D. Compton - The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe

‘I suppose I’m a very interesting case.’ She brushed toast crumbs off the sheet. ‘I suppose you’ll do a paper and you’re here to take notes.’

‘Not altogether.’ So he didn’t deny it. ‘I’m also here because I think I can help.’

‘You told me nothing would help.’

‘With the progress of the syndrome, no. With your attitude to its progress, yes.’

Her attitude was nobody’s business but her own. ‘My attitude at the moment is that I want to go home to my husband. Later I may look in on Computabook to tidy a few things up.’ She didn’t mention what she intended to do in between. ‘I’ve got a lot to get through before my three days of Private Grief run out.’

He was restless. She guessed he must have something difficult to say, for he distanced himself by wandering away to the nurses’ table and sitting down. ‘I… don’t want you to feel your condition is a trap, Katherine. And I must advise you against taking on any binding agreements concerning it.’ Did he suspect the left out, the most important item? ‘You see, no condition is a trap. There are always ways out and I wouldn’t be doing my duty if I didn’t tell you of them.’

‘Euthanasia?’

In the pause that followed he took his ball-point out of his pocket, pressed it against the table and slid his thumb and forefinger down it. Then he turned it the other way up and slid his thumb and forefinger down it again. It skidded unpleasantly on the table’s surface.

‘Never,’ he said, ‘under any circumstances whatsoever. I like my patients to be able to trust me. Completely.’ He looked up. ‘Besides, the conditions under which it was once arguable no longer arise.’

‘Cheerers, cheerers, and more cheerers,’ she said, not quite sure why the idea repelled her.

‘Don’t dismiss them too easily, Katherine. If there’s one thing a doctor learns it’s that there’s nothing inherently noble about suffering.’ He put his ball-point away. ‘I want you to get dressed now, Katherine, and come with me. Before you dismiss the euphoria-producing drugs I would like you to see them in action.’

She shied away, drawing the bedclothes up to her neck. ‘No.’

‘You must. Your decision will have no dignity if it’s based merely on ignorance and fear.’

She didn’t care a bugger whether her decision had dignity or not. Pompous word-making. Dignity was no more than a weapon in the armory of the will to power — when the time came she’d no doubt she would grovel with the rest… To be accused of ignorance and fear, however, was another matter.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘Just give me five minutes to put my face on.’

The hospital Katherine had been taken to had a large Retirement Wing. According to Dr Mason at any one time there would be over a thousand men and women in Retirement there. The euphemism, for so long an accepted part of her vocabulary, was suddenly menacing. She began to sweat. The first Residence she was taken to was for the Absent-minded. In one nice little room an old, old man was propped up in bed, staring at a jigsaw puzzle laid out on the table in front of him. While Katherine and the doctor were there a nurse came in and put two pieces into the corner of the jigsaw -blue sky and sea gulls. The old man smiled.

‘A simple narcosis,’ Dr Mason murmured. ‘He really believes he’s doing it himself.’

In another sun-filled room there was a double bed. Katherine wouldn’t have been surprised if the wrinkled couple lying in it had both been men, or both been women, but it turned out that they were a married couple now on their eighth renewal. ‘They’re lucky,’ Dr Mason said, ‘to have become Absent-minded more or less together.’

Occasionally the bed gave a little electric jiggle, and the couple squeaked faintly, possibly with pleasure. ‘Of course, they sleep a lot as well,’ said Dr Mason.

Farther down the corridor they came to a room with several beds in it, and a continuous high twittering of wordless speech. ‘For some people,’ Dr Mason said, ‘communication is the important thing.’

Katherine closed the door and leaned on it. ‘Is all this supposed to encourage me not to feel trapped?’ she said.

Dr Mason shook his head. ‘You’ll never be like these. Absentmindedness only comes with extreme old age. Perhaps we should have started with cases that were more applicable.’ He walked away and, afraid to be left, she followed him. ‘All the same, your reaction interests me. Every one of these patients is happy, busy, and — as far as their concentration permits — interested. Would you rather we left them to empty vegetation?’

Yes. Yes, she would rather they had left the patients to empty vegetation. But she couldn’t say so. She couldn’t justify. She could only feel. They went up in the elevator to the third floor, to cases that were more applicable.

People up here were mobile, and alert. They knew Dr Mason and greeted him cheerfully, then turned back to their bridge or chess or newspapers or knitting parties or coffee with their friends. If their legs no longer worked they had trollies, if their arms were withered they had prostheses, if their digestions had fallen to pieces they were fed by alternative means. If one of them fell down, or wet the floor, nobody except the nurses seemed to notice. They were all, as far as Katherine could tell, happy. It was a Happy Place.

By way of demonstration Dr Mason spoke to a dwindled old man with paralyzed hips. ‘You there, Charlie, come and tell the lady what the hell you’ve got to be so cheerful about.’

Charlie roared with laughter. ‘Never had it so good, Doc.’

‘That’s nonsense. Your legs don’t work, your heart’s bad, and you might pop off at any minute. Your family doesn’t come to see you, and you’re trapped in here for the rest of your days.’

‘He’s trying to put me off.’ Charlie maneuvered his trolly till he could nudge Katherine. ‘The way I look at it, dearie, is like this. It’s a good life, all right but nothing goes on forever. This here’s a sort of halfway place, where we can make up for things. The one place where it’s all love.’

He spoke neither mawkishly, nor with embarrassment. ‘If it’s took pills,’ he said, ‘to show me life ain’t all rotten, then give me pills every time.’

Dr Mason spun his trolly around to face him. ‘Doesn’t that make pills an awfully easy way out?’ he said harshly.

‘Not an easy way out, Doc. An easy way in. It’s how you look at it. Anyway, what’s so wrong with things being easy?’

‘Some people might say the easy things weren’t worth having.’

‘Like sunsets, I reckon. Or a good sexy song.’ Charlie laughed again, and turned back to Katherine. ‘Them religions had to prop up the old ways. Life was hard, life was brutal. Don’t you believe a word of it.’

Dr Mason thanked him, and led Katherine away, out into the corridor, down in the elevator. ‘You see, they’re not in the least sedated,’ he said. ‘Not in the old sense. Mood control has come a long way since the old bromide.’

Katherine stared at him, angrier than she even understood. ‘Like a seal with its trainer,’ she said. ‘Clap, clap, bounce the ball… And you still think showing me all this will make me want to come here?’

‘You had to know exactly what it was you were rejecting. And why you were rejecting it.’

The elevator arrived at the ground floor. She stumbled out needing to escape, then turned. She wasn’t quite finished with him. He had no right. Most of all, he had no right to demand reasons. ‘I honestly think I’d rather join a row of dribbling idiots than the chemical camaraderie of that lot up there.’

‘I can find you some dribblers, if that’s what you want.’