The novel
In the fall of 2020, everyone is tired. Dr. Adrienne Hale has practiced internal medicine in Newport Beach long enough to tell a bad year from an illness, and long enough to trust a good treatment when one finally arrives.
The Halo is a small implant that sends gentle signals along the vagus nerve. It is approved for depression that nothing else has touched. The trial was clean. The approval was real. Her patients who receive it tell her they have never felt better.
Then Roland Petrossian, her patient of fifteen years, dies. The paperwork agrees with itself. Every explanation fits.
He will not be the last. The deaths come one at a time, years apart, each for a reason that makes perfect sense. Nobody is hiding anything. The company’s representative is careful and decent. The company’s systems are working exactly as designed. And the one person placed to see the pattern is the doctor who recommended the device.
A novel of medicine, certainty,
and what it costs to stay in the room.
From the file
The novel is told in chapters and in the records that follow them: event logs, support tickets, a press release, a report to the FDA. Each one is accurate. None of them is the whole thing.
HALO PROGRAM, EVENT RECORD Generated by RANDL Event ID: EV-2022-0616 Device: Aeon Halo · Serial ending 4471 Implanted: June 2021 · Prescribing physician on file Date of event: June 2022 Source: Field report Event: Motor vehicle accident (single vehicle) Outcome: Death Device interrogated: No Device-related: No Status: Closed
The first page
The fax came in at 6:40 in the morning, which was how she knew before she read it.
Nobody faxed good news.
(from the Prologue)
Read the Prologue and Chapter One, or listen to them narrated.
