We Were Three - Trailer

October 13, 2022 3m

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 now wherever you get your podcasts.

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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 2.42 p.m.
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 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.

I can find forgiveness somewhere in me,

but I swear to you if you don't go to the ER right now, I will not forgive you when you die. He did go to the hospital, but two days later, he checked himself out against medical advice and lied to Rachel that he was getting better.
Peter died at home alone about two weeks after his father. Rachel's entire family gone, and she had no idea what had happened in the last couple months of their lives.
What had Peter been thinking as their father was fading away, and then as he himself was dying? What had he been doing? And then Rachel made a discovery,

a record of Peter's final weeks,

and she found out exactly what happened.

From Serial Productions and The New York Times,

I'm Nancy Updike.

This is We Were Three,

a story about lives, family, America,

and what COVID revealed,