said he was throwing Elizabeth a thirtieth birthday party and he
wanted his grandson to come and play a tune for her. Tyler had been
playing the guitar since high school and liked to compose his own
songs. During his travels the previous summer, he’d played in pubs
and on street corners around Ireland. Tyler tried to get out of it by
invoking work: his shift on the production team was from 3:00 p.m. to
1:00 a.m., overlapping with the evening party. But George insisted.
He’d already made a seating chart and placed his grandson between
Channing Robertson and Elizabeth at the dinner table. And he was
sure Elizabeth wouldn’t mind if Tyler missed work to celebrate her
birthday. She wanted him there, he said.
A few days later, Tyler found himself mingling with other guests in
the living room of George’s home, a big light-blue shingled house
perched on a hill next to the Stanford campus. George’s second wife,
Charlotte, was playing host to the festivities. Elizabeth’s parents had
flown in for the occasion and her younger brother, Christian, was there
too. So were Channing Robertson and Theranos board member Bill
Perry, who had served as secretary of defense in the Clinton
administration.
At his grandfather’s urging, Tyler played the song he’d hastily
composed. He tried not to cringe as he sang its cheesy lyrics, which
borrowed from Theranos’s “one tiny drop changes everything” slogan.
To his horror, he had to play it again a little while later because Henry
Kissinger arrived late and everybody thought that he too should hear
it. When Tyler was finished, Kissinger, who like George Shultz was in
his early nineties, recited a limerick he’d written for the birthday girl.
The scene had a surreal quality to it: they were all sitting in a circle in
the Shultzes’ living room and Elizabeth was in the middle, reveling in
the attention. It was as though she were the queen and they were her
court, kissing her ring. As awkward as the evening was, it made Tyler
feel like he was on friendly enough terms with Elizabeth to speak to
her candidly about his concerns. Shortly after the party, he sent her an
email asking if they could meet.
Elizabeth invited him to her office. Their meeting was brief, but he
had time to raise a few of the issues that bothered him. One of them