Chapter 9: The Swab Drive

Darby found the woman in a day and a half.

She knew a paramedic who knew a nurse who knew the donor registry office in Oakland.

Every one of them wanted to help.

Nobody liked what had happened at the Fairmont.

Someone had posted the recording on the internet.

By Friday morning it had two million listens and a comment section I did not read.

The registry's office was on the second floor above a dry cleaner.

The woman who ran it was in her sixties.

She had reading glasses on a beaded chain and a mug that said World's Okayest Grandma.

She didn't look up when we came in.

"If you're here about the recording, I've said all I'm going to say," she said. "I don't talk to reporters."

"We're not reporters," Darby said. "My sister is the one on the recording."

Now she looked up.

I stood there with my hands in my coat pockets, and she took off her glasses.

"Oh, honey," she said. "Sit down."

Carl took the chair by the door and said he'd keep an eye on the stairs.

I sat across from her desk.

"Three years ago in May there was a swab drive outside a coffee shop in Lawrenceville," I said.

"I joined the registry there."

"I'd like to know who set up that drive, and who asked for my results."

She was quiet.

She picked up the mug and put it down.

"Results go to the person who got tested, and to nobody else," she said.

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