People scream.
I handle the man with force; the gun falls to the ground. He has a lot of body mass, but he isn’t trained. It takes me three seconds to have him on the floor, his arm on the back with my knee pressing with all my weight and force on his lower back.
He tries to fight me, but I just pull that arm higher.
“Don’t even try, fucker,” I say darkly, grab the gun from the floor, and press his own gun against the back of his neck.
I turn my head to see if anyone was hit.
Everyone’s crouched down for cover behind the wooden rows of chairs. Jane is kneeling next to the lectern. Her arms are crossed in front of her, she is breathing flatly, muttering something to herself while rocking softly back and forth.
It confirms what I suspected. Autism. Or a severe trauma reaction. Maybe both, as it so often correlates.
“Anyone call or get security!” I shout into the room, before I look back at Jane. “Professor McKenzie,” I call for her, but she does not react.
There’s nothing I can do from here, so I wait. The wait for security to arrive is almost unbearable. I count the seconds and reach 279. Way too long.
Four men arrive and handcuff the attacker. Two of them are NYPD. The moment I push myself off the guy on the floor, I hand them the gun. I know it will be run, but my identity is solid, so I hand them the gun with my fingerprints on it.
The officers want to question me, but I tell them to wait a moment.
I get over to Jane.
She’s still rocking herself there, not reacting to anything that is happening.
I sit on the ground in front of her, close but at an arm’s distance.
“Parasympathetic postganglionic cells and all preganglionic axons produce and release acetylcholine as a neurotransmitter, while sympathetic postganglionic cells produce and use norepinephrine,” I say, rehearsing what I read in the recommended coursework book by Breedlove & Watson about Behavioral Neuroscience. “Explain to me what it means for the body.”
She doesn’t look at me, but I get an immediate answer. Her voice shows her stress as she speaks in a staccato, robotic way. Her head twitches slightly in between.
“Parasympathetic division arises from the brain and the spinal cord within the autonomic nervous system, which can be triggered by external and internal, immediate as well as non-immediate occurrences,” she says, and finally stops rocking herself.
Her voice gets more confident as she continues.“Parasympathetic activation may cause pupil and/or airway constriction, slowing of heartbeat, stimulation of digestion and gallbladder, and dilation of blood vessels. Mainly described as the rest and digest response. Simply said, it signals to the body that the surroundings are safe, and it can relax.”
She relaxes more and breathes in deep.
“Exactly,” I say as she looks up at me. She stares at me with still wide, green eyes, and yet they soften for a brief moment. Her gaze is so raw, almost as if I were the first human she has ever seen, and it touches me somewhere deep, sending a warm sensation of curiosity through my body.
A faint smile hushes over my face.
I get up without touching her and return to the police men.
I am questioned about what happened, and I rehearse. I tell them that my body just reacted, a sudden rush of adrenaline, and I just did what I have seen in movies. I make myself smaller, appear shy, and fake an adrenaline drop by letting my handsshake slightly. I can’t have anyone here know I was trained, least of all the police.
It seems to be convincing enough for the officers. More people are arriving in the room, including the Dean of Students and a Crisis Counselor. I am asked how I feel, and I play a story to avoid drawing any more attention to myself. I get all the praise for my actions, praise I don’t want.
At some point, my body gets tired. And by tired, I mean that the drugs wear off entirely, and I realize I haven’t slept once in the last 36 hours.
I ask the officer if I can leave, and no one denies me, so I grab my backpack and just walk away.
Half an hour later, I’m walking out of the elevator leading to my studio, earsplitting music coming from the door. I hesitate for a moment and lean against the door. I am so tired, I want to be alone. Not party on.
I sigh and then enter the studio. Sure enough, I find El in it, dancing with herself to loud music. I mind, while I don’t mind. She has taken over the studio in the best way possible by completely redecorating it in less than two days, but sometimes I’d really like some alone time.
I turn down the music, so she realizes I’m back. I let myself fall onto the brown leather couch that cost $33,459. I think it’s crazy to pay that much for a couch, but El said I needed it, and here we are.
“You’re back early,” she says as she sits on my lap. I can tell she never stopped partying. Her pupils are so dilated that there’s only a small rim of her blue eyes left.
