Carl the Death Driver / Ch-3 / Pt-1

Annette was lovely. A young research scientist involved in nanoparticle fabrication; Annette fell in love with Carl as an undergrad in San Diego. He was in his third year of a prestigious bioengineering program and she was completing her degree in chemical engineering with plans for a master’s. They first met at a midnight coffee klatsch in front of the Geisel Library. What began as a chance encounter during a late-night study break, evolved into regular afternoons and evenings together on the quiet floors of the library. Annette went onto Caltech in Pasadena for her Master of Science in Chemistry while Carl remained in San Diego for a fifth year at UCSD. Their relationship not only endured but flourished with travel up and down the I-5. For two years they were 120 miles apart and together every other weekend and throughout every break. When Annette completed her thesis and landed her first position outside of Los Angeles, Carl passed on a partial scholarship award toward a specialized master’s program for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. He followed Annette into the beginning of a career path and found his first work with a subcontractor supplier to a medical device group headquartered up in San Francisco.

Annette and Carl were lost in the daily focus of adoring one another with little recognition for the wonderful life they were building together. They established themselves in an apartment complex within the downtown district of an upscale community. They were within a short walk of shops, restaurants, and a family owned grocery store. Not far from a sprawling park, a small stage theatre, and two boutique museums. After the first year in this perfect part of town, Annette began to scout a number of modest single family homes listed for sale in a nearby area with tree-lined streets flanked by craftsman-era homes. The stores and restaurants they enjoyed would not be within walking distance, but this older community featured a strong school system and an active community center. It was a place for young families and young couples ready to embark on parenthood. Annette and Carl were deeply engrossed in their respective work. While the idea of forming a family was on Annette’s mind, as a couple they never openly discussed a plan for marriage, let alone children.

The company Annette worked with had little competition in some of the earliest breakthroughs in particle synthesis with real application across a multitude of industries. She was positioned within a prized group and as the company was experiencing exponential growth, most members of Annette’s department eventually became leading figures of the company. She was handsomely rewarded, and on her own, Annette could afford the down payment on the starter home she had her eye on. But she yearned to make this milestone purchase together with Carl, seeing it as another building block of their shared future. Annette knew it would have to wait until he could make more regular contributions to their joint savings. Those were his conditions not hers. Annette did not want Carl to feel bad about his infrequent additions to their pooled house money. So over time, she was careful to only match what Carl could contribute and placed the rest in a separate savings account.

Carl never regretted his decision to forego a higher degree. He was with a steady business enjoying ongoing growth and doing great things for the client company in San Francisco. They were dynamic and highly innovative, involved in cutting edge biotech and breakthrough neuroscience endeavors under their own brand name with a deep pocketed distribution partner. Carl’s frustration arose from being steered away from operations involving exotic developments that matched his talent and personal passion, only to be placed within a group that barely saw the light of day, yet served as the backbone profit center to the entire company. This group was a medical billing operation made possible through computing technology transcending the private service sector in the 1970s. While Carl was attending university, computer science was nonexistent as an area of study. Yet Carl and a few classmates had access to minicomputers to test drive theories involving considerable batches of computations. By necessity they became self-taught programmers in one of the earliest high-level programming languages, FORTRAN. Over decades, Carl would become a self-trained expert in other programming languages including C++ and Java. When Carl revealed this other talent in an effort to help a colleague resolve a discovered defect in the company’s medical billing software, he was loaned out to that sector of the company. There he remained as a captive employee deemed as too vital to depart and his temporary stay became permanent.

After more years of delay in moving toward the family community and actually starting a family of their own, Annette became determined to put the cart before the horse. If she could become pregnant, perhaps Carl would come out of his stubborn shell of stall tactics and rigid routines of ceaseless work. He might come to realize that a new living environment was necessary to raise a child and he might accept the viability of a lifestyle change through Annette’s secret stash of funds.

In the end, a child is what Carl hoped and prayed for as well. And it developed into the greater imperative of their loving relationship as they faced an unforeseen struggle with infertility. After seeking the council of their regular doctor, a specialist placed Annette on a regimen of clomiphene citrate to bring about a regular ovulation cycle. When conception continued to elude the couple, the dosage was increased in subsequent cycles. A year later it was clear that the medication would not deliver the results the couple had hoped for. They stepped back from this desire for a child of their own and took an indefinite break from the painful pattern of anticipation, emotional fall, and rebuilding of confidence once again.

As the couple moved into their early thirties, their bond became stronger. They continued to embrace their city life, the culture that surround them, and their ongoing career growth. Each was seen as a critically valuable talent within their respective company. The family dream that had eluded them for years was revisited when Annette experienced occasional abdominal pains along with bouts of fatigue and nausea. Her menstrual cycle was always highly irregular and had been nonexistent for months. Annette did not want to present this possibility to Carl until she was certain. Hiding her excitement over morning breakfast, Annette took the day off from work to take a long walk through the park and reflect before she stepped into her doctor’s office.

There was no baby. There was abdominal swelling and other signs related to pregnancy, but Annette was not pregnant. By dinner time, she had found the courage to hide her most horrific thoughts. She did not share with Carl the visit to her doctor earlier that day, nor her appointment with an oncologist later in the week.

When Annette was initially diagnosed with stage III ovarian cancer, she was 34 years old. Before the exploratory surgery and the biopsies that confirmed the spread into her abdominal cavity and lymph nodes, Annette had many weeks of waiting filled with both hope and despair. Between the initial blood tests for tumor markers and the definitive diagnosis that came with surgery and pathological analysis of tissue samples, their life was in disarray. In these weeks, Carl could not process the worst and maintained a high degree of denial along with escape through work and self-made projects around the apartment. Annette experienced stifling anxiety. She did envision the worst and needed to do something that allowed her to express control and a degree of self-determination. Annette accessed her secret savings intended for the down payment of a family home and put the funds toward the purchase of a new car for Carl.

She knew that Carl would never do this for himself. He would never buy himself something new and beautiful. He would always find an excuse to keep things simple and the same. Annette purchased the new vehicle, and in the registration process, she ordered a vanity plate to remind Carl of her everlasting love for him. A few months beyond age 36, Annette was gone.