At the hospital, teams of doctors worked on the couple who had been brought in by ambulance from the house where they had been found unconscious. They gave them IVs and steroids and antibiotics and X-rays and MRIs and EKGs and glucose and biopsies and everything else they could think of.1 Meanwhile, in the administration office of the hospital, there was a flurry of confusion.
“This makes no sense,” the hospital director said. He picked up one of the two wallets that were lying on his desk. “They both have medical insurance cards, but the insurance company says they’ve never heard of them.”
“And I called the address on their driver’s licenses,” the assistant hospital administrator said. “It’s a very nice house—I drive past it every day on my way to work—but the woman who answered said her name is O’Leary and her family has lived there for years. She’s never heard of— What was the name again?” She picked up one wallet, peered at the ID, and said, “Willoughby.”
“There are credit cards,” the secretary said. “But they’ve all expired years ago. I called the Mastercard number, but they thought I was nuts. And no, they won’t cover the hospital bill.”
The chief administrator turned to the young EMT who had driven the ambulance. “Explain again where you found them.”
The EMT repeated the address. “It’s a very strange little house. I wouldn’t even call it a house, really—it’s so tiny. The shutters are a nice freshly painted blue, and you could tell that ordinarily, when no one has been vomiting everywhere, it’s very tidy. But there’s a straw hat hanging on the door. And the refrigerator makes a grinding noise—eeew, eeew, eeew—as if it has pulmonary problems.”
“And this couple lives there?”
“No, the woman who lives there, a Mrs. Poore, said they were her guests. But she didn’t really know them. She wasn’t even sure of their names.”
“The drivers’ licenses both say Willoughby.”
“I know. But this Mrs. Poore? She says that the name they told her was something else. An alias, I guess.”
A police officer was standing in the doorway, listening. He hadn’t been paying much attention because it wasn’t a homicide or a burglary—those were the things that interested him. But now he straightened his shoulders and stepped forward. “Alias?” he said. “Did someone say alias? That’s my department!” He took a small notebook from his pocket, wrote ALIAS in large letters and waited, poised, for more information.
“And there’s a problem,” the EMT went on.
“Definitely my department,” the police officer said, and began to write: PROBLEM.
“The thing is,” the EMT explained, “according to the DOB—”
“What’s that mean? DOB?” the police officer asked, his pencil waiting.
“Date of birth.”
The police officer wrote that down.
The EMT continued. “According to the DOB on the licenses, they should be sixty-something. Close to seventy.”
“They’re not close to seventy. No way.” The young doctor who had seen the couple in the emergency ward stepped forward.
“No, they’re way younger,” the EMT agreed. “I’d say thirties, tops.”
At her desk, the secretary tapped the keys on her computer. “I’m going to Google them,” she said. “Tell me the names again.”
The administrator picked up the wallets. “Willoughby,” he said, looking at the first one. “Henry, and—” He opened the second wallet. “Some soggy money in here. Foreign, it looks like. Here’s the name: Frances.”
Everyone waited. The secretary typed in the names. After a pause, she looked up, her eyes wide. “Whoa,” she said. “I got an obituary! They’re dead! Both of them!”
“Dead?” the policeman repeated, and began writing in his notebook. “My department for sure!”
“They’re not dead! They both had pulses,” the EMT said. “I took them myself. And blood pressures.”
The secretary read from the screen. “Died in Switzerland. Mountain climbing accident.”
The assistant administrator said, “I climbed Mount Washington once,” he said. “In New Hampshire? But I was way younger then.”
“Oh, be quiet,” said his boss. “What else does it say?” He turned to his secretary.
“This is weird.” She looked up, puzzled. “That accident was thirty years ago.”
At that moment the office door opened and a white-coated man appeared. “Sorry to interrupt,” he said. “But I thought you should have this information.”
He handed a clipboard thick with papers to the administrator. “I’m from Pathology,”2 he explained.
“Spell that,” said the police officer, and then listened carefully to the spelling. He added PATHOLOGY to his notebook page.
“The thing is,” the pathologist said, “we’ve been looking at these slides down in the path lab. They’re from that couple that was biopsied in the ER.”
“Henry and Frances Willoughby,” the secretary said. “I just Googled them. And—”
“They were frozen.”
“That’s what the obituary says,” the secretary, still looking at her computer screen, explained. “Frozen solid. They were inadequately dressed, and the temperature was—”
The administrator interrupted her. He turned to the pathologist. “You mean that you took the biopsied material and froze it to make slides for your microscope?”
“No, I mean—”
“Hold it,” said the police officer. “I’m getting this down. Frozen, you say? Same as the movie? My kid loves that movie. She’s always singing—” He began to sing the words. “Let it gooooo . . .”
The pathologist interrupted him. “Would you shut up?” he said. “What I mean is that the cell structure indicates that the tissues themselves, long before we got the specimens, had been frozen. And then, at some later time, defrosted.”
The room fell silent.
“Would insurance cover that?” someone asked.