I square my feet, say my mantra—“There is the nothing that is there, and the nothing that is not there”—and chop into the tree. The sound of the axe meeting the wood makes a cracking sound that is deeply satisfying. About a third of the way through, I make several vertical chops at a forty-five-degree angle, to create the V-shaped notch that will act as a hinge when the tree falls.
Swinging my ax, I realize just how good I feel. I’ve always considered it vital that every day one finds a reason to feel fortunate, something, no matter how small, to make one smile. Yet, I must admit, I’ve mostly failed at this simple goal. So many days are consumed with the most tedious and soul-wrenching of obligations: dressing a reluctant and screaming child for school, meeting with hospital administrators, informing a patient she only has months to live, and traffic, and errands, and fights with the spouse. I sometimes go as many as three days straight without experiencing a single minute of joy, or even of peacefulness. In my current bliss, I see how truth and logic rarely go hand in hand—how two entirely contradictory propositions can both be true. For example, the statement: happiness is not expensive. At face value, this declaration sounds preposterous. Of course happiness is expensive! We are taught this from day one in America. The great goal of any patriot in this country is to make as much money as possible. If it weren’t for money, how else could we measure happiness? But here I am, using my own physical strength, exerting all my energy, sweating, making my muscles sore and my bones ache, to complete a task I could easily pay a robot to do, and I feel fantastic.
On the other hand, I recall a ski vacation that Rachel, Julian, and I took to Vail, Colorado, last year—as expensive a disaster as ever I’ve suffered. Our flight to Denver was delayed two hours. At the airport, I allowed Julian to eat a plate of nachos, forgetting that he’s lactose intolerant, and the poor boy shit himself. Later, in our rental car, a heavy storm came through the region and stopped all traffic for eight hours. The next morning, we enrolled Julian in ski school. At lunch, we received a call from the instructor, informing us that Julian had skied away from the group and gotten lost. The ski patrol deployed half of their force in their quest to find him, leaving them insufficient personnel to respond to an avalanche that buried two snowboarders who had been riding out of bounds on the mountain’s backside. The patrol finally tracked Julian down, just as the lifts were closing for the day. He had been in the lodge drinking hot chocolate and playing Jenga with a college ski club visiting from St. Louis. Things went on this way, disaster on disaster, until we could no longer bear it and cut the trip short two days early. The total price? $24,500!
After making the wedge-shaped notch on the side of the trunk toward which the tree will fall, I work on the back cut. With three strikes, I’m nearly halfway through the diameter of the trunk. Then I place a wedge in the cut to discourage the tree from sitting back on the blade of the axe, and continue to chop. Five more strokes and the tree gives way, the wood popping and cracking, as it falls. “Timber!” I shout while Julian and I make our escape. As I had estimated, the top of the tree barely kisses the fence, cracking just two of its boards.
Like all children who come from wealth, Julian has no experience with manual labor. It’s not uncommon, in fact, for endangerment charges to be brought against any parent who exposes their child to labor, if there is so much as a modicum of danger involved. Just last week, a thirteen-year-old boy roasted a chicken in the oven without parental supervision. He told his friends at school about the meal he had prepared, one of which kids told his parents, who reported the act. The boy’s father is currently in the county jail, awaiting trial.
Now, while I cut the tree into pieces, Julian stacks my work against the side of the house. To my amazement, he is the most ardent worker I’ve ever seen. It is as if the work fulfills and validates him. The more he works, actually, the more enthusiastic he becomes. By sunset, Julian’s stack is five feet deep, six feet tall, and twenty-five feet long.
“Can we cut down another tree tomorrow?” Julian asks.
“But aren’t you tired?”
“I’ve never been more tired in all my life.”
“And you like this feeling?”
“Better than anything. Maybe when I’m older I can build houses.”
“All houses will soon be built with 3D printers.”
“But I don’t want to spend my life in a chair before my gram.”
Rachel steps from the house with her freshly styled hair and made-up face. “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?” she sings in a delicate alto. Then, before our handiwork, she says, “The landscapers sure did a nice job!”
“We did it ourselves,” Julian says.
“What do you mean?” she replies, glaring at me.
“Just after you left this morning,” I say, “the landscapers called and cancelled.”
“Surely you didn’t make our son do this work.”
“He likes it.”
“I do, Mama, I love it!”
“But it’s so dangerous!”
“Nonsense,” I say. “We took every precaution.”
“This,” Rachel says as she storms away, “is unacceptable.”
Julian says he wants to stay outside, the first time he’s ever made such a request. He even asks if he can sleep out here.
“We’ll buy a sleeping bag and tent tomorrow,” I say.
“Thank you, Dad,” he exclaims and hugs me. “Today was the best day ever.”
24
Mr. Toczauer died, and yesterday I attended his funeral.
This is not something I normally do. In all of my years practicing medicine, I’ve attended only one other funeral, early on, when I was pursuing pediatric oncology. I was cured of that compulsion, however, when the first child I treated died before my eyes.
For me to do my job ably, I’ve found that a strict policy of no-funerals-even-for-dead-people is best. Why, then, I attended Mr. Toczauer’s funeral is of concern. It’s not like we were close. Normally I never make impulsive decisions. When I decided to quit music to pursue medicine, I conditioned myself to become a staunch rationalist. The change required a complete rewiring of my brain. Now I’m essentially barren of any creative or spontaneous urges. And perhaps this is why I went to the funeral? It was the first completely unnatural and uncultivated idea I’d had in years. It felt necessary.
Generally, I only have to hear the word God and a giant black veil swallows me up. But yesterday, as the priest gave his eulogy, I was moved. It wasn’t so much anything he said about Mr. Toczauer’s death, but the topic itself, of death.
I thought about the time when as a youth I saw a shooting star, and for a single moment understood the religious impulse, the idea of something grander than ourselves. Until the funeral, I hadn’t thought about this in years. It’s been so long, in fact, I can scarcely even be certain it happened. And yet it is significant.
As the service progressed, I grew increasingly fixed on Mrs. Toczauer. She swayed between hysterical crying and stoic silence. I became aware of just how confused I’m made by witnessing true expressions of grief and pain, seeing how I tend to deny the tragic side of things. I wasn’t always like this.
My first year of rotations in the hospital, I was in the emergency room, and the paramedics brought in a man after a massive heart attack. He was barely alive, unconscious, and his vital signs left no ambiguity about his fate. I knew nothing about this man. But he died before my eyes, and it was I who had to say so officially. I had never witnessed this, the death of a man. I rushed to the bathroom and spent an hour vomiting and crying. How full of tenderness and charity I was, how full of heart.
Today there’s little of any of this left in me. Last Tuesday, for example, was a slow day, so slow that for the first time in nearly two months, I was going to eat a proper lunch. A tech had delivered a roast beef sandwich, but just as I sat down to eat it, I learned that one of my patients had been rushed to intensive care. I went to see him, his prognosis
already determined. And sure enough, he died the moment I reached him. “Time of death, 2:27p.m.,” I announced, just as I had that first time. Now, however, rather than cry and puke, I enjoyed my sandwich. The man’s death was the last thing on my mind.
With yesterday’s funeral, I realized how far I’ve allowed my humanity to disintegrate. More than once, alone with Rachel, I’ve spoken ill of my patients. The fear of death, I’ve always said, is the Achilles heel of Western civilization.
Yet what do I know of death? I try to imagine the sensation of living one’s own death, and it terrifies me past expression.
I welcome this renaissance in me of compassion and goodwill toward my fellow man. It is affirming.
25
I’m up for my annual performance review at the hospital. The Board of Directors have gathered in the conference room for the event. At the head of the table is Serena, flanked by Dr. Hines and a team of healthcare bureaucrats. Dr. Hines is displaying a graph titled “Annual Physician Spending Comparison.” Directly above my name is a tall red bar, representing $112 million in spending, which I gather is a lot based on the aggrieved expressions of the bureaucrats. Next to my bar, there is a second bar in blue, only half as tall, labelled, “Average Physician Spending.” The bureaucrats study Dr. Hines’ findings and then whisper clandestinely into each other’s ears. Dr. Hines flashes a cruel smile in my direction, catapulting me into despair. Then, Dr. Hines launches into a lengthy sermon on the merits of Serena’s Human Life Valuation Tool, and how if it’s made into law it will prevent such profligate spending in the future.
What irks me most about Dr. Hines is how he thinks all things connected to him are divine. He’s convinced himself that he’s one of destiny’s elect. It’s his prerogative that if he attaches himself to something, it somehow assumes near mystical proportions. It’s not just this healthcare business of Serena’s that Dr. Hines reveres, either. He does this with anything he touches.
For instance, five years ago, at the age of thirty-seven, in Oslo, a former teen singing sensation was charged with manslaughter, stemming from a post-concert orgy with a bunch of swimsuit models in which a Japanese fan somehow slipped into the throng and was crushed to death. As it happens, Dr. Hines once treated the singer’s manager for a skin sarcoma that was removed during an out-patient procedure. This tenuous connection was enough for Dr. Hines to commit the full weight of his efforts to supporting the troubled celebrity. He wrote a number of opinion pieces for local news outlets championing the pop star’s innocence. Once this gained him a bit of notoriety, he started a non-profit organization that raised money to perform independent forensic studies on the crime scene. When this effort failed, he took a short sabbatical to study law, culminating not in a Juris Doctorate, but with a conspiracy theorist’s ability to twist facts and make straw-man arguments. This somehow landed him on a panel of experts advising the beleaguered singer’s legal team. Eventually, the man was acquitted, and now he and Dr. Hines are practically best pals.
Upon completing his speech, Dr. Hines says, “Henri, this morning I was reviewing your cases. You recently had a patient who died named Mr. Toczauer. He was eighty-six years old and had Agnogenic Myeloid Metaplasia. By your own estimation, he had less than a five percent chance of surviving chemotherapy. Yet you allowed him to receive a bone marrow transplant. Tell me how that makes sense?”
“I suggested euthanasia and then hospice care, but the family wanted further treatment. Based on the laws of the land, he was entitled.”
“You disappoint me, Henri. I would’ve thought you were better than that. You’re the doctor for Christ’s sake. Don’t be afraid to impose your will on these people. This isn’t just about life or death, it’s economics, too.” The boardroom breaks out into hysterics. Even Serena has a good chuckle at my expense. Encouraged by his remark’s reception, Dr. Hines continues. “Times have changed, Henri, but you’re still practicing medicine as if it were 2025.”
“You mean I’m still treating patients as if my job were to look after their best interests?”
“It’s only fools who fear change,” he says. “Perhaps you would prefer the world to stand still? To make its inhabitants immutable?”
“Go to hell,” I mumble.
Serena chimes in immediately. “Don’t take offense, Henri. We’re only trying to find solutions to a difficult problem.”
After the review is over, I open my gram to check the report. I’m in the 96th percentile for Highest Average Patient Expenditure and the 93rd percentile for Patient Life Expectancy. Due to these marks, I’ve been placed on probation.
26
The weather report called for rain today, the first time in months. It’s all anyone could discuss. As the day wore on, the excitement grew, and there was talk of the rain coming down in biblical proportions. One TV weather-man used the word “hurricane” in his forecast. Another advised that everyone would be safest to remain indoors.
A beggar on the street said he’d been praying for rain so he could wash himself and his clothes. He’d spent his last two dollars on a bar of soap. So affected by his pleas, two wealthy men opened their grams and gave him money. They even shook the beggar’s hand.
A sight like this is rare. The city has changed so much since I arrived, already long into its evolution as the proto-type of our new world. Back then there was still a glimmer of hope that all of this technology would eventually raise everyone up, and not just the folks getting rich off it. In the interim, the wealthy did what they could to make the lives of the poor a bit more livable. Restaurants used to put refrigerators outside of their front doors, for example, where customers could leave their leftovers for the homeless. Those days now seem prehistoric. Serena blames the government, of course. She says our outrageous taxes have drained any charitable impulse she may have once possessed.
In anticipation of the deluge, store owners raised the price of umbrellas over one thousand percent. Those unfortunate enough not to have procured an umbrella walked the streets covered in plastic garbage bags and ponchos. Alas, the great downpour was nothing more than hype. A slight drizzle fell, that’s it, too little to wash away the dust from a car’s windshield. Ten minutes after the first drops, the clouds parted and a blazing sun slyly smiled down. Everyone felt injured and duped. As one person described it, the city was in the grip of a “collective melancholy.”
A few whiskeys might ease the sting of disappointment, I think, as I walk into Anodyne. I’m not the only one with such an idea. The bar is packed, and Lydia is pouring drinks at a record pace. Her coordination and know-how is unparalleled. She moves like an elite athlete. I watch in awe as she mixes a rum and coke with one hand and pours tequila shots with the other. Her math skills, however, are lousy. This is made clear when she tries to charge some poor schmuck two hundred dollars for five whiskey sodas.
The man looks at her questioningly.
“Henri, a little help, here?” Lydia says.
“Forty sounds fair,” I say.
The man gram-transfers the money and walks away.
“You think that knock on the head I took is causing side effects?” Lydia asks.
“I wouldn’t operate any heavy machinery if I were you.”
“I can’t screw up this bartending gig, it’s all I’ve got left.”
“No other job prospects, hobbies, nothing?”
“Not long ago I was volunteering as a mentor to a wonderful teenage girl named Gabby,” Lydia says, covering her eyes with a hand. She’s drunk, I realize, and is now crying. Worse, there are vomit stains on her shirt. “But they just cancelled the program.” Her voice comes in fits and starts. “The director said human mentors are a liability, too many risk factors. Apparently, a boy was molested in Toledo. We’ve been replaced with robotic pet dogs.”
Karl is parked just two stools down. On the stool between us is a heavy rucksack. And his mutt lies at his feet. Karl is eating a bag of potato chips and sipping on a beer. His recent mania has somehow been taken by
a somber calm. His movements are slow and deliberate, as if he were moving through water. He’s watching Tim Bradford, the Luddite candidate, on the news as he makes a speech at the site of the Lincoln Memorial, where Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech. A headline at the bottom of the screen estimates two-hundred thousand people in attendance.
Despite Bradford’s deeply unattractive face, his eyes possess a combative glow that is remarkably affecting. In them, there is no hint of artifice, no suggestion of gimmick or contrivance. He’s a man of deep conviction, and his disciples would follow him to the ends of the earth.
Bradford’s voice, as well, carries a tunefulness that worms into your brain so that his alarming ideas appear commonsensical. I myself can scarcely resist his charisma.
“What law,” he thunders, “says we must continue to strive toward increasing the scope of machines, efficiency, and organization? Because it seems clear to me that this path has led us to the brink of ruin!”
Karl raises his beer and salutes as Bradford goes on.
“It’s no secret, my friends, the great evils of vice, divorce, and juvenile disobedience that are tearing apart the fabric of our once great nation grow in direct relation to automation’s acceleration and human work’s devaluation! President Martinez’s policies have brought on a new era of slavery in this country. But it’s even worse than the horrors committed against those poor men and women that were brought over on boats from Africa centuries ago. Because if physical slavery is a sin, how much more repulsive is slavery of the spirit? It’s time we reclaim our rightful place in the world. Our movement is growing stronger and come election day there will be a revolution!”
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