know, the cost of a night in an ICU is prohibitive. On page two, you can see the range of values nation-wide. It varies wildly between hospitals, even in the same cities, but the one unifying factor? It’s insanely expensive.
“Now, you might think it’s all markups. And it is true, there are many markups. We can show that definitively by examining the operating costs of hospitals in other first-world nations and controlling for energy costs, et cetera. That’s on page three.”
Amber, who had yet to meet a spreadsheet she didn’t like, drank this in happily. Jacob, who had seen all this firsthand recently, seemed a little more despondent about it.
“However,” Nick said, “it’s not all markups. Running the equipment genuinely is expensive, and part of that is because it’s several distinct systems, each of which needs to talk to the others, receive updates, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.” He waved a hand expansively. “Which brings us to the numbers you’ve all waited for. Flip to page four, if you would.”
Both his companions turned the page and looks of extreme surprise settled on their faces.
“Whoa,” Amber said quietly. “Okay, I knew…I knew. But it’s crazy to see it.”
Jacob stared quietly at the numbers. On the table, one of his hands was in constant motion. The fingers danced over and around each other the way he did when he was deep in thought or stressed. It had become an inside joke in their class at MIT that he could have powered a small plant with his hand motions during exams.
The diagram on the page showed expected costs over time for a patient in the ICU in two scenarios. The first was in the current technological setup and the second in one of the PIVOT pods. A thick line ran horizontally along the page, and Nick didn’t smile as he pointed to it.
“This? It’s the median savings of an American family. Look how quickly it gets eaten away by a regular ICU stay.”
Amber shook her head quietly. Beside her, Jacob looked like he wanted to burn the world down.
“Over a two-week stay, which is the median, the costs of running our pod doesn’t even touch that line,” Nick said. “And I’m pleased to report that the modifications to the already-manufactured pods cost almost nothing and would come out even when producing new ones.”
“You’re kidding.” Amber flipped a page ahead and began to read, her brows drawn together in concentration. “Holy shit, you’re right.”
“I haven’t even reached the best part yet.” He grinned.
“You haven’t?” She looked up.
“Nope.” He put his folder on the table and leaned on his hands to fix them both with a smug look. “We have a whole set of research showing that things like our game could help bring people out of comas faster and recover more of their brain function.”
Amber frowned now. She and Jacob exchanged a look.
“I knew it was a theory,” Jacob said, “but I didn’t think it had been studied.”
“There was a huge study on it.” Nick couldn’t stop smiling. This alone had been worth the extra time. “
Dr. Dubois at American University. He went through an insanely rigorous process with neurosurgeons, psychiatrists, neuroscientists—the whole nine yards. They even did a set of very, very successful tests on mice.”
“Not…humans?” She raised an eyebrow. “Nick, I gotta say, I don’t think the mouse ICU market is all that big.”
“You’re not thinking of how many mice we could fit in one of those at a time,” Jacob objected.
“Oh, you make a good point.”
“Guys.” Nick laughed. “Focus. The results were all good. They were really good.”
“So why isn’t there already a product on the market?” Amber shrugged. “There must be something you didn’t see—”
“Well, you see, IterNext Corp was seeking approval at the same time for a different method of treating patients in comas.” He raised an eyebrow. “Somehow, out of nowhere…the FDA approval didn’t come through for Dubois.”
“Wait.” Jacob frowned at him. “Who blocked it?”
“Well, I don’t have any idea officially, but the head of the FDA accepted a real cushy post on the board of IterNext when he retired.” Nick shook his head.
“Fuck that.” His friend was furious. “They don’t get to do things like that! These are people’s lives they’re playing with. If we make this public—”
“Nothing will happen,” Amber said quietly.
Both men looked at her in surprise.
“Look.” She shrugged. “They can get away with things like that. It’s how it works in Washington. Money buys influence. That’s how it’s been forever.”
“And you’ll seriously simply give up because a few lobbyists—” Jacob’s voice was rising.
“I’m not giving up. I’m saying everyone who gets into congress winds up doing things like this!” She waved her hands to encompass the room to emphasize the idea of everyone. “Every election cycle, there’s a new set of people who will shake things up, and has the system changed at all? No. So before we go all-in on this, I want us to understand that we’re probably…tilting at a windmill.”
A long pause followed while the two men digested her statement.
“Where did you get windmills from?” Nick asked finally.
“It’s a reference,” Amber said wearily.
“To what?”
“I don’t know. My dad says it all the time.” She shrugged. “It means you’re doing something futile.”
“This isn’t futile, though.” Jacob stabbed a finger onto the sheet of paper. “This got blocked, okay? Sure. But that was before we had the resources we have now. Before people could do things like write a song about an airline destroying their guitar and have it go viral on Twitter and before people could dredge up videos and photos from decades ago and destroy someone’s whole career.”
“Your eyes are looking a little crazy,” Amber told him.
“Maybe we can’t change how politics works from inside the system,” Jacob said dangerously, “but we can sure as hell make a ton of people mad that there’s a cheap way to make people better and the FDA didn’t approve testing. It’s not like no one’s talking about this lately. We have our moment.”
“We don’t have any allies,” she pointed out wearily. “We can’t simply take this up ourselves. Who will we go to? This kind of thing needs someone to sponsor a bill. It needs someone to make calls. Most of all, it needs someone in the senate, and in case you haven’t noticed, we don’t have much spare cash lying around.”
Jacob leaned back in his chair for a moment, his jaw set. He shook his head angrily. “No. This isn’t the end of it. We don’t have a product, a problem, a solution, and research that backs it, all for nothing. Nick, can you get in touch with this Dubois guy?”
Amber shook her head in exasperation, but Nick wasn’t entirely sure what would happen if he told Jacob no right now. She was right. The man had a crazy look in his eye.
“What harm could it do to call him?” he asked her.
“Well, no harm yet, but….” She sighed. “Okay, have it your way. I’ll make more coffee. If we all get offed by big pharma lobbyists, I will haunt you two.”
“We’ll also be dead,” Nick pointed out as he dialed.
“I’ll find a way.” The look on her face was remarkably convincing.
He spun in his office chair as the phone rang. When he began to think Dr. Dubois had no answering machine, a brusque voice said, “Yes?”
“Uh. Hi.” He cleared his throat. “Is this Dr. Dubois?”
“Yes. Is this important? I was heading out.”
“Uh, I’ll be quick. Yes, it’s important.” Nick looked at the others and mouthed, “The doctor is in.” “I’m calling about your study on using low-level electric currents to stimulate brain activity.”
There was a long pause. “Are you a journalist?” Dubois asked finally.
“No. I’m an engineer.” Nick hesitated, then took the plunge. “My friends and I made a device that, it turns out, is very close to what you had envisaged. We recently found your research and we wanted to meet. We’re in the bay area, and—”
“Huh.” The doctor cut him off. “Send me your resume, kid, with schematics. I’ll get back to you.” He hung up without a goodbye.
Nick put the phone down carefully. “Well, he’s interesting. A little like Professor Elling at high speed.”
Amber raised her eyebrows.
“Guys?” Jacob turned the TV up. “Look at that for a second.”
Amber craned her neck to see better. The TV displayed a broadcast of footage taken from a chopper. Ambulances were crowded around a crumpled piece of metal that looked like it might once have been a car before it met a tree at high speed. Two pictures flashed on the screen. One was of a young woman with dark hair and a mischievous smile, captured in a candid photo. The other portrayed an uncomfortable-looking young man in a sport coat and tie, probably a senior class photo.
“Car accident?” she said. “None of us live near there, man.”
“Look who he is, though.” Jacob pointed to the text that scrolled across the bottom. THE PASSENGER, JUSTIN WILLIAMS, IS THE SON OF JUNIOR SENATOR TAD WILLIAMS. WILLIAMS, WHO WAS ELECTED IN 2018…
“Oh,” she said softly.
“Oh,” Jacob echoed. He gave her a determined look. “It seems we might have found our pull in the senate, doesn’t it?”
Chapter Four
Tad Williams had grown accustomed to thinking of his son as an overgrown child. At six feet two inches, with his father’s broad-shouldered build and a good education, Justin had all the makings of a good looking, successful man. He shouldn’t be living at home at the age of twenty-four, playing video games all day long with no earthly ambition.
The fact was that lately, he hadn’t even been able to look at his son without feeling annoyed.
It was amazing how quickly things changed. He looked at him now, lying still under the blankets of the hospital bed, and all he could think about was when he was still small enough to pick up. When he’d carried him to bed, his blond head pillowed on his shoulder, tiny arms around his neck, and eyes drooping.
He even looked small right now. His chest barely moved and his face was horrifying.
The doctors said they kept the lights dim so that if he woke, it wouldn’t be hard for him to open his eyes, but he suspected it was so that he and his wife couldn’t see how bad the bruising was. Half of Justin’s face looked almost purple, and another bruise was visible at the neck of his hospital gown—the seatbelt had probably made that one.
The doctor said his collarbone had been knocked out of place.
Why that was enough to make his heart squeeze, he didn’t know, but he fumbled blindly for Mary’s hand. When her fingers tightened around his, he looked at her and their eyes met.
Justin didn’t know it, but he wasn’t the only one with a lazy streak. At eighteen, all Tad had wanted to do with his life was work on cars and maybe get a job in the factory in town. He hadn’t cared much about college or a career.<
br />
That was until her father sat him down. He had thought he knew where the conversation was going, and he’d never been more wrong in his life.
“I think you like my Mary,” Harry had told him. “And she likes you. I like you too.”
Tad had smiled.
“We like you,” Harry had added, “because we know the man you could be. I think Mary would give anything to make you that man, Tad.” When he’d blinked, suddenly aware that this conversation was going sideways, Harry leaned forward and looked him right in the eyes. “I like you, Tad,” he’d said again. “And I like to think that if you woke up at forty-five and realized you’d made my daughter miserable because you never lived up to what she knew you could be, you’d hate that.”
Tad had braced for The Talk, the one all the boys his age expected—you hurt my little girl, and—
But all Harry had said was, “The thing is, Tad, Mary can’t ever make you that man. Only you can do that.” He’d clapped Tad on the shoulder and offered him a beer.
It was a story he had waited to tell Justin since he’d first learned he was having a son. He’d had ideas about him coming to him with girl problems, about throwing a football, about glowing reports from teachers and the young man’s ambitions—would he be a doctor? An entrepreneur? A lawyer?
But nothing had turned out like he wanted. The man he’d worked so hard to be had made his wife proud, but it hadn’t been enough of an example for his son.
Mary’s blue eyes were sad. She hadn’t cried yet and had held herself together, on the brink, until now. “You’re blaming yourself,” she said. She could always see what was happening inside his head.
Tad found he couldn’t say anything to that. His voice would break if he did.
“It’s not your fault,” she told him. “It’s hers.” Her voice had changed now. She looked at the bed with the angriest expression he’d ever seen on his wife’s face. Tears rolled down her cheeks at last, but her expression wasn’t one of grief.
It was one of rage.
“Ninety,” she said. Her face twisted at the number. “Ninety miles per hour and—”
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