The generosity-contagion cases this quarter had been concentrated in the transit corridor, which suggested a source event Coln had not yet located. He had three active assessments on his desk when he came in.
The first was a primary school teacher, six weeks in, who had been giving away classroom supplies and, in the last two weeks, household goods. The children were fine. The household situation was not. Coln recommended Level 2 intervention, which meant a support coordinator and a temporary financial guardian to protect remaining assets. This was the intervention he most often recommended for early-stage subjects with dependents.
The second was a retired plumber, four months in. These were the cases he found hardest to work. Not because the subjects were difficult, they rarely were, but because by month four the condition had shaped itself into something particular. This plumber had spent two months fixing pipes free of charge for anyone who called him, and his calendar was booked into July. A four-month carrier in skilled labor was nearly impossible to intervene on without broader network disruption. Coln recommended monitoring and community accommodation, which was the closest his framework had to letting it run its course. It usually did.
The third was early stage and unclear. He flagged it for follow-up.
On the train home he noted, with the specific notational habit of eleven years in this work, that he had been in proximity to the man to his right for forty minutes. The man had given his umbrella to a woman who left the train in the rain, and his newspaper to an older passenger who had nothing to read, and had been, throughout, in the particular state Coln had learned to recognize: not performing anything, simply and continuously giving away what he had because it seemed like the right response to the situation in front of him.
Coln had gotten off one stop early to offer his seat to a woman who looked tired. He sat with that on the walk home. He had done this before, without the condition, but he could not remember when. He did not know if it was anything. He wrote it down.