▸ Column · Modern Marvel-era New York — civilian emergency response working the aftermath of superhuman "incidents," post-Battle-of-New-York
IRON MAN replies.
Replied to by Iron Man, with a rebuttal from Captain America.
The letter
I run emergency response in the city — the unglamorous part, the part that shows up after the cameras and the capes have cleared out. Eleven years doing it. Last spring we pulled a kid out of a collapsed walk-up after one of those "incidents" downtown. Seven years old. Front teeth missing, same gap-toothed grin my own boy's got right now. He didn't make it. I figured I was holding up fine until a couple months back, when I started phoning in sick anytime the rotation put me near the blocks with the most families. Told myself it was my gut. My partner finally said something after I went dead quiet for the back half of a shift — just stood there staring at the rig. Didn't even have a comeback for him. I know I'm supposed to "talk to somebody." But the department's peer-support guy is a fella I split lunch with three times a week, and I can't picture sitting across from him like a patient. Do the rest of us actually find a way through this — or do we all just quietly steer ourselves around the calls we can't take anymore?
Iron Man replies
Okay, so here's the thing. The stomach thing. The "must've been something I ate" thing. I know that bit intimately — I hold the patent. I once told a doctor I had an arc reactor problem when what I actually had was that I couldn't say the word "panic" out loud without my hands going.
After the wormhole — the big one, the one everybody's got a mug about — I stopped sleeping and started building. Mark 42, 43, all the way up, three in the morning, soldering iron, telling myself it was R&D. It was rerouting. Avoidance with better tools. Pepper had to be the one to say the word, because I sure wasn't going to.
So I'll say yours: you're not rerouting around the east side, pal. You're rerouting around the boy. And there's no route that doesn't dead-end, because you are currently your own single point of failure — one guy, no redundancy, and the map of streets you can drive keeps shrinking.
Build the failsafe before the next call does it for you. Find a professional — outside the building, no lunch table, no eye contact at the vending machine. This week. Not "looking fine." Looking fine is load-bearing denial. I'd know. I live there.
— Iron Man
Captain America weighs in
Tony, you'd engineer the man a whole new building so he never has to look his friend in the eye. That's the part I'd argue.
Friend — the lunch buddy isn't the obstacle. He's the gift. A fella who knows you well enough to eat across from you three days a week is exactly who you trust with this, not who you hide it from. Pride's telling you that's weakness. It isn't. Your partner already showed you how it's done — he saw you go quiet and he said something. That took nerve. Now you find yours.
The little guy you've spent eleven years refusing to drive past? Right now that's you. Don't reroute around him.
— Captain America
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