James Halperin - The First Immortal

Webster tilted his head slightly. “If you had to do it over, would you have done it differently? The morphine, I mean.”

“Yeah,” Toby answered immediately. “I’d’ve made damn sure Harvey Bacon never saw that syringe.”

Webster laughed. This man seemed to be one of those rare clients he could have been friends with—if only they’d met under different circumstances.

The attorney had often considered himself fortunate to practice in a state where everything took so long, even those rare litigations where neither side employed delay tactics. And Webster had always been a master of delay. Like shooting fish in a barrel, he would find himself musing. But at least for this moment he wished there were some way to help Toby deal with the pressure. He felt nothing but admiration and gratitude toward him: admiration of Toby’s steadfast and rare loyalty to Ben Smith, and gratitude for the personal gain Toby’s loyalty had bestowed upon he himself.

Yep, he didn’t know what he’d do if Toby had had to pay him. But no sweat; the Trust could easily afford it.

Over the past eighteen months, his firm had billed the Smith Family Cryonic Trust $1,572,400, plus out-of-pocket expenses.

March 1, 1991

—Pentagon sources estimate the Iraqi death toll from the recently concluded Gulf War at up to 50,000, while just 79 Americans died in combat. Yet few Americans express sympathy for the enemy dead and their families, despite the powerlessness of Iraqi soldiers to resist the commands of their own country’s totalitarian regime.—General Motors Corporation engineers demonstrate a scale model of an automobile, less than 1/200th of an inch long, with doors that open and close, and a working motor.

Gary stood before the middle-aged woman who sat planted like a shrub at her cluttered desk. “Please don’t try to bullshit me, Ms. Forman. I’ve seen your second and third floors.” He tried smiling to temper harsh words with gentle charm, but facial muscles betrayed his emotion. A part of him could still see the neglected, blank shells, those pathetic remnants of human beings, strapped to wheelchairs and drays, some moaning, others with eyes darting about in random bewilderment, or staring for hours at fixed points on the walls or ceiling or empty air. Gary could still hear their voices. Last week, when he’d prowled the halls of the second floor, they’d cried out to him, never using his true name, mistaking him instead for their sons, grandsons, husbands, or friends they hadn’t seen in years, perhaps long dead; or merely hoping against reason that this man might be here to give them some attention, to distract them from their interminable boredom, relentless pain, and hopeless isolation.

Yet the third floor had been far worse. Its residents—inmates, he suddenly thought—had communicated at an even more primal level, often less cerebrally than infants, some wailing or whimpering, others vacant of any apparent soul. Surely this was what hell must be like, he’d decided as he walked those corridors just a few days ago. The fierceness of the thought surprised him; he’d even felt slightly ashamed.

The matron across the desk scowled, the expression transforming her already homely features into a marvel of extraordinary ugliness. She wore a blue and white badge that read: Doris Forman, Asst. Senior Administrator, Brookline Village Nursing Residence. Her face was serious, stern, and almost comically puffy, and her body more distended than obese.

Gary suddenly wondered if this woman, having chosen health care as her profession, had ever even tried to exercise or maintain a healthy diet. If he’d worked there, forced every day to see what aging could do to people, he knew damn well he’d fight against his own decay with his every fiber.

“When?” Forman asked sharply, yanking Gary back from his mental digression. The woman was obviously surprised that anyone could or would have gone upstairs without her knowledge.

“Last week. Thursday on the second floor, and Friday on the third. Told them I was visiting Ruth and Maurice Shapiro. Sorry about the white lie, but I had to see for myself, and not on one of your guided tours.”

She said nothing.

“Didn’t spot anyone living on the second floor who hadn’t had a major stroke, or worse. And the poor creatures who live on the third have no idea who they even are.”

She hesitated a moment, no doubt angered by such blatant disregard of the rules. But she regained her composure. Apparently the What else could I do? expression on Gary’s face had disarmed her. “Care on level two would be more appropriate for your grandmother,” she said. “More staff per patient, and she needs a lot of help these days. She can’t go to the bathroom by herself anymore; can’t even sit in a wheelchair.”

“You have to keep her on this floor! With her friends, whose minds are still reasonably sound.”

“I just can’t do that. It’s not my decision to make.”

“Look, I used to be a doctor myself. I hear your staff is excellent, and at least I didn’t see any signs of abuse; neglect maybe—”

She cut him off. “If you used to be a doctor, then you also know that some amount of neglect is impossible to avoid. You’re not going to find people willing to give constant care to patients like ours for the salaries we can afford to pay. It takes a lot of emotional strength just to look at people like that. You get hardened to their suffering after a while, or else you crack up.”

“I know that,” Gary said. “Look, I understand this is one of the best-run nursing homes around. And I know you’re better equipped to care for terminal patients on the second floor. But my grandmother is not typical. At the rate her strength’s declining, her heart won’t last the month. Yet mentally, she’s completely sound. It’s a mixed blessing, but still a blessing. I don’t want her spending her last weeks around those people. If she needs extra help, I’ll pay for it.”

“That would be expensive.”

“Expense isn’t an issue,” Gary said, forcing himself to smile, to look into her glossy gray and bloodshot-red eyes and to somehow connect with this woman. “Look, she’s my Grammy! She changed my diapers; taught me the alphabet. She took me to feed the ducks in the park every Saturday when I was five. She was there when I graduated from high school and college—and the day I got my medical degree, when my own father was too busy to come. Any cliché you want, I’ve got it for you. She’s always been there for me, and I want to be there for her. It would be one thing if she was like those people on the third floor, but she’ll know what’s happening to her. She’ll know.”

Forman just sat there, gazing back.

Something in the nether regions of Gary’s subconscious told him to grin. “Aw c’mon, Doris. I love her.”

For the first time, Doris Forman actually displayed a trace of a smile. “Like I said, it’s not my decision. But I can still pull a few strings. If I couldn’t, well, I’d have to leave this job, wouldn’t I?”

Gary reached out, took her hand, and brought it to his lips. The woman blushed. He looked at her face, winked, and limped from the office.

Gary set the video camera on the bureau table in Alice’s room and pushed the record button. “Grammy, do you know who I am?” he asked.

Alice lay on her side, knees perhaps six inches from her chin. She weighed less than seventy pounds and her breathing had become audibly labored. “Of course I do,” she said. “You’re my grandson. Gary. My only son Benjamin’s firstborn child.”

“And what day is today?”

“Friday. March first, 1991.”

“Who’s the President of the United States?”

“George Herbert Walker Bush. A pretty good man. But unfortunately, that lightweight, Dan Quayle, Howdy Doody in the flesh… is only a heartbeat away!”