Lyle stared at this crazy person before him and considered which strategy, if any, might reorient her.
“Melanie, maybe, saw certain things about you,” Jackie continued. “Eleanor may imagine she sees things in you, but now I’m digressing and that poor torpid bitch isn’t really worth talking about. My point is that what we have is the very essence of a relationship.”
“I do see you, Jackie.”
“Thank you, Lyle.”
“I don’t think I like what I see.”
“No, that’s not what you mean.” Her voice rose. “I’m sorry.” She cleared her throat. “What you mean is that it’s hard for you to reconcile the way I’ve made you feel about yourself with some of the other things you see going on.”
He looked at the screen with the live TV feed. Now he could make out the words at the bottom: National Mall; Million Gun March. Under an Hour. Will There Be Bloodshed?
Lyle looked at the countdown clock.
38:16
38:15
“Help me reconcile it, Jackie,” he said. He needed to buy time. His plan looked very much like it was not taking shape.
“Would you like some wine, Lyle?”
“Sure.”
She poured him some red into a plastic cup.
“Let’s talk about you first. When I found you, you were all but dead. Now you are revived. Will you grant me that?”
“It’s a stretch, Jackie. I was in a bad place, and now I’m in a worse place.”
She laughed gaily.
“I think we might say the same for humanity. I want you to think in a very clear-eyed way about how the world is transforming and where it finds itself. It is on the brink of coming apart. Look at them.” She jutted her chin in the direction of the video screen. “It’s exactly—exactly—what made you so angry when things collapsed with Melanie and with that ridiculous Dean Thomas and your job.”
“I’m sorry, Jackie, I’m having trouble following.”
“I doubt that. Maybe it’s the Taser. You do realize that it was becoming very, very hard for you to defend your life choices as a doctor, to continue to get the energy to try to protect humanity. It was getting very hard to figure out what was the right thing to do. Do you remember?”
He remembered. He didn’t want to admit it to her right now because his growing skepticism from three years ago bore no relation to this monster in the black dress and red lipstick.
“Suit yourself, Lyle. You know it’s true, though. Of course, you were cynical. You’d fought on the side of people. But you eventually discovered that the viruses, the evil bacteria and disease, were so much more, well, frank. You knew where they were coming from. They declared their purpose. On the other hand, the people, humanity, what a disingenuous lot, right?”
“No, that’s not—”
“Okay, maybe a bridge too far saying that. But confusing, at least. People are confusing, at least, sending mixed messages. People put you in a difficult position, impossible positions.” She saw that he was trying to understand and she took it as encouragement. She thought of her parents, putting her in an impossible position, not knowing what to do, then her sister whom her inaction failed to save, and Denny, using her, abusing her trust. She’d had no time to figure things out, the world moving so fast. She winced and brushed away those memories. It was a new time.
“Lyle, were you supposed to treat people, help them, let them kill themselves or each other? What the hell were you supposed to do?”
Lyle felt the power of the moment. She was telling him something.
“Do people put you in a difficult position, Jackie?”
She smiled, shrugged, like Of course, aren’t we all speaking the same language here?
“Did someone in particular put you in a difficult position, Jackie?”
She gritted her teeth. He’d not move her into those terrible memories, and, besides, this wasn’t about Jackie; no, to her, this was now about everyone. Even someone as sane and wonderful as Lyle understood what it was like to be put in a terrible position, to not know what to do as violence, danger, terror loomed.
“These people, look at them”—she looked at the computer—“in Washington, at the mall, one self-righteous group of police is going to go to war with another self-righteous group of gun owners. Each certain they are saving humanity, and each about to destroy it.”
Lyle tried to latch on to the change in direction, keep her going, buy time. “We’re speaking about differences of opinions, the working out of ideas. That is politics, cooperation, compromise.”
“No! The opposite!” She slapped the table. “We’re talking about not listening. We’re talking about…”
“What, Jackie. What are we talking about?”
“We’re talking about giving people some time so that they can figure out what’s right? We’re slowing the world down. Don’t you see how important that is?”
He pulled backward at the intensity. This was what it was all about for her, and he suddenly totally grasped that basic idea. It was all moving too fast for her. She didn’t feel heard and she couldn’t hear herself.
“Let’s take our time with it, Jackie. I’m listening.”
“I know you are. You are the first person who ever really saw me. You met me in Nepal, you…” She grinned, so sincerely. “You don’t remember, do you? Oh, Lyle, of course you need to know this.” She reminded him, seeing he had a vague recollection of helping a young backpacker. “And then, years later, in the back of class, you heard me even before you actually saw me. You heard me, which is even more powerful. Then when you looked at me, you understood. Just the way you diagnosed people and what ailed them. It is such a powerful gift and I want you to know that I see you, too; I hear you. I heard you calling and I came.”
On the live video stream, there was a flash of light.
“It’s starting,” she said.
“You did that?” he asked.
“No. No. I mean that one of the nut cases on one side or another has started the violence. Honestly, I can’t tell which is the immune system anymore and which the disease—whether we’re defending or attacking ourselves. I guess maybe that’s how you felt when you got depressed. But the thing is, Lyle, the thing that I think you’ll be most proud of is that I figured out a painless way to stop things.” Before she could elaborate, the pair of them looked at the screen and the scrambling of footage as reporters and cameras jogged around. Several shots rang out loud enough to overcome the extremely low volume on the TV.
“How does it work?” Lyle asked.
“Quite effectively. Before you know it, everyone at the mall, everyone in the world, will be on pause. No more violence, no more”—she looked for the words—“crimes of passion.” She paused. “Then when they come out of it, if they come out of it, they’ll have forgotten what got them so incensed in the first place. Think of it, Lyle! A reboot for humanity.” She knew that wasn’t the question he was asking. “We’ve got a few minutes. I’ll bring you up to speed on the process.”
From the way they were talking, Lyle couldn’t tell if she felt he was softening to her, or whether she thought he remained her sworn foe. In any case, she was still keeping him in a physically inferior position. She wasn’t going to give him a chance to extricate himself or stop her, if he could even figure out how to do that. He tried to think about what he would do if she were a deadly virus. In such a case, he’d try everything to hold the disease at bay—through fluids and managing infection spread—until the body came and healed itself or he could figure out another solution, a medical miracle. His original plan looked like it was going to fail, miserably. She was going to destroy the entire planet. He could imagine her hitting the proverbial green button and everyone heading into some strange seizure and crashing their cars, falling down and splitting open their skulls, failing to turn off their ovens and having fires burn down the world.