“The same reason I put off talking with Dr. Mason for the last M&M,” Noah said. “I’m a coward.”
“I can understand,” Ava said. “It could be almost as bad as talking with Dr. Mason. He is not as narcissistic, but they share some of the same personality traits.”
“I know. That’s the reason I’ve put off having the meeting.”
“But it is important to know his mind-set,” Ava said. “I’d like to know if he’s still mad.”
“Me, too,” Noah said. “Have you heard anything from Dr. Kumar to make you think that Dr. Jackson complained to him?”
“Not a thing.”
“Okay, good,” Noah said. “I think his threats to talk with our bosses was just his venting in the heat of the moment. Dr. Hernandez hasn’t said anything to me, either. Best-case scenario is that Dr. Jackson realizes some of the blame falls on his shoulders. If that’s true, we are in a far better position than with Dr. Mason.”
“We need to find out how he feels to plan your presentation,” Ava said. “When do you think you will be talking with him?”
“Now that you’ve reminded me, I’ll try to do it tomorrow.”
“I hate to be pushy, but it could be important.”
Eager to change the subject, Noah said, “The first time I was here, when you were showing me your fabulous computer setup, you said something interesting after admitting how much you enjoyed social media and how much time you spend doing it. You said it’s allowed you to learn more about yourself than if you’d done psychoanalysis. Were you being serious?”
“I was very serious.”
“You also said that you would be willing to explain it to me sometime. Is this a good time?”
“As good a time as any,” Ava said. She sat back in her seat. “First, why I enjoy it so much? That’s easy. It fills a social void, which binge-watching Netflix doesn’t do, although I do that sometimes, too. I’ve already explained why I prefer not to socialize with colleagues — you excepted, of course. Since my work is so encompassing and I’m invariably out of town consulting or traveling when I’m off, I know almost no one here in Boston. Online, I have an entire complement of so-called ‘friends’ always waiting, probably a lot more varied and interesting than if I had acquaintances here in Boston who would undoubtedly be as busy as I am and unavailable when I was available. The online world is so much bigger than the invariably parochial real world, and it is always there, never sleeping and never too busy. And best of all, when you have had enough for whatever reason, you just click it off, no muss, no fuss.”
At that moment, Ava’s mobile phone filled the room with its raucous sound. After checking to see who was calling, she excused herself and went out of earshot to take the call. It was a typical interruption that Noah had learned to expect but hadn’t learned to like. While she was away, he thought about what she had said and wondered if he would rely on social media as much as she if he had as much free time as she did. She averaged a typical 40-hour-per-week schedule, whereas he averaged somewhere in the neighborhood of 120 hours per week at the hospital, far more than he was supposed to be doing.
Noah toyed with his food but didn’t eat, preferring to wait for her return. Unfortunately, this episode was longer than the usual. When she finally reappeared thirty-five minutes later, she was appropriately apologetic. While they microwaved their food to rewarm it, she explained that one of her major bosses at the NSC was all uptight about an article coming out in the Annals of Internal Medicine the following week. This article, similar to but larger than others that had come out since 1992, would be reporting on a study of almost a half million people over a decade that multivitamins and dietary supplements failed to show any benefits. Perhaps even more damning, it would state that megavitamins had shown a paradoxical increased risk of cancer and heart disease.
“No wonder your boss was upset,” Noah said, not bothering to suppress his delight. “That could be a death knell for the industry and maybe for your consulting.”
“Not in the slightest,” Ava mocked. “We lobbyists have learned how to deal with such studies. There have been others, and like what was done in the past, we’ll argue that the wrong amounts of vitamins or the wrong brands of supplements were used. Then we’ll say there was something wrong with the way the subjects were selected. After that we’ll blame the results on the big drug companies and fan conspiracy theories even to the point of suggesting big pharma was behind the study because they don’t want people to keep themselves well with relatively inexpensive supplements. The implication, of course, is that the drug companies want to sell more expensive prescription drugs. The public will eat it up. Besides, something like a medical journal article stays in the news feed for one cycle only, and then it disappears under the next scandal or disaster or tweet.”
“God! That’s discouraging,” Noah said.
“Ultimately, it is what the public wants, meaning an easy way out by taking a few pills rather than making the effort to maintain healthy lifestyles. Of course, for me it means I’ll have to go directly back to Washington to do damage control.”
With the food reheated, they sat back down at the counter. Night had completely fallen, and thanks to a run of superb weather, it was yet another picture-perfect evening. The glass sliders that lined the kitchen were folded back into their pockets, making it seem like the kitchen and the backyard were one single room. The floodlight illuminated the carefully planted garden. With the help of a few crickets, the fountain provided restful background noise.
“So you were telling me how social media fills a social need for you with no muss and no fuss.”
“Right,” Ava said. “But it’s a lot bigger than that. It gives me the opportunity to explore aspects of myself that I wasn’t even aware of.”
“Oh?” Noah questioned. Statements like that seemed to him to be on the weird side, especially coming from a fellow physician.
“In real life we’re all caught up in the reality of who and what we think we are,” Ava said. “We value consistency and so do our family and friends, who are more like us than we usually like to admit. That’s not the case in a virtual world. I can be whoever I want to be without any downside or consequence, with the benefit of learning more about myself.”
“So Gail Shafter, your Facebook and Snapchat persona, is not you with a different name?”
“No way,” Ava said with a unique laugh. “Although we’re the same age, she’s mired in a world that I was initially caught in right after high school but managed to escape. She’s stuck in a small town, working for a dentist who lords it over her, and she’s divorced after a failed marriage. She gives me a true appreciation of my life and what I’ve been able to become in the real world by a combination of hard work and chance. Compared to her, I am so lucky.”
“So it’s safe to say that when you’re on Facebook you’re Gail and not you?”
“Of course. It goes without saying, just like when I go on Facebook as Melanie Howard, I’m Melanie Howard.”
“Melanie Howard? Is that the name of another sockpuppet?”
“I don’t like the term sockpuppet or even smurf. They are too closely associated with uncivil online behavior. Melanie and I don’t do that. We don’t engage in any vicious trolling or any flaming whatsoever. That’s hardly the goal or the point. Melanie Howard is just another person in the virtual world trying to do the best she can within the limitations of her social circumstances, her personality, and her intelligence.”
“What’s she like?”