“When?” He feels like the floor is lurching underneath him, and it’s all he can do to plant his feet and stay steady.
“Soon.”
He snaps sarcastically, “Before the end of time?”
“Lord,” she says, “are you all right? You look like you’re about to fall over.”
He sits down, setting his weary body down in the chair across from her again, almost sighing with pleasure at getting off his feet. There’s no point in arguing with her when she’s right.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m just—tired.”
“Me too,” she says, almost in a whisper. “Me too.”
“I suppose it’s all taken a toll. The bullet, the bad news from the doctor. Worrying about it all.”
“What was it like? Being shot?”
“It wasn’t like anything in particular,” he says. “It was just—it was a fact. I’d been shot. I was going to die. It was a certainty.”
“But then you didn’t.”
“I was a fool to think there were ever certainties.”
She smiles.
“It’s nothing to be glad about,” he says. “When I woke up under the doctor’s care, when I realized I was alive, I was overjoyed. In that moment. But this life, it doesn’t even feel like life anymore.”
The smile disappears from her face.
He says, “I told you, I’ll get driven out for sure. I’ll lose my position, my wife, the only things that give my life meaning. I might as well have died. It’d be faster.”
“Hogwash,” she says.
“Excuse me?”
“Life is always better than death. Always. No exceptions.”
“You don’t understand.” He leans in toward her, speaking more loudly, intently, trying to drive his point home. “I could die right now, sitting across from you in this chair, having this conversation.”
“Well, don’t,” she says. “If you do, I’ll never get out of here.”
“I’m serious.”
“I’m sorry. I know what you’re trying to say. You think your life is so compromised that there’s no joy in it anymore.”
“Exactly.”
“Still. Even when life is full of pain, it’s better than the alternative.”
“Every minute of every day, I’m aware it could be my last,” he says, still trying to make her understand. “The worst is, when it was happening, and I was lying there bleeding, I thought, all I want is to survive. And I did. But now I’m not sure it’s better this way.”
She says, “I don’t want to sound rude, but officer, that doesn’t make you special. It’s the story of modern life. You want something, and you get it…and it’s not what you thought it would be.”
“Sure,” he says. “That’s what happened to you, with Clyde?”
“With everything,” she answers softly.