“I don’t want a nurse. And what’s the Department of whatever you said anyway? What are you going to do for them? Stare at a screen all day? You already do that here. I’m done. You can help me off the toilet now. I can pull up my own pants. I’m not a baby.”
“Yes, Dad. Let me wash my hands now and I’ll start dinner.”
Justin wheeled his father into the apartment’s tiny kitchen. It would make the preparation of dinner a little more difficult, but it was easier than listening to complaints from the other room, always punctuated with calls of, “What? What’d you say? I can’t hear you!”
Justin cut slices of chicken, cut them into chewable pieces, placed them carefully on his father’s plate. Rice and peas and salad. A glass of iced tea for each.
They ate in silence, the old man chewing each piece of chicken slowly and carefully because his teeth hurt. Finally, he said, “ ’Course, on the other hand, if you had a job, you wouldn’t be underfoot all day, annoying the hell out of me with your constant complaining.”
“Yes, you’d have some quiet time for yourself.”
“Hmpf. Like I need that. Nobody ever comes to visit anyway.”
“You could go down to the park.”
“It’s not safe. I’d rather stay here.” He peered across the table. “What kind of a job is it?”
“The Department of Enabled Actuarial Transitional Health. I’d be a—a field worker. A service provider.”
“Service provider? What’s that mean?”
“If I take the job. I’d be a—a deathman. But I’m not sure I’m going to take the job.”
“A deathman. Hah. Everybody thinks about it, but nobody ever wants to actually do it. Serve death? Uh-uh. Scares the screaming hell out of them. But it’s still gotta be done. Like collecting garbage or cleaning sewers. Society breaks down if nobody does it.” The old man grumbled. “At least it’s clean work. You wouldn’t come home stinking of garbage or shit.”
“No, I guess I wouldn’t.”
“They pay good?”
“Twelve hundred and fifty dollars per service, to start—plus expenses, if any, like transportation. I can set my own hours. If I get assigned to a major facility, I can make several thousand dollars a day.”
“That’s a lot of money.”
“Death isn’t cheap, Dad.”
“ ’Course money isn’t worth anything if you don’t have your health.”
“You’re right about that.”
“You gonna take the job?”
“I don’t know. I have to go back on Monday.”
“This thing about death. They say it’s a public service. Cleaning up the sick and old and useless. Because they’re a drain on the public body. Parasites. You’re helping society. Making the world a better place. Make more room for the real people.”
The old man paused to pick apart a stringy piece of chicken with his fingers. “When I was your age . . . except your mom didn’t want me to. Might have done it anyway, except you came along. But I looked into it, I did. Lots of us did. Easy work, easy money.” He popped the meat into his mouth and chewed for a bit. “Takes a special somethin’, though. You gotta feel for people, like you’re doin’ them a service, helpin’ them along. Otherwise, y’know, y’start to feel bad about yourself. Whatever. If you have the backbone for it, it’s good work. Nobody ever gives you shit. That’s for sure.”
Justin stopped. He laid his fork down next to his plate. And considered carefully what his father had just said.
“Do you want me to take the job?”
“Ahh, you’ll do what you want to do. You always do. You never listened to me in the past, why would you listen to me now?”
“I want your opinion. Your advice.”
“My advice? Hah. Make up your own mind. I wish I had. If I had, you wouldn’t be here nagging the hell out of me.”
“It’s really very simple,” the training supervisor said. “You get a gray suit, a gray car, gray gloves. You go in, you lay your hands on them, they transition peacefully and without pain. That’s really all that’s required. And if that’s all you ever did, you’d be earning your salary.
“But the good caseworkers, they make the service personal. They respect their clients, they sit with them and chat for a bit. They take the time to know them, learn something about who they are and how they lived and what makes their lives special and worth remembering. If you can see them as real people, then you can give them their transition as a gift of release. Some agents just go in and out, wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am. But the great agents take the time to make sure the client is ready to go. Every case is different. Your job, your real job, is to be a generous listener. In a sense, you have to fall in love with each client, look for the love in their hearts and the dignity in their eyes. Give them peace in their soul and you can feel good about giving them an easy and painless release.”
Justin nodded slowly, hearing the words but not yet understanding the depth of meaning. All of the words, they were starting to blur together like so much jargon. In butt-simple language, the deathman kills people. He takes lives. He does it legally. As a service of a benevolent society. He does it with a transition warrant, signed by a panel of three judges who have reviewed the life-quality of the client and determined that it has depreciated beyond recovery. More jargon.
It’s still death.
“Yes,” agreed the training supervisor, even before Justin could finish speaking it aloud. “Everybody has that conversation. That one. The one about morality and conscience and isn’t this a mortal sin? No, it isn’t. We’d be merciful to a horse with a broken leg or a dog with distemper, wouldn’t we? Why would we want to deny such a generous mercy to our loved ones? When you can achieve that level of understanding, then you can see your job as what it truly is—a service.”
“I understand what you’re saying,” Justin replied. “It’s going to take me a while to actually experience it that way.”
“Don’t worry. You will. Eventually. If you stick with it.”
The hospital smelled of disinfectant and flowers and air freshener. The lights were too bright. His footsteps sounded heavy on the floor, as if his shoes were soled with granite. Maybe it was the way that people turned to look at him, then turned hastily away.
A crisp gray suit, shiny gray shoes, a pair of silent gray gloves. Except he wasn’t wearing the gloves yet. Not yet. Not until the client was ready. But they still recognized him, still knew why he was here.
Justin felt uneasy; he hoped it didn’t show. Could they tell that this was his first case, his first time? His face flushed with embarrassment. He bit his lips tightly together and hoped it looked like determination.
Room 223. Mrs. Bellini.
He had to ask at the nurse’s station. The male nurse barely glanced up. “You should have been here a week ago. We need the bed.”
“Paperwork,” mumbled Justin.
The nurse jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Back there.” He punched a button on his phone. “Yeah, I’ve got a code gray. I’ll need a DC and a gurney in five. No, make it ten. The gray’s a noob.”
Justin followed the general direction, found the room, and gently pushed the door open. “Mrs. Bellini?”
She didn’t answer. She was a small still form beneath a pale blanket. Her skin was sallow. She had an IV in her left arm. What was left of her hair hung down in yellow strings. She was intubated and her breath rasped painfully. Her yellow eyes were open, staring blankly at the ceiling.
“Mrs. Bellini?” Justin moved into her field of view. Her eyes flicked sideways, then drifted away. “Mrs. Bellini, do you know who I am? Do you know why I’m here?”
No answer.
“My name is Justin. I’m here to ease your transition.”
She lifted her right hand as if to wave him away. He stepped back. The hand fluttered helplessly in the air, like an injured bird. It had a life of its own.
Justin glanced around, grabbed a chair, and pulled it close. He sat down and
leaned forward. Because he didn’t know what else to do, he reached out and took her hand. Her bony fingers wrapped tightly around his.
“Do you know why I’m here?”
She blinked. Once, twice. She moved her head, almost a nod.
“That’s good, yes.”
He started to say, “Is there anything I can do for you—” then stopped himself. She couldn’t speak. She didn’t have the physical strength to write a note. He couldn’t even offer her a sip of water. She was helpless beneath the tubes and wires.
“All right,” he said. “This won’t take long.” He reached into the inside pocket of his coat and pulled out his gray gloves.
Her eyes widened as she watched. Justin hesitated. He stopped fumbling with the gloves and just met her gaze. He watched as her eyes filled with tears. Finally, he said, “It’s time to go, sweetheart.” He finished pulling on the gloves. They felt cold and smooth, they tingled. He closed his eyes and issued a wordless prayer to himself for strength, then reached over and took her hand again, pressing it between both of his. He held it for a long time, waiting and listening to the sound of her breath leaving her body for the last time.
The first few weeks, most of his clients were like Mrs. Bellini. A few could talk. Some of them said, “Bless you,” or “Thank you.” One old man called him something in Italian. Justin wasn’t sure if it was a good thing or not.
A nine-year-old girl, only a few wispy strands of hair left on her head—her sunken eyes never left him. In a voice like the rustle of parchment she asked if it would hurt. “No,” Justin promised. “It will be just like going to sleep.”
“Will I go to heaven?”
The question startled him. “What do you think?”
“I took my sister’s doll and broke it. Isn’t that a sin?”
“Did you apologize to her?”
“Yes. But I didn’t mean it. Daddy made me.”
“Are you sorry now?”
“Yes, please. I don’t want to go to hell.”
“Well, I’m pretty sure that God doesn’t send little girls to hell. Especially not someone as sweet and honest as you.”
That seemed to satisfy her. “Okay,” she said quietly, and a moment later, “I’m ready.”
Justin stepped out of the way, so Mom and Dad could hug their little girl one more time. He used the moment to pull on his gray gloves, still so cold and smooth. When the parents finally moved away from the bed, he sat down. “Okay, close your eyes,” he whispered. “And now you count to three with me, and on three, you let go. Okay?”
On three, he took her hand in his.
On Thursday, Justin was sent to a small house in the suburbs, where a teenager had overdosed on drugs. The paramedics were just sliding the gurney into the back of the ambulance when he arrived. They looked at him, annoyed. Justin held up the transition warrant.
“He’s just a kid.”
“He’s had his three strikes. He’s out.” Justin regretted the words even before he finished saying them.
“You don’t believe in rehab?”
“I do, yes. But apparently this boy doesn’t.” He offered the warrant for their inspection.
Neither of the paramedics reached for it. One of them said, “We’ve seen that paperwork before. We know.”
The other added, “We also know that in cases like this, you have the right to make an on-site adjudication.”
The first one said, “But you don’t get paid if you don’t serve, do you?”
The second one nodded over Justin’s shoulder. “That’s his mom, over there. She’s the one who called it in.”
Justin looked. A worried-looking woman, clutching her sweater close to her. He turned back to the paramedics. “I can let him go. But you know we’ll all be back here again in a week. Or a month.”
“Or maybe not. Maybe when he finds out that a deathman let him live, just this one more time, maybe he’ll straighten out. It’s your call, of course. It’s your conscience.”
Justin put the gloves away, back into his inside coat pocket. He couldn’t think of anything else to say, so he just turned and walked back to his car. The gray car.
Friday morning, Justin went to see his supervisor. He knocked politely on her door, waited for her to say, “Enter,” then stepped quietly into the room.
Without looking up from the screen she was studying, she waved him to a chair. After a moment, she finished and turned to him. “Problem?”
“No. Yes. Maybe. I don’t know.”
She glanced at her watch. “Mm-hm. You’re right on schedule. Three weeks. Which conversation are we going to have? The one where you tell me you can’t do this anymore? Or the one where you ask for reassurance that you’re doing the right thing?”
Justin flushed with embarrassment. “I guess I’m not the first person to have . . . I guess you could say, misgivings.”
She laughed gently. “No. You’re not the first. Which one was it? The little girl?”
“No. She was sweet. It was easy because she understood we were ending her pain. And she knew she was loved. No, it was the boy last night.”
“The drug overdose?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You gave him a pass.”
“Yes.”
“The paramedics talked you out of it?”
“And his mother was watching.”
“Yes, I heard. In fact, that’s why I expected you this morning. Everybody gets one of those warrants, sooner or later.” She added, “You did the right thing. You erred on the side of caution. Maybe the boy will learn, maybe he won’t. Probably he won’t. But if there’s even the slightest chance that he will, you were right to do what you did. It doesn’t hurt you to be merciful. It doesn’t hurt us.”
She took a deep breath. “But sometimes, it does hurt the client. Sometimes in our eagerness to be the nice guy, sometimes all we do is extend the pain, stretch it out a little longer than it needs to be. It’s a judgment call, and I promise you, I’ll always stand behind you, no matter what you decide in such a case. As far as I’m concerned, you’re a deathman, you don’t make mistakes. But just be aware—sometimes, in some cases, it happens that being merciful isn’t the most merciful thing you can do. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
Justin nodded. “I was thinking about his mother. I didn’t sleep very well last night. If I had . . . exercised the transition warrant, the boy would be out of his pain. And so would the mom. I mean, yes, she’d have to deal with her grief for a while, but the warrant would have released her from the trap she was in. This way, he goes to the hospital, the clinic, the rehab center, he begins the cycle all over again, one more time—and the mom, she has to go through the whole cycle again, too. Until the next time she finds him on the floor choking on his vomit. I could have spared her that pain. How many weeks or months or even years?”
Justin’s supervisor nodded. “What you just said—that’s true compassion.”
“It’s in the training. I paid attention.”
“Yes, you did.”
“I get it now. It’s not just about the client. It’s about the client’s family—releasing them from their burdens, too. That’s what I’m upset about. I’m not sure I did that woman any favor.”
“No, you probably didn’t. Oh, if you were to ask her, she’d say you did, and she’d be enormously grateful. But in actuality, no. Her quality of life will not improve as long as she is carrying the burden of that boy and his addiction. No, Justin, you didn’t do anything wrong last night. It’s a lesson we all have to learn. Mercy isn’t always nice. Sometimes mercy is ruthless.”
She sighed, not in exhaustion but in sympathy. “Do you need to take some personal time?”
Justin shook his head. “I’m fine. I think.”
“If you want to take the rest of the day, or even a couple of days, go ahead.”
“Thank you,” Justin said, rising. “I, uh—I think maybe I should. Thank you.”
On the way out, Justin ran into the dispa
tch officer. He was holding a fresh warrant.
“Um, no, I probably shouldn’t. I’m supposed to take a personal day.”
“Sure, okay. No problem. I was just thinking convenience.”
Justin rubbed his nose. “Okay.” He took the transition warrant and shoved it into his coat pocket without looking at it. “I can take care of it tonight.”
“Or tomorrow,” said the officer. “Whenever it’s convenient. The client isn’t going anywhere.”
In the morning, Justin helped his father out of bed and into the bathroom. He sat him down on the plastic chair in the shower and helped him bathe, using a showerhead on a flexible hose so the old man wouldn’t have to twist or turn more than necessary.
After he dressed his father, he lifted him into the wheelchair and rolled him into the kitchen. “Would you like some bacon and eggs this morning, Dad?”
“Too expensive. Why are you spending all this money? Oatmeal.”
“We can afford it now. Remember, I have a job.”
“Eggs and bacon. Cholesterol and fat. Trying to kill me, are you?”
“No, Dad. I’m trying to make you happy. Sunny-side up? Or scrambled?”
“Scrambled. Hmpf.”
“And what channel would you like today? History or Animals or National Geographic?”
“Doesn’t matter, they’re all the same. And don’t get so uppity. I know how to use the remote.”
“Yes, you do know. It’s right there for you.”
“Don’t you have to go to work already?”
“Not today. I’m taking a personal day.”
“They fired you already?”
“No, Dad. They said I did good. They just want me to have some time to—to think about some things. It’s part of the job.”
“Hmpf. I know what happens when you start thinking. You tie yourself in a knot. You get all stuck. Well, don’t you do that now. You have a good job. It keeps us in bacon and eggs. Don’t you give up now. What? No toast?”
“It’s in the toaster, just a minute more. And no, I’m not giving up my job. I’m just—sorting some things out.”
More Stories from the Twilight Zone Page 15
