The Measure(57)

It was only after Katherine had fallen asleep that Anthony actually thought about Jack.

Anthony and his wife had never wanted children. Kids would certainly not have fit into either of their schedules, and Katherine seemed perfectly content to play the doting aunt at birthdays and graduations, to help out whenever her brother was particularly burdened, and then return to the thrilling life she was building with Anthony.

Of course, Anthony felt sorry for his short-stringer nephew. He always thought Jack seemed a little out of place, the scrawny kid at family reunions, usually picked last as a partner for the three-legged race. He never had the same sense of fight in him, Anthony thought. Probably inherited too much from his flaky mother, who ran off to Europe like some socialist. Anthony just hoped that Jack’s short string wouldn’t lead him to do anything rash, anything that could taint his and Katherine’s good names.

And then it hit him. The protests and the shooting had made it alarmingly, if unsurprisingly, obvious that Anthony had a popularity issue among short-string voters. Perhaps Jack had just given him a solution.





Maura




Coverage of the shooting lasted for days: “Local Doctor Remembered as a Hero.” The anchors mourned the martyrdom of a dedicated physician who saved a congressman and a crowd of spectators from a potential rampage. Few reports mentioned that Hank was only at the rally in order to protest the congressman’s actions.

In the days and weeks that followed his death, Maura felt anxious, unmoored. But she still had to set her alarm each morning and ride the subway to work and sit inside her cubicle, staring at a spreadsheet, listening to the smack of her coworker’s gum. Maura’s department was scaling back, every team had to trim their budgets, and though Maura never let any of her jobs define her, she had always liked her role in publishing—crafting clever captions for social media posts, brainstorming new publicity strategies, all the interesting gatherings of creative minds—until now. Hank was dead, her own life tumbled by, the whole world seemed set on fire, and yet she was expected to keep sending press releases and finding excess expenses to cut, as though nothing at all had changed?

Of course, Maura needed a paycheck. She couldn’t just quit because of her string. And she couldn’t even contemplate any moves without hearing the warnings on loop: You’re a short-stringer. Your options are limited. Your time is valuable. Choose wisely.

That’s when Maura realized why Hank’s death had been so unsettling. It wasn’t just the profound loss, or the shocking violence. It was the fact that Hank was the first.

Not the first person that Maura knew who had died, of course, but the first short-stringer that Maura knew who had reached the end of their string. Who had run out of options, out of time.

And it made Maura wonder about how it might happen to her. The scissor that would snip the strand.

Nina, with her gloriously long string, had actually been given two gifts: A lengthy life and the ability to assume that death would catch up to her naturally, perhaps in her sleep, when she was old and tired and ready. The peaceful ending that we all deserved, yet only the lucky few got.

Maura was not so lucky.

The science was sharpening quickly, measurements growing more exact. The window in which your life would end was tightening by the minute, and both short-and long-stringers had gone back to the updated website to amend their expectations. But the precision only fueled the fear, as what was once a handful of years became a season, became a month.

And Maura heard the stories of short-stringers approaching the end, with no obvious illness, stalked by dread and uncertainty, hesitating before crossing the street, standing far from the subway tracks. It sounded unbelievably stressful. An awful, powerless feeling. Maura wasn’t surprised that some short-stringers had apparently formed a network for obtaining special pills, either from sympathetic doctors or dealers abroad, choosing to slip away gently, with their favorite people by their side, rather than wait a few more days for a potentially painful accident. It was quite a complex issue—Nina’s magazine had just covered the trend—since these short-stringers were seemingly healthy, their actions still illegal. But did they not share the same rights as the terminally ill? Maura wondered. The chance to exert their power, their freedom, in the final hour of their life?

Maura chose not to return to the website and remeasure a more accurate time frame.

She already knew enough.

And that particular gnawing question—the one thing she didn’t know—she tried to shove deep inside of herself, pushing it down as best she could. But still it emerged, every once in a while, and on the rare occasion when she let herself succumb, she tried to focus instead on the outcomes that would surely never occur.

Shark attack. Broken parachute. These, at least, she could rule out. And wasn’t there comfort in that?

Venomous snake. Lightning strike. Malnutrition. All improbable.

And yet, Hank’s death—gunned down at a protest—seemed exceedingly rare in itself. One year ago, if someone had told Hank that he would die at a “short-stringer rally,” he wouldn’t have even understood the phrase. Who would have guessed that he would be shot by a woman aiming for the corrupt politician behind him?

Or perhaps it was obvious, Maura finally realized, that he would die the same way he lived, according to his oath—saving the lives of others, even those who seemed unworthy.