“A few months ago, the Chinese government called upon all citizens to report their string length as part of a national data registry, claiming it was for the public’s protection and official recordkeeping,” the anchor explained. “And while there was some international outcry surrounding the ambiguity of those motives, most notably within the EU and the U.S., it was the sudden arrests, earlier this month, of three Beijing residents who refused to comply with the order that inspired these larger protests we’re seeing now.”
Hank assumed that the ongoing coverage of Beijing had partly inspired the crowds expected today in New York. It was hard to hear Anthony Rollins’s speeches and not worry that America was treading closer and closer to China’s sweeping mandates.
It was rumored that Anthony Rollins was among the key forces behind the government’s latest policies, and his stunt at the June debate was viewed by many as the spark that ignited the current discrimination against short-stringers, spreading from Congress into nearly every community. According to the event page on Facebook, nearly twelve thousand participants planned to converge on the small Manhattan park where Anthony’s rally was being held, bearing posters and megaphones and flags to voice their outrage.
Hank remembered when Anika had dragged him to the March for Science. He hadn’t wanted to go at first. He wasn’t convinced it would have any impact.
“Maybe it won’t,” Anika said. “But I’ll tell you the same thing I told my friends at the Women’s March. We don’t just march because we hope it will trigger change. We march to remind them of our numbers. To remind them that they can’t forget about us.”
Hank turned off the TV and set out.
Inside the park, Hank was surrounded by signs. “Short-Stringers Stand Together!” “A Long String Is Overcompensating.” “Equality for All.” “We Are More Than Our Strings!”
He was surprised by how overwhelmed he felt. It was a beautiful sight, this kaleidoscope of neon posters, of words both snarky and sincere.
The feeling that overtook Hank in that moment transported him to another time and place, some two decades ago, when his old girlfriend Lucy took him by the hand and led him to the maternity ward during their first week of training at the hospital, and the two of them gazed through the glass at the rows of newborns—sleeping, squirming, yawning, crying. Lucy’s eyes grew teary, but Hank didn’t want to cry in front of the girl he was still trying to impress. So he just stood there, staring at the future. At a dozen blank canvases in bassinets, still unmarred by the world outside the ward. A dozen reasons to have hope.
Many of Hank’s classmates said they wanted to become doctors to be a part of something bigger than themselves. Hank had always nodded along when they spoke, but he never really understood what they meant. He just wanted to help people.
But here, amid the crowd, as his gaze swept from face to face, he understood.
In the background, Hank could hear Rollins arriving onstage to a mixture of cheers and heckling, but he didn’t want to turn around just yet. He wanted to watch the field of protesters for just another moment.
Until Hank’s roaming eye came into focus.
An auburn-haired woman was moving swiftly through the crowd, bumping into people and hastily brushing them off as she moved toward the front, her right hand tucked inside her jacket, like she was holding on to something.
Fuck. Hank felt it in his stomach. The same gut response, the same nauseating sense of assuredness that he could feel when a patient was brought into the ER with barely a chance of survival. His body had a knack for knowing when something awful was about to happen.
Someone was introducing Rollins at the microphone behind him, heralding the congressman’s courage and conviction and faith, but Hank could hardly hear it. He was following the woman, inching closer and closer to her, trying to figure out what she was planning. Maybe it was just a particularly pointed sign, or a bottle of pig’s blood. Whatever it was, she was determined.
He was only a few feet away from her when she finally pulled out a gun.
Hank had been driven by an instinctive impulse his entire life—it allowed him to stay alert during twelve-hour shifts, to stick his hand inside a gushing wound and pinch the artery with his fingers, to run toward the gunshots that morning in May at New York Memorial Hospital. It was that same impulse that pushed him now.
He didn’t think about the obvious danger to himself. He didn’t think about his string. He thought only of this moment, of the people in peril around him.