“I thought it was a good one,” I said proudly. “That’s why we went through with it.”
“A robot toy is a good idea?” he said with a sneer.
I scowled at him. “Different people are motivated by different things. In Toki’s case, a robot toy was ideal.”
“Did you even talk to the physical therapist? We all have our jobs. Yours is nursing and care. Rehab is the job of the physical therapists.”
“I’ll admit we should have run the idea past them. But since Toki is now going to rehab…”
“The results are not the point. You are not a physical therapist, yet you ignored all protocol in favor of a very unorthodox, unapproved action. This is the problem. A silly, frivolous idea thought up by a robot, an idea you can’t find in any textbook. We have a lot of residents in our care, and we cannot allow people to take actions based on whims and harebrained schemes. If nurses and caregivers started trying out any crazy ideas that occurred to them, all the residents would be in danger!”
This was nonsense. If there were any danger, I would never have done it. There could be no possible danger in loaning Toki a toy. It seemed transparently obvious the manager’s real problem lay with the fact that a robot had thought of it.
To my eye, the facility head was afraid of a risk that did not exist. It was like moving his wedding date to avoid the Buddha’s death.
He went on for another half an hour before finally releasing us. At least I didn’t get my wages docked, but it was still exhausting. It was well past the end of my shift, so I took Shion to the nurses’ station to turn her off.
“I did nothing wrong,” Shion said as she filled her methanol tank.
“Right. You were absolutely correct,” I said, still fuming. “It’s the physical therapist that’s to blame here—we encroached on his domain, so the narrow-minded fool is jealous.”
“I don’t understand. Both the physical therapist and the facility head should want Toki to get better. Why would they object to us helping him do that?”
“Not everything people say makes sense,” I said.
When I was a child, there was a little park where all the kids used to play. There was a parking lot next to it and a white block wall between the two. One day, we thought it might be fun to paint a picture on that wall, so the neighborhood association president’s son suggested it to his father. He discussed it with the other members and got permission from the parking lot owner. I was the best artist among the neighborhood children, so I was selected to lead the project. We had a boy and a girl holding hands and rabbits and butterflies and UFOs flying around them.
On Sunday, we gathered in the park. The local paint store had given us some paint, free of charge. We worked together and painted the wall as planned. We ate lunch together and finished it up that afternoon. We were very satisfied with the results. And that was as far as our fun went.
The middle-aged man in the house opposite the park had not attended the neighborhood association meeting and had not been told about our plan. When he saw the painting, he was outraged and ran straight to the association president’s house. He claimed the idea of seeing that crappy painting outside his window every day made him physically ill. It was a crime against aesthetics. It caused him emotional distress. How dare anyone go through with a plan like this without consulting him? The weak-willed association president soon gave in and promised to get rid of it. Within a week, the mural we had worked so hard on had gone back to being a plain white wall.
“It was the biggest trauma of my life,” I explained. “I never painted again. It hurts to talk about it even now.”
Shion thought about it. “What that man did was wrong.”
“Yes, it was.”
“Humans often do the wrong thing.”
“Yes,” I said vehemently. “All the time—and because of it, the world is getting worse.”
Then I told her to shut down, just like I always did.
At the time, I was too worked up to think about it, but once I’d gotten home and had something to eat, Shion’s words bothered me.
She didn’t used to know what was right or wrong, and I often had to tell her. But she was starting to make up her own mind more often and clearly tell people when they were wrong. That meant she was developing… but at the same time, it increased the chances she would value her own decisions over those of humans and stop obeying us.
“No… I have to trust her,” I said aloud, but my words sounded empty. I’d spent a lot of time with Shion and certainly liked her, but at the same time I knew very well that she was not human. It was relatively easy to guess what another human was thinking. But it was impossible for me to tell what Shion was thinking. Her mind was a black box, the insides of which no person could perceive. Some great evil could be growing inside that electric darkness, and no hint of it would ever slip past her plastic smile. We would never know until she took action.
I decided I needed to have a good long talk with her. About life and death. About morality. Why it was wrong to kill, to hurt other people. I had to make sure to teach her all of that… and yet I kept putting it off. Not because we were too busy, but because I was scared.
I was not a scholar or a theologian; I was no eloquent speaker. When I saw seniors suffering, I sometimes wished they could somehow be put out of their misery. It sometimes nagged at me that we had no way of doing that. So I was hardly the person to go explaining why you should never kill someone. And if the idea had never occurred to Shion, then my clumsy explanation might just prove the hint she needed…
I could not figure out how to teach her what was right.
5
Ever since the wheelchair incident, Isezaki had seemed a bit jumpy around Shion. Perhaps he was afraid she would want revenge. But Shion possessed no such desire. She was as nice to him as ever and took care of his needs. This seemed to simply confuse him all the more. He was used to malice begetting malice and had no immunity against someone who simply had not developed a capacity for malice.
At the end of September, a month after they clashed, Isezaki suffered a mild heart attack. After that, he was different. He looked as sullen as ever, but he no longer shouted at us as much and no longer caused as many problems. His rehab was going well, and his appetite remained healthy, but his spirits were clearly down.
The horrific pain of a heart attack often makes people start to think seriously about dying. In Isezaki’s case, he was also worried that getting worked up might damage his heart and in the case of another attack he might not survive, so it was natural he would seem more subdued. Concern for his health might be why he was working hard at rehab and being careful to eat well. While he was easier to deal with, it was never fun to watch a resident living in fear.
Once a week, I took Shion out on the town. We went to movies and the amusement park. She would stop to watch all kinds of things, but there was still nothing in particular that drew her attention. I began to wonder if anything ever would. She seemed the same as ever. Takami seemed crestfallen.
But I continued to treat her as though she were human, hoping to someday give her a human heart.
Early in October, as Shion got used to her work, it was decided we should vary her experience. She began working late shifts, early shifts, and night shifts. I went back to my usual rotation, and she came with me.
Night shift was always two people per floor. For the first few times we had an extra caregiver along just in case, but as soon as Shion had grasped the basics of night duty and it was clear there would be no problems, night shift became just the two of us.
One day, I arrived at the center in the evening to begin my night shift. In the changing room I ran into Kasukabe, who had just finished up an evening shift. She was sitting on a folding chair, out of uniform, staring into space. I figured she was worn out and didn’t pay much attention.
“You see X-Caesar yet?” I asked as I changed.
“Mm?” Kasukabe appeared to notice me for the first time. “Oh no… too
busy. Recorded it though.”
“Then I won’t spoil it. Commander Axel was badass. He totally owns that show now.”
Kasukabe liked older guys, and Commander Axel’s finely aged dignity made him her favorite of X-Caesar’s regulars.
She chuckled. “I’ll have to watch it when I get home.”
“Do,” I said, fastening the last button on my uniform. I punched in and went up to the nurses’ station, humming to myself. I found Shion sleeping in the corner and pushed the button on the back of her neck. The light under the hairline flashed, and her body started to whir faintly. About twenty seconds later, she looked up.
“Good morning, Kanbara.”
“Morning? It’s already evening! Our first night shift on our own!”
“Yes.”
“Night shift can be rough, so keep your guard up. Let’s get ’em!”
“Let’s get ’em!”
As we finished our little ritual, Kajita came tottering over and whispered, “Kanbara.”
“Yes?”
“Sumiyoshi in 210 passed away this morning. A sudden pulmonary infarction. Said her chest hurt after breakfast, and we sent her to the hospital, but it was too late.”
Kajita kept her tone strictly businesslike. Her plain description made it even easier to visualize. Pulmonary infarctions were incredibly painful and could easily cause a weakened heart to stop.
“If the other residents ask…”
“I know,” I said, still reeling a little from the shock. This was not the first resident I’d been friendly with who had passed away. Most of them died in the hospital, not in front of us, but I had seen the sudden change in their condition that made us send them to the hospital. The worst had been a lively, energetic septuagenarian who had finished his rehabilitation program and was just about ready to leave us when he suddenly fell and hit his head and died of a cerebral hemorrhage.
I thought of all the stories Sumiyoshi had told me in the bath and felt my eyes about to tear up. I barely stopped myself from crying. It was a nurse’s fate to regularly encounter death. We did not possess enough tears to cry every time.
But I could not stop the thought of her smile from weighing on my heart.
“Sumiyoshi passed away,” Shion said softly. Perhaps it was my imagination, but she sounded a little sad. This was the first death on our floor since Shion had arrived.
“Don’t tell the other residents. If they ask, say she’s in the hospital. But nothing more.”
“We lie out of concern for the mental well-being of the other residents, right?”
“Exactly.”
Death in the home was a taboo subject. Every time someone died, the other residents were told the deceased had gone home or was in the hospital. Since all of them were sent to the hospital and their bodies sent home, neither of these little lies was completely untrue.
We started working. I did my best to look normal and hide how shaken I was. I almost burst into tears when I saw the empty bed in room 210 and was terrified Sumiyoshi’s roommate had noticed. Shion was the same as always. I envied the android’s composure. She could not cry and could not feel grief like humans did.
Fortunately, no one asked about Sumiyoshi. The more perceptive seniors guessed what had happened but had the sense to avoid the subject.
At six, we helped the late-shift staff with dinner. As always, we gathered everyone at the elevators, took them down to the cafeteria, and brought them back up when they were done. When that was finished, we went on break. The late-shift staff manned the floors while I ate. Shion sat next to me, reading a magazine.
When I had finished eating, we started back toward the second floor when one of the security guards came over to me, looking tense.
“Kasukabe works on the second floor with you, right?”
“Yes… why?”
“Something’s wrong with her.”
“With Kasukabe?”
What was he talking about? She had gone home three hours ago.
“She’s still here. Over in the park.”
Uh-oh. I quickly went outside. Shion followed.
It was pitch black. I went around the side of the building to a little park—it was part of the facility, designed for the residents to take walks in as part of their rehab programs. Kasukabe was sitting in a particularly dark corner, on a brick wall next to a hedge. Staring up at the night sky, just as out of it as she’d been three hours before.
Something must have happened.
I went over to her and crouched down beside her. She kept staring at the sky, seemingly unaware of my presence.
“What’s wrong, Kasukabe?” I said gently. “You’ve finished work… Aren’t you going home?”
Kasukabe’s head turned slowly toward me. There was no expression on her face. “Home?” she asked.
“Yes. You were going home to watch X-Caesar.”
“Home…” Her gaze drifted away toward the flower beds, her eyes not focused. “I live alone.”
“I know.”
“There’s no one there.”
She shuddered. Tears were forming in the corners of her eyes. Her lips moved, and she whispered, so softly I could barely make it out, “Sumiyoshi…”
I knew just how she felt.
Being a nurse or a caregiver demanded a particular aptitude that other jobs did not. Physical endurance and the ability to do the job were not enough. Your heart needed to be every bit as strong. There was no way to test for that. You would never know until you ran smack into it.
Every time we lost a resident, an unseen weight fell on our hearts. It gradually crushed us. There was no getting used to it, and if you stopped feeling, you were finished. Love was vital to performing our jobs but brought with it the burden of each loss. We all knew that coming into this job, and we knew we had to be strong in the face of it. We could not let ourselves cry in front of the other residents. We were strong in silence. We slammed lids on our hearts and put smiles on our faces.
One or two out of every hundred were simply unable to handle this. They collapsed under the pressure, their hearts broken.
“Kasukabe,” I said, embracing her. “Go ahead and cry. Cry all you need to.”
She began bawling like a little child.
Shion watched us, saying nothing.
Kasukabe cried for a good twenty minutes. At last, we left her in the security booth. Washio, on the late shift, agreed to take her home.
At eight thirty, the late-shift staff said goodbye and left the floor. Until morning, it would just be Shion and me.
Some of the seniors hung around the lounge awhile after dinner, chatting or watching TV, but by nine we had them changed into pajamas and made sure they had gone to the bathroom. We then administered sedatives where needed and changed compresses. Nine o’clock was lights-out. They would then sleep soundly till morning, but we could not. At midnight, three, and six we did rounds and changed diapers. (Seniors suffering from incontinence got extra checks at two and four, but luckily there were none in residence at the moment.) Obviously, if anyone pressed the nurse call button, we would respond. People would wake up needing to use the toilet, in pain, wanting medicine to help them fall asleep, or simply feeling lonely and looking for someone to talk to. On busy nights the call button would ring as many as ten times, so we could rarely kick back and relax for long. At dawn the early shift would arrive and begin helping get ready for breakfast. Only then were we able to go home.
That evening, the woman in 211, Toma, was fretting. She would not take her sleeping pills. She had severe dementia and suspected that the CIA was trying to poison her. It was ten o’clock before I managed to talk her down. I barely had time to catch my breath before the nurse call started ringing; one request after another. Things finally settled down as the clock passed eleven.
At 11:10 PM, the residents were all asleep, and the floor was quiet.
Shion was sitting in the corner of the nurses’ station reading an old paperback. I was on the other side reading a ne
wspaper.
The news was discouraging.
A dispute with Russia over resources in the North Pacific was deteriorating. There were anti-Japanese demonstrations in the streets of Moscow and anti-Russian demonstrations in Tokyo. Both sides made things worse by bringing up ancient history like Japanese POWs in Soviet labor camps and the Russo-Japanese war. They’d caught the arsonist responsible for the deaths of seventeen people in Yokohama, and she was a twenty-something housewife who claimed to have just been blowing off steam. In Hokkaido, a man had been arrested for throwing his young daughter off a ten-story building.
“Kanbara,” Shion suddenly said.
“What?”
“There’s something I’d like to talk about. If this is a good time.”
“Sure. What?”
“About life and death.”
So the time had come. I couldn’t run anymore. I folded the newspaper, sat up in my seat, and looked her in the eye. “Okay. Where should we start?”
“Do you believe in life after death?”
An interesting start. I hesitated. I didn’t want to risk giving her any strange ideas with a careless answer. I needed time to think.
“What do you think?”
“It only takes a small injury to a human brain to cause severe memory loss or loss of consciousness. It doesn’t seem logical to believe that consciousness and memories continue in some form after the brain has ceased to function. I don’t believe that what they call the soul survives. It sounds like fiction to me.”
A perfect answer—a robot’s answer. I sighed.
“Yes, logically… you’re absolutely right. But I don’t want to think logically. I want to believe in a world after death.”
“When you say you want to believe, does that mean you know it isn’t true?”
“It means I have to believe to keep on living.”
“To escape from the psychological pressure, you refuse to accept the truth? You prefer to imagine seniors that have passed away living happily in the next world?” Shion asked.
The Stories of Ibis Page 22