This story idea came to me based on a confluence of conditions: the current crisis, a virtual Bible study I was participating in on Sunday and some conversations with my brother about the supply shortfall his hospital is facing. It made me wonder:

If we had a current day Darcy, in what way might he use his position to benefit the world in light of the current COVID-19 crisis?

Could Darcy's selfless, private behavior, win Elizabeth's good opinion once she found out?

How would Lady Catherine, George Wickham, Caroline Bingley and the whole cast of characters behave at such a time?

I challenge you to review with an example of what you have done or plan to do to help your neighbors and wider community in this time of crisis, or highlight a need that maybe would not occur to others. We can all do something!

I

Like most of the rest of the country, Will Darcy was watching way too much 24 hour news and reading too many alarming Facebook posts during his spare time, though he never had much extra time even now that he was working predominately from his home in Massachusetts. As CEO of a national closely-held construction corporation, Darcy was used to working almost constantly and mostly acting with impunity in all day-to-day operations. His cousins, Mitch and Ed Fitzwilliam, were busy with their own lives and appreciated the regular profit-sharing which allowed them to pursue their dreams, but did not participate much besides occasional shareholder meetings for Pemberley Inc. As Gina was a minor, Darcy was still in charge of voting her shares, but at least she was interested in what he was doing. Generally Aunt Catherine, who voted both her own shares and those of his Cousin Anne, had no interest in Pemberley except as it generated income for her and gave her the funds to continually remodel and add onto Rosings (she had just installed an enormous new fireplace facing, including a massive hearth and mantle with the chimney piece reaching all the way up to the twenty foot tall ceiling) and pay for Anne's round-the-clock care.

It used to be that watching the news was a way for Will to unwind and distract himself from the minutia of his days and help him think about the bigger picture, but the news felt too immediate today, especially with the reports about all the new cases of COVID-19 in New York City. It was past eleven p.m. and Gina was already asleep and he felt lonely and out of sorts. Hearing the news made him think about Elizabeth (her chocolate brown eyes dancing with amusement as she talked with Jane and Charlotte, but also her scornful look as she told Darcy she would never, ever date him after he broke up her sister and Bingley and accused him of cheating George Wickham out of shares in Pemberley) and what might be happening with her and her family right now.

Darcy wondered, had Elizabeth stayed in New York City after Columbia University, where she was in a Ph.D. program, shut down and prepared to go all online? He had made it his business to track what was going on with her university and when he was in a particularly love-sick phase kept watching the original Ghostbusters which showed some buildings on her campus just so he could imagine her walking around there. Or was Elizabeth even now living back with her parents and all her sisters in Connecticut? Could she possibly be ill and self quarantining in her apartment or hospitalized in the City (though surely not one of the list of the dead) or was she perhaps self quarantining in Connecticut (probably not easy to do if all the sisters were back home)? He wished Elizabeth had never blocked him from her Facebook page and was considering whether he might friend one of her sisters as a way of getting an update about her.

Darcy was also thinking about Cousin Ed. He knew he was among the national guardsmen called up and Darcy wondered what exactly Ed was doing and how safe he was.

While Darcy sat in his oversized arm chair before his oversized T.V., hearing about how more and more states had completely shut down almost everything, he called up his Facebook account on his laptop and tried to remember Elizabeth's younger sisters names. However, he got distracted by an email alert that popped up on his screen:

Will,

I've got your back on the decision you made. It is the right call.

Mitch

Darcy noted with some annoyance that Mitch had not "replied all" on the email from Aunt Catherine that he had been cced on, but instead had sent a separate message to him alone. Usually Catherine de Bourgh was too caught up in micromanaging her daughter's life to care about the day-to-day operations of the family corporation, which his father had started with an investment from Lewis de Bourgh and Gerald Fitzwilliam. But apparently with less to do than usual, Catherine had been second-guessing his every move and making his life even more difficult.

The email from his aunt needed to be answered, but Darcy was still trying to write the correct response. It needed to be pleasant, measured and emphatic enough to shut down more complaints from her, without getting personal. He had already tried to type out his response half a dozen times but kept deleting the message before he hit "send." He did not want to risk sending another message in a spirit of bitterness as he had to Elizabeth all those months ago. He wondered, not for the first time, if she had read his message before or after she blocked him from Facebook.

Darcy read the core paragraphs of his aunt's email once again as a prelude to formulating a more measured response:

Nephew, you go too far! How dare you unilaterally decide to keep paying Pemberley Inc. employees in the states where they aren't working! Profits are going to be sharply down anyway and, as you know, we are poised to start phase two of the Rosings kitchen remodel and expansion. Why are you wasting money on layabouts when Pemberley isn't going to be able to keep turning a profit until things open up again? I'm already suffering enough as it is from the corona virus. Anne's nurse asked for a leave of absence so she could help out at the hospital. If course I told her it was out of the question; Anne needs her and I can't have her coming back and exposing us all to this plague. I was sure she'd see reason, but instead she up and quit. I put Collins to work on finding her a new nurse, but he said after calling around for hours that it is impossible to find anyone now. Anne's stuck getting by with only two nursing aides.

Darcy's phone pinged and he grabbed it off the arm of his chair. It was a text from Bingley.

Bingley: Caroline's been driving me crazy. I just left her place and I should be driving home, but I feel like I shouldn't leave and not do something.

Darcy, who had been carefully navigating how to deal with Caroline for about a decade and was well familiar with all her regular antics, wondered how she could make the current crisis all about her.

Darcy: What did she do now?

Immediately Darcy's phone began to ring, showing Bingley calling. He answered and Bingley said, "Hi Will, it would take too long to text the whole story to you. Earlier today Caroline called me and told me she needed some supplies but was scared to go out and get them herself. I asked her to text me the list and it was ridiculous. I expected it would be things like milk, bread and eggs (although knowing my sister it would be almond milk, gluten-free bread and twenty-dollar organic, vegetarian fed hand bubble-bathed chicken eggs). "

"Naturally," Darcy answered, half grinning to himself. Hearing about whatever the latest horrid thing Caroline did to her brother always helped Darcy put his own frustrations with his family into perspective, because at least he only had to occasionally deal with his aunt, unlike Bingley who saw his sister almost every week. Darcy thought, not for the first time, how blessed he was to have Gina for a sister rather than Caroline. He also thought, yet again, that Bingley really needed to grow a backbone and stop kowtowing to all of his sister's demands.

"Well, it was so much worse than that," Bingley told him. "Caroline texted me a list which included her pads, tampons and panty-liners, each of a different brand, and they weren't all available at the same store, so I had to stand a long time in the feminine aisle in multiple stores trying to find the right things. And then she had the gall to complain when I didn't get the kind with wings, even though she didn't bother to tell me that's what she wanted. I mean, how was I supposed to know?"

"I'd be clueless, too," Darcy replied, remembering having to take Gina to the grocery store with her underwear stuffed with toilet paper when she was twelve and got her first period. In the feminine aisle Gina, suddenly shy, had held back and Darcy had been left to scan the options, baffled by the sizes, types and options, before a rotund forty-something woman beside her teenage daughter who was pushing their cart asked, "Do you need help finding something for your daughter?"

Darcy hadn't bothered to correct her about the daughter part, just murmuring, "Yes, please." He beckoned Gina forward.

Gina mumbled softly, arms crossed around and hugging her thin frame, eyes fixed on the ground, "I got my period" and then said nothing more when the woman tried to explain Gina's options and her own recommendations.

Finally Darcy said, "Can you just pick out what she needs?" The woman and her daughter proceeded to load up Darcy's cart while telling Gina what they were picking out and why while she looked down and her face got redder and redder. He remembered turning his back on Gina to try to give her some privacy, thinking that might help, and seeing, just across from the feminine stuff, the condoms and the pregnancy tests. He realized then, that if he thought dealing with periods was hard, he was really going to hate talking to Gina about pregnancy and birth control.

Darcy half heard Bingley's explanation about the other difficult to find items on Caroline's list which concluded with, "But that is just Caroline for you."

It took Darcy a moment to realize Bingley had paused and was waiting for him to say something. Darcy responded, "Yeah, I am sorry you have to deal with stuff like that."

"But that isn't the worst part, oh no. When I got to her place she invited me in and then told me to stay six feet away from her, but to carry her stuff into her spare room. And then you wouldn't believe what I found inside."

"Did she already have pads?" Darcy asked.

"Let me show you. I took a picture; I'll send it to you." A few seconds later the picture popped up and Darcy saw a huge stack of toilet paper and paper towels, hand sanitizer bottles, hand sanitizer wipes, medical gloves and things of that sort. But the thing that caused Darcy to inhale sharply was a box labeled N-95 respirators.

"Is that box what I think it is?" Darcy asked, well aware that the news reports had been full of how the medical personnel both locally and across the nation were running out of personnel protective equipment, most importantly respirators of that exact type which would filter out the corona virus.

"Yes, I talked to her about it, I mean, what business does Caroline have with keeping medical respirators? but she said that she needs all that stuff and get this, said it was to protect me and Louisa and the rest of the family if things got bad. I tried to talk to her about. It doesn't even make any sense as it is not like we all live together. But she wouldn't listen to reason. I can't do nothing, let her hoard stuff like that when other people who need it more are going without, but what am I to do?"

"I know just what you'll do," Darcy said in a sudden moment of inspiration. "Walk back up to her door and put me on speaker phone."

"Thanks Will!"

Darcy heard Bingley's steps, him knocking on a door and then Caroline's waspish tone, "What are you doing back here, trying to infect me or something?"

Bingley responded, "I've got Will Darcy on speaker phone. He wants to talk to you."

"Oh how are you doing Will?" Caroline's voice was totally different from how she had addressed her brother. Her voice was honeyed, too sweet really. It was annoying, but it boded well for his plan.

"I can't complain," Darcy answered, "no one is my family is sick and our company will get through this."

"Oh how is dear Gina? It has been way too long since I have seen her."

"She is doing alright. She is home all the time now that her high school has gone online." Darcy forced himself to be pleasant before he addressed the matter at hand.

"Now Caroline, Bingley told me that you have a whole room filled with supplies that you are keeping just for you and your family. I told Bingley that he must be mistaken . . . ," Darcy heard a snort from Bingley but ignored it, ". . . and that surely you were just collecting these hard-to-find items so that they could be given to charity."

There was a longish pause before Caroline replied, "Yes, of course Will. I was just trying to decide what I needed to keep back to protect the family. You understand, of course."

Darcy grinned to himself and said in his most reasonable voice, the one he reserved for million dollar customers who insisted on complaining to the top and difficult suppliers, "Well, never fear. It would be appropriate to keep two packages of toilet paper, two bottles of hand sanitizer, one package of wipes and the rest should go to charity. Bingley mentioned that you don't want to go out anymore, so I know he will be happy to load as much as will fit in his car and come back for the rest later. Those respirators are needed at area hospitals right now, so I think you should start with those, Bingley."

There was another pause before Caroline responded, "Of course, Will." Her tone did not sound nearly so pleasant as before.

"Thanks Darcy," Bingley said. "I've got to go now, so I can load up those supplies."

Darcy said goodbye, set his phone back on the arm of the arm chair and then called up his email again. He wrote a terse reply to his aunt:

I am sorry to hear about your personal difficulties. In this national time of crisis I will continue to do what I feel is right for our corporation and our workers. If you are unhappy with my decisions, certainly you may call a board meeting.

Some hours later, Darcy was dozing in his chair when he startled by an alert tone on his phone, grabbed for it and heard the clunk as it fell on the floor. He set his closed laptop on the side table and got up to retrieve his phone from the other side. He noted that the phone seemed all right and then swiped and put in his password. He saw three missed messages from Bingley:

Bingley: Caroline complained some more, but in the end let me take everything but what you said she could keep. It took me three car trips.

Bingley: I called my neighbor who is an emergency room doctor. I am pretty sure I woke him up. I told him about the respirators I liberated from Caroline and before I even finished the call he was knocking on my door in his pajamas. He says his hospital has been reusing the disposable N-95 masks, sterilizing them with a special UV-light but they don't know how effective they are with repeated use. When he saw that I had two cases (with 12 masks each), he practically jumped up and down. He is a big hulking man, but he was like a kid at Christmas times about 100. He drove off with the masks still wearing his pajamas.

Bingley: Oh, earlier he mentioned that a few of the doctors were using respirators they bought themselves before this whole crisis hit. He mentioned that the P-100s work, too. Isn't that the sort of kind your company might use for construction?

Darcy immediately pulled up his search engine and typed "P-100 respirator virus." One of the first articles to pop up was a PubMed article which showed P-100s were highly efficacious at filtering out viruses, even more so than the N-95s. Darcy felt like dancing, but instead grabbed his phone. He hesitated a moment before glancing at the clock in the corner of his phone screen. 5:28 a.m. It was too early to call, so he decided to text Mrs. Reynolds instead. She had been with the company since his father started it and among other things she was in charge ordering supplies and overseeing inventory.

Darcy: Mrs. Reynolds, how many P-100 respirators and filters do we have? I just heard that they will work against the corona virus.

Mrs. Reynolds: That's great.

He waited a few minutes for her next text to pop up. Like most Pemberley office employees, she was working at home now with her company laptop.

Mrs. Reynolds: We have 500 respirators between our three warehouses and at least double the replacement filters. We have another two hundred or so at various local branches that may or may not have been opened yet.

Darcy: First thing today, start contacting our various divisions and have them collect all the respirators and filters, whether they have used them or not, and bag them up to deliver to the local hospitals. Contact our warehouse managers and have them do the same. Getting everything distributed to the hospitals that need this gear the most is top priority today.

Mrs. Reynolds: On it boss. I'm sure you've already thought of this, but there are a lot of jobs we won't be able to work on without those respirators, things like asbestos remediation, high pressure sanding, things of that nature. We are going to miss deadlines, possibly delay certain projects for years because who knows how long it will be until we can buy this gear again.

Darcy: It doesn't matter. Our medical personnel come first. If the board has a problem with it, I will pay any damages out of my own pocket. We will act first and worry about the fallout later.

Mrs. Reynolds: Sure thing and God bless!

Author's Note: Here is more about what we were studying in the Bible study and how it just seems to fit with where we are right now in this county. We were completing week nine of a Jen Wilkin's study on the Bible entitled: James: Living a Life of Genuine Faith. The assigned verses included these from James 4:13-15:

Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit"-yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, "If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that."

James chapter 5 goes on to condemn the rich man who has "laid up treasure in the last days." The study had us look up various verses on wealth and helping the poor, and in its last "apply" question asked: "What is your attitude toward wealth and possessions? Specifically, what are you tempted to board or indulge in? How are you tempted to misuse the resources entrusted to you? How does your attitude display a lack of trust in God?" At the end we were discussing how we could help those in our church family and the wider community.

In these recent days we have certainly seen people who are hoarding items (like toilet paper and masks that medical personnel need) from fear about what the future will hold. I found the reading from James to be very reassuring in these difficult times that God is in control. This crisis is an opportunity to depend on Him and help take care of our neighbors.

Oh, and the inspiration for Darcy donating the P-100 masks and replaceable filters was that my brother, who is an emergency medicine doctor, said they are almost out of protective gear and don't have respirators. I remembered that all the news stories are about doctors needing N-95 masks. I mentioned to him that I had a P-100 respirator that I purchased last year to safely clean off some furnace tape that likely had asbestos and asked if it would be of help to him. He asked me to mail it to him express, which I did yesterday. If any of you have stuff like this, see if you can donate it to a local hospital; it is far superior to these masks people are sewing out of cotton.