The wife returns: the ecstatic rictus, no response, and she follows his line of sight to the viewer

pivotal · 2 April ~0145h YDAU

• When: just before 0145h, 2 April YDAU
• What: The wife arrives home ~0145h, uncovers her hair, and sees "the Near Eastern medical attaché and his face and tray and eyes and the soiled condition of his special recliner." She rushes to him crying his name, touching his head, trying and failing to get any response — he stares "straight ahead" — and then, noting that the expression on his rictus of a face "appeared very positive, ecstatic, even," she "eventually and naturally" turns her head and follows his line of sight to the cartridge-viewer. The scene ends on that turn: the narration does not follow her gaze past it. This is the pivot from patient zero to contagion — the second viewer, in the act of looking. A note on the telling: this event is focalized through the wife.