Cell (35 page)

A WEEK LATER

BOULDER MEMORIAL HOSPITAL

AURORA, COLORADO

MONDAY, JULY 14, 2014, 11:37
A.M.

D
r. Paul Caldwell found a padded USPS envelope in his mail inbox. It stood out among what was mostly junk mail. Caldwell looked for a return address, but there was none. He noticed the postmark: Los Angeles. It was the only piece of mail he didn't throw into the recycling bin.

As he headed back to the emergency room, where he was the director, he tore open the envelope. Out dropped a second envelope with just his name hand-printed in large letters. He stooped down to pick it up. There was no return address on it, either. He began walking again, glancing back into the larger envelope. There was a single sheet of paper in it. He pulled out a short note in cursive script that looked as if it had been dashed off. Caldwell recognized the distinctive handwriting. It belonged to George Wilson, a radiology resident with whom he'd become acquainted. There had been considerable correspondence between them by snail mail and email over the previous year involving a mutual friend.

Paul stopped in the busy hospital corridor and read the note with a perplexed frown:

 

Hope all is well with you. This might sound weird, but I have a favor to ask. If you don't hear from me in let's say a week from the time you are reading this, try to text or call my mobile phone. The number is (917) 844-3289 in case you have misplaced it. If you don't get me, open the sealed envelope and read the contents, and then do whatever you think is best. As for me, I'll probably be committed to a private, highly secure mental health facility someplace up in the Hollywood Hills off Laurel Canyon Boulevard and would appreciate being, should we say, sprung! But don't try to do it alone. Bring the cavalry, meaning the media and law enforcement. And if I'm not there, then I'm probably dead. Let's hope I'm there! It's going to be an explosive story.

George.

P.S. Your job as you know it might be on the line!

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For a complete list of this author's books click here or visit www.penguin.com/cookchecklist

For those readers interested in delving deeper into the changes coming to the profession of medicine due to the convergence of informational technology, nanotechnology, and genomics, I heartily recommend the nonfiction book called:
The Creative Destruction of Medicine
by Eric Topol, M.D.

I was in the middle of writing
Cell
when I came across this fascinating work. The introduction alone impressed me with how closely the author's vision of the future of medicine and my own coincided. Reading the book enabled me to add some richness to
Cell
that it wouldn't have had otherwise.