But he resisted the urge and called the next number. Come on. Be the right one and don't be Ally.
This one had a 516 area code. That meant Long Island.
"Hello," came a rusty old voice that had to be in its seventies. It sounded oversmoked and just hanging on. Again definitely not the Ally he knew.
"Hello, ma'am," he said "I'm sorry to bother you, but—"
"Are you trying to sell me something, young man," the woman asked. "It's not going to do you much good. I live on a Social Security check, and it's all I can do to make ends meet as is. You sound nice, but—"
"No, ma'am, I'm a newspaper reporter. I'm doing a story on ... I just wanted to follow up on your admission to the clinical trials for the Gerex Corporation." He felt a surge of hope. It wasn't Ally, but she did sound like a woman who might well be a candidate for medical treatment. "Do you know what day you plan to start?"
"What on earth are you talking about?" she asked. "Young man, it's ill manners to start asking a body silly questions, no matter how nice you might be otherwise. I've never heard of this, whatever you called it, corporation." Click.
She sure didn't sound like a patient. Or maybe she was too far gone to even know if she was a patient or not. In any case, this was not a promising lead.
Okay, he thought, go with the one you should have in the first place.
Blast. He wanted this to be the one, but he just didn't want it to be Ally. Or maybe he did.