The Case of the Loose Wire

COLD OPEN

CONNIE (V.O.)Some informants are loyal. Some aren't.

And some are, even when they aren't.

— music sting —

ANNOUNCERWelcome to Adverse Events. Transcribed stories from the case files of Dr. Tracy Grant, who writes the protocol, and Connie Chase, who makes it all happen.

ANNOUNCERThe story you are about to hear is fiction. Any resemblance to your last study is purely coincidental and entirely predictable.

ANNOUNCERAnd now: The Case of the Loose Wire.

SCENE ONE — THE EQUIPMENT ROOM

a crate dragged across a floor · a lid off · small hard objects turned over in a box · a wrist strap pulled tight, then released

CONNIE (V.O.)The VIGIL trial. Variability In Gait, Independence and Living. The acronym came first. Like it always does.

But really it's just 60 people agreeing to wear a watch.

a strap again · a buckle

Well not a watch exactly. The thing we give them doesn't tell you the time and it won't tell you anything else either. You put it on a wrist, it counts, and twelve weeks later you take it off and find out what it thought of you.

Sixty of them came in a crate the size of a footlocker. Sixty little cradles to charge them in. Sixty instruction cards, printed by somebody in this building whose name I never got.

a card off a stack

Two lines on the card. Wear it every day. Charge daily.

That's the whole card. I have read it maybe four hundred times since, and it is still two lines, and it is still wrong, and you cannot see what's wrong with it by reading it.

a drawer

Number thirty-one picked hers up on a Tuesday. Asked me which wrist. Asked me whether it minded water. Asked me what happened if she forgot, and I said nobody's ever going to be cross with you, Mrs. Ruiz, we just want to know how the week actually went.

She wrote that down. On the card. In pen.

— music bridge, four bars, then under —

SCENE TWO — THE TURN

a printer running long · pages falling into a tray · the printer stopping

CONNIE (V.O.)Every fourth Friday the units come back in, get read out, and turn into a stack of paper about an inch thick.

One line per person. Percent of the day the thing was on a wrist. That number is the whole ball game, because the analysis plan says under seventy percent and you come out of the study, and a number written into a plan is not a number anybody argues with on a Friday.

pages turned, several at a time

Fifty-nine people between eighty and ninety-six.

the turning stops

Thirty-one. Seventy-four.

Four points off the edge of the world.

— music bridge, two bars —

SCENE THREE — THE INVESTIGATION

a radiator knocking · no printer · a chair, and no other chair

CONNIE (V.O.)Now. You don't go straight at a person. Not first. First you brace the machine, because a machine has no feelings to hurt and no reason to be polite to you about it.

a unit set on a desk · a cradle · a small click as it seats

So I got her unit off the rack and gave it the third degree. Twice.

Battery: fine. Memory: fine. Clock eleven seconds slow across a month, which is nothing. That unit was in better shape than I was, and it clammed up like it had a lawyer coming.

a handset lifted · a number dialed

So I went over its head and called the people who built it.

ring · click

RECORDED VOICEThank you for calling technical support. Your call is important to us. Please have your unit serial number, your firmware revision and your institutional account number ready before speaking to a representative. Your estimated wait time is longer than forty minutes.

the hold music starts · the handset set down on the desk, still playing, and left there

CONNIE (V.O.)Forty minutes isn't a wait. Forty minutes is a brush-off.

I let it play anyway. Seemed like company.

the hold music continues, faintly, under the rest of the scene

Second suspect: us. Sixty units, one rack, one download cable, a coordinator with a clipboard doing forty of them in an afternoon. Plenty of room in there for somebody's hands to get crossed.

So I went through our story looking for the hole in it. Every unit, every visit, initialed and dated. Then I slipped her a ringer, a different unit off the rack entirely, which is what you do when you're out of ideas and would rather look busy than beaten.

pages, the same sound as before

Four weeks. New unit. Seventy-four percent.

the hold music, still going

Our story checked out. The machine's story checked out. Which leaves the third suspect, and there is always a third suspect, and it is always a person.

a handset picked back up, the hold music suddenly loud, then set down again, still playing

Sixty people on that roster and I could tell you what every one of them does for a living. Number thirty-one is the one who wrote on her card.

But I'd been at this six weeks, and the plan said seventy, and she said seventy-four, and I had a report going upstairs on Monday.

— music bridge, two bars —

SCENE FOUR — THE OFFICE

a door · a chair down the hall · paper set on a desk

CONNIE (V.O.)Dr. Grant was still in, which is how I knew it was after seven without looking.

CONNIEDo you know what the record is? For holding.

TRACYHolding what.

CONNIEThe telephone. I've got a handset down in equipment that has been playing the same thirty seconds of music since the third week of April.

TRACYHang it up.

CONNIEAnd lose my place?

TRACYYou don't have a place. There's no line. Nobody cares.

CONNIESomebody cares.

TRACYNobody cares.

CONNIEThey said my call was important to them.

TRACYI'm sure they did.

CONNIESomebody's gonna pick up, and I intend to be there when they do.

TRACYWell, okay then.

CONNIEHey, do you remember the Halloran fiasco? Now that was a situation, wasn't it?

TRACYConnie. What do you need.

CONNIEI've got a name to put on the drop list and I don't like it.

TRACYThirty-one.

CONNIESeventy-four. Twice. Two different units.

TRACYThen it isn't the unit.

CONNIEThat's what I keep telling myself. It's not the unit, it's not us, so I'm all out of suspects and the last one on the list is a sixty-two-year-old woman who wrote which wrist on her instruction card in pen.

a beat

TRACYSeventy is a threshold, Connie. It is not a judgment about her.

CONNIEIt's going to read like one in the paper.

TRACYIt will, yes.

TRACYCall her.

CONNIEAnd ask her what? Whether she's been lying to me for ten weeks?

TRACYAsk her what she does with it. You have been asking the equipment for six weeks. It has told you everything it knows.

— music bridge, two bars —

SCENE FIVE — THE CALL

a phone dialed · ring · ring · pickup · a television turned down somewhere behind the voice

CONNIEMrs. Ruiz? It's Connie, from the university. Is this a rotten time?

the voice on the line — warm, unhurried, never words

CONNIENo, nothing's wrong. Nothing at all. I'm being nosy, is all. Can you walk me through your day with it? From getting up.

the voice, going on a while

CONNIEUh huh. And it stays on for all that?

the voice again

CONNIEEven the shower. Good for you.

the voice, shorter

CONNIEAnd then at night?

the voice · and underneath it, small and clear, a click

CONNIEMrs. Ruiz, what was that?

the voice, cheerful, brief

CONNIEThat's the charger.

HOLD — three full seconds · the television behind the voice · nothing else

CONNIENo. No, you did exactly right. You did exactly what the card said.

handset down, slowly

CONNIE (V.O.)Charge daily.

Two words on a card, and not one of them was when.

She plugged it in when she went to bed, because that is when a sensible person plugs a thing in, and she took it off the charger when she got up, because that is when a sensible person takes a thing off a charger.

Eleven at night to five in the morning. Six hours. Every night, without fail, for ten weeks, because she is the kind of woman who does what the card says.

a pen · a line drawn on paper

Eighteen hours out of twenty-four is seventy-five percent. There is your seventy-four. It was never a slope. It was a rectangle, and I had been looking at it every fourth Friday since April.

— music bridge, two bars —

SCENE SIX — THE CHANGE

a window open · traffic · the hold music, still going · a crate again, and cards off a stack

CONNIE (V.O.)Here is the part I'd like on the record.

The most reliable person in that study read exactly like the least. Not close to it. Identical. A woman who never once forgot, and a woman who'd quietly given up on us in week three, come off that printer as the same number, and there is nothing in the number that tells you which one you're holding.

a card set down · a pen

So I wrote a third line on the card. Charge it after breakfast. Four words, felt-tip, sixty cards, one evening.

And I put a question in the week-one call, which is the fix I'd actually defend, because the card only helps the people who get the new card. Not do you understand. Not any questions. When are you going to charge it. Ask somebody how they're going to do a thing and they'll tell you. Ask them if they understand and they'll say yes, because they're polite, and because they do. She understood it perfectly. That was the trouble.

a drawer, and cards going into it

Ten weeks of her nights are gone and I can't get them back. She finished the study. She's in the numbers.

Nineteen years I've been doing this, and I'd have signed that drop list.

the crate lid

Nobody ever writes a card wrong on purpose. They just write it on a Tuesday, for somebody they've never met, and leave out the one word that turns out to be the whole thing.

the hold music stops · a click · a voice on the line at last, brisk and unintelligible

CONNIETechnical support. (beat) No, thank you, we're all set. It was never your machine, it was the card.

one short question, unintelligible

CONNIEDon't mention it. You were about five weeks light.

the receiver down · traffic through the open window

— music —

SIGN-OFF

ANNOUNCERThis has been The Case of the Loose Wire.

Dr. —— appeared as the Voice of Technical Support.

Adverse Events is brought to you by Software for Research. For those who love discovery more than data entry.

And even though the data safety monitoring board recommends we stop immediately whenever they hear us say it: this is Adverse Events.

— music out —