“So…some perspective then, as we wrap up?” The T.A. smiled around at the ring of students seated with him in the small, sunlit room. “Pulling back from all these details, what are your overall takeaways from this morning’s material?”

After a moment of the usual shuffling silence, Celeste—always the most forthcoming of their group—said, “Well, I guess to start with, the need to enter this work focused not just on who the clients are,” she shrugged, “or who we think they are, I mean—but on who we are, and aren’t. What we are and aren’t there to do. For them…or to them.”

“Okay.” The T.A. nodded. “That’s a good place to start. An important place. But I think it’s also worth noting that, even after everything we’ve been over this morning, you still use the words ‘for them’ and ‘to them.’ He gave her a quizzical smile. “Why not ‘with them?’

“Right,” said Colleen. “I mean, the whole shift from religious charity to secular partnership you talked about—the original shape of all that still tags along, right? Even without the overtly religious lexicon. If we’re still thinking of them as the ‘unsaved,’ and us as the ‘saviors,’ changing that model takes more than new labels. There has to be some persistent, conscious intent to reject it and build something else. But who’s gonna find space for that in the day-to-day shuffle? So…it just doesn’t happen—even as we learn to talk a different game?”

Dusty suppressed a smile as several people, including the T.A., nodded. Colleen liked to let someone else establish the frame, then jump in with touch-up. She was smart that way. They were all so smart here. And so completely clueless. Still, being here, up on his feet again, beat lying in a hospital bed by light years.

“Colleen raises a point,” the T.A. said. “It’s important to be thinking now about that daily shuffle, ’cause it crushes a lot of people in this profession, and it will try to crush you. No one’s going to be sympathetic about that either; not your colleagues, and certainly not your clients. It’ll be really hard to do more than let the flow sweep you toward one cut corner after another. But that very struggle to swim even harder, when you’re already being pressed to do so much more than you feel able to, can—if you embrace that discomfort rather than pushing it away—help you to join your clients in their own struggle to confront more than they feel able to—rather than just stooping down from on high to help someone ‘less fortunate.’ That’s the shift we’re really talking about here—at the core of getting past this old paradigm of ‘the other.’

“Ever since social work became a thing at all, we’ve tended to think of ourselves as ‘members in good standing’ of some unbroken world, leaning down to help broken people live more like us. What we’re talking about now is approaching this work as our clients’ peers—fellow citizens of a whole broken world—in which some of us—not ‘them’—have a much harder course to navigate than others of us were handed. Our job in this new paradigm is about helping equip our clients to better navigate the lives they have, as who they are, where they are.” He looked around the room more soberly. “We can’t give most of these people different lives, no matter how badly we may wish to, or how hard we’re willing to try. We can only help them find better resources with which to live where they’re already living, navigating their reality as it is, and will likely go right on being.”

Dusty liked the guy, and admired his take on things. A lot. But he also couldn’t help wondering if he’d ever spent more than ten minutes down on the Ave., or seen any of the world between his office and his apartment building from closer up than beyond a windshield. Dusty knew that wasn’t fair, or likely true. But very little of the ‘social services evolution’ this guy waxed on about matched anything Dusty had ever experienced out there.

The T.A. glanced at his watch. “And that’s it today.” He grabbed his iPad and stood up. “Looks like campus will be staying closed for one more week, so I’ll see you all here again on Thursday.” Classes had resumed in ad hoc spaces all over town, like this empty office complex, while the university finished clearing and repairing flood damage on campus. The T.A. flashed them one last grin. “Nice to have you all back together. Be safe out there.”

Colleen swept up her laptop and books, coming to join Dusty as everyone filed out of the room. “That was a really good session,” she said as they fell in behind the larger herd. “Kind of inspiring, even.”

“Yeah, I guess,” said Dusty.

“You didn’t think so?”

“His ideas are pretty right on.” Dusty shrugged. “I’m just not sure where he’s seeing this evolution in social work actually happening. I sure never saw it.”

“Well, I think he acknowledged pretty clearly that it’s an emerging consensus, not an established one. That’s kind of the point, isn’t it—that part of our job will be moving this new mindset forward?”

Dusty wagged his head uncertainly. “I guess so. I hope so. But if anyone in social services was taking these ideas seriously back when I was the client, I sure never met them.”

“What?” Colleen gave him an impatient look. “You were adopted by one!”

Dusty shook his head. “Anna was no social worker. She was a volunteer activist, and a radical outlier even by that standard. About as outside the system as you could get.” He stopped and turned, leaning back against the wall to grin at Colleen. “Can you really imagine any actual social worker adopting a client? She’d probably have been fired for inappropriate attachment issues.” He looked away, chuckling softly at the idea. “The guy they sent to ‘help’ my family deal with things was a walking anxiety dream. And, on the Ave., social workers were right behind bedbugs on the list of things to keep well clear of.”

“Then what are you doing here?” Colleen rolled her eyes. “How many times have you told me you want to help people like no one ever had a clue how to help you? That’s exactly what he was talking about this morning, wasn’t it? That’s what I’m in this for; to meet people where they’re at. To give them a hand up with respect and recognition—just like he said. I was glad to see a teacher saying it.”

“He’s not a teacher. He’s a T.A., which is why he can still believe that things—”

“T.A.s are teachers,” Colleen cut in rather sharply. “He is paid by the university, which is part of the system. That was the system saying, ‘Hey! We’ve been getting it wrong! We need to change!’ Why do you—of all people—have to sneer at that?”

Why do you, of all people, think I have no right to? Dusty thought, just wise enough to keep the reply to himself. Sure, the pretty world their T.A. had been describing sounded credible to the heiress of a wealthy tech tycoon. Everything must look pretty from up there. What could such people know about where people down here ‘were at?’

Hearing himself, Dusty’s jaw tightened in self-reproach. Colleen had done a pretty amazing job of knowing where he was at—all along—hadn’t she?

She was right. …Why so bitter, dickhead? he asked himself. Too smart to fall for hope—or put up with it in others? What was he doing here?

“I’m sorry,” Colleen said, quietly. “I didn’t mean to shut you down that way.”

“No, I’m sorry.” He shook his head again. “You’re right. About everything, as usual. I just didn’t wanna hear it.” He looked down, nodding to himself as he realized what his thoughts just now had shown him. “That paradigm of ‘the other;’ it’s not just church people and bureaucracies who keep it going. On the street, you guys are ‘the other.’ We believe in that separation as much or more than anyone, and don’t let go of it any easier.” He gave Colleen an apologetic shrug. “Yeah, I do want to do this work without being ‘the other.’ I guess I just…don’t trust ‘the others’ yet to want that too—really.” He smiled darkly. “If I’d thought of that in class, I could’ve spoken up for once and looked smarter than anybody.”

Colleen came across the hallway to lean up and peck him softly on the cheek. “Silence already makes you look smarter than anybody else. Don’t fuck that up.” She gave him a smile, took his hand, and pulled him farther down the hallway toward the door. “Maybe I should try it.”

Outside, the day was gorgeous. In fact, the weather had been lovely ever since the storm had finally died, as if nature wanted to paper over its huge mistake. ‘Storm? What storm?’ The city itself, however, unmasked that lie graphically. Two weeks later, it was still a mess—and would be for some time, by all accounts.

“So. Shall we go face the beast?” asked Dusty.

The authorities had recently reopened parts of town around Colleen’s apartment, and, as luck would have it, this morning’s relocated lecture had placed them halfway there already. They’d brought both Dusty’s truck and Colleen’s rental car down from Thom and Anna’s house, resolved to go start sorting out the mess they’d left behind there on the ‘big night,’ as they now called it.

“Don’t see why not,” said Colleen, shading her eyes as she squinted up at the azure sky. “I bet Anna and Thom will be relieved to have their house back finally.” She grinned at him mischievously. “Want me to follow you?”

He looked down, smiling as well, but abashed. “Nope. Got that memo now. I have to stop and put some gas into the truck somewhere. So, I’ll just meet you there.”

“See you there then.” She came to plant a quick kiss on his lips, wriggled her fingers ‘goodbye,’ and walked off toward her car.

Minutes later, Dusty was making his own way across town, keeping one eye peeled for an open gas station. Many remained closed down here, even now, still waiting for repairs of one kind or another, or for the return or replacement of absent staff. The rest of his attention was divided between navigating traffic and remaining detours, and taking in all the restoration work in progress around him. Telecom crews bustled around their trucks on every third or fourth street he passed, it seemed, still repairing poles and restringing cable. Berms of flood debris still covered many sidewalks and parking lots, backed by boarded windows and ravaged landscaping. Trying not to recall that night too clearly, Dusty wondered if the city he had known would ever really return.

Dusty himself did not feel entirely returned yet. Things inside of him had definitely shifted since his brush with death—as if some huge, invisible knot had…uncurled and relaxed—or disappeared completely. Even before his release from the hospital, he’d felt oddly both less anxious and more restless all at once, about…virtually everything, as if some important question had been answered, and some pressing new goal was waiting to be pursued. The trouble was, he still had no idea what question or what goal those could be. It just felt like there’d been some giant change of rules that no one had informed him of, much less explained. He kept waiting for these feelings to fade, like dreams did. But they still hadn’t.

And then, there was Colleen.

Putting his finger on what had changed in her seemed equally impossible, but something had. They both felt intensely lucky, deeply grateful, for all they had been spared and given back. They paid even more attention to each other now than they had before. And yet, there was some…part of her now that always felt…held back. He caught her watching him sometimes, as if waiting for an answer to some question she had never asked—or unsure, perhaps, of who she was even looking at. Which left him wondering the same of her. Then they’d smile, or kiss, and move on like nothing had just happened. His mind kept trying to fill those vague blanks—never very optimistically—until he closed that box again.

And under all of that somewhere, Matthew Rhymer still lurked. Colleen had continued to read bits of his unfathomable tale, but Dusty had not picked it up again since before the big night. Nor had Anna, as far as Dusty knew. They’d heard nothing more from Matt—which seemed just fine…on the surface. But niggling questions still bubbled up in Dusty’s gut at odd moments. Like…where had Matthew been when half the city flooded? Had he been forced to leave wherever he’d been holed up? Was he in some other city now? …Some other state?

Had he even lived through that night?

Dusty took a deep breath, and exhaled the thought, again, relieved to see an open gas station not far ahead on his side of the street.

As he pulled up to the pump and killed the engine, Dusty glanced up at the station sign unhappily. The price of regular had risen almost seventy cents within days after the storm. Fucking vultures, he thought, getting out and walking back to remove the gas cap. Their day is coming. My next car is so gonna be electric.

As he went to enter his credit card and select his fuel grade, a small green compact pulled up a few pumps over. The man who got out caught his eye, seeming strangely familiar, though Dusty could not for the life of him recall where from. He shook his head and looked away. Everything seemed loaded with mysterious meaning these days. It was really time to start setting all that down more forcibly. He, and everyone else in this city, had more than enough to cope with now than freaking out just for the hell of it.

When the nozzle clicked off, he returned it to its saddle, grabbed his receipt, and was on his way again.  

Fifteen minutes later, he pulled into Colleen’s complex just past its swanky granite sign, happy to see no evidence of damage anywhere. There’d been no real flooding here. This area had just been surrounded by lower-lying neighborhoods evacuated and closed off for a time.

He was kind of surprised by how deserted it looked, though. The area had been reopened for several days now. It hadn’t been convenient for Colleen and him to come down earlier, Thom and Anna’s house being over an hour away, but he’d expected to see other people moved back in by now, or moving anyway. There were no cars at all parked in the open lots, nor any signs of life that he could see out on the building’s balconies or behind its windows. Even the management office looked dark and closed. He hoped the place wasn’t still without water or electricity, or suffering some other problem no one had informed them of. …He was pretty sure Colleen had called the manager about coming back today. Hadn’t she? Maybe he should have checked that with her? Dusty headed for the underground garage, hoping to park as close as possible to Colleen’s assigned parking space.

As his eyes adjusted to the relative gloom, he saw no cars parked there either, and started to suspect there was something going on here they hadn’t been told about. As he approached the garage’s first tight corner, he glanced down at his phone to see if he had missed a call from her while he’d been pumping gas. But there was nothing there. He slowed down to navigate the narrow corner, came around it, and slammed on his brakes—unable, for a second, to make sense of what he was staring at.

Forty feet ahead of him, Colleen’s rental car sat motionless, halfway into the driving lane. Both of its front doors were open, the passenger door hanging askew, as if it had been… His mouth fell open as he realized the car’s front end was crumpled against the wide cement support column just in front of it. With something between a grunt and a shout, he grabbed his phone, yanked his belt off, lept from the cab, and ran to her car, envisioning her body slumped behind its wheel, blood running from her forehead. What the fuck had happened?

To his relief, however, the car was empty. Her books and laptop lay scattered in the passenger-side floor well, but he saw no signs of blood, or even serious damage to the interior—except that the passenger door had clearly been wrenched open very forcefully.

Which made no sense at all.

If she wasn’t here, then she must be up in her apartment, maybe calling help of some kind? Why hadn’t she called him? He straightened up and looked around more carefully, wanting to be sure she wasn’t lying on the ground somewhere nearby. But he found no sign of her, or any skid marks or debris from another car…

Dusty raised his phone, went to ‘recents,’ and touched her name. When the call went straight to voicemail, he jammed the phone back in his pocket and hurried to the garage stairwell, yanking the door open with an echoing bang, and taking the stairs several at a time to the second floor. He ran down the railed walkway to her door, and grabbed its handle—which was locked.

Why was it locked? He looked around, still breathing hard, a bit lightheaded and increasingly panicked. Where else could she be? He turned back and hammered on her door. “Colleen? …You in there?” He banged again. “Colleen!”

What if she’d gone in…and passed out? She might have hit her head back in the car after all. He grappled the key from his pocket and fumbled it into the lock, twisted it and shoved the door open. “Colleen!” he shouted, looking rapidly around as he rushed through the living room, crunching across the drifts of paper, cardboard, plastic bags, and random objects they’d left scattered everywhere when they’d departed. He ran down the hallway, glancing at the empty laundry alcove on his way into the bathroom. Nothing. He turned and sprinted toward her bedroom. The place smelled closed up, stale. Deep down, he knew already that she hadn’t been here, but rushed into the bedroom anyway and nearly fell across the piles of clothing she’d left lying in front of her closet doors. Disentangling his feet, he looked up around the room, and froze.

Scrawled in large letters across the wall above her bed—as if in charcoal—were the words, “We want someone you know how to find. Care to trade?”

For a moment, Dusty simply gaped, unable to process what he was seeing. Then a vine of rage and grief twined up from just below his stomach, tightening in a flash around his lungs and arms and neck. “Matt—you FUCKER!” he shouted. His eyes grew hot. His vision blurred. “What have you done to us?” he hissed through clenched teeth.

Dusty yanked the phone out of his pocket and punched 911—again, so soon—as all the rage and grief drained back out of him as quickly as they had arrived, displaced, for the second time in weeks, by the bottomless, icy, breathless calm that had always fallen over him since childhood in his father’s house, whenever things got ‘life and death.’

“911. Where is your emergency?”

“I, um, 1752 Larch Street, Apartment 215.”

“Thank you; what’s happening?”

“I think…” No, he knew. “My fiancée has just been kidnapped. …I’m looking at a goddamn ransom note.”