Читать книгу Our Collective Life - JD Kennedy - Страница 16

It was the next session when Linda was with David. After talking about what Linda had been doing with her time, Linda decided to get to the heart of the matter. Taking a deep breath, she said “We still don’t know exactly what happened. How Jo managed to get that close to trying to end the life.”

Sitting forward, David asked, “What do you know?”

“All we know is she made the decision, and she got as far as popping out the pills. We didn’t know anything about it until we saw Demise and Trudi running down the hall within. Then we knew something was wrong and found out they intervened just in time.”

“And nobody has been able to explain how? I know you have things in place to stop that, due to the high risk of self-injury and suicide held within the Collective.”

“Well, all we can think is it is somehow related to the level of noise from within.”

“What noise do you mean?”

Linda thought for a moment, then said “We have the crying within again. Constant sobbing echoing around the house within. And generally the noise level has increased, too.”

“I didn’t realise the crying had started again,” David had previously heard about the crying which seemed to happen from time to time. “And you feel that could have something to do with not being able to intervene earlier?”

Linda nodded, “The increase in noise means it is harder to focus out here, or see what is happening out here when we are within. But,” she added, “it is really just a guess.”

“How is Jo now, do you know?”

“I’m not sure, I haven’t heard anything about her.”

That was disappointing, and he said “It might be good if you could find out how she is doing. I spoke to her the other day, but it was so brief and we didn’t get the time to touch on how she was feeling.” David wished Jo could stay longer when she was in session with him, as he knew she was in a great deal of emotional pain. Yet she rarely stayed for more than a few minutes.

David said “You know I have been thinking. I wonder if you did try and involve Jo a little more and find out more about her, maybe you would be able to find out why or how this happened. And it may even lessen the chance of it happening again.”

Linda’s first instinct was to say ‘absolutely not’. After all, Jo wasn’t part of the Collective, so how would involving her benefit them?

But over the next couple of days, she started to think a little more about what he had said. Until they understood how Jo got through the defences, then how could they stop her? Could David be right? He knew the Collective so well and he often was able to shed light on things they themselves could not see or understand. So if he was mentioning it, then Linda was inclined to believe he may be onto something. And as much as she didn’t want to include Jo in anything, she couldn’t deny that on some level what David said made sense.