There are people who are just suicidal, regardless. They are

Host: The night hung over the riverbank like a heavy blanket of ink, its darkness trembling with distant sirens and the low hum of a passing train. A single streetlamp flickered beside a rusted bench, casting long, fractured shadows across the wet concrete. Fog curled around the trees, moving like the ghosts of forgotten voices.

On that bench sat Jack, a cigarette glowing between his fingers, the smoke rising like a slow confession. His eyes, cold and grey, stared into the water that mirrored nothing. Beside him, Jeeny sat with her coat drawn tight, her hands folded in her lap, her breath forming fragile clouds that dissolved as quickly as her hope.

Between them lay a small, folded note, damp at the edges — a few sentences scribbled in faded ink. Miriam Toews’s words.

“There are people who are just suicidal, regardless. They are built to self-destruct. It seems, in my family, like a virus that’s resistant to any kind of help or care or medication.”

Jeeny: (quietly) “It’s a virus, she says… I keep thinking about that — how pain could move through bloodlines, like some invisible inheritance.”

Jack: (exhales smoke) “That’s a poet’s disease, Jeeny — turning despair into biology. People aren’t born to die. They’re just… too aware sometimes.”

Jeeny: “Too aware?”

Jack: “Yeah. They see too much of what’s broken, what can’t be fixed. They stare too long at the cracks and start believing they’re part of them.”

Host: The river gurgled softly, carrying bits of trash and memory downstream. The moonlight struggled through the clouds, painting faint silver veins across the water — as if even the sky was trying to trace the outline of its own sorrow.

Jeeny: “You sound like you’ve seen it before.”

Jack: (bitter smile) “Haven’t you? It’s everywhere. Fathers who drink until their hands stop shaking. Mothers who smile until their faces forget how to mean it. Sons who stare at the floor and call it living. You call it a virus — I call it a pattern. One that starts when people mistake pain for identity.”

Jeeny: “Or maybe when they’re never allowed to call it what it is. You say it’s a pattern, but patterns can be broken. This—” (gestures at the note) “—this is resignation. It’s saying: ‘We can’t save them.’ I don’t believe that.”

Jack: “You believe too easily. Some people, Jeeny, are just wired to implode. It’s not about belief. It’s chemistry, wiring, neurons gone rogue. You can’t out-pray serotonin deficiency.”

Jeeny: “But you can hold someone. You can remind them of light. You can sit beside them in the dark until they start to remember the shape of the sun. Isn’t that worth something?”

Host: A gust of wind blew through, scattering leaves across the path. A single paper cup rolled past, bumping against Jack’s shoe. He crushed it absentmindedly, his jawline hard in the flickering light.

Jack: “You think love is a cure, don’t you? But it’s not. It’s a bandage on a wound that keeps reopening. You hold them, yes. You whisper all the right things. But the moment you let go, they remember the void again.”

Jeeny: (angrily) “Then what are we supposed to do, Jack? Just watch? Pretend that medicine and therapy and love don’t matter?”

Jack: “No. You do what you can. You try. But you don’t lie to yourself. Some people are just… unreachable. That’s what Toews meant. A virus—resistant, relentless. You can’t heal what doesn’t want to be healed.”

Jeeny: “Maybe they do want it. Maybe they just don’t know how. You talk like they’re machines—malfunctioning bodies. But they’re not. They’re stories, Jack. Broken stories, yes, but not finished ones.”

Host: Her voice cracked, the sound trembling in the cold. A bus passed on the nearby bridge, its lights flashing across their faces — two silhouettes, one etched in logic, the other in mercy.

Jack: “Tell that to my brother, Jeeny.”

Jeeny: (softly) “Your brother?”

Jack: “Yeah. He was nineteen. Smart. Funny. Had that kind of laugh that filled a room. One night, he didn’t come home. They found him by the tracks. No note, no reason. Just... gone. The doctors, the therapists—they all said the same thing: chronic depression, resistant to treatment. They said it like it was weather — something that just happens.”

Jeeny: (whispers) “I’m sorry.”

Jack: “Don’t be. Just… don’t make it sound like he could’ve been saved if someone had loved him harder. We all tried. He wasn’t sick of life, Jeeny. He was sick of his own mind.”

Jeeny: “But isn’t that part of life too? The mind, the heart, the battle between them? I don’t think people self-destruct because they’re built that way. I think they’re taught to. Taught by shame, by silence, by the way the world refuses to listen until it’s too late.”

Host: The lamplight flickered again, then steadied. The fog had thickened, curling around them like a living thing. Somewhere, a bell chimed twelve times. The city exhaled in slow, heavy rhythm.

Jack: “You really think the world can listen to every cry?”

Jeeny: “No. But it can listen to one. And then another. That’s how the virus breaks. Not through cures, but through connection.”

Jack: “You sound like a therapist.”

Jeeny: “I sound like someone who still believes in people.”

Host: For a moment, neither spoke. The silence hung between them, thick and fragile, like a string stretched too tight. Then Jack leaned back, the cigarette burning close to his fingers, the embers glowing like a dying heartbeat.

Jack: “You know, Toews lost two sisters to suicide. Maybe that’s why she called it a virus. Not because she believed in its inevitability, but because she couldn’t find a cure. Maybe that was her way of forgiving the ones who left.”

Jeeny: “Or forgiving herself.”

Jack: (looks at her) “You think guilt is part of the inheritance too?”

Jeeny: “Yes. But so is love. And that’s what makes it bearable.”

Host: The river shifted — a ripple breaking the reflection of the lamp into a thousand fragments. It looked, for a moment, like tears spreading across the surface.

Jack: “Maybe you’re right. Maybe the virus doesn’t end with the ones who die. Maybe it ends with the ones who stay — if they keep remembering them with compassion instead of blame.”

Jeeny: “That’s the real research, isn’t it? Not in the laboratories, not in the medications, but in the heart — how we study our own grief and still choose to love.”

Host: The wind quieted. The clouds parted just enough to reveal a thin slice of moonlight, resting gently on the river.

Jack dropped the cigarette, crushed it beneath his boot, and turned to Jeeny.

Jack: “You always do this.”

Jeeny: “What?”

Jack: “Turn pain into poetry.”

Jeeny: “And you always turn poetry into reason. That’s why we keep talking.”

Host: He smiled, barely — the kind of smile that isn’t happiness, but survival. The fog began to lift, revealing the faint glow of dawn creeping through the trees.

Jeeny: “You can’t cure a virus like this, Jack. But you can refuse to let it define the story. Maybe that’s all any of us can do — keep writing, even when the ink runs thin.”

Jack: “Keep writing, huh? Even if the ending scares you?”

Jeeny: “Especially then.”

Host: The first bird called out from somewhere unseen. The river shimmered with early light, fragile but real. Jack and Jeeny sat in silence — two souls tracing the fine line between despair and defiance, memory and mercy.

The camera pulled away slowly, the bench shrinking into the wide frame of an awakening city. And as the credits of their conversation faded into the morning mist, the world whispered its quiet, relentless truth:

Some viruses destroy. Some heal. It all depends on what you choose to pass on.