Lionel Enzino has been institutionalized for two years, but one day a week, the paranoiac's doctors let him spend the day in New York City. He absolutely despises it. Lionel fears nothing more than the chaos of the city, full of unpredictable and possibly dangerous crowds and people who might want to kill him. He spends hours planning out every iota of his days out, and nothing leaves him more relieved than returning to the Craigmore Institute on Sunday nights. Dr. Benson, his therapist and the man in charge of the Institute, is the only person he really trusts, and even their relationship is adversarial. Franklin, his teenage brother, thinks his institutionalization is a wasteful drain on the family, and his mother has extreme anxiety on his account -- he was her golden boy, the first in their family to attend college. One week, Dr. Benson convinces Lionel to go to a baseball game alone. That Sunday, Lionel's terror crescendos on the train, peaking when he sees that his usual restaurant is closed. Stricken with fear, he staggers down the street to a new place and resists the urge to call Franklin. In the diner, he stammers through his order and watches the other customers while he waits, assigning them labels to keep his mind busy. One seedy-looking man has a bulge in his coat, and Lionel immediately assumes it's a gun. As his horror mounts, a strangled cry to get down escapes his lips -- just before the man actually does draw his weapon, killing two men, a girl, and then himself. His cry saves two children's lives. As he wonders how he'll tell Dr. Benson in the aftermath, Lionel feels his heart rending even as his soul finds the beginnings of a strange sort of peace.