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he?”
    “He pushed me over and I pushed him back. Then he went and pushed Katie and then Katie started to cry. I didn't cry.”
    Stutsen got up from the grass and her afternoon daydreaming, and holding Jayne's hand, walked towards the playground. “Well, it sounds like we need to talk to Jacob about this. Just because he pushes you, Jayne, doesn't mean you have to push back. When you see a problem, you can just come tell me without being mean back.”
    “I know I should play nice.” From her teachers and parents, Jayne had learned the proper word s to use when being chastised to avoid punishment.
    Stutsen looked around the chaotic playground but still didn't see Jacob. She quickly began to walk down the length of the playground with her head bent low to see into the playground equipment. “Where did he go?” This question was no longer intended for Jayne but as an admission of concern to the open air. Once she circled the playground without seeing him, her heart began to beat violently and her mind began to swirl. Before a cascade of panic could erupt through her body, she heard the yelling of children behind her. She turned and saw two girls running towards her.
    “M s. Stutsen, Jacob is over on the grass and he hit me.” Stutsen looked up and saw him just ten yards from the playground. She realized how just a little panic made her irrationally circle around a fifty square foot playground without looking outside of its perimeters. Jacob was lying on the grass.
    “Jacob! Get up and get over here, right now!”
    Jacob lay on the grass, cheerfully rolling from his stomach to his back repeatedly. As Stutsen started to approach him, she realized that what she thought from a distance was the jolly demeanor of a six year old playing was really the writhing of a child in pain. She ran over to Jacob, which in her mind was a single flash that instantly transported her to him.
    What she predicted was Jacob clutching hi s abdomen from a stomachache, but what she saw was the boy's face gouged by fluid filled sacs of dark pus rupturing from his skin. Some of the membranous sacs were slowly dribbling blood and yellow secretions while others remained intact but ready to burst at the mere graze of contact. The swelling was prominent on his eyelids, which forced his eyes completely shut. The blistering had created craters in his cheeks, indenting inwards, making it appear as if his entire cheekbone structure had been altered. The skin on his entire face was slightly pulsating with his heartbeat, and with every beat, more fluid flowed from the open wounds. The abrasions on his face were so severe that the swelling was starting to alter the placement of his right ear. It had become loose with the skin to which it was attached and was drooping downwards. His entire head was rapidly losing the essential characteristics that made it identifiable as an actual human head.
    Jayne screamed and began to cry. Stutsen fell to her knees beside Jacob and shook his shoulders calling his name. She could see that he was trying to respond but his lips had swollen outwards making it impossible to articulate words. The only sound he could produce was a shallow gurgling. Stutsen scooped up Jacob in her arms and yelled to Jayne. “Jayne, sweetheart, I need you to run ahead of me and go tell another teacher inside that there is an emergency on the playground and that Jacob is hurt.”
    Jayne stood up and began to run in a manner that surprised Stutsen. Jayne turned around, “But you tell us not to run in the halls?”
    “It's okay to run in an emergency.”
     
    **** *
     
    The employees of the northeast side of the 9 th floor of the building had gathered into multiple groups around the conference room that had become the temporary confinement of temporary insanity. Two filing cabinets had blocked the door to the room. After someone saw the body of an unconscious, disheveled bald man being carried from the room, they thought the precaution was