Two Weeks' Notice

Gertrude now.

She didn’t have much time to think it over, because as soon as she’d hung her coat back on the rack in the closet, Lucy paged her to let her know her four o’clock had arrived. Bryn checked herself in the mirror—habit—and went out to greet him.

He was a tall young man, and he looked athletic, but when she spotted him sitting in the chair, he looked… unstrung, like a discarded puppet. He looked up vaguely when she stopped in front of him and said, “Mr. Lindell?” in her gentlest voice. “I’m Bryn Davis. Why don’t we go into my office.”

“Are my mom and dad here?” he asked, still seated. “Can I see them?”

“Please, come with me,” she said, and the persuasive, understanding tone worked; it got him up and moving with her. As she shut the door, he looked around her office with blank incomprehension, and she guided him to one of the two small sofas, with the table in the middle. She’d learned her lessons from the old owner, Lincoln Fairview, well; there were tissues in a wooden box on the table, and a trash can tucked discreetly just where a visitor would expect. All her materials were ready—pens, forms, iPad with photographs of options. She sat young Mr. Lindell down, fetched him hot coffee when he indicated he might drink some, and otherwise just listened as he talked for a while. He didn’t, thankfully, return to his request to see his parents; that was something she wanted to avoid at all costs.

“They said at the hospital it was instantaneous,” Mr. Lindell said. “That they never even knew.”

It most likely wasn’t true, but Bryn wouldn’t have said so. Not to him, not at a time like this. “I know it was very quick,” she said. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Lindell.”

“Eric,” he corrected softly. “I’m Eric. I want—I want to be sure I do this right, but I don’t know how. I’ve never—I’ve never even been to a funeral before. When my grandfather died, I was a freshman in college, and I couldn’t get back in time for the services.…” He seemed very pale, and much younger than Bryn had initially thought. “What happens now? What do I do?”

“Do you have any other family members who want to be involved?” Bryn asked. She felt sorry for him, for the vacant suffering in his face. He was maybe twenty, she realized—much younger than her, in every way. She’d gone into the army and seen death and brutality; the worst this man had seen might have been a drunken fistfight at a frat party.

Eric shook his head. “My sister’s off in Thailand on some kind of hiking trip. I can’t even reach her. It’s just me.” He suddenly took in a gasp of air and said, “I need help. I can’t do this. I can’t.”

It was like a cry, and Bryn reached out and took his hand in hers. Instinct. It stilled some of her own pain that still boiled inside. “I know,” she said. “And I’ll help you through this.”

It was the best part, she thought, of doing this job—seeing the relief in the eyes of those who sat on this couch, knowing they weren’t going through it alone.

In the end, she undercharged him for the funeral, because it just…hurt to do anything else.

The work did help, Bryn discovered when Eric Lindell finally left, paperwork in a folder for him to keep. It had been a long session, almost two hours, and the funeral home was quiet when she walked him out to his car. He seemed calmer now, and steadier, and as he was opening the car door, his cell phone rang.

His sister, calling from Thailand. Bryn watched him from the indoor window as he talked, and cried, and finally drove away.

Suddenly, she wanted to be back at the McCallister estate, with Patrick. Life is short. She was reminded of that every single day, here. I need to decide what to do about Kleiman, she thought. It was a thorny sort of administrative case—William hadn’t made a complaint, and Kleiman had taken the reprimand for Lucy’s complaint without too much grandstanding. Hard to dismiss her without incurring some kind of lawsuit, given the facts in hand.

Maybe she’ll quit, Bryn thought. That would be a nice solution for everyone— voluntary departure. And maybe pigs will fly. You don’t ever get off that easily, do you?

No. No, she didn’t.

It was the work of a moment to pack up the laptop and thumb drive, then another five to check the doors and windows of the building and set the alarm before exiting. She was locking up when her cell phone sounded, and she juggled it along with the keys. “Hello?”

“Bryn? Hi, this is Carl. I was—I was checking in to see when you were planning on having that support group meeting. I’d really like to be there, if possible.”

Crap. She hadn’t thought about the support group at all for days. “I don’t know, Carl. Let me make some calls and see if I can set something up. Have you spoken with your wife yet?”

“I—No. Not yet. Maybe if you would go with me to talk to her—I mean, having someone else there would be good, wouldn’t it?”

Only for Carl. His wife would probably find it intimidating and terrifying, given the situation. But that depended on her, and him. “I’ll call you back,” she promised. “Are you having any other issues right now?”

“I can’t sleep,” he said. “At all. I try, but I just lay there and think. I can’t shut my brain off. It’s like the nanites are making me do it. Did you ever feel like that? That they’re making you do things you don’t want to do?”

That was alarming, she thought, and leaned against the pillar. “Like what specifically?”

“I don’t know. Turn the car one direction instead of another. Think about—doing bad things.” He sounded positively strange now. “Nobody tested this stuff. They tested it on us. How do we know it’s not changing us, not making us dangerous? Do you know? Does anybody?”

All of a sudden, Carl sounded like the darkest voices of her id coming out of the depths, and it was spooky. She’d wondered these things herself from time to time; it was easy to fall into despair in this situation and imagine every random thing that happened as a symptom of a nonexistent disease. The deadly thing was that if Carl convinced himself he wasn’t in control, what would he do? What couldn’t he do?

“Are you thinking about hurting yourself? Hurting someone else?” She was not qualified for this, she thought in a sudden, angry fit of despair; no one had trained her, given her a diploma in how to manage dead people’s fears. Not even her own.

His hesitation made her nervous, but then he said, “No, not really. I’m just—I think a lot, and that must be the nanites, right? That they’re working too hard or something?”

“Carl, that’s why we have the group—because by talking out these things, we find out that what we’re feeling isn’t so strange or uncommon, okay? I’ve had the same sensations, the same thoughts. You can’t get better if you don’t reach out to people, and I’m glad you called me about it. If you feel that there’s something wrong, I want you to call the Pharmadene hotline and report it. They can check you out immediately. Understand?”

“Yeah.” He sounded better, a little. Calmer. “Yeah, I forgot about the hotline. Sorry.”

“It’s all right. You’re anxious, and that’s really pretty normal.” She laughed, a little sadly. “As far as normal exists for us, anymore.”

“Okay. Thanks for saying that you’ve had these thoughts, too. I thought—I thought I was out there in the dark, you know? On my own?”

“I know,” she said. “If you need me, call back. I’ll be here.”

He hung up after a polite decompression moment of good-night wishes, and Bryn closed the call and took a deep breath. It wasn’t the first time she’d had the same conversation. All of them fell down the rabbit hole sooner or later; not everybody was able to climb out.

When I get home, I’ll get the group schedule, she promised herself. She knew how important it was for people to stick together, talk, connect.

Exactly what Pharmadene and the government didn’t want them to do, of course. But screw that.

Bryn walked through the gardens, breathing in the roses and the rich, damp smell of earth, and was almost sorry when she reached the parking lot. Her car was parked next to two of the limousines, and she headed in that direction, half her mind on what she needed to do when she reached the estate. Show Patrick the vids. That was the first thing. He’d have some perspective on it, some insight she didn’t. And she needed him to share this with her, help her process that helpless feeling of fear.