On he read, as invitations from J.R. to housestaff get-togethers and pharmaceutical-sponsored dinners were repeatedly declined or ignored altogether.
At the end of January there was an email from Massachusetts General Hospital offering Ryan’s dad a spot on the faculty. “I knew it!” Ryan whispered aloud, pumping his fist with a conflicting sense of pride and sorrow at the sight of it. His parents had never told him. Prescott had announced that his dad had accepted a job at Harvard the day AVEX had opened, Ryan recalled, but he had never known if that was really true until now.
His dad had forwarded it on to his mom with the subject line, “Got it!” The body of the email started, “I guess Little Ryan’s going to have to go to a new school next year (and J.R.’s going to have to find a new best friend.)”
A few days later J.R. had sent a message to Ryan Sr., telling him that he still hadn’t heard anything back from Harvard, wondering if Ryan Sr. had heard anything, to which Ryan’s dad replied, “I got an offer. I’m thinking about taking it. Michelle’s still waiting to hear about the job at Boston Children’s. Good luck. Would suck to lose my partner in crime.”
J.R. didn’t send another correspondence for the next week. His next message had the subject “Jobs” and read, “I’ve been thinking about it, and I really think we should just stay here. I talked to Dr. Easterbrook. He definitely wants us stay. Positions are there if we want them. Think about it.” There was no reply.
A slew of email invitations to get together to study followed, mostly rejected but with just enough accepted, so as not to seem rude.
In early March a fairly long thread began with the subject “Location.” It started with an email from J.R. to Ryan Sr.: “Hey Ryan, can you to turn the ‘share location’ feature on your phone on, so we can meet up if we’re in the same area. I turned mine on.”
Ryan Sr. then forwarded it on to Michelle with the addendum “UGH!” The following day, he replied to J.R. that he didn’t want everyone knowing where he was all the time, claiming he was worried that he’d probably be tracked down by some crazy patient.
Later that day Ryan’s mom had responded, “Do what you want, but it’ll probably only be a problem until late June. I got the job at Boston Children’s! We’re going to Boston! (and J.R.’s not!)”
Meanwhile J.R. was left pleading with Ryan Sr., “You can choose who you want to see it. You could just allow me and Michelle.”
Days passed as Ryan’s dad tried to kill the issue with a series of claims that showing his location would max out his data usage on his wireless plan, that his phone didn’t support the function, and then finally that he just couldn’t figure out how to turn the feature on. Each time, J.R. replied with detailed solutions to the “problems,” some of which involved a considerable time investment on his part.
Finally at the end of the thread, six days before he died, Ryan Sr. appeared to have caved. “I got it working,” he wrote. “My location is no longer a mystery.”
The final email chain from J.R. was dated March 15th, the day before the crash. “Hey Ryan, last chance to stay in Cleveland! Dr. Easterbrook is going to finalize those two faculty slots by the end of the week. We could own this town for the next 30 years…”
“Would be awesome,” read the reply, “but we’re headed to Boston. It’s finalized at this point. You’ll have to come visit once we get moved in.”
“That’s a shame,” J.R. wrote back. “I’ll miss you. You have been a great friend.”
Curious that he’d use the present perfect tense, “have been a great friend” — instead of the simple present “are a great friend,” Ryan thought. No, not curious. Suspicious.
A steadily intensifying tingling sensation in his lower legs gradually woke Corbett from a sound sleep. Still sitting upright in his office chair, he rolled his ankles back and forth and then stomped his numb feet on the ground, trying to beat the sensation back into them. His windowless interior office was completely black, providing no clue as to what time of day it was or how long he’d been asleep.
Still somewhat disoriented, he fumbled around his desktop eventually bumping into his mouse, which woke his monitor from sleep mode and illuminated the room. It had only been two hours. But he had a new email from Bradford marked urgent with a file attached.
“You need to address this now!” the message read. Corbett could almost hear Bradford yelling it at him.
He clicked on the attachment to open it and then rotely clicked away the annoying warning message that popped up cautioning him to download attachments only from trusted sources. Just as he did, he was struck with an intense panic — a split second too late. He’d already released the mouse button. The file was downloaded.
A text file opened: “Turnabout is fair play. I would suggest you give up this line of investigation you’re pursuing. I’m not working alone. You’re in way over your head, and you seem to have just downloaded something that you won’t know how to deal with. Bradford isn’t going to be happy if he finds out. Of course this could all stop right here. It’s up to you…”
It was probably a bluff. But he had no other option than to leave the decision on how to proceed to Bradford.
Was it too much to ask for just one thing to go right? Now instead of being praised for his diligence, once again he was going to get reamed. With a pit in his stomach, he trudged over to Bradford’s office.
His knuckles hesitated a few inches from Bradford’s door, his eyes closed and his head hanging down almost to his chest as he weighed how he should break the news.
“What are you doing?” Bradford asked loudly, walking up behind him.
Corbett jumped. “Uh, I was just coming over to discuss something with you,” he said, unshaven and looking generally disheveled from spending the better part of two days in his office.
“You look like hell,” Bradford noted, opening his door. “Come in. You’ve got five minutes. I have to get to a meeting with Mr. Prescott.” (Bradford was the only person in the company who addressed the CEO by his first name, but when referencing him to another employee, he always called him Mr. Prescott.)
“Oh. Well perhaps I should just come back when you have more time,” Corbett sputtered.
“When I say I’ve got five minutes, that’s a lot of my time to dedicate to you. Now get on with on it.”
“Well, I’ve got good news and bad news. Mostly good actually…”
“You still haven’t said anything! Spit it out! I’m perfectly capable of making a determination of whether news is good or bad.”
“Yes, of course. In reference to that email you sent out with the corrupted attachment, well, it was downloaded, and I captured the IP address of the snoop in our system. So far I’ve narrowed his location down to the MIT campus. I should have his exact location, and hopefully his identity, by the end of the day today.”
Bradford smiled as his eyes narrowed.
“Now, to get this information,” Corbett continued with a tremulous voice, “I had to sit at my desk, monitoring my computer very closely for more than 24 hours straight with only brief breaks to run to the bathroom.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Bradford groaned, rolling his eyes. “We all have to work long hours sometimes.”