Chapter 5 – The Cure Arrived Too Late…
“Get out of bed, old man. Don’t make me tell you again.”
Ben grunted as Butch shook his bed, jarring the IV drip set into his arm and shaking so many parts of Ben’s body that hurt from so much chemotherapy and radiation.
“It’s the middle of the night,” Ben moaned.
“You think that makes any difference?” Butch laughed. “Get out of bed. I’m not putting you into any wheelchair, and you’re walking on your own.”
Ben winced and pulled his legs out of the bed. He pointed his shaking toes at a pair of slippers waiting for him on the floor’s cold tiles, but Butch kicked the footwear away before Ben’s heals felt the comfort those slippers offered. Ben would have to walk the cold hallway leading to the recreational chamber in his bare feet. Another grandchild was visiting in the night, and the orderlies were gathering their patients together to witness what punishment that girl or boy would deliver to their home. Butch offered no assistance as Ben shuffled down the long hallway, the IV stand creaking behind Ben as he grimaced through each of his steps. The cold floor numbed Ben’s feet. Pain fired in his arthritic knees. Still Ben forced himself onward. That was not the first march Ben shambled down the hall in the middle of the night, and he knew that the occasion ahead put the orderlies into their cruelest of demeanors. To hesitate, trip or fall would invite Butch’s wrath, and so Ben shuffled onward down that cold hall, his eyes wincing to adjust to the bright light flooding from overheard.
“You’re the last one here, old man,” Butch snarled. “Everyone’s waiting on your old bones.”
“I’m sorry, Butch. The treatments make me weak. They make me hurt.”
Butch returned a twisted smile, and Ben knew he would later pay for his excuse. “You think that makes me look any better? You don’t think it embarrasses me that I’m the last orderly to get his patient in front of the glass room? Don’t worry, Ben. Later on, I’ll make sure to share a little of my shame.”
The legs of the old trembled, but the orderlies allowed none of their charges the comfort of a sofa or chair. They forced every resident to stand around the three glass walls that extended into the recreational chamber. Ben shuffled to his friend Ernie, whose legless body had been dumped upon the floor. Even Ernie had beaten Ben to the glass chamber. Ben wondered when had he turned so weak that simply standing exhausted him? How did he still breathe when so much poison and radiation burned his guts? Why didn’t the doctors just turn off the beeping machine at his bedside and let him sleep into the world of the dead? Hadn’t he suffered enough hurt? Did all those doctors expect him to live a decade more if that was how long he might need to wait before his granddaughter came visit?
Ben scanned the assembly to note who was missing. He saw Clara crying across the room, sobbing to her orderly about her swollen feet. He spotted Viola briefly lean against one of the glass walls before her scowling orderly grabbed her throat and pulled her back upon her feet. Mattie was the missing face. He suspected it would be her time to sit on that stool perched in the glass room. She had shown him the postcard delivered from her grandson. Jonah came to make her pay for what her generation made of the world. Ben felt for Mattie. He hoped Jonah would give Mattie a little mercy, though he knew the punishment those grandchildren carried to the old rarely held any merciful comfort.
The door on the far side of that glass chamber opened, and another set of blue-frocked orderlies pulled Mattie to that stool, and they roughly forced her onto the seat. Mattie’s shoulders heaved as she cried. She didn’t look up to match the gaze of her friends who stood on the other side of the glass. She didn’t lift a hand to press against a wall when Ernie pressed his against the glass in an attempt to show Mattie some support before an orderly slapped Ernie’s hand away from the glass.
The room was silent. The old choked their tears. The orderlies allowed no one to speak. They growled so that the old stood still.
The door on the far side of that glass chamber opened once more, and a small, bald boy of pale skin slowly walked into the room. That child was little more than a skeleton, with dark, hallow eyes, covered with flesh that looked more like paper than skin. His shirt and pants hung loosely from what was left of his frame, and the boy seemed to teeter with each step. Without saying a word, an orderly stepped forward to help the boy approach his grandmother. Ben’s heart quickened when he saw that orderly hand a weapon to the child, and the crowd gasped as that frail boy used both of his hands to lift that gun with trembling forearms at his grandmother perched atop that stool.
Jonah’s lips didn’t move. He didn’t say a thing to Mattie. He asked her no questions, and he gave her no opportunity to defend herself from the charge of laying waste to a world. He gave Mattie no chance to beg for his forgiveness.
The chamber’s thick walls muffled the gun’s roar when Mattie’s head shattered into bits of blood and gore that oozed down the glass. Some of the residents cried, and they were instantly slapped by their attending orderlies. Some of the residents collapsed, and their orderlies fell upon them with frustrated curses before clutching their charges by their ankles and dragging them back down the long, cold hall.
Ben didn’t fall. He didn’t shake. He didn’t gasp. He feared he may have further angered Butch by his cold stoicism. Ben knew what comfort Butch always took when seeing shock cross Ben’s face. Ben showed no emotion at all when Mattie’s headless body collapsed from the stool. Ben didn’t flinch as he watched Mattie’s blood ooze down the glass wall.
Jonah curled in a ball upon the floor of that glass chamber. A strange angle in the boy’s arm showed how the gun’s kickback had broken the child’s wrist. One of the orderlies beyond the glass knelt and gently stroked the boy’s bald head while another gathered the gun. Then, those orderlies carefully carried the boy back through the chamber’s door. Ben knew that no one would come to remove Mattie’s body for days. He knew that no one would come to clean away the blood. The orderlies and the doctors would let the carnage fester, so that Ben’s generation would have to look upon Mattie’s ruin whenever they were forced to gather in the recreational chamber.
Butch laughed at Ben as the old man shuffled back down the cold hall, to find a few more hours of sleep perhaps before a new round of chemotherapy and radiation pulled Ben into further pain. Ben swooned, but he returned to his room under his own power. He closed his eyes for a moment before opening his chamber’s door, and a doctor surprised him when he entered the room.
“You look absolutely terrible, Mr. Cane,” spoke the doctor. “You should be in bed, but there are just so many things that are not as they should be. Wouldn’t you agree? Do you know how long you’ve been here, Mr. Cane?”
Ben didn’t answer. The doctor waved a hand to order Butch to leave the room.
“Your skin is very pale, Mr. Cane. I’m sure your walk back from the glass chamber has stolen much of your breath, so I won’t force you to voice a guess. You’ve been with us for nearly an entire decade, a much longer stay than anyone else has known within our home. I remember the day we assigned this room to you. So many of the doctors who were here at that time have passed away since then, but I’m still kicking, and I still remember.
“I remember that we were unsure if we would find the means to keep your cancer from overtaking your blood. But we did, Mr. Cane. Your body was filled with tumors when you entered these halls, and yet we found a way to halt, to even reverse, the growth of your disease. In the previous world, our discovery might’ve been called miraculous. In the previous world, what we’ve learned from treating you might’ve saved so many lives. But we no longer live in that world, do we? And so many things are not the way they should be.”
Likely suffering from his own pain, the doctor winced and stood from the edge of Ben’s cot. He helped Ben back into his bed, and the doctor even gently hooked Ben’s implanted port back to its beeping machine. Then, the doctor removed a white envelope from his jacket pocket and tossed it upon Ben’s che
st.
“It contains the postcard you’ve been waiting for, Mr. Cane. Your granddaughter has little time remaining, and so you’ll soon have your appointment within our glass chamber. Personally, I wish it would’ve taken a while longer for you to receive that postcard. Though you’ve already spent so much time with us, I would’ve liked to have tested how long all our medicines might’ve kept you ticking. Given the state of our world, I find the idea of an immortal man fascinating, and I cannot decide if a longer life would be a blessing or a curse. I very much would’ve liked to have had the chance to study you for a long time more, and to see if I might’ve been able to solve such a conundrum.”
The doctor lingered at the door. “I wish it was up to me, but what any of us want no longer matters. I’m afraid I won’t be allowed to provide you that comfortable cot for much longer.”
Butch’s face reappeared in the doorframe just as the doctor departed, the face chuckling before the orderly slammed Ben’s door closed. Ben removed the postcard from its envelope. He held it to the light cast by his beeping machine, and his heart cracked when he looked upon the landscape Mallory had chosen to send him. On the postcard was an image of a farm set upon a golden field, with cows lined up in a dairy, with chickens strutting about a green yard, with a team of horses tied to the plow.
The world was once wonderful, but it was wasted by the time Ben turned old. Ben hated himself, and all of his kind, for everything that had been lost.
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