On the second day that Darren and Amber came to visit their musician friend, Dan, in the hospital, Gwen was sitting in a wheel chair in the hallway of the same wing. She had a bandage wrapped around her head, covering her eyes. Amber immediately felt compassion for her and stopped to ask how she was doing.
“Yesterday I was free. Today I’m a prisoner in a dark world,” Gwen reported gloomily. She told her story to them.
Once inside the State Labor Communes, there are few opportunities for freedom. But if somebody wanted to give up a kidney, hand, or knee cap, they may be in luck thanks to the Medical Buy Out program.
Gwen was in great health, head of a communal housing building cleaning crew, and owned by the State since birth. As luck would have it, at age thirty-six she received an offer to leave the labor commune through the Medical Buy Out program.
There is one thing worth mentioning about this program. People didn’t sign up for it. They were selected. It was involuntary. It was mandatory, depending on what useful body parts someone had and how much someone on the outside was willing to pay for them.
The program was simple. If someone from A or B class needed an organ or limb or bone transplant, they could buy someone out of a labor commune for a high price. The person would give up the body part, then live in relative freedom starting in D class on the outside in a special institution set up specifically for the Medical Buy Outs.
The Medical Buy Outs were for the most part disabled after the deal was completed, mildly to severely depending on the body part taken from them. So they needed some help living and coping with their missing part. That help did not come from the State, though.
The institutions, little more than D class housing with low paid oversight staff, were paid for in half by the person receiving the body parts and half by the medical institution performing the operation. In reality, insurance companies paid it all. The State paid nothing.
Gwen was a perfect match for the right blood type, eye color and good eye sight. So on one otherwise normal Thursday morning, she went from a sense of community and every need met in the labor commune to the hospital where they’d performed the procedure to remove her eyes just that morning. Now she was forever blind and would live in near poverty conditions on the outside.
Most of her bills would be paid for life, though. And any money she could make from working on the outside would be tax free. There was opportunity to move up from the bottom. It would be more difficult for her, though, having lost her eyes.
Gwen had a long way to go. She would have to learn to live without eyes, enjoy without seeing. But at least she’d never set foot in a labor commune again. That was impossible. They generally didn’t take the disabled, and found ways to get rid of anyone who became disabled.
She must have pissed off someone from the State, good. An eye donation was one of the most severe Medical Buy Out options. Maybe she wouldn’t put out. It was common for State inspectors, regulators, and administrators of the labor communes to help themselves to whatever woman they wanted.
After hearing Gwen’s story, Amber burned with anger towards the State’s inhumanity and injustices in the labor communes. Amber told Darren later that day, “If we ever do anything to help the State, we should be shot.”