I am getting closer to the truth, I can feel it. As I look at the documents and clippings pinned to my bedroom wall, I can sense the answers hidden in the cacophony of facts. I just need to comb through them, analyse them and then the truth will reveal itself to me.
This all started with one sick child. Six months ago, my editor sent me to the hospital to do an interview with a young boy who had successfully raised money, via a crowdfunding campaign, to fund an experimental treatment for his leukaemia. I think back to the day I met Ikenna and his mother in the hospital. For a boy who was so ill he was surprisingly energetic. He asked me so many questions you would have thought he was the journalist. At one point he asked me three questions in a row. I was taking a breath after many minutes of talking when his mother mentioned that I reminded her of a strange woman who had visited them shortly after they had moved into their house.
It wasn’t much, but the mention of the woman tugged at my intuition. On a hunch, I researched across social media, news reports and public records to see if I could find anything relating to the boy’s illness. Over the course of that sleepless night, I found nineteen cases that seemed to be correlated with the boy’s illness in some way, either the diagnosis, the time period, or the location. The next morning, I presented my findings to my editor. He was intrigued. It was not yet a story but we could both see that there was a story there. He told me to investigate further, so I did.
Just a twenty four hours later, my editor came to me and ordered me to stop my investigation. He gave no real reason, but insisted that I focus on ‘more important work.’ I stopped, at least while I was on the clock. I continued my investigation in secret. Now here I am with a wall of mystery and a compulsion to find the answer hidden in it all.
