Absence of Mind

by H. C. H. Ritz

  | Please, give it a try? |

  I sigh, groan, whimper, and then put down the coffee mug and grab a glass for water.My Navi erupts in cheers and applause, and a big “Congratulations, Phoebe!” flashes in the emergency notifications area. I experience a short battle between rolling my eyes and grinning and seem to manage to do both at once. But I make sure the grumpy expression has the last word. Screw Past-Phoebe and all her good intentions.

  That afternoon, Mila walks into the Lovely Pines rest home with slow steps, her head down and her face drawn. As she approaches the front desk, the security guard, Jerry Armstead, stares into his Navi display, oblivious to her presence. She taps on the desk.

  His eyes refocus. “Sorry, Ms. Bremer, I kinda got lost in my Bible study. Sorry about that.” He looks her over and then tilts his head in concern. “You doin’ all right today?” As he speaks, he pulls out a clipboard and pencil.

  Mila signs in on the clipboard. “No, Jerry. I don’t feel well.”

  He shakes his head. “Well, don’t give your momma any germs, now. Lord knows all these old people don’t need to be gettin’ sick.”

  “No, I don’t believe I’m contagious. I… feel unwell… in my head.”

  “Well, hold up.” Jerry looks at her intently for a moment and then says, “Nope, Susan don’t see nothin’—nothin’ diagnosable, anyway. Guess you can’t be too bad off.”

  “Susan?”

  “My Navi. I like her to have a sexy name. Gave her a sexy voice, too—wish you could hear it.” He grins widely.

  Mila shakes her head, not quite cracking a smile. Her head down again, she moves slowly down the hallway, through double doors, and into the main recreation area. She scans the room, which contains a number of older folks in various stages of decay, and then approaches a plump, silver-haired woman in a wheelchair in the far corner. The woman’s head tilts down at a sharp angle, practically hanging from the neck bone, her chin resting on her chest.

  “Mrs. Bremer?”

  The woman doesn’t respond. Mila sees that her eyes are closed. She straightens up and glances around as if to see whether anyone has noticed her, whether she can perhaps leave. She rubs her hands over her face. But then she shakes the woman gently by the shoulder. “Mrs. Bremer… you have a visitor.”

  The woman’s eyes open slowly, and she looks up, seemingly confused at first and then brightening. “Oh my. It’s so nice to have a visitor. Sit down, won’t you?”

  Mila pulls up a chair and sits. She rubs her temples as if suffering from a headache. “How are you feeling today?” she asks without interest.

  “Oh, I can’t complain, can’t ever complain,” Mrs. Bremer says placidly. She eyes Mila, obviously trying to place her. “You look so much like my daughter. But you’re a few years too old, of course. My Mila went off to college. And her hair is short. She likes having a short cut to her hair. The magazines call it a pixie cut.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’m a friend of Mila’s. Mila will be visiting tomorrow, but she wanted me to stop by and see you.”

  “Oh my, that’s sweet. That’s so sweet of her.” Mrs. Bremer eyes her, noting her slumped shoulders and drawn face. “Are you feeling all right, sugar?”

  “I don’t feel well. It’s not important. Mila says to tell you she got a 4.0 again.”

  “Oh, wonderful! Do you know her from college?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’m a teaching assistant working on my master’s degree. That’s how I met her.”

  “Oh, good. Good. So Mila has a friend? That’s so good. You know, I have always worried about Mila making friends. She has never seen the point in it, you know. She has always had her head in a book or in a computer. But I have always told her, you have got to have friends. Otherwise, you get old, like me, and you don’t have a soul to come and see you.”

  Mila doesn’t say anything. Her face has a pained expression. “Do you want to play a card game?”

  “Oh, yes. I love card games. Do you—”

  Mila interrupts, sounding too exhausted to keep up the charade. “Cribbage? I love cribbage. Let’s play cribbage.”

  “Oh, wonderful! I was going to say, I love cribbage. Here, let’s ask these nice people for the cribbage board and cards…”

  Mila gets up and goes right to where they’re kept on a bookshelf on a nearby wall. When Mrs. Bremer studies her curiously, Mila says, “I’ve visited other people here before.”

  “Oh, that’s nice,” Mrs. Bremer says. “So you like to volunteer at places like this?”

  “Yes,” Mila says. She shuffles quickly and places the deck face down, and both she and her mother choose a card. Mila comes out the dealer, and she starts counting out cards.

  “That’s thoughtful,” Mrs. Bremer says. “So many of the old folks here don’t get any visitors. It can be a sad place here, you know.”

  Mila clenches her jaw. “I know.”

  The two women look at their cards. Then Mrs. Bremer flips over the starter card. “Oh look, it’s a Jack. You get his heels.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Mila puts her elbows on the table and hunches forward as she moves her peg two spots up the cribbage board. Then she rests her head on one hand as she surveys her cards.

  They’ve started counting out cards and making pairs and runs when Mila groans. “I’m sorry, Mo—Mrs. Bremer. I’m not feeling so good. I have to go, I’m sorry.”

  She bolts up from the table, leaving Mrs. Bremer sitting open-mouthed, and runs to the women’s restroom, where she is briefly sick. Then she flushes the toilet, rinses her mouth, and washes and dries her face, which remains inscrutable all the while. Her hands tremble.

  Not long afterward, Mila walks to her apartment with the slow, cautious movements of someone who is feeling horrible, and she lets herself in. She steps into the kitchen and pours some apple juice from the fridge. She takes a wary sip of it.

  Taking a box of crackers from the pantry, she walks back into the living room. Her gray cat mews from the sofa, and Mila sits carefully beside her.

  “Something happened to me today, and I don’t know what it is.” She nibbles at a cracker and stares at the cat, who stares back. “I don’t feel good at all, and I don’t know why I don’t feel good. And I can’t even remember how it started, really.”

  The cat mews. She stretches out one paw toward Mila and squeezes her eyes shut in that universal cat expression of affection.

  Mila strokes the cat slowly, then takes a few more nibbles of the cracker. She swallows hard and takes another sip of juice. Then, putting a hand to her forehead, she winces.

  “I know I had a meeting with my boss. But I don’t remember the meeting well. I had such a headache. I think. And after that…” She trails off. “This has never happened to me before, and I don’t see why it would have happened, and I don’t like it at all. But something… something is happening to me.”

  The cat puts her head down on the sofa.

  “I left work early, since I was feeling bad. I went to see Mom at the nursing home.”

  The cat doesn’t respond.

  “She always talks about me making friends. I’m getting tired of hearing it.”

  The two sit silently for a bit.

  “But I’m trying. You know? Oh. I didn’t even tell you. I met someone yesterday, in fact.” Now there’s distress in her tone. “Her name is Phoebe.”

  Mew. The cat looks up.

  “I’m not sure what to do about it,” Mila says. “It’s a problem.”

  The cat begins to purr loudly, and Mila rests her hand against the cat’s throat as if to feel the vibrations.

  “It would be fine if she didn’t want to have dinner with me. But she does, tonight. So, yeah. Phoebe.”

  The cat mews again.

  Mila sighs and rubs her throat, under her jaw. “Maybe my glands are swollen. But it only hurts on this one side.”

  Mila falls silent after that. She eats several more crackers and finishes her juice while petting the cat.

  The apartment
becomes so quiet that only the hum of the air conditioning unit can be heard. Then the refrigerator comes on and adds its hum to the stillness. The apartment grows quite dark as the sun sets outside, until Mila and the cat are only dark shapes on the light-colored sofa.

  “I’m going to go take a nap,” Mila tells the cat quietly, standing up. “Sleep this off before I have to meet Phoebe at nine o’clock.” The kitty purrs again and leaps off the sofa to follow her to the bedroom.

  A few hours later, Mila stands outside Cat’s Diner, looking about for Phoebe. As she watches silent people approach and leave the restaurant, she shrugs and rolls her shoulders periodically as if trying to loosen tension. The day is windy and overcast, making it chillier than one would expect for Atlanta in May.

  Phoebe appears from around the corner of the building, her curviness and straight brown hair easily recognizable from a distance. She approaches Mila, smiles, and says, “Hi.”

  “Hello,” Mila replies, unsmiling.

  After a moment, during which her smile fades, Phoebe says, “I guess we should go inside.” She gestures toward the diner.

  Once inside, Mila steps up to the hostess and says, “I’ll need a server to come take my order.”

  The hostess’s eyes widen in surprise, and then she says aloud, with the over-eager tone of someone trying too hard to be accommodating to a person with a disability, “Of course, ma’am. That’s no problem at all. No problem. Will you be needing a physical menu also?”

  “No, I know what I want.”

  “I can order for you if you want,” Phoebe offers.

  Mila shrugs.

  The waitress glances from one woman to the other. “Do you still want the server to come take your order, ma’am?”

  “No, it’s fine,” Mila says.

  The server leads them to a booth. Mila takes a seat, unfolds her paper napkin, and then places it in her lap. Phoebe follows suit.

  The restaurant is quiet other than some light pop music in the background and the sounds of some young children in other booths. Everyone over age six speaks to one another via Navi.

  Phoebe clears her throat and asks, “So, what are you planning to order?”

  A few people look over at the sound of the out-loud voice.

  Mila looks up. “I’m sorry?”

  “Oh. I was asking what your favorite meal here is. What you like best.”

  Mila rubs a spot under her jaw. “I always order pecan pie and coffee.”

  “Oh,” Phoebe says.

  Mila starts to sigh and then redirects the movement toward refolding her napkin.

  Some of the other patrons’ gazes have become pitying. They’ve realized that at least one of the women is a Nonnie.

  Mila offers reluctantly, “And at other places, I always get a baked potato and a salad with Ranch dressing.”

  “I guess no one can screw that up, huh?”

  “Right.”

  There’s a moment of silence. Phoebe’s eyes move about as she looks at something on her display. Mila looks off to the side, toward the windows and the night sky outside. A few minutes pass. Then Phoebe focuses on Mila again.

  “I placed our orders. Um… So, I wanted to tell you, thank you for saving my dog.”

  “You said that already.”

  Phoebe’s cheeks flush slightly. “So I did.” She straightens the napkin in her lap and takes a drink of her water. Then she asks, “So, what do you do?”

  “With what?”

  “I mean, for a living.”

  “I’m a computer programmer.”

  “Oh.” A moment passes. “I’m a nurse. In the neuro ward of Grady Hospital.” She looks hopeful that perhaps this information will provoke some conversation.

  “Ah,” Mila says.

  Phoebe stifles a sigh. Again, her gaze unfocuses, giving her the same blank look that almost every other person in the restaurant has. Mila glares at her briefly and then goes back to looking out of the window.

  Phoebe refolds her napkin again—aggressively this time—and straightens up in her chair. The set of her shoulders suggests that she’s made up her mind about something. She begins, “We’ve been having a busy couple of days, since I met you. There have been dozens more new cases than normal, and the cases are bizarre, too. People are coming in with extreme anxiety or aggressiveness. I’ve also seen some—”

  The waiter brings their food and sets it on the table.

  Resolutely, Phoebe continues. “—some cases of extreme addiction to bizarre behaviors.” She takes a bite of her scrambled eggs. “One person was addicted to video games to the point of not eating or sleeping or going to work, and that’s not unusual, but another person came in because he was so addicted to candy that he wouldn’t eat anything else and he wasn’t doing anything else other than buying and eating candy. I’ve never had to help someone detox from candy binging before.” She takes another bite.

  Mila only picks at her pecan pie, but Phoebe doesn’t notice.

  Phoebe grimaces. “So, tell me about your computer programming. Where do you work, what kinds of things do you work on, and do you like the work?” Her tone is commanding. She seems determined to have a pleasant conversation.

  Mila sighs and takes a tiny sip of coffee. Then she settles back in her chair resignedly. “I work at a company called ENI. I code to unit tests. A unit of code is a small piece of programming that is supposed to bring about a highly specific result. The unit test places this bit of code into an artificial context, supplying test inputs and ensuring that the output is correct. If each unit of code works correctly, then the final product will work properly in the end-user’s experience.”

  Phoebe blinks slowly and nods. “So you put pieces of the program into isolation. That makes sense.”

  Mila tilts her head to the side and raises her eyebrows. “Most people don’t understand anything I just said the first time through.”

  Phoebe smiles. “Do you like your work?”

  Mila pauses. Finally, after taking another reluctant bite, she says, “If I were a shark, programming would be the ocean.”

  Phoebe’s eyes widen and she nods slowly. “Nicely put.” Then her eyes refocus on her Navi.

  A few moments pass while Mila stares at Phoebe, unnoticed.

  Phoebe giggles at something she’s hearing or reading, and Mila grimaces and looks away. She eats a couple of small bites of pie and rubs the place under her jaw again.

  After a bit, Phoebe’s eyes refocus on the eggs and pancakes cooling and congealing on her plate. Then she looks at Mila, her eyes wide. “Oh, I’m sorry. I got distracted with some messages. I didn’t mean to do that. I’m sorry. I’m a jerk.” She sounds alarmed. “I hope that wasn’t too insensitive to your… condition.”

  Mila grimaces again and doesn’t answer.

  “I mean, I’m assuming you can’t take a Navi. Right?” She sounds cautious, afraid of being snapped at. “I mean, it’s not by choice?”

  “That’s correct.”

  Phoebe nods. “But you don’t use a smartphone, either.”

  Mila says nothing.

  Her eyebrows knit, Phoebe asks tentatively, “Is it for religious reasons?”

  Mila tilts her head to the side again. “No, of course not. Why would it be religious?”

  Phoebe’s forehead smoothes out. “Well, there are some people like that. My family, actually. They’re called ‘Plain people.’ Have you ever heard of that?”

  “No.”

  “They used to be called Old Order Mennonites, but my family belongs to a sect that branched out from the Mennonites. Anyway, they avoid modern technology. No Navis, no TVs, no computers. No cars, either. And they’re called ‘Plain people’ because they wear simple clothes and have simple homes and furnishings and stuff.”

  Mila doesn’t respond.

  “My family lives in Zanesville, Ohio. Little town about an hour from Cleveland. About twenty thousand people. My people own a bunch of land and have farms and gardens and such. They don’t inte
ract with the outside world other than the mail carrier and whoever else they can’t avoid. Most people think it’s weird… I don’t usually tell people about them… actually.”

  “It sounds peaceful.” Mila takes a sip of her coffee. “I like it quiet. That’s why I don’t have technology. I like it with me and my cat.”

  “Ah.”

  They fall silent again.

  Phoebe’s eyes unfocus as she interacts with her Navi some more. Mila stabs at her pie.

  “I’m sorry,” Phoebe says for at least the third time in the last thirty minutes, but this time, her voice is strained, her face stricken. “I got an emergency message about my little brother. He’s in the emergency room. I need to go the hospital. I’m sorry, I’m going to have to go now.”

  She stands up as she speaks, and then she stops, her eyes widening.

  “I forgot. Damn it!” She squeezes her eyes shut and freezes for a moment. Then she comes back. “I forgot that my car is in the shop and I took the rail here. I hate to ask, but can I please, please, please get a ride from you?”

  Mila stares at her, unblinking.

  “It’s that it’ll take more than an hour to get to the hospital from here by rail, and it’ll take forever to get a cab here…”

  “Yes, I can give you a ride,” Mila replies. “But we do have to pay.” She unzips her backpack and starts to dig in it.

  “No, no. I’ll handle it.” She taps her forehead, suggesting that she’ll pay by Navi. “I’m supposed to be paying for you anyway, remember? I want to get to the hospital. Please?”

  Mila zips the backpack closed again. “Fine. Let’s go.”

  Three

  I’ve already messaged Jamie four times, and he’s not replying. My heart is pounding, my stomach is sick, and now I’m wishing I hadn’t eaten anything. I authorize payment for our meal at Cat’s Diner, and then I direct my Navi to connect me to the ER. Once I’m connected, I verify my identity, confirm my relationship to Jamie, and pull up the ER report. As I do so, I hardly notice Mila taking me by the elbow and leading me to her car. She directs me toward the seat, and I grope for the belt buckle.