Page 5 of The Paradox Club

“They’re resolved as far as she’s concerned.”

“Just a suggestion. Give the new meds a little time. Do you think you can stay here a few more days?”

“If I don’t tell them I’m dropping out, they won’t kick me out of the dorm.”

“I want you to check in with me every day until you’re with Vivian, okay, Tess? Even if it’s just a two-minute phone call.”

“I can text.”

“I want to hear your voice.”

“Okay.”

TESS AND HARRY ON THE DOCK

On the dock beneath the night sky at age eight Tess asked her father, “Why do you like telling me stories?”

“Why do you like hearing them?”

“I asked you first.”

“The answer to both questions is the same. Because we’re human.”

“But stories aren’t important. Not like science. Science can save your life.”

“You think stories aren’t important? You think stories can’t save your life? Let me tell you a story. Once there were two men, or perhaps a man and a woman, trapped in a mine or maybe stranded on a desert island or lost in the wilderness.” Harry would often begin stories this way, probing possibilities for the best combination of details.

“Could it be two women?” asked Tess.

“It could be two women,” said her father. “In fact, it was two women. And these two women were lost in the wilderness.”

“Because there aren’t many women miners.”

“I suppose you’re right about that. For better or for worse there are not many women miners. So, these two women were lost in the wilderness. They had a tent and matches for a fire. The forest around them was full of ripe berries and a nearby stream was flowing with fresh water and teeming with fish. They had everything they needed for their bodies to survive. But we’re more than just our bodies, aren’t we?”

“Are we?”

“Do you read and think about stories and imagine things and understand science with your body?”

“I read with my eyes and I listen with my ears and I think with my brain.”

“You think with your mind, which is much more than just a brain. Even the lowest animal has a brain, but you have a mind and, just like your body, it can get sick or injured.”

“And that’s what happened to the two women?”

“That’s what started to happen to the two women. After a few days they both began to feel afraid and nervous and anxious, and they even began to imagine things that weren’t there.”

“I feel anxious sometimes.”

“Not like this. Their minds were playing tricks on them, reacting to their isolation in the worst possible way. The two women were going insane.”

“What does insane mean?”

“It means that, if things kept on as they were, their minds wouldn’t work properly anymore, and they wouldn’t be able to survive.”

“Your mind can kill you?” This thought chilled Tess to the bone, though she gave no indication to her father that her question was anything more than a child’s idle curiosity.

“In a way, yes. The two women needed medicine for their minds. They needed something to help them stay sane. And what do you think that something was?”