A three-part series from This American Life producer Nancy Updike. When Rachel McKibbens’s father and brother died suddenly last fall, two weeks apart, from Covid, she’d had no idea her father was sick, and no idea her brother was dying. They were unvaccinated, but the story of what happened started long before that. All three episodes of "We Were Three," a new show from Serial Productions and The New York Times, are available wherever you get your podcasts on Thursday, October 13th, 2022.
Last fall, Rachel McKibbins got a message from her brother Peter.
At about midnight, my brother sent me a text that said, I've been too distraught to tell you, but dad passed away Today at 2:42pm because of a text?
Yeah, a text telling her that her father had been dead for hours.
She figured car accident.
She knew he'd been driving a lot, looking for work.
She called her brother.
I said, peter, what is happening?
What happened?
And he explained that they had gone to a funeral.
And he said, I never should have let dad go to the funeral with all those vaxxed people.
Vaccinated people.
Her brother believed that Covid vaccines weren't just dangerous for people who got the vaccine vaccinated people were dangerous to be around if you were unvaccinated.
Like him and his dad, they lived together.
They'd been living together for years.
On the phone with her brother, Rachel learned that her father had been sick for over a week.
Covid not only had Peter not told her about it, he also hadn't taken their father to the hospital, hadn't called 911.
Then another thought hit her.
I said, peter, you've been his nurse this whole time, how do you feel?
And he said, well, I mean, we both probably got sick around the same time, but you know, I'm healthier than dad.
And I said, peter, I can forgive you for not taking dad to the hospital.