Gillian Anderson - A Vision of Fire

“Oh?”

Ben allowed the silence to stretch until the server appeared. Caitlin let it rest. Ben would talk if and when he was ready. Thinking of Barbara’s culinary suggestions, she ordered roasted vegetables and an omelet. Ben stuck with coffee.

He sat back. “I’m tempted by the same desire for stability that I guess everyone wants. Home, family. But I’m chin-deep in the world’s worst crises, every day, so there’s not much point in letting my mind go there.”

“Your current boss does it.”

“The ambassador has a staff, he has a bunch of years on me, he has experience, and he’s still stressed.”

“Maybe if you looked at it as adding to the world at large, rather than taking away from yours…”

“Adding what? Besides worry,” Ben said.

“I didn’t say it was free,” Caitlin told him. “You can’t understand until you actually experience the parts that are transcendent.”

“Is it worth what our friend is going through with his child?”

“You tell me. You’ve seen them when she was her normal, happy self.”

Ben was silent. Eventually he nodded.

“All parents have challenges,” Caitlin said quietly.

The server arrived with Caitlin’s meal. Ben leaned in after the woman walked away. “What kind of a challenge is he looking at? Is she schizophrenic or something similar?”

“I can’t make that diagnosis yet, and I shouldn’t tell you anyway.”

“But you will, right?”

“I will say she’s missing some key symptoms,” Caitlin confided. “There are usually warning signs for a psychotic break. But in this case, by all accounts she hasn’t shown a progressive disconnect from her life. This girl was very suddenly ripped from her reality.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning I’m not sure what to make of that yet.”

“There is such a thing as sudden onset, though.”

“I won’t say there’s no such thing, but not this sudden, not usually. And there’s something else.” Caitlin took a bite of omelet as she collected her thoughts. “This is harder to describe. Typically, schizophrenics attempt to apply order to the disorganized information they’re receiving. That’s when you get diagrams, notebooks full of things that don’t make sense. In this case, there seems to be something very organized about what she’s experiencing.”

“Organized,” he said. “You mean this is making sense to her?”

“Perhaps on some level. The cycles of stimuli she’s reacting to are producing clear, repetitive effects.”

“The effects being fear.”

“I’m not convinced that’s what we’re seeing. It may be part of the mix, but it’s not the external part.”

“You lost me.”

“We don’t know what’s going on with her, other than her expression seems disorganized. We’re reading that confusion as panic, fear.”

Ben brightened. “I think I get what you mean. I’ve seen it in linguistics. She’s like a small child who doesn’t have enough language to communicate what she needs to say so there’s a huge amount of frustration, almost anger. But inside, things make sense.”

“Mm-hmm.” Caitlin had a mouthful of egg. She swallowed and nodded.

“What can you do to treat that?” Ben asked.

“Ideally, as I tried to explain to her father last night, we do another round of hypnosis and try to find and quarantine the problem, keep it from expressing itself as we saw yesterday.”

“ ‘Tried to,’” Ben said. “I take it he was not enthusiastic about that?”

“He was diplomatic, but no.”

“I’ll see if I can help the idea take root.”

“He’s sensitive to the pressure put on him,” Caitlin said as she bit into her toast.

“Yes,” said Ben, concerned for his friend.

“So, how’s Marina?” Caitlin grabbed a different subject. “Has she changed your man cave unrecognizably?”

“She started to,” Ben replied as he sipped his coffee. “I’ve changed it back.”

Caitlin paused her chewing. “Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry.”

He shrugged. “It was a good seven months. She went home to Ukraine. I was specifically disinvited to come along.”

Caitlin continued eating. “You shouldn’t have kept pouring coffee on her.”

There was a glimmer of laughter in Ben’s eyes. “With her, it was tea. She had a tea press.”

“Oooh, heavy-duty.”

Ben smiled, gazing at her. “I’ve never actually asked you out, have I?”

Caitlin fired him a look and immediately waved a Stop! Cease! Desist! hand at her old friend.

“Ben, you”—she motioned you over there —“and me”—she motioned me over here —“are perfect as we are. Let’s keep it perfect.”

“Okay,” he agreed readily. “It was just a question, it wasn’t a proposal.”

She laughed. “Oh, it wasn’t, huh?”

“No! I couldn’t remember. I was asking.”

“Uh-huh. Do you really want me to analyze that ‘question’?”

“No. Okay, fine. Maybe I was talking about possibly asking you out. Dinner, movies, a concert? I get a lot of invites from consulates and now I have no one to go with.”

“Events, yes. Dates, no. ‘Friends’”—she tapped the table for emphasis—“means we don’t let things get deep and messy.”

“Messy?” He grinned. “Who says the past has to inform the future?” He picked up a fork and dug into her cold omelet. “Anyway, the Friend Zone doesn’t exist after forty.”

“Put a sock in it, Moss.” She smiled.

Before he could answer, her phone rang in her bag. Someone was calling from the Pawars’ number. Her expression changed and she held up a finger to Ben as she answered.

“Hello?”

“Dr. O’Hara”—Mrs. Pawar’s voice was taut—“can you please come to us immediately?”

“What’s happened?”

“Please,” the woman said.

“I’m on the way,” Caitlin said.

They shared a cab to Forty-Eighth Street, then Ben went on to join the ambassador at the UN. Today marked the beginning of the second week of talks; Ben said they were expecting the Indian and Pakistani delegates to shed what little politeness they had managed to maintain thus far. It was not likely to be a pleasant week at the negotiating table.

When the housekeeper ushered Caitlin into Maanik’s bedroom, Caitlin resisted the urge to recoil. Maanik was standing upright in her pajamas, fighting against her mother’s restraining arms. The young woman was absolutely silent, even though the muscles in her neck were straining and her mouth was stretched so wide that her lower lip had split. Her abdomen was pushing in a controlled rhythm, timed with the straining of her neck. Maanik was clearly screaming as hard as she could—but without a sound. Kamala backed from the room, fighting sobs.

Caitlin started into the room just as Maanik wrenched herself forward so hard that Hansa lost her grip and fell to her knees. The girl remained where she stood, trembling from head to toe, leaning forward—not toward Caitlin but toward the windows. Caitlin could just make out the small shape of Jack London behind the curtains. Then she looked back at the girl.

For one second Maanik’s eyes rolled to meet hers and Caitlin felt raw horror wash down her spine. She had seen young people trapped in terrible circumstances—held hostage by a parent, pinned by a landslide—but here she felt as if she were looking at someone who had wakened in a coffin and found herself buried alive. The girl took an uncertain step and her eyes rolled to the ceiling. She was still trying to scream.

Caitlin grasped the girl’s shoulders. “Maanik, I’m here. You hear my voice, feel the weight of my hands…”