Archive of Our Own

Voicemail heard around the country finds its home with ‘the future of medicine’ in San Diego

By JANINE LIM | [email protected]

PUBLISHED: November 2, 2030 at 11:03 AM PDT

UPDATED: December 27, 2030 at 9:42 AM PDT

This piece has been updated with new information since its original publication on November 2, 2030.

Hi Mo—er, Samira. I guess if this is it I should call you Samira at least once, right? [laughter] God, I should’ve said it more. Uh, sorry to be calling out of the blue. I’m just in a bit of a situation and if I don’t come out the other side of this — shit —

Sorry. I just wanted to tell you that after my wife died, I thought I’d never be happy again. I think given the circumstances, she’d forgive me for saying that the happiest I’ve ever been has been in the ED with you.

You’ve got a big heart and it shows in everything you do, and that’s what makes you the future of medicine. I only regret that I don’t get to see you change the world more than you’ve already changed mine. Love you. Bye, Samira.

The future of medicine walks among us in San Diego.

This is no title foisted upon by the World Medical Association, the American Medical Association, the Medical Board of California, or even the editorial staff here at the San Diego Union-Tribune. Up until now, this title was given freely by a man who, just five months ago, thought he would die buried under the rubble of the Meridian apartment complex after it collapsed in Pittsburgh, PA, some 2,400 miles away from here.

In the days that followed the collapse, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) began their technical investigation, which came to reveal the negligent oversight that went into the construction of the building and subsequently led to the closure of several other apartment complexes and office buildings that developer Continuum built up. What no one expected was for a different revelation to come to light: a 52-second voicemail left to 29-year-old Isadore Jenson, who had just started a new job at a marketing firm in New Jersey and had been set up with a work phone.

“I have my phone set to screen all calls from unknown numbers, so I didn’t even get the call — just the voicemail after,” Isadore tells me on a Zoom call that she takes from her apartment, the Manhattan skyline visible through the window behind her.

“The first few seconds made me think it was a stupid prank, but the panic in the background was pretty alarming, so I wrote that possibility off pretty quickly.”

What drives a New Jersey woman to send a voicemail that she’d initially thought was spam to every local news station in Pittsburgh? “If I was the person meant to get this voicemail, I’d wanna know,” she says wistfully. After identifying the area code, she’d searched for local news and saw that a building in a Pittsburgh neighborhood had collapsed. She’d deliberated on what to do next for a good 30 seconds before reaching out to every major news station through their tip hotline or inbox with the pitch of a lifetime: Possible love confession after Meridian apartments collapse – please help me identify!

News outlets were quickly able to ID the caller as 55-year-old Jack Abbot, a night shift attending physician at Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center (PTMC), whose friends and colleagues had confirmed as missing in the hours following the building collapse.

At the time, these friends and colleagues were a bit more precious with the details on who the “Samira” referenced in the voicemail was, choosing to contact her on their own before running into the same problem that Jack had the previous night. In trying to reach their former colleague, they could only find Isadore.

While this wild goose chase for a woman ensued, Urban Search and Rescue task forces found a body later identified to be Jack and rushed him to UPMC Presbyterian Hospital, and the voicemail that had made local news quickly went national as word began to spread. It by no means dominated the news cycle — there were too many updated reports on those recovered and still missing, and the coming investigation — and eventually the story around the voicemail had died down when no “Samira” came forward and Jack remained exceptionally elusive to media once he recovered from his injuries and returned to work. The news cycle moved along as it always does, and those enamored with the story of the voicemail were left with a distinct lack of closure.

Five months after the fact, we know who sent this voicemail, we have an idea of who it was meant for — a former colleague at PTMC — and we know who it actually went to. Two questions, among many others, remain prominent for those still on the hook: who is Samira, and why did Jack’s message never reach her directly? The romantics of the world can underscore two more questions on the list: did the voicemail eventually make its way to her, and does she love Jack?

It’s October when I first meet the future of medicine at a coffee shop that’s within walking distance of the hospital where she now works. Months of sitting on this story, pivoting to others, and coming back to this one after a tip from a popular creator on MedTok — the arm of TikTok where practicing physicians share residency tips, prep for their shifts with an audience, commiserate about rotations, and joke about first-year residents still having light in their eyes — who asked to remain anonymous bring me to Dr. Samira Mohan, a 35-year-old day shift attending physician at Scripps Mercy Hospital’s emergency room.

She hails from Edison, NJ by way of Pittsburgh, where she completed her residency in emergency medicine at PTMC before moving to San Diego. She is a horrible cook and likes to get takeout from a Thai spot a few blocks away from her apartment a little too much, and she is proud that she has made a livelihood out of saving others. She has few friends and hobbies, which she gives me explicit permission to print while she laughs self-deprecatingly over a steaming cup of chai. I’m nothing special is the unspoken implication connecting these factoids and confessions, but any stranger you ask who has heard the story of this voicemail could tell her that she is beloved anyway.

But this voicemail never reached her directly, a fact that Samira acknowledges somberly. When she finished her residency at PTMC, she left no forwarding address, no personal email address, and no notice that she would be changing her phone number.

“I didn’t plan on changing my number when I moved,” she admits. “I was involved in a case that unfortunately compromised my privacy, and that’s all I’ll say on that front.”

That’s two questions answered. I ask the other two for the romantics, which I tell her I’m not ashamed to divulge is a category that I fall under. She laughs again, this time a sincere burst of sound that beckons one to smile along with her.

“As I’m sure you can imagine, the voicemail did make its way to me,” she says as her laughter eases and her features shift into a more reserved expression. “No comment on that last one.”

There’s so much more I want to know: what were her immediate feelings after hearing the voicemail for the first time? Was that the first time he’d said he loved her? Did she know Jack felt this way prior to the voicemail? What was her relationship with Jack like before the voicemail, and did it change how she felt about him? He’d said sorry for calling so out of the blue — when was the last time they’d talked? Has she been in touch with him since hearing it? And, again, does she love Jack?

For now, what I have above is all the answers we get — and isn’t it a miracle that we get them at all? I got the tip about Samira in September, tracked her down shortly after the fact, and proceeded to plead with her for several weeks via email to chat. I’d whittled my offer down to a convenient 10-minutes-max phone call when she finally countered with a few minutes together in-person.

We really do only have a few minutes together — she leaves shortly after offering no comment when I ask her whether she loves Jack, though not out of discomfort or an eagerness to get away. It’s just that her pager’s gone off, and there’s another life that needs saving. Her sneakers scuff against the pavement and soon enough, she is no more than a blur of navy blue scrubs sprinting towards the hospital. One can imagine that there is always more work to be done when you’re the future of medicine.

UPDATE: December 27, 2030 at 9:42 AM PDT

My October meeting with Samira was all I had to work with for this piece in terms of her perspective — that is, until she reached out to me earlier this month.

She invites me not to meet at the hospital for another handful of minutes together, not to chat on the phone for 10 minutes, but to come see her at her home on one of the rare days off that she chooses to take.

Samira offers me coffee and a slice of homemade coffee cake that I make an educated guess was not her doing but someone else’s. She laughs again, a lighter version of the sound I’d heard in October. Her coffee — the beans come from one of her favorite spots in Pittsburgh — and the cake are absolutely divine.

Her apartment is modern but looks like it’s deep in the decorating process with a few boxes still lying around, though it’s clearly been upgraded with accessibility in mind: there are grab bars and handrails installed along the walls. From the living room, you can see into her bathroom, where there are more grab bars and a shower bench and a chair just outside of the shower stall.

Just as I’m eyeing all of these features that most certainly did not come with the apartment, she reads my mind in a manner that I’m sure her colleagues and patients appreciate.

“Jack’s got a BKA,” she explains, and this is one of the few things that she’s said to me since I set foot into her home. I don’t tell her that I already know from the brief profile that WPXI shared on Jack after he’d been identified as the caller. I know other details, too: he’d been taking a walk in the neighborhood, he’d heard the building collapse first — the prolonged shudder of concrete and metal slamming into the ground that it had once towered over — and ran towards the site to provide medical aid when he got caught under the slide of loose rubble. He’s a former combat medic and served six years in Afghanistan with a carbon fiber prosthesis to show for it, and he doesn’t shy from danger when there are lives on the line.

I know these things, and I take it she knows these things, so what are we doing here? It’s only when I finish the cake that I gather the courage to ask why she agreed to meet with me in the first place, and why she’s following up now.

“I met with you in October because it only felt right to meet Jack on a similar level after his voicemail blew up online,” she confesses sheepishly. “We’re both pretty private people, and as romantic and grand gesture-y as people found his message to be, if either of us had the choice to keep that between us, we would’ve taken it. I get that we have that choice now and I’m ignoring it, but I’m trying not to think too much about that.”

I apologize to her for bringing her further into the spotlight — she shakes her head with an understanding smile — but I have to double down: if that’s the case, why invite me here now, after more of their story has already gone public?

“I wanted to answer your question from before — you asked me if I love Jack.”

My breath catches in my throat at the unexpected surrender, and I wait expectantly for her answer.

Her mouth opens at the same time the front door does.

“Hey sweetheart,” calls a gruff voice that I know well, have heard countless times on the news and on podcasts and TikToks and reels.

Samira forgets to answer me with words, but the way her whole being lights up tells me everything I need to know. The future of medicine remains bright. She is loved, and she loves in return. ￭