“The Tomahawk is what we call a health care desert,” Watt explained. “There just aren’t services there for the people who need them most. Let’s be honest, most of the time, an ambulance won’t even bother answering calls to the Tomahawk. On the one hand, I can’t blame them: people down there often refuse treatment, thinking they’ll end up in jail. On the other hand, it’s a disgrace. People die too often, and pointlessly—people like Floella. So we fund Common Dreams, and they service the places others won’t.”

“That’s very generous.”

“We take the idea of corporate citizenship seriously, Whitney. You don’t last in the health industry without building trust.”

“And Common Dreams,” I said, “they’re part of your trials?”

“In Floella’s case, yes. But if you asked Common Dreams what their day-to-day job looks like, I wonder if they’d even mention Rubicon. As far as they’re concerned, we just cut the checks.”

I scratched it all into my notes, wishing I hadn’t left my tape recorder in New York.

Watt eyed my notebook, hunched over the desk. “Look,” he said, “I got on the phone last night and put the feelers out to the top brass. They’re not completely, absolutely against talking about this in public. You can feel it on the tips of their tongues, you know? Whitney, how long are you staying here?”

“I’m supposed to fly back tomorrow.”

“There’s not a whole lot more I can tell you,” he said. “If you could open up my head, you’d find more questions than answers. But I’m sick of the secrecy too. Even my wife wonders what we’re doing. So I’m advocating hard for you, and I think it’s going to happen. I think I’m going to get you an interview with Dr. Kriss.”

THE SOLUTION

1.

The journalist from Vice shuts her copy of The Complete Bystander. The edge of daylight has traversed my office and she’s settled into the interview. Now there’s space for silence, like the one that falls over the two of us, the iPhone still recording on the desk.

“What made you want to be a journalist?” she asks.

It’s the right question at the right time. I’m pleased to be drawn away from the Bystander, all the way back to Los Angeles.

“It’s temperament before it’s anything else,” I answer. “My mom says I wanted to be a flight attendant. When I was ten or so, we took a plane to visit her relatives in Vancouver, and something about the nomadic life of flight attendants made a deep impression on me. I suppose I was attracted to drifting careers, where it’s never certain where you’ll be next week.”