Henry looked up and saw people in HAZMAT suits.
It was a dirty bomb. That's the only thing that could mean. There was no other reason for HAZMAT suits. First responders wouldn't have taken the time out of random precaution.
Elizabeth. He had put her in an impossible situation. Depending on the type of radioactivity, he could be dead in minutes. Logically, he knew this. He could leave his wife a widow with three children. All because he had to go back in and try to help.
His mind raced. He saw Elizabeth's panicked face. He saw the kids' tears. They needed him. Henry was scared for himself, too. He didn't want to die. For a moment, he let his mind run wild, panic and fear clenching his insides.
Then a calm washed over him. What had he just told Ali? That sometimes you are called to act. It is better to act and be wrong than it is to stay silent, even if your action is as small as a word. That's why he had come back into the building. He was setting an example for his daughter, and also for himself. There were so many times he should have acted.
With his father - he should have tried harder. He should have reached out. But he didn't.
But today he had chosen the right path. Today he chose action.
And Elizabeth was going to pay the consequences of that. It seemed like Elizabeth always had to pick up the pieces for every international crisis, family crisis, and personal crisis... The buck stopped with her. The president said, "Handle it," and she did.
She would understand. She would love him for it, wouldn't she? Not immediately, of course, but she would know that he had to go back into the building. He got his kids to safety, and then he had to go save more people. That was what their family stood for.
There was no way for him to have known it was a dirty bomb, he reasoned. It was pure chance. He would have taken the same course of action if he had known there was a small chance of it being a dirty bomb. The radiation was a poor hand dealt to him, but it could have been something else. He could have developed a rare complication to a mosquito bite, or some fluke cancer. Anything was possible. But today it was radiation. He was no more susceptible than Elizabeth, and he was no more at fault than she.
But oh, how mad she would be at him. And her anger was justified. How could she lose her husband so young? Before her kids were even out of school?
Henry didn't even know if she could manage without him. Her panic attacks had subsided. She didn't need coddling. She was strong, but she needed her husband. Elizabeth needed the one person she could always talk to. He wasn't interchangeable. He knew her idiosyncrasies. He knew where the tension hid behind her shoulder blade. He even knew that she got emotional every Sunday night because she didn't want to leave him in the morning, but she also wanted to fix the world.
Those two sides warred within Elizabeth; her professionalism, and her family. Only Henry knew how to square the circle. He could help her conceptualize her feelings, and that was the only way she could move forward - once she understood everything. Even if she wanted to leave something unexamined, her mind wouldn't let her.
So, could she go on without him? She wouldn't keel over, he knew. She would continue living, and her heart would continue beating, but she wouldn't be grounded. The floor would drop out from under her, and she would start to drown eventually. She had the kids to take care of, and she would make that the priority. She would probably quit her job, but Henry knew that would make her feel worse without an outlet for her enormous intellectual capacity. She needed him to help her find the balance. Finding the balance was impossible for her. All thanks to Gloria Steinem, but she could never strike quite the right chord. Henry was there to help. When she disappeared into work for too long, he reminded her to come home and eat. When she couldn't face one more day of partisan bickering, he helped her find hope again.
She did the same for him, of course. She made sure she was at Ali's soccer game when he couldn't be, and he went to Ali's parent teacher conference when Elizabeth was at work. There was a give and take that made sure that everything got done. They worked well together.
But without Henry, Elizabeth wouldn't have that give and take. Could she find the balance on her own? Could she pull herself out of her grief by herself?
Henry didn't know. There was no way for him to know. He hoped to God that Elizabeth wouldn't have to try to make it without him.