Medical Veritas International Inc.

     This is a story about a ruthless man, Dr. Damon Leviticus, who puts his personal profit above the good of humanity.  He is well respected in the community, because he is a skillful liar.  Very smooth.  He has successfully used his family and his community for his own gain in the past, and when a new opportunity arises, he is the first to recognize its potential.  He is completely self-absorbed and sees nothing but himself.  
     He has a hero complex, but he doesn't understand what being a hero really is.  He thinks it's flags and parades, anything for self-aggrandizement.  He treats his family like possessions, but is especially fond of his only son.
     As a family physician, he puts his reputation and energy toward a mass immunization project, to protect every man, woman and child from chickenpox and its possible fatal complications of encephalitis and pneumonia.  Sure, he's read the studies, and he knows they may be biased and flawed, but he's got to be the hero, one more time, to turn his skeptical son into one of his followers.
     He organizes the mass program, called Injection Day, brushing aside all the reports he's heard from the more wary residents of the town -- school nurses, distraught parents whose children have had serious, life-altering side effects from other shots.  What does it matter about all those other children?  They weren't his responsibility.  His responsibility was following what he was taught in medical school, all those lessons based on documented studies.  He knows the protocol and he follows it.  He's a doctor. He's a hero.
     He wants to impress his son.
     But he has opposition in the form of a young, inexperienced investigative reporter, Millie, who has heard about the program and want to stop it.  She's a friend of his son, and he steps in to stop the budding romance.  
     His son, Brandon, and Millie, are in love, and make plans to marry secretly.
     Injection day arrives following a huge media blitz.  Shots for everyone.  Free.  To soothe the sting, ice cream for everyone.  Free.
     Dr. Damon Leviticus is an honorable man.  He's a pillar of the community.  He's a hero.
     He orders his reluctant son to take the first injection.
     His picture is on CNN.   He's going to get his son's respect at last.
     But then something goes wrong.
     Various individuals start experiencing adverse vaccine reactions; an 18-year-old, strong with no health problems ends up on life support.  A new mother becomes disoriented while driving and crashes. She miscarries.  
     The independent studies weren't wrong—but the good doctor won't admit he was.  He says he still wasn't responsible for any of the multitude of problems despite what the real statistics show.  Ignoring these and favoring the results produced by the pharmaceutical-sponsored studies, Dr. Leviticus believes there will be fewer complications in those who receive the shot then from those contracting chickenpox.  
     And that's as far as his self-absorbed thinking takes him.
     However, he's not exactly the hero he expected to be, and he moves his family and his medical practice to the other side of the country.
     Brandon grows up, having married Millie.  He's 36 years old with a family he loves deeply, when he is stricken with shingles.  
     Which has to be coincidence, right?  Certainly the other cases the media is hyping into a shingles epidemic are statistical flukes.  
     Dr. D.L. is panicked.  His son is sicker than he realizes.  Something could happen to him.  
     It's all the fault of that crazy reporter.  She's never been a good daughter-in-law.  She says she can see right through him for the liar and murderer he is.  Doesn't he understand that it is not only about his son?  What about the teacher's son, and the politicians child, and the construction worker's son?  Aren't they valuable?  Does Dr. DL think he has the only child on the planet?
     They hear the reports one by one of a shingles epidemic that is blinding and crippling the population.
     Brandon, unable to see from the ravages of the virus in his eyes, sees with his heart and knows the truth finally about his father.  He stumbles down the front steps as his father drives up with yet another pharmaceutical miracle, and accuses him for the irresponsible murderer he is.  He backs his father into the street, unaware of an approaching car.  His father is in the path. Brandon, the late afternoon son taking the last of his vision, but uncaring for his own personal safety because he knows he is part of a greater consciousness, lunges toward Damon, pushing him out of the way, taking the impact himself.
     As Dr. D.L. holds his dying son in his arms, the shattered anti-viral containers he had brought to help him splintered on the pavement, he knows for the first time personal loss.
     He has joined the community of those who grieve, and he knows without a doubt, that all those people he inoculated, all those sons and daughters no matter their ages, were his children, too.