Assimilation

by James Stryker

  Andrew accepted another glass of water from the waiter. “That seems harsh.”

  “Go watch a lion take down a zebra on the nature channel. Life is harsh. Only in our species do we spend copious amounts of energy trying to force people to survive, and it’s going to ruin us. I should be dead. You should be dead. And yeah, it’s fucked when young people die. I wasn’t looking forward to death. But if that’s what the universe had in store for me, who was I to question?”

  “Well, your father obviously didn’t take ‘no’ for an answer.”

  “But I tried to block him – before I couldn’t write any longer, I signed an advanced directive refusing attempts to resuscitate or reanimate. He hit the fucking roof. It was awesome.”

  “I don’t mean to piss you off, but if he didn’t want you to die, isn’t that proof that he cared about you?” Andrew asked.

  “He didn’t so much ‘not want me to die’ as he ‘wanted to keep me alive.’ There’s a subtle difference between the two. He’d built that CryoLife niche for himself, a reputation he wanted to pass to me. He knew I would’ve achieved more than he ever could. I was so smart, Andrew, so intelligent …” The words caught and he had to push through the tightness in his chest. “But I didn’t want it. And it didn’t matter how successful I was. I wasn’t a doctor, so it wasn’t good enough. He never gave up hope that I’d come around though.”

  “You don’t seem like him. I don’t think you could do what he does. No offense.”

  “None taken.”

  Andrew folded a corner of his napkin, smoothing the crease with the side of his thumb. “You’re too honest. And there’s something artificial about him. He’s nice, but it’s like a heavy glaze to coat something instead of compliment it.”

  “Yes, he’s a sugar-crusted shit rag. When his beloved company isn’t on the line, that coating melts away. I wasn’t brokenhearted when he cut off communication. I concentrated on what I was doing. My project was crucial. It needed all my time.

  “As hard as I was working before, I worked harder. When I couldn’t write anymore, I henpecked at the computer. When I couldn’t do that, students wrote for me on dry erase boards so I could look at the data and think. That’s how I thought best. Something tangible before my eyes, to come back to. I could spin off in a thousand directions. Off into my world, while having an anchor in reality.”

  Oz closed his eyes. He was trudging through thick, gelatinous sludge and thoughts were slowed in having to wrench each footstep from the sucking mud.

  “Not being able to pace bothered me at first, since that helped me muddle through ideas. But while I could move the tips of my fingers, I ran the motorized wheelchair back and forth until the batteries ran down. Of course, my time was running down as well.

  “I was able to live alone but I had an aide who came by to help me. One morning I felt like someone was sitting on my chest. It was terrifying. I couldn’t have picked up the phone to call 911. I had to lie there for hours until my aide found me.”

  He tried to hide a shudder. The level of alcohol he’d consumed made the feeling of the weight almost real.

  “I’m lying there, struggling for every breath, and the old man’s words go through my mind. I imagine the shotgun barrel as having supplanted the hand of a clock ticking toward my face. As it took a strong turn in my direction, I thought about CryoLife.

  “It would’ve been simple, right? Call the douche bag and have him get a court order. Totally possible that in a month, I could be receiving anesthesia for brain extraction, instead of for inserting the trach. Nine months later, I could have all the time in the world with a disease free body that wouldn’t abandon me.”

  “I’m sure that’s what a lot of people would think,” Andrew said. “You’re only human.”

  “Meaning I’m also capable of evaluating choices and not making stupid decisions based on fear. Which I didn’t. It occurred to me that the dick wad was waiting for me to cave. He probably had the judge on speed dial, attorney on retainer, and the court order drafted. I wouldn’t have put it past him to have the body itself in the works. That’s how little he believed in me. So when my aide came, I wouldn’t let her call him. Dumb whore still made me go to the hospital.”

  “If you couldn’t breathe, that was probably a good decision.”

  “I had work to do. There wasn’t time for that shit.” Oz pushed another empty highball glass to the table edge. “They put me on HFT though.”

  “HFT?”

  “High Flow Therapy – nasal oxygen delivery. Keeps the airways open. I could still talk, and therefore work. Which I did. With the barrel ticking in my ears and the doctors bitching at me to consider options.”

  “They wanted you to do CryoLife too? I didn’t think they were allowed to offer that route.”

  “No, HFT isn’t a permanent solution. It’s beneficial to come off it before it stops working altogether. They wanted me to choose between the trach, another type of ventilator, or start hospice.” His hands shook as he held his new glass.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. Like all of us, I would’ve rather lived a long, boring life with my original parts, including brain function, undamaged. But how often does preference enter into life? It doesn’t. You take what you’re given and shut the fuck up about it. Though in hindsight, I should’ve made a choice. Since I refused to, the doctors called my father.

  “He shows up unannounced in my classroom. Instead of ‘Hello’ he greets me with ‘You look like shit. One might say imminently dead.’ So I know what’s coming. And here’s where he tries his polished turd bedside manner with me for the first time in twenty-two years.”

  Oz extended the thumb and index finger of both his hands. “Picture this: He kneels to be at my eye level. Really creaks it to the floor as if he’s an eighty-year-old man on the verge of death himself – makes a big show of it. He’s got the egotistical lines ironed out of his face so he looks like this sweet gray-haired grandfather that builds dollhouses and whittles on the fucking porch. Very amusing.”

  Oz tried to smile, but the result felt cracked and unstable. “He says to me, in a Gone with the Wind soliloquy dramatic voice: ‘This isn’t about me. It’s not about my glory or pride. It’s about you. I admire your convictions, but let me help you live, Osborne.’”

  “What did you say?” Andrew asked.

  “Nothing. He knew I wasn’t buying his shit, so he pulls a lower move by bringing my project into it. He gestures to my dry erase board behind him.”

  Oz closed his eyes and saw the board. The giant space had been filled from corner to corner and top to bottom. To cram more writing into the highest margins, a student had been using a step stool. There’d been more black and red writing than white space … When he reopened his eyes, the restaurant teetered, and it took a moment for him to refocus on Andrew.

  “He starts into another fake-ass speech. ‘It can be about your thing,’ he says, since he never bothered to remember what it was called. But he goes on: ‘God knows who else besides you understands what you’re doing, but if you can’t do it for yourself, do it for your project.’ The man then fishes through the cobwebs of his tear ducts and makes his eyes glassy. I’m telling you, he was going for an Oscar.”

  “Maybe he truthfully was—”

  “All he’s ever cared about is building and maintaining his company. No matter how disappointed he was in me, how would it look if the so-called medical genius behind CryoLife let his son die? Unlike his regular patients, I knew the real him for two decades and saw straight through his shit. And I was pissed that he’d tried to manipulate me by mentioning the project. That was sacrosanct. So I reiterated that he could go fuck himself, which caused the veneer to crumble.

  “He stands up, easy cheese, and his face folds back into those obnoxious superiority wrinkles. He starts to bargain with me. ‘Come home, get the trach, keep working, and we’ll hold off doing the extraction until the end.’ Blah, blah, blah. To which I respond that I
was going to finish my life’s work and die with dignity. That I’d rather have maggots eat out my brain, put my head under a car tire, et cetera. Until amid my list of preferences to CryoLife, he lost his temper.

  “He had the folder with my advanced directive in his hand. He bent it in half and hit me across the face with it.”

  Oz kept his eyes focused on the tabletop. It’d been ten years. It wasn’t the same skin he had now. But the burn on his cheek felt genuine.

  How long did you want to do that? How good did it feel to strike your son in a wheelchair when he couldn’t hit you back? I bet you wanted to do it again, you son-of-a-bitch. You probably still jack off to the power surge.

  “Oz, are you okay?”

  He looked at Andrew and made a conscious effort to relax. His posture had been so rigid it ached in easing the tightness.

  “I’m fine.” Another attempted smile ended in him shaking his head. “Anyway, so after he hits me and calls me a fucking idiot he motions to my board and tells me ‘All this fucking shit you’ve wasted your life on is going to die right along with you.’ Then he storms out.

  “When the HFT stopped working a week later it felt like I just went to sleep. I woke in a hospital room with a tube down my throat, and a ventilator forcing my lungs to function. Pretty much a blinking corpse – more machine than man.”

  “But you’d finished your project, even if your life was over?”

  Oz felt his throat constrict and he coughed. “That project was my life. They were both over. If I’d known what the final piece was, there was no way to convey it. So when that asshole shows, though he’s a dick and reminds me that I’d suffered for no purpose, I’m almost happy to see him. Because he offers me another chance to make my existence not a complete waste.

  “To be honest, I might’ve given in,” he continued. “But then he tears my advanced directive in two and brings in that half-attorney, half-rectal thermometer, Tweed. He tells me that the document isn’t legally binding and is only my preference of care, which he doesn’t give a shit about. Says as my healthcare proxy that he’s ‘calling the shots.’ But he promises to bring me back whole.”

  Oz knew he was talking too loud, but he didn’t care. The emotion choked him and it felt like waking with someone sitting on his chest again.

  “I wanted my life back so I could finish what gave it meaning. But do you know what happened, Andrew?” Oz released the glass as his fingers curled into his palms with a disjointed motion. “I woke up, and it was gone. I couldn’t do anything, as if I’d done nothing before. Like a fucking slate wiped clean. Gone.”

  Chapter 23

  Andrew’s thoughts at the bar days ago rose in his mind:

  You’d better be feeling the same disemboweling, burning pain I am. If there’s any justice in the world, something had better be tearing you apart inside.

  From just looking into his eyes, he’d seen Oz’s suffering. No amount of alcohol, continuous evasion attempts, or shock-value comments could hide the devastation. The debilitating illness, fights with his father, and the loss of his talent and life’s purpose – whatever it was.

  During the ankle monitor placement when Brigman had asked him what he thought about, Andrew had answered “art” because he couldn’t say “feeling like a man.” The doctor had responded that his son thought about the same. Was Oz’s board full of pictures or drawings? His project some fresco in dry erase marker? Maybe.

  Despite a decade having passed, the loss still caused Oz to disintegrate. He was torn apart and more vulnerable than Andrew felt, even under the hungry, searching eyes of men. Oz folded his arms on the table, burying his face in them as sobs shook his body. To Andrew it seemed like he curled into himself. He grew smaller and smaller, pressurizing and constricting into a coiled spring, his frame tightening with every breath.

  And it was similar to Andrew’s experience on the floor of the gun range, only now he felt removed. He looked on the Blue Nude as Picasso had painted her to be seen – from a higher perspective, the model’s face hidden in despair but her body contorted in painful grief.

  I am not alone. I’m in two places at once. Two states. We both are.

  But the morbid companionship was swiftly eclipsed by the current situation.

  Before him was a man who may have looked how he wanted to look and acted like he wanted to act, but Oz was broken and devastated. There were pieces of him missing, and his heart ached for them. Worse still, it was a permanent desire, ever destined to be unfulfilled. He wanted so much to have his life back.

  Andrew felt the same. There was no value in him as Andrew. As Natalie, he’d had a purpose. He’d been one complete person. It was an awful, confusing paradox – he hated the things he wanted to do, but he hated stopping himself from doing them. Robert could be controlling, and Simon’s paranoia overwhelmed him, but weren’t those attributes a result of Andrew? He didn’t remember Natalie’s family being this way with her. So they were good people. Given the chance, would he rewind and sink back into Natalie? Forgetting everything that’d happened and erasing Andrew? Absolutely.

  But neither he nor Oz would get a chance to reverse. Their past lives and identities had been stolen from them. Sold for cheating death. They hadn’t been ready to die, and had so much to live for.

  What was there to live for now?

  We are Blue Nude fused with Schrödinger's cat. We are alive and we are dead.

  They were new people born into old shells with twenty odd years of baggage and obligations. They were filled with memories of previous passions, hopes, and dreams – none of which could be enjoyed any longer. CryoLife had handed them back as a jumble of broken shards. It didn’t matter that it was well intentioned. Yet no one else could understand. If they told the doctors, the media, or yelled it from the rooftops, what would people say?

  They’d say shit like: “At least you’re alive.” “Calm down, it’s not that big of deal.” “You’ll be okay. It’s okay.” Even though we aren’t alive – we’re in pieces. And it will never be okay.

  The statements were infected bandages people slapped over their wounds to shut them up. Had Oz heard them before? Maybe it was best not to say anything.

  So instead, Andrew leaned over the table and placed his hand on Oz’s head. His hair was shaggy and soft. Andrew wished he had hair like this. It was light enough that it didn’t show the gray hairs he must have. He reviewed the timeline in his head – Oz must be what, thirty-two? Thirty-three, maybe?

  He tried to convey thoughts of comfort as he combed Oz’s hair through the tips of his fingers. He saw Oz’s shoulders tense as if he were waiting for him to say something.

  But Andrew knew there was nothing he could say to make the situation less horrible. He couldn’t give Oz his life back or recover whatever ability he mourned. The best any of them could do in this new world was to gather what they were given and try to put together a new life, he supposed. That’s what he had to do. Daily.

  But maybe that road is easier by being surrounded with people who loved you. For your faults, for the things you used to be but now aren’t, and the things you weren’t but now are. Recognition and acceptance for your current identity. Acknowledging the Blue Nude within the soul.

  Oz hadn’t spoken magical words to him when he’d been sobbing on the floor of the shooting range. And despite how wonderful it felt to hear his name, nothing had been said which erased his pain entirely. But Andrew had felt some of the burden lifted. Why did he feel less of a weight?

  And then he knew.

  He curled his fingertips in Oz’s hair. “Oz, I’m here.”

  Someone else being there who understood and didn’t judge. What had fallen away was bearing it alone. He’d turned to see another person, nudging him aside to take a corner of the world. And it made a huge difference. To both of them.

  Oz lifted his head. Andrew took his hand back, but in withdrawing it, he hesitated and turned it over, instead placing it to Oz’s cheek. He caressed it, feeling the sof
tness of his skin beneath his knuckles.

  He wasn’t sure why he made the tender gesture. He hated when Robert touched him, and maybe Oz had been counting the seconds of their contact too. But touch could be a way to convey care or concern when one wasn’t being constantly oppressed by it. Smoothing Oz’s cheek felt like the right thing to do. Maybe it was a silent apology for wanting to bash his brains in with the cash register, tear his face off on multiple occasions, or for almost shooting him earlier that afternoon.

  Something changed in Oz’s eyes when he brought his hand back – the distinct wild spark in them melted. Andrew felt different when they were in that stare. It made him nervous, like his stomach was about to drop. He tucked his hands under the table and glanced away.

  Oz cleared his throat. “Do you know what the Hodge conjecture is?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “It says that de Rham cohomology classes are sums of Poincaré duals of the homology classes of subvarieties. Do you know what that means?”

  I don’t know what those things are individually, let alone what they mean together.

  “And do you know what cohomology is? Or algebraic topology? Or differential topology?”

  “No, Oz.”

  “Neither do I, but I did once.” He held his pointer finger a hair’s width above his thumb. “And I was this close to an argument disproving it.”

  Oz barely spoke above a whisper. “There was a time when it came so easily. When I pulled proofs out of the air and mathematics flowed into and out of my lungs like oxygen. But when I returned from death, I was left empty. Again, I couldn’t breathe. And I’ve been in a state of perpetual suffocation since then.” He took a breath. “Now, if you ask me to multiply two digit numbers, I need a calculator.”

  Math? Really? Andrew felt disappointed. But I guess it’s respectable. It’s not being a contractor. It’s not being a homemaker like Shelly.