When I open “moe,” I immediately recognize Mason’s handwriting. The page is dated December 5, 2001: the day of the bus crash.
Back when the program started, apparently God was paranoid about the Internet and made agents take notes on paper. Eventually, he got over his technophobia and had all of the paper files scanned in and then destroyed. But the handwritten notes are the most real. As I look at Mason’s harried scrawl, I actually feel how dire the situation was, much more than if I was reading a typed report.
“Wow,” I murmur.
“What?” Matt asks.
“Nothing, it’s just the handwriting,” I say. “It’s Mason’s, and it looks so… crazy.”
Matt nods, but he still looks confused. I point at the date.
“This was the day of the crash,” I explain. “The agents had to take quick notes between patients. I’m sure it was chaotic. And it had to be so frustrating for them. Mason and the others were supposed to bring twenty-one people back to life with only a syringe, and that’s it.”
Matt lets my words sink in for a few seconds. “But if the drug didn’t work, they tried other ways to save you guys, too, right?” he asks.
“No, that’s the point,” I say. “To truly test the drug, they could only use Revive. Like, they couldn’t even do CPR.”
“But…” Matt’s words fade.
“Can you imagine being a doctor and knowing all these lifesaving techniques and not being able to use them?” I ask.
“Kind of like having a sister with cancer and knowing about a lifesaving drug that she can’t have,” Matt says, staring right at me.
“I guess so,” I say quietly.
“Sorry,” Matt says.
“Don’t apologize. You’re right.”
Matt steers the conversation back to the screen. Or rather, he looks at the notes and starts reading. Not really knowing what else to say, I read, too.
CASE NUMBER: 16
NAME: KELSEY STROUD
AGE: 6
PARENTS: JONATHAN AND NANCY STROUD
(CONSENT GIVEN AT 9:17 AM)
LOCATION OF BODY: LODGED UNDER SEAT EIGHT (MIDDLE LEFT)
PRESUMED CAUSE OF DEATH: SEVERE HEAD TRAUMA (METAL OBJECT PENETRATED HEAD JUST ABOVE LEFT TEMPLE; SIGNIFICANT SUBSEQUENT BLOOD LOSS; GLASGOW COMA SCALE RATING 1 FOR VISUAL, VERBAL, MOTOR)
FIRST DOSAGE: ONE VIAL, 9:18 AM
REACTION: NONE
REPEAT DOSAGE: NONE
RECOMMENDATION: AUTOPSY TO DETERMINE DEFINITIVE CAUSE OF DEATH TO COMPARE AGAINST OTHER REACTIONS TO DRUG. TEST TISSUE AND HAIR SAMPLES FOR RESISTANT MARKERS DESPITE CLEAR INDICATORS THAT POINT TO HEAD TRAUMA AS COD. RELO PARENTS DESPITE FAILED ATTEMPT?
“Damn,” Matt says quietly, shaking his head.
“Sorry,” I say again. “I wanted to find one for someone who made it. I can’t really tell which file is for which kid.”
“What happened to her parents?” Matt asks, ignoring my apology. I swipe away the notes and open another file in Kelsey’s folder. It’s a signed oath. I close that and find the relo detail sheet: Mr. and Mrs. Stroud, who had no reason to go through a name change, now live in North Dakota. At last contact, in 2011, they were “functioning normally.”
Except that their daughter’s dead.
Matt doesn’t say anything more, so I open another folder. The first file is similar to the page of notes on Kelsey, but it’s for another bus kid, written by another agent.
CASE NUMBER: 20
NAME: NATHAN FRANCIS
AGE: 9
Presumed cause of death: Broken neck (X-ray confirmed cervical vertebrae crushed, consistent with vehicle accident; completely unresponsive)
First dosage: None
Reaction: None
Repeat dosage: None
“Damn,” Matt says again, more forcefully this time.
“I know,” I say, quickly closing the file, then tapping the air to open another. Thankfully, it’s for someone who responded to Revive: Gavin Silva, now Gavin Villarreal. I exhale loudly as I move my hands to page through details of his Revival and relocation to New York.
“I know him,” I say. “He’s super cool.”
“Oh, yeah?” Matt says weakly. I can tell he needs to hear some good news as much as, if not more than, I do.
“Yeah,” I say. “Revive worked for a lot of us. It gave us life.”
I feel like I just walked out of a haunted house: My nerves are frayed and I’m post-stress tired. I pause to regroup. Then I try to explain to Matt the pros of the Revive program.
“So, this guy, Gavin, is twenty-two now,” I say in a measured tone. “You’d like him; he’s really funny. He’s in art school and he does these insane drawings. He sent me one for my birthday last year…. It’s that one of the face, in my room?”
“Yeah, I saw it.”
“Anyway, Gavin’s life is way better now. Mason told me a few years ago that back in Bern, Gavin’s dad was physically abusing him. Like hitting him, but also putting out cigarettes on him.” I pause, shivering.
“That’s sick,” Matt says with a flash of anger in his eyes.
“It is,” I agree. “It’s terrible. He had it really rough. But the Revive program saved him from that.”
Matt’s eyebrows go up like he wants to hear more, so I keep talking.
“So, Gavin’s best friend was one of the ones who died. His name was Michael Dekas. Anyway, before the crash, I guess Michael’s parents started to suspect something was going on at Gavin’s house, but they could never get Gavin to fess up. Mason said they asked Gavin’s mom about it but she denied it, then didn’t let Gavin come to their house for a while.
“Anyway, then the crash happened. Michael didn’t respond at all to the drug; his parents were obviously devastated. But then when the agents went to try to Revive Gavin, they found all these burns on his body. There was no one there to claim him—his parents were in Canada, I guess—and the agents asked if any of the families there knew Gavin. The Dekases came forward, and when they saw the burns, they made a snap decision to volunteer to relocate with Gavin… as their son.”
“No way,” Matt says.
“It’s true,” I say. “The program saved Gavin’s life twice, in a way.”
“Yeah,” Matt agrees. “But you know, that’s also sort of kidnapping. It might be worse than the nun thing.”
“I guess,” I say, never having thought about it like that.
“But I still think it was the right thing to do,” Matt clarifies quickly. “I mean, how could they send a kid back to a guy who was using him as an ashtray?”
“Exactly,” I say, but it lacks conviction. Matt and I both get lost in our thoughts for a few minutes. On my mind are shades of gray. Many times, I’ve pondered the ways in which Gavin’s life is so much better now, but the one thing I haven’t considered before is his real mom, and what her circumstances were like then and now. It strikes me for the first time that the situation might not have been as morally black and white as I’ve always thought.
Maybe they should have found her and offered her a way out, too.
There’s a gnawing inside me that feels like guilt: guilt for second-guessing the program that gave me a life and a home. I move on from Gavin’s story, at least on the outside.