The Machine. James Smythe
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in the front garden proclaims it to be a CENTRE, though Beth knows different. It’s a hospice, really. She would argue that the patients are all terminal, because they’re like this until they die. Any chance of them being treated by this new technique is slim to none; if they’re the right patient, and if the company decides that the technology is up to it, then maybe. Probably not, though. Saturdays are visiting days, and she has to sign in. She has to show ID and be scanned, so she places her bag on the table and stands where she’s meant to and lets them check she’s not dangerous. She has no idea why anybody would want to bring a weapon into this place. The school, that’s a risk. Once a year the news rings out with another story about somebody murdering their classmates. Nobody ever murders the handicapped and dying.
In the hospice itself, Beth knows the way to Vic’s room. There are coloured lines on the floor to lead visitors. Green to the gardens; black to the storeroom in the eaves, where they keep old Machines, in case they should ever need them; sandy yellow to the private rooms. Beth follows this last line up the stairs and to the left. She pays for a room of his own, where so many of them are in larger wards, four or six to a room, divided only by thin cotton curtains. There’s an argument among the families of those in here that private rooms are unfair, because not everybody can afford the subsidies. They’re all in the same boat, goes the argument; and besides, they don’t know any different. She pays the subsidy, despite the rising prices, because it gives them privacy.
When he’s back to being himself, Beth thinks, he’ll appreciate that I did it. What it gave him. That space to be alone, and to be himself.
Vic’s room is the same colour as the rest of the hospice. A thin grey paint, a white dado rail, a white skirting. The furniture is hospital standard, with a white wire-frame bed locked to the wall and a table that’s high enough to be wheeled over the bed – and over Vic – and a chair in the corner of the room, a soft thing that’s low to the ground, impractical to sit in. There’s a television (an old-style set, with the bulbous behind and curved screen) on a stand on the wall opposite the bed as well. It made Beth laugh, the first time she saw it. When they brought her into the room, to tell her that this would be where he was staying, and they pointed it out. She asked them if it would be part of his rehabilitation, watching EastEnders. They ignored her. She found out later that the building used to be an old people’s home, and they simply moved them out and moved the new patients in. In the corner are Vic’s personal accoutrements: his monitor, his spare colostomy bag, a collection of kidney-shaped metal trays stacked up like saucepans. There’s a bowl of fruit, but it’s token, and often the fruit is gone, well past its date. On the wall above the bed, looking directly down at Vic is a security camera, a tiny ball that affords somebody a 360-degree view of the room. A direct line to see and hear whatever Vic is doing at any given point in the day.
Here, Vic is on the bed, shitting himself.
Here, Vic is writhing, managing to push himself onto the floor, his tongue lolling from his mouth.
Here, Vic is in the corner, because he walked of his own accord, which should be a near-miracle, and celebrated, but now he’s just standing there and gasping as he faces the walls, heaving his body up and down, his shoulders halfway to a convulsion. Over and over and over again.
Beth always worries what state she’ll find him in. She’s sometimes been here when there’s been an accident, and she’s seen it before the carers have had a chance to deal with it, but that’s a hazard of their jobs, she thinks. The carers and hers. Even with those paying guests, the clinic is understaffed and underserviced. She could complain, but they’ve got heading on for a hundred other patients here, and they’re all in similar boats. Some are better, admittedly: many of them have kept their day-to-day routine, and they can take themselves to the toilet and feed themselves. Some of them might as well be in a coma for all they’re worth. Lying there, calm as anything, barely cognitive when visitors come. Vic is special to the clinic. He’s a worst case: not just far less able than the man he once was, but totally out of control of the man he’s become. Beth’s never seen anybody worse, not in the flesh.
(On the internet she’s seen videos of patients who reacted to the initial Machine treatments in other ways entirely. She tells herself that it could have been worse: those patients who, in the early stages of treatment, killed themselves and their families: holding them at gunpoint until they ended it, casually, one by one; or slashing their throats while they slept, disbelieving of the stories told to them to fill in their gaps. Or, when they’re vacant – such a cruel word, so suggestive that somebody else will be along in a minute to take their place – they’ve managed to somehow end it all afterwards. Reduced to something so primal and vague that they’re barely even quantifiable as human any more, let alone the men and women that they once were. And they end it, by either just giving up and stopping being any more; or, in worse cases, finding ways to put themselves out of what must be an indefinable misery.)
Today Vic has his back to Beth. She can see the line of his spine, the weight of his skin on it. How it looks almost curved where it follows the too thin mattress, the weak bed frame. His back has spots on it that it never used to have. They never get past red smears, but still. She knows that he’s not being bathed enough. The only times she’s complained they’ve told her to be here more, to do it herself. They are understaffed. They aren’t, they tell her, paid enough.
They say, Why don’t you move closer? They just say it to her, as if they’ve known her all her life, and who are they to pass judgement?
Because of my job, Beth replies, weakly. She doesn’t tell them that it’s shame-based: that she doesn’t want her colleagues’ pity. She tells everybody that Vic’s away at war, and she has a photo of him in her classroom. To her classes and workmates, Beth wants Vic to be a hero. Still away and fighting the good fight, even after all this time, even after any war he could be fighting has long ended.
He doesn’t stir as she approaches. She has to say his name four times before he even flinches, and then it’s not recognition. It’s awareness. When this happened they didn’t know why, any more than they had when Beth had rushed him to the hospital, telling them that something had gone terribly wrong, Vic’s body on the back seat in constant convulsion. He was one of the first to fall apart, because he’d been one of the first to start the treatments, and erase what needed to be erased. He was to be a test case, proudly paraded in front of crowds. But when they let her see him finally without any sedation he was a void. Nothing inside him.
They said, We don’t know why this has happened. This is an anomaly, it can’t be right. They apologized to her straight away, so she knew. You don’t apologize if you haven’t done anything wrong, and they said sorry so many times.
Vic? Beth says again. He moans: low and timorous, from somewhere other than his throat. From below. It’s me, she says.
She puts her hand onto his back and rubs it. Sometimes she’s done this and he’s reacted to her touch as if she was fire. Throwing her off, writhing around, lashing out with his arms and legs. Today he’s more placid. Her hand placed against his shoulder blades, she listens to and feels him breathe.
Some of the other users of the Machine, the doctors said to her when they delivered their final diagnosis, forget the basics, even. They forget the stuff that’s innately written into us, deep within us. Breathing, eating. They forget how their bodies work. They told this to Beth as if this should have made her feel better: your husband isn’t on a respirator, and we don’t have to tell his heart how to work for him. You don’t have to make that hardest of decisions yet. He’s still alive. And Beth, through her guilt, was even grateful.
Will he ever get better? she asked them. They didn’t know. What they did know was that he was ruined.
Sit up, she says to Vic. She moves around to his front, where she can see his face. It’s hardly changed over the past few years. He’s still handsome, she thinks. He’s still an army man, even where he’s lost the definition in his muscles. Jowls more than muscle, there, around his face. His hair has grown out, but she can still see the bruises, burned into his skin. They remind her of being a schoolgirl: of Ash Wednesday. All the children lining up to have a cross drawn on their foreheads, big fingers leaving smears that they were