They begin to stand and stretch moving about, some going directly to the center of the room to begin the process. Trained like beaten dogs they drag their sore worn bodies, awaiting their 'master' to present one of them with a treat while the others just do as their told so as not to be beaten more. They whimper, some cuss, and one even pants slightly excited because she knows she's the one to go home. Harriet Nichols an older woman stands and stares at the monitor just waiting, its time for her to go, she needs to leave.
Jim walks over to her and gives her a hug, he spent the night talking to her, getting to know her, so he could tell the others about her and remember her for the next sixty eight days that he's going to be there. He holds her and hugs her goodbye as the rest of the group come up to join them. As he stands there, holding her he lets his mind wander home. He has a woman in his arms, and while Harriet is older than his wife her frame, her hair length even her grasp in how she holds him reminds him so much of his wife he can't help but fantasize for a moment that his wife is there in his arms.
The monitor comes on and he releases her, touches her face and tells her to tell everyone who will listen about all of us here, and how we're going to get out and be just fine. Cipher goes through his condescending speech of strength and will power, but while others listen Jim just stares at the floor, his mind still back home. Its as if he just let go of his wife, and that feeling of saying good bye before he's off to work, or that deja-vu of that last embrace before she heads off to bed lingers. Cipher continues his monologue on righteousness, and begins revealing the plan of day 17 and what is awaiting the participants.
Dalton approaches Jim and asks whats wrong, he tells him of the hug and of his wife. The way she looked at him when he would catch her eye even across a grocery store isle, like it was the first time they were seeing each other. It wasn't like that all the time, but it happened enough to outweigh any of the other problems or fighting they would have. He asks Dalton if he has anyone back home, and Dalton tells a story of the one that he let get away. How he screwed up and found things that he should have grown out of more important. How friends influenced him to be more like them when maybe it was time to take that step towards adulthood and responsibility but he just didn't do it, and for the love of God he can't think of why.
He talks about this girl, who's not even his girl anymore, in a way someone tries to describe what its like to go on a plane for the first time. It was exciting, fun and full of fear of the unknown and when push came to shove and he had to decide whether or not to take that flight again, he chose to stay on the ground, and because of that....she flew away. He wants to say that all of this changed him and how when he gets out and gets home he'll go to her, ask her how she is, but he's pretty sure while he might have decided to change at that point, she moved on some time ago.
Liz hears his story and tells them of how she met her boyfriend, they were both with other people at the time and while she had a self moral problem for feeling the way she did, wanting another man, she couldn't deny what something inside her was shouting. Her boyfriend that she was with was a good guy, well sorta, he was complacent and didn't really go out of his way for her, he'd rather hang with the guys knowing she'd be there afterwards than just be with her and see them at a different time. Did that make him a bad boyfriend? Did she feel like she needed to much attention? It was always a conflict, she didn't want to smother him, yet she wanted him to want what she wanted. Jim points out that's seldom the case with men and women, that they're both just wired different and the couples that just fully accept each other on the way each of them are, are the ones that last the longest. The ideals of the white picket fence, coming home to a dinner and a kiss on the cheek goodnight were force fed to the public by Hollywood and seldom played out like that in reality.
Liz comforts her and tells her that love is a weird thing, its an emotion like any other, you bump your foot you feel pain and sadness, you get cut off in traffic you feel anger and hatred, some attractive guy opens a door for you or pays you a little extra attention you feel happy and attractive and loved. You translate those things into love because it gives you fee; that warmth inside and makes you happy. If a fellow woman comforts her and makes her feel good she feels loved, if her sister or brother help her out or she misses them she feels love, and when a man risks his life or does something to assure you're okay, its only natural you'll feel a little love.
Jim stops her and disagrees, all of those things aren't love, love is a big word and to say you love someone for opening a door is a bit much. That's like saying someone offering you a piece of gum is the ultimate miracle. The problem with the word love is that its used way to much for to many small things. I LOVE pizza, that sunset was lovely, I LOVE my favorite hockey team we throw it around like its salt, sprinkling it on everything, spicing it up and disguising what something is that is clearly not. Is it possible to only have one love, he doesn't know, he had a friend who's wife died, and years later he met someone else and he said he fell in love again. He swore when he was 15 he was in love with his first girlfriend and they'd be together forever, but it only lasted the summer and then the "love" was gone. Love certainly comes and goes, it is in the air, but we don't breathe it in all the time, its something that just hits you.
Liz smiles and says she has no problem in admitting she was wrong, she tells Anne to listen to Jim, but listen to her heart too. If she feels something, she shouldn't hate herself for doing so, she admits that she doesn't. In fact she smirks and goes on to say as odd as it is in this horrible setting that they're in, she's had a lustful dream about someone while she's been here and can't explain why, those things just happen. Dalton tries to get her to confess as to who the dream was about, but she just blushes and says its none of his business; and they're all to polite to not acknowledge her looking over again towards that door to their right. She snaps out of it, grabs Anne by the hand and looks into her eyes and tells her she's going to get out of this mess, shes going to go home and be reunited with her boyfriend, and yes, she may have dreams and fantasies about someone else, she might even think of that person when she's kissing her man, and at that point she has to decide what she wants, some people stay with someone, and they love them, they truly do, but in the back of their head they have this person that they never stop thinking about.
They all stop and pause, each of them feeling a sense of loss and love, they all have someone in their head, some of them even have more than one; is it love or is it something else. Day 17 had begun, the torture had started but their minds were elsewhere, they worried about their friends who were taken away, and the loved ones they have back home and they try, they try so hard to actually not think about those things because today its quiet possible that the days torture doesn't outweigh the conflicts in their heart.
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