Inside, an abandoned reception desk sat in the small lobby, a straight-back chair still perched at the side. Robert had never seen anyone at the desk. He’d never seen prison personnel anywhere in the home, just the remaining inmates.
Down a short hallway and to the right was a long ward of single beds. Two rows of twelve ran along each wall, with an aisle in the middle. At each end was a bathroom.
Half of the men were still lolling in bed when he arrived, but Robbie was up. He was eighty-seven now, but he looked older and more decrepit than Maggie or Joe. The cheeks that had been full when he was in his fifties were now sunken. The skin on his arms was withered. Robert marveled that Robbie could even walk, he was so thin.
Yet there he was, encouraging an inmate to get out of bed.
“Come on, Randy,” Robbie coaxed. “The final bell is going to ring. You gotta change your clothes today. This one’s a mess.”
The man rolled away from Robbie, and Robert could see a brown stain on his backside. His bed was stained as well.
Robert turned away in disgust. The room must have smelled like a sewer.
Giving up, Robbie hobbled to the bathroom. Hanging his cane on a hook, Robbie shrugged out of his hospital-type gown. He balled it up and dropped it down a chute. Then he stepped into a shower, and for ten seconds, water cascaded over Robbie. He quickly rubbed himself clean under his arms and between his legs. A blast of air partially dried him off before a clean gown appeared. Robbie slipped into it, and pulled on two side straps that cinched the gown closed in the back. Grabbing his cane, he gimped his way to the living area.
A handful of men had already gathered at a small door in the corner of the community room. Three times a day, at designated times, the small door was raised, and the men were fed. If you could call it food.
More men shuffled slowly over, like cows waiting for a bale of hay to be pitched from a loft. Robbie took his place beside the waist-high door, and when it opened, a tall glass of beige liquid rotated out. The first man in line took the glass and another rotated into place.
Robert was reminded of when he was a kid. Some company came out with a liquid drink called Instant Breakfast. He’d begged his mother to buy some. He pretended he was an astronaut as he drank it. It had tasted like thick chocolate milk, but according to the commercials it had been chock full of essential vitamins and minerals.
The gunk these men received was considered nutritionally balanced, but Robert had never been tempted to slip inside one of the inmates for a taste. It looked disgusting.
Robbie stood to one side as each man got his meal.
“Careful,” he said quietly to a man whose hand shook so hard that some of the liquid slopped out. “Use both hands, Terry.”
He encouraged the next man. “You’re doing fine, Bret. This isn’t a race. You take your time.”
“We’re playing rummy tonight,” another man said. “You in?”
“Sure thing,” Robbie replied.
One by one, the men settled into armchairs in a semi-circle before a television where they drank their breakfast and watched the morning news.
Robert thought it was a travesty that the men were not given an option of coffee or tea with their meal. How hard would it be for someone to program a robot to brew coffee, for Godsakes. Of course, the government probably would have euthanized the whole lot of them by now if they thought they could get away with it.
Robbie took the last drink and the small door snapped shut. There were no seconds, and if a man dropped his drink, or spilled it, he was out of luck until the next meal.
Settling into an empty chair, Robbie breathed out a sigh. He was winded from the morning’s activities. He rested his glass on his leg and watched the news. One of the reports was an update on Tanya Kettering, the first woman reanimated.
“Hey!” Robbie said, pointing his cane at the television. “My dad’s one of those guys. He got frozen when I was in my twenties.”
A few of the men nodded without taking their eyes off the screen. Robert figured they’d heard about it before. Then Robbie fell silent, mesmerized by the news.
It occurred to Robert that his son had spent almost his entire life watching television. When he was a kid, Amanda parked him in front of the TV to keep him entertained. During his visit to New York, all Robert had seen Robbie do was veg out in front of his television. Even in prison, inmates either had a set, or they watched someone else’s. Robbie had never worked a day in his life, but he was probably a walking encyclopedia of every television show produced in the last eighty-five years.
The morning dragged on, through talk shows, and then game shows. Right after lunch, one of the men heaved himself out of his seat and shuffled toward the waste chute to throw away his lunch glass. His left arm dangled uselessly at his side.
He jerked, and made a hiccupping sound. His left leg buckled and he made an awkward turn to try and catch himself with his right hand. The cup in his hand crunched against a chair back, dribbling the last dregs onto the fabric. The man tumbled sideways to the floor. His head hit the tile with a sharp crack.
Immediately, Robbie was on his feet.
“Frankie!”
Two other men nearby scrabbled out of their chairs. A man across the room called out, “What happened? What’s going on?”
With the help of his cane, Robbie lowered himself down onto his good knee. He pressed two fingers against Frank’s neck.
Others from the group gathered around, their faces pensive and fearful.
Robbie blew out a breath of relief. “He’s alive. I guess he tripped.”
He made a feeble attempt to make Frank comfortable by straightening out his leg, and pushing his arms against his sides. He brushed a wisp of thin white hair back into place on the side of Frank’s head.
“Come on, buddy,” Robbie whispered. “Stay with me.”
One of the other inmates shuffled over to a small box on the wall, like a fire alarm. He slid open a small window and pressed a red call button that was marked “For Emergency Use ONLY.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Robbie sat in the chair Frank had grabbed to break his fall. He glanced down, still hoping for movement three hours after his friend had fallen. Frank was sprawled in the same position.
Scratching nervously at his forehead, Robbie closed his eyes, like he was trying to come up with a plan. His good leg bobbed spastically. His mouth quivered, the wrinkles around his lips expanding and contracting. Then he opened his eyes and looked out the window on the far side of the room like he was waiting for someone.
The television blared on, but Robert could see that no one in the room was concentrating on yet another game show. From time to time, someone would stand to get a look at Frank on the floor, or he’d call over to Robbie, “Any change?”
By the time two EMTs rolled a stretcher into the room, Robert was sure Frank was dead. One of the techs knelt down and checked his pulse. He shook his head.
“Anybody know what happened here?” he asked.
“He fell,” Robbie said. “Bumped his head.”
As though to confirm, the tech slipped a hand under Frank’s head and felt.
“Yep. He’s got a big knot back here.”
Robert wondered if they would bother with an autopsy, or just list the cause of death as ‘a big knot’.
After they left, Robbie sat hunched in his chair, his arthritic hands fisted together at his face. He chewed at the tip of his thumb as he rocked slowly. His good eye pooled with tears.
When the dinner bell rang, Robbie stayed in his chair. One of the other men brought Robbie’s drink to him, but he refused to take it.
And when he lay in his bed that night, his left hand dug into his thigh, massaging the old wound. His head thrashed from side to side fitfully.
Somewhere in the dark, a man called to Robbie.
“Let it go, man. Nothing you could have done.”
“That’s right, Robbie. You got to get your head on straight again.”<
br />
But Robert understood the significance of losing Frankie. He was Robbie’s greatest achievement. A friend who had been his worst enemy.
After taking a couple deep breaths, Robbie began his humming chant. It was a relaxation technique he had learned years before.
* * *
The June meeting was in Chicago. Robert stood next to Suzanne in a back corner of the executive lounge at O’Hare International, complaining to Maggie.
“There’s no kind of medical attention whatsoever,” he said. “All those guys are just left there to die.”
Joe shook his head as he listened.
“I gathered that from what I’ve heard,” she said. “They’re on some kind of ‘do not resuscitate’ list, too. I guess the government feels they’ve been gracious enough to let our remaining prisoners live.”
“My god,” Robert said, “They’re just a bunch of sick old men. They have no human contact with the outside world.”
“Sounds like something out of a book I read years ago when writers were trying to warn us about the future,” Maggie said.
She started to say more, then nodded for Robert to look behind him. Sam was making his way from group to group.
“I’ve never seen him so depressed,” she said. “This memory business has hit him pretty hard.”
“I can imagine,” Suzanne said. “He spent so much time in class. He must feel its all been a big waste.”
Sam tried to smile when he spotted their little group, but it didn’t alter his sorrowful eyes, or his furrowed brow.
“Hi, everybody,” he said with a sigh.
“You need to get away from the center,” Maggie scolded. “Is this the first you’ve been outside the building?”
He gave her a sheepish shrug.
“Why don’t you come with the four of us?” she said. “We’re taking the train across Canada all the way to the Rockies.”
“Canada, huh? I haven’t done that in a while.”
“Yes, Sam. Please come with us,” Suzanne encouraged.
“Are you speaking at the meeting today?” Robert asked him.
“No. What’s the point?”
“We’d still like to know how the reanimations are coming,” Maggie said.
“Then watch the news,” Sam grumbled.
“Surely you have something good to report,” she said.
As much as Sam wanted to wallow in his grief, that basic need to document and report findings rose to the surface.
“Well, I did go out to the facility where the clones are growing. I looked us all up.”
“Really,” Maggie said, encouraging Sam to continue. “How did I look?”
“We’re still in adolescent stage, but you looked pretty.”
He stood quietly for a long time, his head bobbing, like he was getting it all straight in his mind. Then he turned to Robert.
“They pulled your DNA from your body. They’ve decided it will be easier to grow clones even for the whole body preservations. You were pretty ugly as a kid.”
Maggie snorted.
“Hey!” Robert protested. “My mama always told me I had unique features.”
Suzanne gave his cheek a little tweak. It was worth taking a ribbing from Sam, just to see the smile on his face.
“So,” Robert leaned closer to Sam, “Did you see Madeline Wingate? Is she already a double D?”
“Oh-ho!” Sam hooted. “The techs had to extend the glass.”
It felt good to laugh again. They’d all been depressed ever since Tanya Kettering came back with no memory of her time in limbo. Even subsequent patients had no recollection of the temps, so Maggie’s theory that something might not have been connected properly was a wash.
And then Robert had spent those days with Robbie, which just added to his depression.
“Here’s an interesting tidbit,” Sam said. “The news has made such a big deal about us coming back, that the center has gotten a few squatters.”
“What?” Robert asked.
“Dead people have been hanging around the reanimation suite, hoping they can jump into a body before the rightful owner does.”
“You’re kidding!” Maggie chortled. “Has anyone been successful?”
“No. They get booted out immediately. But you’ve got to admire people for their ingenuity.”
Later that night, after the meeting, Robert curled up behind Suzanne on the bed in their hotel room.
“That was pretty crazy, what Sam said about squatters trying to hijack bodies at the center.”
“People never cease to amaze me,” she said.
“At first, when he told us, I got so excited. I thought all our problems were over.”
“Why?”
“Because of Maggie. She doesn’t want to come back, either. She wants to stay with Joe.”
Suzanne quickly flipped over to face Robert. Her eyes glowed with excitement.
“But it won’t work,” he said. “So don’t get your hopes up.”
She moaned and buried her face in his chest. “Because I’d come back as Maggie, not me.”
“Yeah. And I don’t care how pretty Sam says she looks. I’m not going there.”
* * *
Early in their excursion to Canada, Robert and Maggie resolved to make the most of the time they had left. There was no point making Joe and Suzanne miserable. And Sam definitely needed cheering up.
“One thing I am going to do though,” he told them all as they sat high up in the glass-domed train, viewing the fields of Saskatchewan growing lush with crops. “I’m going back to Virginia and get to know Robbie.
“You already know all about Robbie,” Suzanne said.
“No, I mean get inside his head. I’ve been watching him for years. But I think it’s time I told him I’m proud of what he’s doing.”
“That’s a wonderful idea, Robert,” Maggie said. “I’m proud of how you’ve changed your attitude toward Robbie.”
“He’s probably not going to live much longer,” Robert said. “I want him to see the new me before he dies.”
“Just be careful when you pop into his head,” Maggie warned. “He might not be too receptive. Don’t push it.”
“Yeah, especially if he thinks you’re the Robert we first met all those years ago,” Sam added.
True to his word, as soon as Robert and Suzanne returned from Canada, he went back to the retirement home to see his son.
Before he left, he and Suzanne had discussed the best way to get things started. Robert had even kidded about breathing heavily like Darth Vader when he said, “Robbie, I am your father.”
But now that he was standing behind Robbie, he wondered if his son would be glad to see him or not.
He slipped into Robbie’s head, and got hit with a jolt of pain that felt like someone had slugged him with a ball bat. His left leg throbbed with stabbing pain that radiated all the way up his chest. And Robbie’s back ached because he sat so rigid, tensed against the pain. Even the joints in his fingers seemed to pulse.
Because he could breathe now, Robert inhaled deeply several times to get on top of the intensity.
“You okay, Robbie?” one of the other men asked.
That’s when Robert realized he’d been rocking as he breathed and Robbie was, too.
“Yeah,” Robbie said, shaking his head against the disorientation. “I just—” Robbie stood, and placing a hand in the small of his back, he straightened slightly.
“Your back hurtin’ you again?” the man in the next chair asked.
“No.” Robbie bent a little. “It’s not hurting much at all.”
Robert decided to take a chance. He whispered, “Let’s take a walk.”
Robbie jerked around like someone had snuck up behind him. “What the fuck?”
“You okay, Robbie?” the man asked.
“I don’t know,” he said, scratching his head. He looked behind once more, then said, “I’m going to take a walk.”
He shuffled out of the living area and
headed toward the lobby.
“Robbie,” Robert said, “Don’t freak out. This is dad.”
His son twisted so violently that he lost his balance and had to stagger a short step to the wall for support. Robert was immediately expelled. He waited for a moment as Robbie searched the lobby, and down the hall.
“What the hell?” he muttered as he rubbed his temple.
Robert popped back in. “I’m inside your head—”
“Frankie?”
“No, it’s dad.”
Robbie forced him out again. “This is bullshit.”
He actually knocked on his skull with his knuckles.
This was tougher than Robert had imagined. Usually, he struggled to remain undetected, but trying to establish his presence was beginning to look impossible.
Popping back in, he said. “My body was frozen. But I’m still around.”
Robbie stiffened, his eyes darting once again around the lobby. Then he slumped further into the wall. “Are you kidding me?”
“No. I saw your friend Frankie die last spring. I’m sorry about that.”
“Yeah, well you and Rachel are the only ones who give a shit.”
“Why did it take so long for the paramedics to respond?” Robert asked.
“Because they’re not supposed to do anything to prolong our lives. We’re supposed to shrivel up and die in here. The sooner the better.”
“Is that why you don’t get any pain relievers?”
Robbie snorted. “I don’t need any more drugs, dad. I’ve learned how to control the pain with my mind.”
Robert was tempted to debate how well that control was working, but he let it go. Instead, he said, “Good for you.”
That seemed to irritate Robbie. He pushed off the wall and started back for the living area. “What are you doing here anyway?”
Such a direct question caught Robert off guard. “I came to see you.”
“Yeah? Did you come see me in prison, too? Were you there the day my leg got sliced open? Did you get your jollies watching me take it in the ass for a fix?”
The Ups and Downs of Being Dead Page 30