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THIRTY

“The shooter,” I say, my voice barely audible. “When I was a child. I was supposed to die.”

Henry looks over sharply. “What?”

“I was onsite during a campus shooting. My mom worked there, and I needed a ride. I had no idea the campus was on lockdown, but a woman saw me and came running to help. The shooter fired.” I swallow. “He killed her instead of me.”

I look at Maggie. “That’s it, isn’t it. I was supposed to die that day. And Henry was supposed to fall at that construction site. You’re dead but not dead. Some kind of fetch? Reaper?”

“Oh, so close,” the bartender says. “Keep trying. I have faith in you.”

“You weren’t supposed to die from that shooter,” Maggie says, her voice hollow and soft at the same time. “You were supposed to die crossing the road heading to the campus.”

“I—I was supposed to die before I reached the campus and…” My breath catches. “Dr. Dabrowski. The woman who died saving me. That’s it. If I died before I reached the campus, she wouldn’t have died.”

“Dr. Evangeline Dabrowski,” the bartender says as he lifts a bottle. “Let’s raise a toast to the good doctor. A leading scientist in immunology, who was going to discover the cure for cancer if she hadn’t died saving a little girl who went on to be…” He squints at me. “What are you again?”

“It wasn’t the cure for cancer,” Maggie says with a glare at the bartender. Then, looking at no one, she says, “But yes, she was working on the building blocks for a cure for several cancers, and if she’d lived, she’d have been instrumental in the research that would, by now, have cured them.”

“Saved a hundred thousand lives,” the bartender says cheerfully. “Instead, she saved yours. As trade-offs go…”

The floor beneath my feet sways, and I fumble for a stool. Henry catches me and helps me onto it and then stays close, one arm around my back, support but also reassurance.

“That has nothing to do with Ellie,” Henry says. “It’s a goddamn tragedy that this doctor died, but the person at fault was the shooter.”

“Why not kill him?” The voice is hoarse and raw, and we follow it to Noemi, still in her chair but now looking at us, Henry’s hoodie clutched in her lap like a security blanket. “Why would you ever kill a little girl instead of the actual person responsible for the doctor’s death?”

“Eh, it’s tricky,” the bartender says. “Juggling all these fates. You need to pick and choose. The shooter also injured a scientist who wound up a paraplegic and, because of that, devoted his life to making advances in neuroscience. But Ellie? She was a nobody. She was always going to be a nobody.”

Henry’s arm tightens. “She’s a person, with people whose lives she’s touched—”

“Oh, save me the Hallmark card. There are people who matter and people who don’t. None of you do. Redundant cogs in the machine. Remove them and the machine keeps running. In fact, remove them, and the machine runs better because they would have eventually blocked a more important piece of machinery.”

The bartender points at Henry. “Now you, sir. You failed to save a young boy. Do you remember that?”

Henry’s whole body flinches, and I reach to squeeze his arm.

“Not going to defend yourself on this one?” the bartender says. “Tell us how it was all your partner’s fault?”

“It was,” Maggie says, staring into her beer. “Henry was new to the job. His partner was drunk and refused to help. It was entirely that other man’s fault.”

The bartender shrugs. “Sure, but a kid still died, and that little boy was going to grow up to be the next Henry Kissinger.”

I stare at him. “The Henry Kissinger who was responsible for the death of millions?”

“Exactly. On history’s list of war criminals that kid was going to give Mr. Kissinger a run for his money.”

“And that’s good?” It’s Noemi again, rising from her chair, clutching the hoodie. “What Kissinger did was okay? Because he bombed Cambodia? Because he supplied weapons to massacre Bengalis? They weren’t Americans—or white—so they don’t matter?”

The bartender rolls his eyes. “Pfft, no. What Kissinger did was awful, and that kid was going to do worse. But what he would do was important. It’s like Time magazine picking their Person of the Year. Sometimes it’s a monstrous person, but that doesn’t matter because what they did had impact … even if it was negative.”

“Which is bullshit,” Noemi says. “We shouldn’t be honoring people for doing horrible things.”

He shrugs. “And yet people do. They impacted the course of the world. Henry here doesn’t.”

“He’s a paramedic,” Noemi says. “He saves lives.”

“The lives of other redundant cogs. The one time he had a chance to save someone important, he couldn’t hack it.” He lifts his hands. “Fine, yes, not his fault. But if he died at the construction site, the other paramedic would have still been with his former partner, a woman with enough experience to save the boy.”