***
Jared read the bathroom scale in disbelief. He’d lost thirty-five pounds in the last month. He looked up and saw his reflection: the skin under his eyes was a dark brown—any darker and he would look like a scrawny baseball player using a grease pencil to stop the glare of the sun—his cheeks were starting to sink back into his face, and his hair was thinning. He looked like he was dying.
The doctor told Jared to expect some side effects from the radiation therapy he’d been receiving since his diagnosis, and he wondered if this was part of it.
The treatments were kind of weird. The radiation technician had him lie flat on a table—the table reminded Jared of an operating table, or maybe a table in a morgue—and fixed a mesh mask over his head and face. The idea was to make sure his head was in the exact same position for each treatment.
“If I zap you a little too far to the left,” the technician told Jared when he was first being fitted for the mask, “I’ll fry your ability to blink your eyes. A little to the right and I can make you act like a chicken.”
Jared thought that maybe this was supposed to be funny, so he laughed politely.
“I’m just kidding,” she said, confirming his suspicion that a joke had been told, “but we do need to make sure that tumor stays where we want it.”
“I’d prefer it not be in my head,” Jared said, trying a joke of his own.
Once the mask was on, the treatments were almost peaceful. He would lie still and try to clear his mind. It was forty minutes of uninterrupted lack of interruptions three times a week. He could have done without the side effects, however.
The nausea hit hard after his third treatment. He tried all manner of remedies to settle his stomach: Pepto-Bismol, silver nitrates, opiates prescribed by his doctors, even blackberry brandy and ginger ale. The only thing that seemed to make him feel better was vomiting. Eventually, though, the severity of the nausea settled down, or maybe he just got used to it.
Now, standing in the bathroom, all of it seemed like a blur.
Maybe it’s more than side effects, he thought. Maybe dying, without the radiation, looks like this, too. He tried to remember friends, relatives, and colleagues he’d lost to cancer over the years, but no one was coming to mind. That didn’t seem right. There must be someone.
The only thing Jared knew for sure was that he was tired. So incredibly tired.
***
The return episode of Life and Death aired exactly one week after the Sherman Kingsborough fiasco. It opened with this warning in bold white letters on an all-black background:
The first five minutes of tonight’s episode of Life and Death include scenes of graphic violence that are not suitable for young viewers. Parents are encouraged to escort children from the room.
The warning was on the screen for a full twenty seconds before the voice-over started.
It was Jackie’s voice. It had been taken from an interview she’d done with one of the producers the day after Trebuchet died. The producer, a young, attractive woman with the unfortunate name of Andersona (the same person who had delivered the fan mail), sat with Jackie on Jackie’s bed. It was an old fashioned girl-to-girl heart-to-heart. But the video of the interview wasn’t on the screen when the voice-over started.
This is what viewers saw and heard:
JACKIE: Of course I loved him. He was my best friend. [Her voice chokes.]
FADE from warning about graphic violence to a grainy image of Trebuchet’s bloody body on Jared’s office floor.
JACKIE: That man, Mr. Kingsborough, he wanted to hurt my father.
DISSOLVE TO a stupefied Sherman Kingsborough being escorted from the Stone house in handcuffs.
JACKIE: I don’t know why anyone would want to hurt us. I just don’t understand.
DISSOLVE TO Jared lying on the office floor, clutching his temples in obvious agony. Next to him is the blood-soaked rug where Trebuchet had been stabbed.
JACKIE: Yes, I think he’s in heaven. With my grandma.
DISSOLVE TO Jared, Deirdre, Jackie, and Megan burying Trebuchet in a hole in the backyard. It’s clearly been filmed without their knowledge by a camera hidden in a nearby tree.
SOMBER MUSIC starts softly and begins to swell.
JUMP CUT TO JACKIE and PRODUCER on Jackie’s bed. Jackie is crying hysterically.
JACKIE: Please, can we stop? I need to stop. [Jackie buries her face in her hands. The sound of her heaving sobs fades slowly out and mixes with the music.]
FADE TO BLACK. ROLL OPENING CREDITS.
***
Late the following morning, Deirdre was sitting on the futon in Jared’s office reading a book. Jared was lying on the floor, eyes closed. In the days before the cancer, before the cameras, this was unheard of.