I called the number for the reporting officer, but it went to voicemail. I left a message, expecting that I would have to keep calling until I finally reached him. I dialed the hospital next, and, after several transfers, spoke with the head nurse on the floor where my father had been treated. She confirmed that my father had walked out without a doctor’s discharge or anyone noticing.
“How does that happen?” I asked, pretty frustrated by that point. “Don’t you have security?”
Her voice was brittle. “We do have security, sir. But we’re not jailors. We can’t keep people against their or their caregivers’ will.”
“He had Alzheimer’s! He was on a twenty-four-hour patient watch.”
“Not on the morning he left. That watch had been canceled.”
“By whom?”
“I can’t share those details with you.”
I was incredulous. “My mentally handicapped father is missing, and you can’t share the details of his disappearance?”
“Sir, I’m sorry you can’t locate your father, but under patient privacy laws I’m not permitted to reveal any information from his medical records, including the timing and reasons he was removed from medical watch.”
“Did my brother cancel it? Paul Johns?” I didn’t remember for certain, but it was quite possible that, as the oldest son, Paul had been given power of attorney for my father’s care decisions. He was clever and manipulative, though, so maybe he wouldn’t even have needed it.
“I’m not at liberty to reveal—”
“Yeah, I heard you,” I said. “What if I told you I was going to sue your hospital for letting a mentally ill Alzheimer’s patient wander off the grounds?” It wasn’t exactly fair—my father had, after all, shown every sign of being cured of his Alzheimer’s before I left. But she didn’t know that, and I was angry that she didn’t seem to care. The point was, he was missing. For all that I knew, his Alzheimer’s had returned as quickly as it had gone, and he was wandering the streets with no memory of who he was or how to find his way home.
The phone went quiet. I thought she might have hung up on me until a different woman’s voice spoke. “Mr. Johns?”
“Yes.”
“My name is Indira Sengupta. I’m legal counsel here at the medical center. I understand you are trying to acquire information about your father.”
“My father is missing. He’s been missing ever since he walked out of your hospital. I’m not trying to ‘acquire information.’ I’m trying to determine if he’s even still alive.” I realized my voice was getting louder and the passengers sitting around me on the plane were staring, but I didn’t care. “When he turns up dead, hit by a car or drowned in the river, I’m going to tell the story to every news media this side of the Mississippi. Is that the kind of publicity you want? Not to mention the millions I’ll pull in from the lawsuit.”
“According to his file, we acted according to the express wishes of the family.”
“Yeah? And, in your professional legal opinion, do you think that’s going to make any difference in court?”
“Mr. Johns, please. I—”
“What I want is to find out what state of mind and health my father was in when he left, as well as any indication anyone has of where he might have gone. I want this to be treated like an emergency, because as far as I’m concerned, it is an emergency. You don’t just let an Alzheimer’s patient wander away.”
“He didn’t wander away,” Sengupta said, and there was some steel in her voice now. “He left under the supervision of a family member with legal responsibility for his care.”
“How do you know? Were you there?”
“The records—”
“You mean the ones you won’t let me see?”
“I’m not saying that you can’t see them. Over the phone, however, without any identification, I can’t share anything with you. For your father’s own safety—”
“Let me tell you what you’re going to do,” I said. “My mother will come to the front desk of the hospital in one hour. You will meet her there, personally, with a complete copy of my father’s medical record, which as his spouse she is perfectly within her rights to demand.”
“Legally, the hospital has fifteen days to comply with any request for—”
“Do you have a photocopier?”
“What? Yes.”
“And you have access to my father’s patient record?”
“Yes, I do, but…”
“Then walk over to the machine, press the big green button, and make some copies. Say the words ‘fifteen days’ again, and my next call is to the Washington Post.”
I heard a deep sigh from the other end of the phone. “All right, Mr. Johns. If your mother can demonstrate her legal right to the information, I will give her a copy of the record in question at the front desk in one hour’s time.”
“Don’t be late,” I said, and slammed the phone into its cradle hard enough that the person sitting in the seat in front of me probably felt the jolt. To my surprise, the passengers nearby broke into light, spontaneous applause.
I collapsed back into my seat and caught my breath before calling my mother and asking her to meet Ms. Sengupta at the hospital. Then I closed my eyes and thought. Where might Paul have taken him? Why did they leave? Could they have gone to see my sister? It seemed like a longshot, but I called Julia anyway. I found that Mom had already talked to her, but Julia hadn’t seen or heard from either my father or Paul.
It seemed likely that their disappearance had to do with the influence of the fungus infiltrating their brains. But it wasn’t clear to me yet just how that influence worked. My brother had talked about it remapping his brain for greater efficiency. But whatever control it wielded, it worked so subtly that its victims seemed unaware of it. Perhaps the genius of the fungus was not in its ability to implant specific thoughts, but in steering the host into using his or her own sophisticated problem-solving ability in its favor.
Humans are driven by emotion. Much of our so-called logic is merely the rationalization of choices that make us feel good. For one person, a fast car might create feelings of power and control that drove away fears of not measuring up. For another, a sports jersey or a telescope or a scale model of the Star Trek Enterprise might evoke associations of acceptance by a group of friends. Walking into a church could prompt feelings of safety and belonging, or else it might spark painful emotions of past hurts, and thus would be avoided at all costs. Emotions were often subtle, operating under the surface of our awareness, influencing our purchases, our choice of career or spouse, our home decor and style of interaction. The logic came afterward, a scaffolding we erected to support the decisions we already wanted to make.
What if, besides streamlining our neural pathways, the fungus was hacking our emotions? It would be the perfect way for a non-intelligent creature to influence an intelligent one. Instead of controlling thoughts and decisions directly—a feat that would require the complex coevolution of an organism specifically designed to target the human brain—it could simply adjust brain chemistry and let the host do the sophisticated part on its own.
All this was just theory, though, a pattern I was trying to map on the points of data I had. When it came down to it, I was a cryptologist and mathematician, not a biologist. I needed someone who actually understood the workings of the brain and what a fungal infection might reasonably evolve to do. Someone who could tell me if my theories made any sense, and if so, what that would mean for my father and brother. And for that matter, for the world.
I picked up the phone again and called the hospital. This time, I asked to be connected to Dr. Mei-lin Chu. Chu was the fungal infection specialist who had treated Paul at the hospital and prescribed his medication and apparently had been involved with Dad’s care as well. She had, at least, seen the infection at work and would have medical and biological insights I didn’t have.