Depopulating the Cliff
Durant: What about you, Stephen. What's your worst nightmare?
Connor: To dream, I'd have to be able to sleep.
-TRIBE
Subject-dropping was the one class she missed in medical school. I know this and yet am still surprised each time she resurrects a past conversation. Or lack of one. Well aware of my misdirection as she is, Natalie isn't bothered by walls. She has a license for her jackhammer. But she'll need more than a mere tool to get what she thinks she wants from me.
The scare of a smallpox outbreak in Montana is over, but the paperwork? We're alone in this wing; most 'normal' people deciding to vacate once the single digit hours of overnight arrived. The other team members finished their reports in record time, as though they had somewhere better to be. Natalie has the lengthy autopsy and test results to document. I have the overview for the board and the details for the archive. She has to justify our expense. I have to justify our existence. She got the better end of that deal.
She doesn't look up from her laptop when she addresses me with patented mock annoyance.
"You never answered my question." She mistakes my silence for confusion and clarifies, "about your worst nightmare."
The reminder is supposed to compel me to enter into a discussion I neither want nor intend. Irritation rushes up from its home just below the surface and I wonder yet again why people feel the compulsion to ask me personal questions. My aversion to such things should be well documented in the employee handbook. I know I warrant my own chapter.
"I did. Is that your final report?"
"You didn't and yes, it is."
I recognize that look, the 'open up to me' doe-eyed gaze. Must come in a matching set because my wife had one just like it. Lord knows where that got her. Natalie, though a brilliant scientist, still believes that look alone can actually change me. Make me tear down barriers that I happen to like and confess every thought in my head. As if the universe was ready for that.
"I did. Twice." Neither had satisfied her. How unusual.
I drop the completed case file on her desk. Her report can be added once finished. And this case can move promptly into the archive. Unlike her question.
She eyes the manila folder with disgust, then casts her gaze back to me. The distaste is still there. "Would it kill you to join the human race, Stephen?"
She used to call me Connor. I miss that professional distance. Why does she insist on chipping away at the comfortable space between us? Human? That's what her questions come down to; an attempt to humanize me. There's a presumption of softness within my hard shell that she seeks to uncover. Yet, as much as she wants insight but ignores the truth; the shell is hollow, a void that wasn't meant to be filled. Eventually she'll figure it out. Painfully, no doubt, like my wife had last year. Those who have fought to stay on this cliff with me tend to fall. I long ago lost the desire to hold them here. And I lack the heart to join them below.
Natalie's standing now and her lab coat shifts on her shoulders. The thought that her beauty increases with her anger is banished. It's a carnal observation and in no way based on emotion.
"We're on the same side, Stephen."
And I have little choice but to maneuver her closer to the ledge. "Maybe. But our versions of relevant differ, Dr. Durant." My voice is as cruel as my own ears can stand.
Her recoil verifies the accuracy of my aim and it steals any response. I gladly take the escape that her silence affords. The empty hall carries her huff behind me and I trust a measure of blessed distance has been reestablished.
Her interest in me is distracting. To both of us. And therefore must be destroyed. Being the heartless man I am, I feel no particular remorse at the process of depopulating my cliff. In the end, her trying to save me will kill her. So I'm doing her a favor. There's only room for one up here.