[Linette Meyerson lives with her husband Jack in a quiet townhouse. The red bricks are clean, as are all the windows. The couple greets me at the door. They’re friendly, all smiles. Their home is very well put together. I tell them as much, and Jack offers to give me a little tour. A bit strange, but I can tell they’re both nervous, and I decide a quick tour might ease the tension. Jack owns a local construction company and goes into detail on how he and Linette brought this place back to life.
Upstairs, we turn right, and I’m shown the renovated master bath and bedroom, as well as Jack’s personal study.
“I always wanted a study,” He tells me with a beaming smile. The walls are stuffed with books, and the desk, custom-made from rich purpleheart wood, is truly beautiful. Peaking out from behind the desk, I notice a small box with cuts of purpleheart wood sticking out of it, but think nothing of it.
I follow Linette out of the room and continue to admire the home, but then she pauses at the stairs. She looks down the hall we’ve yet to see, then glances at me before giving her husband what I can only describe as ‘a look’. I pretend to fumble with my phone for a moment. Jack steps past me and asks if I’d like to do the interview in the Kitchen. I tell him that sounds fine, and follow the couple down the stairs. I sneak a glance down the hall. There is a single room, but the door is closed. I look back down the stairs, watching Linette as she descends: one hand on the railing, the other on her prominent belly. Given the nature of my visit and what we will be discussing, it’s not hard to guess what’s behind that door.]
Linette: How do you like your coffee?
Eric: Black as night on a moonless night.
[From the corner of the room, Jack chuckles, looks at me, taps his nose, and starts brewing some coffee.]
Linette: Ugh, you sure you don’t want to interview him? Sounds like you’d have a lot to talk about.
Eric: Maybe we could grab a beer sometime, but he’s not who the world’s made the face of the disclosure movement.
Linette: Hm, no, he isn’t.
[Linette sips her coffee and looks out the kitchen window. I accept the cup Jack offers me and take a sip myself. It’s quite good.]
Eric: So, why don’t you tell me a little about your work?
Linette: Well, I worked as a nurse. I’m a CNM, so I delivered babies all day.
Eric: How did you like your job?
Linette: Oh, I loved it. I was the girl who kept her baby dolls for way too long. I’d cry every time my mom tried to give them away.
So as soon as I learned that there was a job where you were around newborns all the time, well, it wasn’t even a question.
Eric: Did the job live up to your expectations?
Linette: For the most part, yes. But the rose-tinted glasses didn’t last long. My very first delivery… the baby was stillborn. I can still remember how I just cried and cried. Jack had to come pick me up. We’d only been on a few dates, but I didn’t have anyone else.
[Linette smiles weakly and looks to her husband]
I’m sure you’ve read about all of this already thought, right?
Eric: Yes, but I just wanted to hear it all from you, in light of what’s happened. Why don’t you tell me a little about why you started writing?
Linette: Oh God, why does anyone start writing? They think they have something to say, something unique. Or they want to get some stuff off their chest, I don’t know. I took some creative writing classes in College that I really enjoyed, but I was never really the ‘artsy’ type; you know, the girls in berets styling thrifted shirts with designer bags and smoking cigarettes on the quad. That just wasn’t me.
Eric: No, you don’t really fit the part, although some of my exes might be offended by that description.
[Linette and I share a laugh. Jack offers to refill our coffees]
Linette: I think the reason was that I just wanted to connect with people, you know? Talk about life, get to know some people. Make new friends. I’ve never been great at doing that in person, so I did the next best thing.
Eric: Write about your problems online?
Linette: Exactly! Finally, someone who understands!
Eric: Well, it seems to have worked out great for you. Before your last article, you were already sitting at around 1,200 subscribers on SubStack. And since your last piece, you’ve jumped to about 50,000.
Linette:… Last I checked, it was around 21,000. I haven’t really been on the app since everything happened.
Eric: Do you mind if I ask a little about that ‘everything’?
Linette: Go ahead, it’s why you’re here.
Eric: Well, what can you tell me about the experience that led you to post the article you wrote, “The last five babies I’ve delivered have all been comatose.” Could you walk me through the events that led to your writing this?
[Linette looks down at her coffee for a few moments. I can see the gears turning in her head, and wonder how many times she’s rehearsed this moment]
Linette: The day started out fine. I’d had some morning sickness, but nothing too crazy. I was a bit tired, but what nurse isn’t? I was just glad to be at work and to take my mind off things.
Then we had our first delivery of the day. A first-time mom. She’d been in labor for a few hours, but everything was going well. Until… well, she delivered the baby, a little boy. But he wasn’t crying. We all assumed the worst and got to work. But he was breathing fine. He looked perfect. He just… wouldn’t wake up. Nothing we did could wake him up. It didn’t make any sense. Everything leading up to his delivery was… fine. Normal.
A few hours later, it happened again. And then again. After the third we were all pretty shook up. After the fifth, we couldn’t look each other in the eye. I went home and just… sat there. I couldn’t understand it. I didn’t sleep at all that night. I called a friend who was on shift to check in after a while. She said it had happened four more times. There hadn’t been a normal delivery in the last 18 hours.
Eric: Is that when you wrote the article?
Linette: Yes, that’s when I started. It was about three in the morning, and I finished it in a little under an hour and scheduled it to be posted at six. I finally crashed after that and slept until around noon. When I woke up, I went straight to my laptop to delete the post. That kind of stuff could get you fired. But by then, well, you know the rest.
Eric: The post had already gone viral. My publication even ran a piece on it.
Linette: Yeah, I know. I still wonder why. I mean, as I scrolled that morning, I saw plenty of others beginning to post about the same thing.
Eric: I think you were just in the right place at the right time. This story was going to break one way or another. You just so happened to be who the algorithm picked up that morning—it was a well-written article though, just to be clear.
Linette: Hm, thanks. Although I wish the tech Gods had chosen someone else.
Eric: Why do you say that?
Linette: If I had known what was really going on… I wouldn’t have said anything.
Eric: You mean, if you’d have known the scale of what was happening?
Linette: Yes, exactly. I thought I was venting about the worst day of work I’d ever experienced. I didn’t know I was field reporting on what might be the end of the world.
[I can hear Jack shift in his seat behind me. It’s a strange moment. Birds are singing in the garden out back, while we sit inside discussing the end]
Eric: What would you have said differently if you’d known what was about to happen?
Linette: I wouldn’t have called them what I did.
Eric: Who?
Linette: The babies.
Eric: Why did you use the term ‘defective neonates’
Linette: Because it’s cold and clinical, and I heard someone else use it. It wasn’t even mine. Someone used it that night after the third or fourth delivery.
Eric: What would you have called them instead?
Linette: I don’t know. But you’ve seen what’s been going on. What people have been doing. It’s been what, maybe a month? A month without a single healthy, awake baby being born, and already people are losing their minds. I don’t know. I just would have done it differently. I… I would have reminded people that these babies are still alive, still human.
Eric: Do you have any reason to believe they might wake up, or that births will return to normal?
[Linette looks over my shoulder at Jack. She lets a hand drift toward her belly]
Linette: A reason? No, no reason. Just… hope.