CELERITOUS PROLOGUE

Monday, April 18, 1955

In a private room in a Princeton hospital, veteran nurse Susan Phillips reached for the unconscious patient’s wrist and counted the rhythmic beats. She looked down at her patient with a certain fondness, feeling a swell of professional pride at being his final caregiver. This was no ordinary patient; he was bigger than life itself.

Susan was a nurse fresh from the muddy battlefields of the 38th parallel. The wafting of chopper blades pounded in her head from medivac helicopters bringing in their wounded fresh from the field of battle. Their screams of agony or their stillness of death followed her. The wounded that she helped doctors put back together or bury with some sort of dignity would call out in her dreams. She saw the result of war - not some line in the ground, but blood and tears. And she didn’t want to see it anymore. Not for her, her kids, or her grandchildren. For that reason, she was happy to accept this assignment, because she felt she could find what she was looking for. The truth.

She placed his arm back on the bed with great care, felt the paper-thin skin of his forehead, and smiled. Even asleep, she felt his grandfather-like charm had reached out to her, reminding her of her grandpop back in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Albert Einstein barely spoke, but when he did, it was with charm and a silent confidence. He offered depth and meaning that challenged her way of thinking, something that rarely happened at her age. The older she got, the more she felt she knew, but that all changed after she fed him his breakfast, the one and only time.

She wiped his mouth, and he looked into her eyes. She was astonished at how he was able to explain complex theories, like the theory of relativity, as if he were describing how to screw in a light bulb. That was how she was able to see the magic of the universe through his eyes. This was especially true when he told her about the time he’d challenged Sir Isaac Newton, and his theory of gravity. His eyes brightened with excitement as he spoke with reverence of his childhood idol.

While she cleared the dishes from breakfast, she thought of the day the bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, and the horrific footage of the mushroom cloud, followed by the shocking coverage of the massive destruction of life. But like most Americans, she was relieved that they had beaten the Axis to the Bomb. It sparked hope that there would be an end to all the hell that was World War II. And it was.

But then there was another hell. It was Korea.

Susan couldn’t help but think of the magazines and newspaper articles she had read about Einstein, because of the bomb. Or her family back in Nebraska. Would they be able to survive the nuclear blast that Einstein urged the president to unleash? After all, it was Einstein’s prodding that helped give rise to the Manhattan Project.

But of all her questions, she wanted to know one thing.

Susan had a burning desire to ask him, but she hesitated, knowing it might not be professional. But this was her only chance to uncover the truth, and today, that opportunity had finally arrived.

After he was done eating, she wiped his mouth and nervously asked, “Sir … Mr. Einstein, how did you feel about … the bomb? And, well, to be frank, our future with it?”

He looked down, fidgeting with his blanket, and answered in a soft but sincere tone. “I had written to President Roosevelt asking him not to do it. But I was too late. He died, and he never received my letter. And now I’m afraid we are in a whole new race. Not to end war but to beat the Soviets in a new war - the Cold War. How ironic, and terrifying.” He lifted his head back up, and she saw that a tear had formed in the corner of his eye. It hung there for a moment, then ran down his sagging cheek. His lip quivered, and he lay his head on the pillow.

She drew the blanket over his legs and waist, and thought she had gotten more than the truth, for she had seen with her own eyes the price he paid for his genius.

“We let the genie out of the bottle, and we were never able to put it back.” Einstein closed his wrinkled eyes.

Albert Einstein - the man Princeton University had come to know as the “absent-minded professor”, and without a doubt one of the world’s greatest geniuses - had been under her care for just one day since he was admitted, but what she had witnessed would stay with her until she died.

Susan gathered the scattered papers from the bed, locating the notebook that lay off to the side of the ruffled blanket. She took the papers, stuffed them inside the notebook, and placed them on the nightstand, then straightened and gently tucked in the blanket, careful not to disturb her patient. As she stepped back, she felt something under her well-cushioned shoe. Bending over, she saw a pen and picked it up. Not far from the pen was a lone piece of paper labeled “Unified Field Theory.” She shook her head at the numerous equations and complex mathematical symbols drawn in Dr. Einstein’s scribbles. To Susan, the writing was incomprehensible, but she knew the notebook was valuable to her patient, given the hours he labored over it. She slid that paper inside the notebook as well.

Turning to leave, she walked toward the door, when she heard him mutter something that raised the hair on the back of her neck. It wasn’t what he said but the garbled tone he said it with. Startled, she turned back toward the bed.

Einstein thrust his finger toward the sky, then grabbed his chest. Susan’s stomach sank and she charged toward the bed, stuffing the earpieces of her stethoscope into her ears and pressing the chest piece to his chest. To her horror, she couldn’t hear a heartbeat. Stunned, she gasped for a moment, then lunged frantically for a red button on the wall.

In her rush to push it, her prim white hat fell to the floor.

Then the door to the room banged open, and men wearing white lab coats stormed in, carrying a variety of items. One of the men, carrying a large metal box, unknowingly stepped on her nurse’s hat, crushing it. More men followed the first group, carrying glass jars, boxes, and various pieces of medical equipment. Without saying a word, the men clustered around Einstein’s bed and began pulling equipment out of the boxes. Susan was pushed unceremoniously into the corner of the room and told to stay put.

She blew strands of hair from her face as additional footsteps grew closer. Astonished at the activity, she fought off the creeping sadness of her patient’s critical status. She was accustomed to performing resuscitation protocol on patients, not being shoved aside by men she had never seen before and who might not even be doctors. She struggled to ascertain what their true intentions were.

The footsteps that clicked across the hallway tile floor like marching soldiers were now at the door, and Susan was relieved to see that the hand pushing the door open belonged to Dr. James Livingston, a renowned physician and professor at the University of Chicago. She recalled his demure smile and kindness in his explicit instructions on how to care for Einstein and when to hit that red button. Dressed in a spotless white lab coat, his stethoscope swaying with his haste, the thin man hurried up to the bed and leaned over Einstein. Everyone stopped moving in a hush of anticipation, and silence filled the room.

“He’s expired; the aneurysm burst,” Dr. Livingston said, pressing his black frame glasses up the bridge of his nose.

One of the men turned toward Susan and grabbed her arm. She gasped in shock as the unidentified man shoved her out of the room with no word of warning, slamming the faded white door in her face.