Paul Hardy - The Last Man on Earth Club

“Unless the techniques used were beyond the level of your scientific understanding.”

Iokan interjected: “Kwame, if that’s the case, any of us could be hiding some terrible secret. You could have some horrible past we don’t know about…” Kwame flinched.

“I am not — I do not have such a — a —” Kwame stuttered and stalled.

“Kwame. Slow down. Take a breath,” I said.

Kwame stopped trying to talk and breathed carefully for a few seconds before continuing. “All I would like to say is this: we cannot trust this woman. She has lied to all of us. She cannot tell us why she survived and billions of others did not. We cannot trust her.”

“That’s not very charitable,” said Iokan. “I think she’s doing more than any of us to actually do something about the end of her world.”

“Wouldn’t be hard to do more than you, would it?” muttered Olivia.

Elsbet ignored them. “Have you given up?” she asked.

“No,” said Liss.

“Then why are you here?”

“I…” Liss couldn’t quite answer.

“You have a mission.”

Liss looked back at her. “No. I can’t. I just can’t…” She shook her head and looked down. “I’m not the right person. I’m supposed to be an office manager. I don’t know how to find them…”

“That doesn’t matter! You have a duty!”

“Elsbet,” I said, “Liss still has some difficulties, the same as the rest of you. She’s lost her whole world and she needs our help.”

“She has a mission!”

“That’s up to her, Elsbet.”

Elsbet gave me a boiling stare. Then looked aside at all the others looking back at her, and let it go.

“Does anyone else have anything to add?” I asked. None of them did, not even Iokan. I have to admit to being disappointed in the group’s reaction, but I couldn’t force them to get on with each other, and trying too hard would make it worse.

As soon as he could, Kwame went back to his room. I found him in the corner, legs drawn up, head on his knees. I took his chair from behind his desk and sat down facing him.

“Do you want to talk about it?” I asked.

“I do not,” he said.

“I don’t mean last night. I mean the group session. You were very hard on Liss.”

“I do not know who she is.”

“She’s exactly who she was before. She’s lost her world and needs our help.”

“Nothing is what it was before.”

He fell silent.

“You had a flashback last night, didn’t you?” I asked.

“I am sure you already know that.”

“Do you remember anything?”

“Yes.”

“Can you tell me what it was?”

“I saw him.”

“The man in your dreams?”

He laughed. “The man in my dreams. The man of my dreams!” His laughter turned to weeping and he waved me away. “Just leave me alone.”

“Kwame—”

“Just go.”

“If that’s what you want. But if you need to talk to someone, please, just come and see me. Don’t stay in here all day.”

“Will you just go?” He looked up at me, pleading with his eyes. I left him to it.

My next job for the day was to deal with Iokan’s tendency to pretend to be a therapist, which was now causing actual harm. I called him to my office.

“But this is why I’m here,” he complained.

“No, Iokan, this is why I’m here. You’re here for therapy.”

“But there’s nothing wrong with me. I’m supposed to help people!”

“And how has that been going?”

He paused for a moment. “Not perfectly, I have to admit, but—”

“Can you point to any successes?”

“I’ve… tried to support people in any way I can.”

“That’s the problem, Iokan. You’ve been giving everyone exactly what they say they want. But true therapy isn’t about that. Dysfunctional people often don’t want what they need to get better.”

He thought about that, and sighed. “Well, I suppose so…”

“I don’t think a kiss was what Kwame actually needed, was it?” Iokan’s shoulders fell. “Look, I understand what you did, but if he’d gone to a trained therapist, we would have dealt with his problem much more carefully. Instead, he’s even more traumatised than he was before.”

“I never intended to hurt anyone…”

“I know, Iokan. I know you believe you’re here to help. But you don’t have the kind of training you need for this. I’d much rather you concentrated on your own issues rather than trying to solve everyone else’s. I’m afraid if we see anything similar happening again, we’ll have to intervene.”

He nodded. He really seemed to have got the point, and it hit him hard. He left, looking more troubled than I’d ever seen him.

Pew hadn’t been willing to talk the previous evening, and I hoped a night’s rest would help him speak about his attack on Olivia. But instead he hunched himself in an easy chair, hood up, as though he could somehow fall inside it and away from everything.

“Pew? We really do need to talk about what happened.”

He didn’t answer.

“You had a flashback. You weren’t in control of yourself.”

He still didn’t answer.

“I’m only here to help you, Pew. If you did something you’re ashamed of, it’s okay to tell me. Anything you say in here is completely confidential.”

He looked up at me, unsure of what to say.

“Yes, Pew?”

“I…”

“It’s okay. Go on.”

He blurted it out: “I want to die.”

“It’s not that bad, surely?”

“Olivia said you’d let her die if she did the therapy.”

“I see.”

“I want to do the same.”

“Well… if you’re absolutely determined…”

He nodded.

“It’s not the easy way out. You have to demonstrate that therapy is completely hopeless, which means you really have to try. It’s hard work.”

“I’ll do it.”

“It can take years, Pew. Hardly anyone ever actually goes through with it.”

“I said I’ll do it.”

“Okay. If you’re absolutely sure.”

“I’m sure.”

“There’s some paperwork you’ll have to fill in. And there’s a cooling-off period of two weeks. We don’t put anyone on the euthanasia track without giving them a chance to pull out.”

“We’re not free, are we?” He looked back up at me. “We can’t even die without filling in a form.”

“We’re trying to help—”

“I’ve never been free.”

“Pew, we need to talk about what happened last night.”

He didn’t answer.

“You do understand — that’s going to be part of the therapy. You’re going to have to talk about it.”

He took a few moments, and then nodded. “Not… now. Please.”

“I’ll get a pad with the forms,” I said.

Olivia slept in the garden, shaded under her massive straw hat, one hand trailing down from the reclined garden chair to a self-chilling glass of lemonade.

“Olivia?” said Pew. She snorted and snapped awake, suddenly ready and tense. Then she saw who it was.

“Oh. It’s you . What do you want?”

“I’m…”

“Out with it! I haven’t got all day!”

That stopped him for a moment. But he worked up the courage and said: “I’m going to kill myself.”

“Yeh. It’s not much fun when they bring you back. Good luck.” She pulled her hat brim down.

“I mean I’m going on the euthanasia track.”

She lifted her brim and looked up at him.

“I can’t… I can’t keep going on like…”

“You think you’ll do it again,” she said.