Mara pushed the classroom door open and went back in.
[00:09:52]
Professor Nash was drawing a footing on the whiteboard. Nobody looked up.
She sat down. She knew this man, and she had nine minutes.
So she studied him.
Sixty-two years old. Heavy around the middle. A little short of breath when he reached up to the top of the board, but he always was. Color normal. Voice normal.
The room next. The projector on its bracket above his desk, held up by four bolts... she counted. All four. The cable across the floor that he'd stepped over for three years.
And the class was meant to run until five. If he let them go early, he could be anywhere in nine minutes. On the stairs. In the parking lot. In his car.
'It's not enough time. I don't even know what I'm looking for!'
"Professor."
He turned around. So did everyone else.
Mara had no plan at all.
"Are you feeling all right?"
He laughed. "I'm old, Miss Vance. I'm not dying."
Two students smiled. Dina was staring at Mara.
"You look a bit..."
"Handsome? I know. It's a burden."
More laughing. Mara sat back.
[00:07:58]
***
He finished early.
He took in the six of them, and the rain on the windows, and said the settlement curve would still be there next week. People started packing up.
[00:05:22]
He was putting his papers in his case.
"Can I ask you about the site report?"
Mara was already at his desk with her notes in her hand.
She asked him a question about bearing capacity. It was so badly wrong that he put his case down and gave her a look of real worry for her future. And because he was Professor Nash, he started explaining it from the beginning.
Dina walked past behind him with her bag on her shoulder and her eyebrows up. Mara shook her head, very slightly. Dina went and stood outside the door, where Mara could still see her shoulder.
[00:03:47]
He was on to the second diagram. Mara nodded along.
'Keep him here. If something happens to him, I'll be right next to him.'
He reached into his jacket for his phone, to show her a table. It slipped out of his hand.
He bent down to get it. Halfway down, he stopped. His other hand found the edge of the desk.
"Professor?"
"Gone a bit dizzy. It's nothing. Stood up too..."
He hadn't stood up.
"Sit down," Mara said.
They were the two words she hadn't said on Tuesday. This time they came out loud and clear.
"I'm perfectly..."
"Sit down, please."
He saw her face, and he sat. Dina was in the doorway now.
"Call campus medical," Mara told her. "Say sixty-two, male, dizzy. Say it's urgent."
Dina already had her phone out. She didn't ask a single question.
***
Professor Nash complained the whole time.
"This is a great deal of fuss," he said. "Students. Always so dramatic."
He let her take his pulse while he said it. Fast, and not quite even.
His speech was clear. His face was the same on both sides. He could lift both arms. Good, good, good... and then he rubbed his breastbone with two fingers, without thinking about it, like a man with indigestion.
'His heart. It's his heart.'
"Do you have a heart condition?" Mara asked.
"I have students."
"Professor."
He met her eyes and stopped joking.
"Blood pressure," he said. "I take a tablet."
"Did you take it today?"
He had to think about it.
[00:02:11]
The campus medics came with a wheelchair and a bag.
"Sixty-two," Mara told them, in order. "Dizzy for about two minutes. Rubbing his chest. Pulse fast and not even. Speech is fine, face is fine, both arms fine. He takes a blood pressure tablet. He isn't sure he took it today."
Nobody asked her how she'd known to keep him there.
They put a cuff on his arm. The medic reading it said the number out loud to the other one. Mara didn't know much about blood pressure, but she could hear in the medic's voice that the number was bad.
"Did you take your tablet today, sir?"
"I think," the professor said, a little embarrassed, "it's still on the kitchen table. Next to my tea."
[00:01:04]
[00:00:41]
They gave him a small white pill to hold under his tongue.
[00:00:29]
And the count stopped.
It hung there above his gray head, perfectly still. One second passed, then another, and it stayed at twenty-nine. Mara held her breath.
The numbers changed.
[00:47:13]
Forty-seven minutes. She made a sound. Nobody turned.
The count started to climb. It ran upward faster than she could read it. The minutes rolled over into hours, and a new number appeared on the left for the days, and then another one after that.
'It's going up. We changed what happens to him, and it's going up!'
The count climbed until there was too much of it to show, and then the numbers went out.
Only the whiteboard was left, with half a footing drawn on it.
Mara stood very still and let the medics work around her.
Professor Nash was still complaining when they wheeled him out. Over his shoulder, he told Mara to reread chapter six.
***
"What was that?" Dina said.
She was standing very close.
"Mara. What was that? You told him to sit down like you were his mother!"
"He looked sick."
"He looked like Nash." Dina was studying her face. "You were at his desk before he dropped the phone."
"I had a question."
"It was a terrible question. I heard it."
"I know."
Dina picked Mara's bag up off the floor, and hung it on Mara's shoulder for her, the way you would for a kid.
"I've got a thing at six," Dina said. "I'm going to cancel it."
"Don't. Please. Go to your thing."
"You'd tell me. If anything was going on."
"Go to your thing, Dina."
Dina went. She looked back twice.
***
On the way to the tram, Mara stopped at the stationery shop by the gate and bought a notebook. Squared paper, hard cover, a ribbon to mark the page.
She wanted the record in her own handwriting, not on her phone. Phones can't tell you if your hand was shaking.
She wrote on the tram, standing, with the book pressed against the pole.
--Notebook--
CASE 01. Male, about 50. Tuesday.
Seen in reflections only. First seen at 00:06:18.
His heart stopped about a minute before zero. No help until after that.
Outcome: died at 00:00:00.
--Notebook--
CASE 02. Professor Nash, 62. Thursday.
Seen directly, no reflection. First seen at 00:11:03.
Help: kept in the room, sat down, campus medics called, medicine given. All of it happened while his heart was still going.
Count stopped at 00:00:29, then went up, then disappeared.
Outcome: alive.
She stared at the last word all the way through two stops. She underlined it. And underlined it again.
***
At home, Theo was lying on the sofa upside down. His feet were over the back and his head hung off the seat. He held his phone above his face, watching a video.
"Dad says pizza," he told her.
"Dad's at work."
"Yes. So. Pizza."
Mara put her bag down. She stood in the doorway with her coat still on and checked above her little brother's head.
From where he was lying, that was somewhere near the floor.
There was the rug, and a sock. No numbers.
She dropped the sock on his face, ordered the pizza, and went to her room before he could see her hands.
***
Mara sat on her bed with the notebook on her knees and put the two pages side by side.
Both men got help. The man on Tuesday got it after his heart had already stopped. Professor Nash got it while his heart was still going. That was the only real difference.
She checked it again from the top. She couldn't find a mistake.
Part of her was glad. Mostly she was scared.
If the death could be stopped, then the next one she saw was hers to stop. And so was the one after that. Mr. Barrett had told her the same thing about drawings once. If you sign it, it's yours.
She uncapped her pen and wrote it under CASE 02, in capitals, so she couldn't tell herself later that she hadn't known.
--Notebook--
THE NUMBERS COUNT DOWN TO A DEATH.
THE DEATH CAN BE STOPPED.