"That's not quite it. I'm in your class, too, obviously. Sitting around consuming would drive us crazy." He looked at the wall, reaching for words. "I guess I'm asking that you take a part-time job, as therapist, in addition to being a full-time physicist. Until he's better."
She stared at him in a way she sometimes stared at a student. "Thank you for not pointing out that he's done the same thing for me." She stood up suddenly and crossed over to the coffee machine. "Want a cup?"
"No, thank you."
When she came back she hooked a chair around so that the table was between them. "A week ago I would have dropped everything to be his therapist. I love him more than you, or he, seem to think, and of course I owe him, too."
She paused and leaned forward. "But the world has gotten a lot more complicated in the last few days. Did you know he went to Washington?"
"No. Government business?"
"Not exactly. But that's where I was, working. He came to me with what I see now was obviously a cry for help."
"About killing the boy?"
"And all the other death, the tramplings. I was properly horrified, even before I saw the news. But I... I..." She started to take a drink of coffee but put it down and sobbed, a startling, racking sound. She knuckled away sudden tears.
"It's all right."
"It's not all right. But it's bigger than him or me. Bigger than whether we even live or die."
"What, wait. Slow down. Your work?"
"I've said too much. But yes."
"What is it, some sort of defense application?"
"You could say that. Yes."
He sat back and pressed on his beard, as if it were pasted on. "Defense. Blaze, Dr. Harding ... I spend all day watching people lie to me. I'm not an expert in much, but I'm an expert in that."
"So?"
"So nothing. Your business is your business, and my interest in it begins and ends with how it affects my patient. I don't care if your job is saving the country, saving the world. All I ask is that when you're not working with that, you're working with him."
"I'll do that, of course."
"You do owe him."
"Dr. Jefferson. I have one Jewish mother already. I don't need one with a beard and a suit."
"Point well taken. I didn't mean to be insulting." He stood up. "I'm misdirecting my own sense of responsibility onto you. I should not have let him go after we jacked. If I'd admitted him, put him under observation, this wouldn't have happened."
Amelia took his offered hand. "Okay. You beat yourself up over this, and I'll beat myself up over it, and our patient will have to improve, by osmosis."
He smiled. "Take care. Take care of yourself. This kind of thing is a terrible strain."
This kind of thing! She watched him leave and heard the outer door close. She felt her face redden and fought the pressure of tears behind her eyes, then let it win.
WHEN I'D STARTED TO die it felt like I was drifting through a corridor of white light. Then I wound up in a big room with Amelia and my parents and a dozen or so friends and relations. My father was the way I remember him from grade school, slim and beardless. Nan Li, the first girl I was ever serious about, was standing next to me with her hand in my pocket, stroking. Amelia had an absurd grin, watching us.
Nobody said anything. We just looked at each other. Then everything faded out and I woke up in the hospital with an oxygen mask over my face and the smell of vomit deep inside my nose. My jaw hurt, as if someone had punched me.
My arm felt like it belonged to someone else, but I managed to drag my hand up and pull the mask down. There was someone in the room, out of focus, and I asked for a Kleenex and she handed it to me. I tried to blow my nose but it triggered retching, and she held me up and put a metal bowl under my chin while I coughed and drooled most attractively. Then she handed me a glass of water and said to rinse, and I realized it was Amelia, not a nurse. I said something romantic like "oh, shit," and started to black out again, and she eased me back to the pillow and worked the mask over my face.
I heard her calling for a nurse and then I passed out.
It's strange how much detail you recall from some parts of an experience like this, and how little of others. They told me later that I slept a solid fifteen hours after the little puking ceremony. It felt more like fifteen seconds. I woke up as if from a slap, with Dr. Jefferson drawing a hypo gun away from my arm.
I wasn't wearing the oxygen mask anymore. "Don't try to sit up," Jefferson said. "Get your bearings."
"Okay." I was just able to focus on him. "First bearing, I'm not dead, right? I didn't take enough pills."
"Amelia found you and saved you."
"I'll have to thank her."
"By that, you mean you're going to try again?"
"How many people don't?"
"Plenty." He held out a glass of water with a plastic straw. "People attempt suicide for various reasons."
I drank a cold sip. "You don't think I was actually serious about it."
"I do. You're pretty competent at everything you do. You'd be dead if Amelia hadn't come home."
"I'll thank her," I repeated.
"She's sleeping now. She stayed with you for as long as she could keep her eyes open."
"Then you came."
"She called me. She didn't want you to wake up alone." He weighed the hypodermic gun in his hand. "I decided to help you along with a mild stimulant."
I nodded and sat up a little. "It feels pretty good, actually. Did it counteract the drug? The poison."
"No, you've already been treated for that. Do you want to talk about it?"
"No." I reached for the water and he helped me. "Not with you."
"With Amelia?"
"Not now." I drank and was able to replace the glass by myself. "I guess first I want to jack with my platoon. They'd understand."
There was a long silence. "You're not going to be able to do that."
I didn't understand. "Of course I can. It's automatic."
"You're out, Julian. You can't be a mechanic anymore."
"Hold it. Do you think any of my platoon would be surprised by this? Do you think they're that dumb?"
"That's not the point. It's just that they can't be made to live through it! I'm trained for it, and I can't say I look forward to jacking with you. Do you want to kill your friends?"
"Kill them."
"Yes! Exactly. Don't you think it's possible you might push one of them into doing the same? Candi, for instance. She's close to clinical depression most of the time, anyhow."
I could see the sense in that, actually. "But after I'm cured?"
"No. You'll never be a mechanic again. You'll be reassigned to some – "
"A shoe? I'll be a shoe?"
"They wouldn't want you in the infantry. They'll take advantage of your education, and put you in a technical post somewhere."
"Portobello?"
"Probably not. You'd jack socially with members of your platoon, your ex-platoon." He shook his head slowly. "Can't you see? That wouldn't be good for you or for them."
"Oh, I see; I see. From your point of view, anyhow."
"I am the expert," he said carefully. "I don't want you to be hurt and I don't want to be court-martialed for negligence-which is what would happen if I let you go back to your platoon and some of them couldn't handle sharing your memories."
"We've shared the feelings of people while they died, sometimes in great pain."
"But they didn't come back from the dead. Come back and discuss how desirable it might be."
"I may be cured of that." Even as I said it, I knew how false it sounded.
"One day, I'm sure you will be." That didn't sound too convincing, either.
JULIAN ENDURED ONE MORE day of bed rest and then was transferred to an "observation unit," which was like a hotel room, except that it only locked from the outside, and was always locked. Dr. Jefferson came in every other day for a week, and a kindly young civilian therapist, Mona Pierce, talked to him daily. After a week (by then, Julian was convinced he was going to go insane) Jefferson jacked with him, and the next day, he was released.