# The Case of the Perfect Delivery Show: Adverse Events · Lead: Connie Chase · Draft 1 > **This is the script.** The build is `podcast-perfect-delivery.html`, generated from this file. > Write here; the build is disposable. Run-sheet and production notes live in the > build only. > > Format: `##` opens a scene · `>` is a sound cue · `**CAPS**` is a speaker · > everything else is speech · blank line between paragraphs · `*(beat)*` inline. --- ## COLD OPEN — 0:20 **CONNIE (V.O.)** Forty messages. Every one of them sent. Every one of them delivered. Not a word back in six weeks. > — music sting — **ANNOUNCER** Adverse Events. From the case files of Dr. Tracy Grant, who writes the protocol, and Connie Chase, who makes it happen. **ANNOUNCER** The story you are about to hear is fiction. Any resemblance to your last study is purely coincidental and entirely predictable. **ANNOUNCER** *The Case of the Perfect Delivery.* --- ## SCENE ONE — AN OFFICE > a wall clock, loud the way a clock only is in an empty room · index cards set down one at a time · a keyboard, unhurried **CONNIE (V.O.)** The SIGNAL trial. Twelve weeks of nightly texts about how far you walked, for sixty people who put their hand up at a clinic. Put their hand up on a piece of paper, because paper interest cards are what the IRB approved back in the spring, and amending study materials takes longer than the study does. So that's how they arrive. Sixty cards. Sixty handwritings. One evening, one desk, one lamp, and me. > a card laid down · another Some people print. Some people write like they're being timed. One fella did his in pencil, which I have opinions about. Number thirty-one did hers in block capitals, the way you'd fill out a form that mattered. Put a note in the margin asking whether it would still help if she couldn't manage all twelve weeks. Most people ask about the gift card. She asked about the science. > the keyboard again, steady Sixty numbers, ten digits apiece, typed in off the cards by yours truly. Last one went in a little after eleven. > — music bridge, four bars, then under — ## SCENE TWO — THE SAME OFFICE > no clock · a printer running · a phone ringing two desks over **CONNIE (V.O.)** Six weeks in, my phone rang, and for once it was somebody I wanted to talk to. > handset lifted **CONNIE** SIGNAL study, this is Connie. > a voice on the line — warm, indistinct, never words **CONNIE** You haven't? *(beat)* Not one? > the voice again, longer **CONNIE** No. No, you haven't done a thing wrong. Let me look into it and call you straight back. > handset down **CONNIE (V.O.)** She apologized twice before she hung up. For our mistake. Which I didn't know was a mistake yet. > — music bridge, two bars — ## SCENE THREE — THE INVESTIGATION > doors, footsteps, then fewer of them · a keyboard, faster now **CONNIE (V.O.)** First thing you check is whether she's actually in the study. People fall off a roster the way change falls out of a coat pocket — quietly, and always when you need it. She was on it. Day one. Consented, randomized, every box in ink. > a filing drawer Second: whether the messages went at all. I pulled the log braced for a wall of red. Forty rows. Sent. Delivered. Sent. Delivered. Green as a golf course and about as interesting. Third: the phone itself. Broken, dead, out of contract, at the bottom of a lake. It happens more than you'd think, and it's the only suspect in this business you can rule out by asking one question. I'd already asked it, while she was on the line. The phone was on the table in front of her. Six weeks, and it had never once made a sound. > a chair pushed back · footsteps to a cabinet Which left the suspect I'd been walking around all afternoon. Yours truly. So I went and got her card out of the file. > — music bridge, two bars — ## SCENE FOUR — THE REVELATION > a card set flat on a desk · a chair drawn in **CONNIE (V.O.)** I'd been staring at that card and her record on the screen for the better part of an hour. Everything was jake. I was about to give up. Dr. Grant was still in her office, which at that hour is its own kind of confession. > a door · a chair creaking somewhere down the hall **CONNIE** Still here. **TRACY** Still here. **CONNIE** Can I get you anything? Coffee from the machine on four? **TRACY** There's a lot of things on four. Coffee is a stretch. > a beat · Connie sits down without being asked **CONNIE** So. Remember the Halloran fiasco? That was a stitch, wasn't it? *Ha!* > a long beat · a keyboard, somewhere, stopping **TRACY** What can I do for you. **CONNIE** Pull up SIGNAL. Participant thirty-one. > keys · a pause **TRACY** All right. I've got her. **CONNIE** Read me what you've got on her. **TRACY** All of it? **CONNIE** Just the number. **TRACY** Five five five. Three one four. One nine six one. > a card lifted off the desk **CONNIE** Five five five. Three one four. One nine one six. > HOLD — three full seconds · nothing but the room **TRACY** Connie? **CONNIE** Aw, nuts. > a chair pushed back · the card set down **CONNIE (V.O.)** My heart sank like a wedding ring dropped down a deep well, clanging off every side on the way to the bottom. Five hundred and ninety-eight digits of perfect data entry. Two digits of disaster. And here's the trouble with two digits. They don't give you a broken number. They give you a different one. > a handset lifted · a number dialed slowly · ring · ring · click **RECORDED VOICE** You've reached Dale. Leave it after the beep. > the beep · a long pause · the handset set down without a word **CONNIE (V.O.)** Dale. Two counties over. Six weeks of nightly advice about his step count, delivered on schedule, every evening at eight, and not once did he write back to ask what any of us wanted from him. I hope he got his ten thousand in. > — music bridge, two bars — ## SCENE FIVE — THE CALL > traffic through a window · a kettle somewhere **CONNIE (V.O.)** I called the right number first thing. > dial · ring · pickup **CONNIE** It's Connie, from the SIGNAL study. I've finally got the right number for you — and I'm sorry it took us this long. > the voice — surprised, then warm **CONNIE** No — thank *you* for your patience. Goodbye. > handset down · a breath Keeping it from happening to the next one took about a minute, and there's nothing clever in it. Nobody enters a number alone now. One reads, one types, one initials — same as you'd handle a dose. Which, if you're keeping score, is exactly how I found it. Took me six weeks and a PI who hadn't gone home to work out that two sets of eyes beat one, every time, for free. The other fix isn't mine to make. As long as the front door is paper, somebody in this building is transcribing, and somebody who transcribes is going to swap two digits eventually. That's not a character flaw. That's arithmetic. > a card filed away Six weeks of her data, gone with the wind. Six weeks still to come. Nobody writes a paper about the half you saved. > — music — **ANNOUNCER** This has been *The Case of the Perfect Delivery.* --- ## SIGN-OFF — 0:30 > — music up — **ANNOUNCER** Dr. —— appeared as the Voice of Dale. **ANNOUNCER** Adverse Events is brought to you by Software for Research. For those who love discovery more than data entry. **ANNOUNCER** And even though the participants would like it noted that they did not consent to any of this whenever they hear us: this is Adverse Events. > — music out —