So.. I, uh…I can see the number of people a person has killed, floating above their head. If they haven’t killed anyone, that number is 0…Now, it doesn’t always have to be that they killed a person themselves, no…Um, for example: one time I witnessed a bus driver refuse to let a woman board because she didn’t have enough money. I couldn’t help, as I had left my money at home and purchased an E-ticket. When the doors slammed shut, she ran crying into traffic, screaming that her son had been left home in his crib, unattended, and she had to get to him to administer his medicine.

She got hit by a taxi. Dead on impact. I watched with the other bus goers, in pure horror. I felt terrible, and wish that I had been able to give her my E-ticket, but it was non-transferable. Out of the corner of my eyes, I saw the numbers above 70% of the other bus riders heads go up 1, including the bus driver.

About an hour later, I saw most of their numbers increase by 1 again. My stomach twisted as I remembered what she had said about administering her baby’s medicine. She never made it back, and that child never got their medicine.

One day, years later I picked up my daughter from daycare. She was 5 years old, and as expected every day her number was 0. I was sure that I would die an old man and never see that number change. But today…Today I picked Ada up as usual, but instead of that pristine “0” floating above her head, I saw a number that simply defied all expectations. Numbers I’d only seen on politicians, Mafia leaders, and strangely enough, a few doctors.

I tried not to show her my spike in emotions, the panic that began to spread from my spine to the rest of my body. We went home, and talked instead about where we would go tomorrow, as it was a Sunday, and as such, I had the whole day free to spend time with her.

I planned a simple outing, just my child and their stuffed gorilla toy “Gogo”, intent on finding a way to get my daughter to tell me how she had managed to kill over 5,000,000 people.

Being a doctor and a licensed psychiatrist, I thought this would be a simple enough task. Though I’ve done riskier things to get confessions from folks in the past, this should be a simpler task. Most, if not all of the deaths I’d seen the number of were from accidental events, and the rest had been purely intentional.

My 5 year old daughter, my darling Ada, had somehow intentionally caused the deaths of over 5,000,000 people! But HOW!?!? Never-mind the why, as she’s only 5- just…Just HOW in the hell had Ada been responsible for the death of LITERAL MILLIONS!?

We were about one hour into playtime at the children’s fun park, when the answer to my question finally came to me.

Ada: “Daddy…?” Me: “Yes my darling Ada?” Ada: “I took the bad man’s candy, daddy.” Me: “Sweetheart, what? What bad man? What’s this candy look like?” Ada:“I…I saw him in your…office? He had funny eyes, but…like…Bad funny, daddy. And he had a vewy vewy big numbers over his head. They got bigger and bigger everwy that I saw him.”

My mind whirled, and I searched my memory to see if I could put a face to match Ada’s vague description. As a psychiatrist, I wasn’t sure I could describe ANY of my patients in particular as having “Bad funny” eyes… Unless…

Me: “Ada, baby, what day exactly did you take that man’s “Candy”, and where is it now?”

Wait, she can see the numbers too? She is my daughter, after all…

Ada:”…Pwomise not to get angery…I think he was the pwesmndewmp or something.”

Me: “The what? Ada, what day was it?”

Ada: “Satuwday.”

The realization rocked me to the core. Saturday, over 5 million deaths, the universe was…It was holding my little Ada responsible for the actions of one man, my most high-profile client of my career:

The president of the United States. She took his medicine intentionally, thinking it was candy, because she somehow knew that the numbers over his head were bad! But…But that medicine was his antipsychotic prescription…

That day, I learned that my daughter Ada was blamed by the universe for the psychotic break of the United States President, directly impacting his decision to bomb an entire country for their suspected involvement in terrorist events over the last several years.

She set Gogo the stuffed gorilla down and ran to the swings, shouting back to me:

“Daddy, Gogo is going to go play by himself, but I want you to push me on da swings! Haha, let’s go daddy!”

My face went white, and sweat began to bead on my forehead. When little Ada ran to the swings, her number stayed behind. As she reached the swing set, her numbers showed 0.

But Gogo, on the other hand?

“Over 5,000,000”.