Tuesday, May 30, 2028 – Ottawa
HE WAS AWARE OF the low thunder of the falls, the cool spray misting his bifocals, the slatted bench on which he sat. But, as so often happened these days, the texture of the moment seemed frayed, his place in it somehow obscure. He’d been coming to this spot at different times for most of his seventy-eight years. What seemed uncertain now was exactly which time this was.
But the day was fine, the spring air balmy, and when he felt this way—no aches or pains, vital inside his skin, almost euphoric—the specter of encroaching Alzheimer’s disease seemed much less fearsome than it did when he was rooted in the here and now. Here and now offered only the vagaries of aging: restless sleep interrupted by a grumbling prostate; the unyielding ache of arthritic joints; the subtle restrictions of life in the Eastern Ontario Center for Geriatric Care; and, in spite of the thousands of other fossils housed along with him on the thirty-acre site, a grim and abiding loneliness. Added to this was the growing certainty that in spite of a long and rich professional life, he’d missed the point. Missed it by a mile.
He shifted on the bench now, the hard slats putting his backside to sleep. When he was comfortable again, he noticed his hands. They were old man’s hands, liver-spotted and tremulous, and the sight of them startled him. When these disorienting episodes of dementia came, he was seldom an old man. Many times he was little more than a boy.
Maybe it was this place. Hog’s Back Falls, where the placid waters of the Rideau River slid under a low bridge to cascade into a rocky gorge. From the time he’d been old enough to make the trip on his own, the falls had been the place he’d come to contemplate life.
He smiled now, remembering other times that had little to do with reflection. Necking in the moonlight. Oh, yeah. His girl saying, “Benjamin Hunter, what is that in your pocket?” Playful. Or standing on the spur of rock overlooking the deepest part of the gorge, trying to summon the courage to leap through twenty feet of thin air into the churn of mist and whitewater at the base of the falls. The kids called it The Funnel, a reputedly bottomless chasm with downward-spiraling currents you had to swim like hell against if you wanted to live to tell about it. He never had found the guts.
Slipping deeper into his disease, Ben recalled another trip to the falls, this one decades ago with his pal Ed Quinn—but had it really been all those years ago? Or was it happening now, in this oddly skewed moment? Because he could smell the Brylcreem on Quinn now, gobs of it plastering the guy’s ginger locks to his skull…gangly, awkward Quinn, with his Coke-bottle glasses, teenage wisp of moustache, and that perpetual glint of mischief in his eyes. They’d biked here from Hillcrest High on their lunch break, thinking they might ditch the rest of the day. History and phys-ed this afternoon, sheer torture, and it was such a beautiful day, spring coming early this year.
Leave it to Quinn to screw things up.
Now Ben heard himself say, “Quinn, you mental case,” and he turned away, in the hope that ignoring the wildman would make him stop. He’d only taken his eyes off the guy for a second, and now Quinn was hanging out there on the wrong side of the fence bordering the gorge, gloved fingers clutching the chain-link, feet dangling over The Funnel, the water beneath him freezing on this sunny May afternoon. Christ, there were chunks of ice the size of suitcases tumbling past down there.
Ben said, “C’mon, man, let’s head back,” and turned to see the fingers of Quinn’s fleece-lined gloves still gripping the chain-link—only Quinn was no longer in them. Quinn was nowhere in sight.
“Oh, shit.”
Ben sprinted to the end of the fence, pivoted out onto the crumbly ledge and saw his friend down there, clutching the slippery rock-face, the current dragging him under—
“Doctor Hunter, there you are.”
Squinting against the sun, Ben looked up into a tiny woman’s face. A familiar face, smiling down at him the way a teacher might smile at an errant grade-schooler. Somehow, he knew Quinn was going to make it—but still, he had to get to him. He said, “Sister Mary Grace, call an ambulance,” and watched the woman’s expression turn to one of patient understanding.
“Daydreaming again, Ben?”
He shifted his gaze to the fence. No gloves in the chain-link. Different fence. A cluster of high-rise condos where the Shell station used to be. He’d called the ambulance from there himself…
Ben closed his eyes, past and present swapping places in his mind, the sensation akin to being trapped inside a revolving door for a few brisk rotations before stumbling out on the other side.
Looking again at the woman’s face, Ben said, “Yeah, Sister, I guess I was.” He smiled, trying to mask his bewilderment. “What can I do for you?”
The nun tapped her wristwatch. “Your speech, Ben. Your speech. It’s in ten minutes. I’ve been all over the grounds looking for you. And you with no coat. You’re going to catch your death out here.”
“Right, my speech.” As one of the Geriatric Center’s founding fathers, now a resident, he’d been asked to say a few words at today’s twenty-fifth anniversary celebration.
“Come on,” the nun said, reaching for his hand. “I’ll help you up.”
Ben Hunter got to his feet, letting the nun help him, his knees popping in protest.
How long had he been sitting out here?
Christ, the speech. He hadn’t even prepared one. That explained the suit he was wearing, at least.
He glanced over the edge into the roiling falls, flashing again on Quinn, The Funnel swallowing him whole. The son of a bitch had made it out on his own, in spite of Ben’s reckless attempts to save him, bobbing up a half-mile downstream with ice in his hair and downy moustache, clinging to a sapling on the flooded bank. Three busted ribs, his glasses, shoes, socks, jean jacket, watch and wallet all gone. Crazy bastard. A couple of guys from a road crew had hauled him up the embankment with a rope.
That had been sixty years ago.
Yet the smell of Brylcreem still lingered in his nostrils.
God help me.
Ben shivered, out of his sheltered niche now, the wind cutting through him in spite of the end-of-May sunshine. That, at least, felt real.
“Come on,” the sister said. “If we hustle we can just make it.”
* * *
By the time they reached the gated entrance to the Geriatric Center, a hike of about a hundred yards across manicured grounds, Ben had begun to feel more limber, and he shrugged off the nun’s supporting grip on his arm.
No matter how many times he viewed the Center from this vantage, he always felt a sense of pride: the lavish admin building in the foreground, with its pillared portico and reflective glass façade; the adjoining twin high-rise condos, reserved for clients capable of independent living; the acute- and chronic-care hospitals, just visible through a stand of budding maples; and beyond that, the Euthanasia Foundation. In his younger days as medical director of the original site—the gloomy husk of the old St. Joseph’s Hospital in the city’s south end—he’d lobbied hard for the gorgeous tract of riverside land upon which the Center now stood. It had been a heated battle, one he’d come within an ace of losing to a billionaire developer planning to bulldoze it flat and turn it into a shopping mall. He’d called in a ton of favors to help make this place a reality. And whatever regrets he might be harboring now about the way he’d spent his adult life, his role in the creation of the Eastern Ontario Center for Geriatric Care was not among them.
Sister Mary Grace took his arm again. “Come on, Ben,” she said. “You’re on in two minutes.”
* * *
Clifford Hicks, CEO of the Center, was just finishing up, mouthing platitudes to the attending heavyweights, cordoned off from the rest in a corral of red-velvet rope at the front of the auditorium: the Prime Minister and his entourage; the mayor and her gang; the big-money sponsors, lounging up there with support staff hovering, topping up their refreshments; the press in a cluster outside the rope.
In a changing world, Ben thought, feeling lucid now and more than a little irritated, some things never change.
Sister Mary Grace tugged him along the left-hand aisle, past curving rows of plush burgundy seats, occupied now by residents able to attend. No support staff here, save a few near the back, assisting those confined to wheelchairs. No refreshments, either.
Hicks, CEO for the past fourteen years and a man Ben quietly despised, glanced his way as he climbed onstage and took a seat next to a fellow speaker. The men had locked horns from the outset: Ben, in his role as Medical Director, feeling Hicks was wrong for the job, more interested in politics than sound patient care; and Hicks, a gifted manipulator, hamstringing Ben’s every innovation with cries of cost, cost, cost. The lobby alone, uncountable thousands’ worth of brass, marble, and stainless steel, could have financed Ben’s most extravagant treatment notions a dozen times over. He could still hear the man’s stock justification for streaming funds away from medical development: “When families bring their loved ones here, Doctor Hunter, they need to see this kind of opulence, this kind of confidence.”
Ben said, “My ass,” and the woman seated next to him bugged her eyes, saying, “Pardon me?”
Ben tried to shape a reply, but for once Hicks saved him, looking his way now with that shit-eating grin on his face, saying his name into the microphone.
“—introduce Doctor Benjamin Hunter, former Medical Director, now a proud resident of the grand facility he helped pioneer. I asked Ben to say a few words today because I could think of no one better qualified to add such a sweeping perspective to our ongoing efforts here at the Center, both from a historic point of view and, more recently, as an actual client.” Hicks extended an open hand. “Doctor Hunter?”
With a quick prayer for steadiness, Ben took the podium. Applause chattered through the large gathering, one white head popping up and shouting, “Ben-ji.”
Ben chuckled, saying, “Sit down, Quinn, you old jackass. I was just thinking about you.”
As he waited for the audience to settle, he noticed the big anniversary banner at the back of the auditorium: 2003-2028. TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF CARING FOR OUR ELDERLY.
“God save us,” Ben said into a silence that might have lasted longer than he realized. “A quarter century already.” He glanced at the crowd, as if seeing it for the first time. “But my, what a quarter century it’s been.
“Two-thousand-three. Year of the gene. The entire human genome mapped and sequenced. The lid on a huge can of worms. Human cloning. Genetically engineered embryos—designer babies. Sex reduced to the status of recreation.”
“What’s wrong with that?” some old guy hollered, getting a few laughs.
“I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with it,” Ben said. “Look at the array of drugs we have now to keep the lead in our pencils.” Behind him, the CEO cleared his throat, a sharp, intrusive sound. “And if the drugs don’t cut it, look at the work the Japanese are doing with tissue preparations. Ten years from now, we’ll all be able to grow a new one, like a salamander’s tail. And chances are, most of us’ll still be around to see that day. Have a look at our life expectancies: forty-seven in the year nineteen-hundred; seventy-six at the turn of the century; now, it’s nothing to be spooning up Pablum at age one hundred.”
“Don’t get me started on the menu around here,” someone shouted—sounded like Quinn again—and a few more laughs tinkled through the big room.
Ben said, “I remember reading an article back in the nineties that predicted the doubling of the elderly population by the year twenty-twenty-five. That informed forecast fell shy by twenty-three percent. We baby boomers turned out to be a tenacious lot. The article also predicted that in the same time period, the number of people suffering from dementia would rise from four million to eight million in the U.S. alone. Enter broad-spectrum anti-aggregates in twenty-seventeen—Alzheimer’s all but vanquished in a single stroke, a half-dozen variants of the disease thrown in for good measure.”
Quinn again: “And we’ve got you to thank for that, Doc.”
“Well, that’s not entirely true now is it, Ed,” Ben said. “I was only one member of a very large team.” The irony was, he couldn’t take the drug himself. He was deadly allergic.
A few photographers swept into the orchestra pit now, flash-glares blinding Ben for a moment. When his vision cleared, he said, “And what about cancer? The great and fearsome slayer of the twentieth century, on the ropes in the twenty-first. Matrix metaloproteinase inhibitors, anti-cancer vaccines, anti-angiogenic factors, the p53 gene. All gifts of the past decade.
“And the new stuff coming down the pike every month? Pure science fiction twenty-five years ago. Nanotechnology, neural stem cells, brain transplants less than a decade away—though I prefer to think of that particular notion as a body transplant.
“But here’s the rub, folks. We are deep in the maze of technology now, a maze from which there is no longer any escape. We passed that point five years ago with the extinction of the manta ray and the decimation of the Great Barrier Reef. Egress blocked by progress. Fortunately for us ‘clients’”—he glanced at the CEO, tipping him a wry wink—“most of the benefits fall to us, the residents of this fine institution. Here we live in a modern, self-sustaining community. We want for nothing—apart, perhaps, from any sense of individuality or personal freedom. We have the drugs—” He heard his friend Vince Wilder out there, saying, “Right on, Doc,” but chose to ignore him. Hicks was on his feet now, approaching the podium. “We have the malls and the restaurants, the physiotherapy clinics and the bike paths, the rec center and the greenhouses, and a couple of modern hospitals should we fall ill. And when it all becomes too much for us, as it sometimes will, we have the Euthanasia Foundation, something I helped realize and design. My baby, if you will. As a physician, I saw it as an answer to the kind of suffering that has no other answer, save the whims of the gods. Today, as a member of this great community of the aged, I see it in much the same light.” He glanced at Hicks, crowding the podium now, and said, “It’s the administration of the thing I—”
Hicks made a slicing gesture and the mic went dead, the rest of Ben’s sentence “—take issue with,” reaching only Hicks’s ears. Nudging Ben aside, the CEO bent to the mic and said, “I hate to interrupt,” into a live feed. “But we really must press on. Thank you, Doctor Hunter, for that insightful overview.”
Now Ben was being led offstage, shielded from the press by silent men clad in black, ushered into a back hall, the door slammed shut behind him.
To hell with it anyway, he thought, tugging on the handle of the metal door, locked now from the opposite side. If he had a point, he’d forgotten what it was. He was hungry now, and it was a long walk to the buffet from back here.
* * *
She approached him in the lobby, a slender girl of no more than eighteen, her support-staff uniform a half-size too big for her. She wore her sandy hair long, a stylish frame for an oval face that transformed when their eyes met, a smile of such unreserved brightness blooming on it Ben felt his heart stumble in his chest.
“Doctor Hunter?” the girl said, sinking to one knee next to the wingchair he was seated in. She was long-limbed and olive-skinned, green eyes flecked with gold, teeth a startling white against the pink of her gums. She exuded cleanliness and youthful vitality and Ben felt shaken by her attention.
He said, “Yes, I’m Ben Hunter. Pardon me for staring, but you reminded me of someone just now.”
“Really?” the girl said. “Who?”
Ben was intensely uncomfortable now, long-repressed memories coming in a deluge, muddied by time and regret and the distortions of dementia. “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “It was a long time ago.” It was hard to look into those shining eyes. Hard to stay grounded. “Is there something I can do for you?”
The girl’s expression darkened, a worry line creasing her brow. She said, “I heard your speech in there, and I was hoping we could talk.”
Ben chuckled, regaining a measure of composure. “Not much of a speech, I’m afraid. More of a rant, really.” He indicated the chair next to his. “Why don’t you join me? I’d love the company.”
Moving with quiet grace, the girl sat primly with her legs crossed and her hands folded in her lap. She said, “I’m Roxanne Austen,” and that smile blossomed again. “Call me anything but Roxie.”
“Hi, Roxanne, I’m Ben. Call me anything but Doctor.”
That got a giggle out of her.
He said, “So what is it you’d like to discuss?”
She hesitated now, glancing at the exit, and Ben got to his feet, instinct telling him privacy was in order. The lobby was noisy and congested, the amplified voice of whoever was speaking in the auditorium adding an echoey backbeat to the confusion.
He said, “Feel like some fresh air?”
Roxanne stood, saying, “You read my mind. It’s a bit chilly out, though. Should you grab a jacket?”
“No need. We’ll wander down to the solar array. Nice and cozy down there.” He offered his arm and Roxanne took it.
And as they made their way out into spring sunshine, Ben felt an almost forgotten excitement, one he hadn’t experienced in a very long time.
* * *
They followed the footpath along the Rideau River in sun-dappled shadow, a double row of scotch pines screening them from the worst of the wind. Past the sewage treatment dome, a hi-tech marsh where specialized plants and microbes purified the waste-water, channeling it into a reservoir for eventual reuse. Past the open agricultural plots, already tilled, rich black soil ready for the spring planting, only days away now. To the solar field, a two-acre grid of copper-colored panels embedded in concrete, silently tracking the sun. The warmth down here could be felt from fifty yards away.
They chatted comfortably as they walked, Ben telling her he’d retired from full-time practice at the age of sixty-eight, then moved in here, a ninth-floor apartment with a view of the falls. Roxanne said she’d finished high school the previous spring, then taken a year off to work at the Center and bank some tuition money. She said she’d been accepted into the environmental studies program at Dalhousie University, and would be starting classes in the fall.
Ben said, “Halifax, huh? Why so far away?”
“They’ve got the best program in the country.”
“Make’s sense. Ever been there?”
“Not yet. But I hear it’s beautiful.”
“It certainly is. I did some subspecialty training there in the eighties. Loved the place.”
They came to a shaded bench and Roxanne sat down, that worry line etched in her brow again. Ben sat next to her, thinking this was as good a place as any.
She was clutching the armrest now, bracing herself for what she had to say. Ben had an idea what was coming, but when she looked at him, the sun minting gold in her eyes, he experienced another of those vexing dislocations, the river flowing deep and steely in the near distance, the sun warm on his face, no sense of his aged self, and this lovely young woman holding his gaze with such openness and trust…
“It’s about my grandfather,” she said, the words barely out before her eyes filled with tears and she hid her face in her hair.
Ben said, “Aw, sweetie, come here,” and held his arms out to her.
Roxanne leaned into his embrace, saying, “I’m sorry,” and Ben patted her on the back, hushing her, telling her it was okay.
She let it come then, the force of her upset rooting Ben firmly in the here and now, his back beginning to ache from the weight of her against him, a headache creeping up the back of his neck to clutch his skull.
She collected herself slowly, apologizing again as she pulled away. Sniffling, she dug a wad of tissue out of her uniform pocket and used it to dry her eyes.
Ben was in no hurry, feeling a welcome contentment in spite of the girl’s upset. All his adult life he’d felt pulled by outside forces, so unable to just be that he’d eventually stopped noticing, coming to think of that driven feeling as normal. But now, as at certain times in the distant past, nothing tugged at him. Here he was, and here he was glad to be.
There was something so familiar about this girl…
She said, “I should start by telling you I was raised by my grandparents. My parents separated before I was born, and my mother died when I was two.” She gave a blubbery little laugh. “Sounds like the plot of a really bad soap opera.” Ben said it sounded like a bum deal. Nodding, Roxanne said, “I’ve never met my father, and I have no clear memory of my mother, so I’ve always thought of my grandparents as my mom and dad.
“Gramps had a stroke about a year ago. A massive one. Gram cared for him at home for a while, but it was too much.” She regarded him with the wounded eyes of a child. “He was so full of fun, and active. Nobody believed he was almost eighty. We used to take long walks together, and he’d tell me about all kinds of things. It was so hard to see his mind just…shut down like that, as if someone had pulled the plug.”
Ben knew exactly what she was talking about, had seen it hundreds of times in his geriatric practice. But she needed an ear right now, not an old physician’s platitudes.
She said, “It’s hopeless now. He just lies there. Fading. Losing weight. He barely even looks like himself anymore. They sponge bathe him and feed him through that tube in his belly. But he’s not there. My grandmother’s at the end of her rope.”
Roxanne brushed away a final tear, and Ben could see her tapping into a vein of steel in her character, a sudden set in her jaw that was again eerily familiar.
“She wants it to end,” Roxanne said. “But it won’t. So she wants to end it.”
“But she wants your consent.”
“Yes. She wants my consent.”
This was no child’s gaze Ben felt on him now. This was the probing scrutiny of a young adult faced with the toughest decision of her life, and it galvanized him, appealing for his most considered judgment before the plea was even shaped into words.
She said, “In your speech you said you saw euthanasia as an answer to the kind of suffering that has no other answer. And even though I have no idea why, I got the feeling you could help me make the right decision.”
Ben looked away from her now, feeling his age like never before. He already knew what he was going to say. He merely wanted a moment to assure himself the situation was real and he was fully engaged in it.
Then he said, “Please don’t think I’m being glib when I say this, Roxanne, but in my experience, here’s what it always boils down to: What would your grandfather want? You described him as an active, loving, intelligent man. If he could see himself now, even for an instant, and could then convey his wishes to you, what do you think he would say?”
And even as he said it, Ben could see the decision framing itself behind the girl’s eyes. There was no science to a situation like this. No prevailing medical stance. Life was a finite thing. It had a beginning and it had an end, both of which were most fittingly determined by Nature. It was only now, in this age of power of attorney and informed consent, that such a burden of decision could be placed so squarely on the shoulders of someone so young.
In the woeful silence that now spun out, it was all Ben could do to hold his tongue, the temptation to make the decision for her almost overpowering. A part of him felt he was cheating her by not having a better answer—for, in fact, answering her question with another question. But he’d been in this position many times in his professional life, and knew the final word had to come from family. All he could do was set the stage, and he’d already done that here.
So he waited.
A gray squirrel darted across the grounds in front of them and Roxanne raised her eyes to watch it go. It stopped at the edge of the footpath twenty yards away and rose up on its haunches, bushy tail twitching. Roxanne said, “My grandfather says they do that when they’re alarmed,” and a guy decked out like a Tour de France competitor whizzed past on a racing bike, sending the squirrel scampering back the way it had come.
Roxanne watched the rodent leap onto the trunk of a sprawling oak and clamber out of sight. Then she stood, putting her hand out to help Ben to his feet. “I should be heading back now,” she said, maintaining her grip on Ben’s hand when propriety and mild embarrassment bade him let go. They returned to the Center that way, hands linked in comfortable silence.
* * *
By the time they got back, the morning’s festivities had come to an end, the press vans and limos already gone. Only the cleaning staff remained, picking up after the revelers.
In the lobby, Roxanne hugged Ben and thanked him for his help. She said her grandmother had an appointment with a counselor in the morning, and told him she planned to attend.
As she turned to leave, Ben said if she wanted to discuss it more before the meeting to give him a call…but he could see she’d already made up her mind. She nodded, thanked him again, and left.
Watching her go, Ben felt suddenly drained. It was as if a fresh, sunny day had been eclipsed by despair, and he only stood there, no idea what he should do next. Being in the girl’s presence had awakened a long-forgotten sense of purpose, and an even longer-lost feeling of connection, sensations he became aware of only in her absence. And in this moment, with all of that obliterated, a dark part of him felt this might be as good a time as any to curl up and die.
But in spite of having made a career out of death and dying, Ben was terrified of facing his own certain end. Since the Alzheimer’s diagnosis eight months ago, he’d been hosting an almost nonstop dialogue in his head, an obsessive turning-over of what he saw as his only options: euthanasia, or the inexpressible horror of dementia. The object of this debate was always the same: Which of these options frightened him most? It was a close race.
Pride—the first deadly sin—had him leaning toward euthanasia. He’d seen enough vibrant, fiercely-intelligent human beings take that slow slide into oblivion to last a lifetime. And the prospect of being randomly disassembled like that, neuron by neuron until there was nothing left but a shitting, gawking, drooling husk resembling a man—that was the stuff of nightmares. Viewed in this light, euthanasia seemed the best solution.
But that meant lying on a padded table in one of the euthanasia suites and baring his arm to an expressionless technician, feeling that bright stab of pain as the needle pierced the plump vein at his elbow.
That meant Death by clear-headed decision.
There was a third option, and he was prepared for it. In case the disease claimed him before he made up his mind, he’d given Power of Attorney to a trusted colleague, along with a detailed living will. He would’ve preferred a family member, but his childless brother had died of a heart attack in his forties, and Ben had never married. Either way, the upshot was the same: if the disease got the better of him before he decided, the plan was immediate euthanasia.
Sometimes this third option seemed the most feasible. Once the true decline began, he could hope for a rapid course into insensibility, followed by a painless death by injection.
But he’d seen many Alzheimer’s victims regress at the end into a twisted version of childhood, heard them weeping in the night and calling for their mommies.
What if that withered child was somehow aware? Unable to express itself, yet subject to the same paralyzing breed of terror only a child can experience?
What if he became that child and they put him on the table and he was aware but unable to let them know?
And round and round…
Ben thought, Jesus.
Snapping him out of this dark reverie, his pal Vince Wilder strode up to him now, his expression, as always, full of mischief and cunning.
“Hey, Doc,” the old hippie said. “Why so glum?”
“Hey, Wilder. Just tired.”
“Tired, huh?” He took Ben’s arm and hustled him back outside. “I’ve got just the thing.”
At the end of the walkway Wilder turned right, heading for the greenhouses. Too worn out to object, Ben followed.
* * *
During his teens and early twenties, Ben Hunter had been part of a tight circle of friends that included Ed Quinn, Ray Gale, and Vince Wilder. A few other guys had drifted in and out at different times, but had never fit as comfortably as the original four.
In those days, Quinn had been a reckless dirt bike jockey and perpetual class clown, always in trouble of one kind or another and always keen to take on a dare. It got so the others had to be careful what they said around the guy, because there were many times some casual comment led to situations in which Quinn risked incarceration, serious injury or worse just to impress his buddies. Sweet guy, Quinn, but more than a little crazy. In his mid-twenties, he’d moved north to Moose Factory, where he’d eventually married, fathered three strong boys and become mayor of the town. He’d been a resident at the Center for the past five years, since his wife’s protracted death from ovarian cancer.
Ray Gale had been Ben’s best friend since the third grade, and was the only member of the gang who hadn’t yet become a resident of the Center. As sometimes happened with old friends, time, distance, and the demands of daily living had eroded their connection, and, regrettably, Ben had lost touch with Ray more than a decade ago. The last time they’d spoken, Ray had said his forty-year marriage had ended, and had hinted that his thoughts had turned to suicide. At the time, Ben had been laboring under monumental pressures of his own, and when he thought about it now, he wondered if he’d simply been unwilling to get involved in his friend’s dilemma. Like so many other things of late, though, the details of those days had grown fuzzy. He kept thinking he should give the man a call, see if he could put things right. Maybe it was a guilty conscience that prevented him from reaching out.
Vince Wilder, the final member of the merry quartet, was an imp of a man who’d lived a nomadic life as a hard-rock miner. Vince’s capacity for substance abuse was legendary, but as far as anyone could tell, its long-term effects on him were negligible. At seventy-seven, the man still looked as trim and as hale as he had as a teenager. Just a bit of snow on the roof now, dusting those popcorn curls. His ready smile had separated many a woman from her panties, and his love of mischief hadn’t diminished an ounce in all the years Ben had known him. Which was why he was more than a little apprehensive about what Wilder had in store for him today.
Now, hustling along the same footpath he’d shared with Roxanne, Ben said, “Slow down, you spry old bastard,” and Wilder paused to let him catch up, matching his stride as they resumed their approach to the greenhouses. There were twenty of them in the near distance, ranked like battlefield coffins beyond the solar array, each a hundred feet long and constructed of glass. Using his abundant charm, Wilder had talked his way into the paid position of Greenhouse Supervisor, and only a select few—Ben among them—knew the real reason why. It was all about access.
Ben was just about to ask Wilder what he had in mind when Ed Quinn plodded up behind them, chuffing like a steam engine. Frantically gesturing, he spent the next several seconds trying to suck enough air into his lungs to speak. Then he said, “I’ve been all over hell’s half acre looking for you two.” Stung and annoyed, scrambling to keep up as the men started walking again. “All these years we’ve been friends, you sons of bitches just sneak off on me like that? You both saw me in the auditorium—Hunter, who was that little cutie you were chatting with in the lobby? Kinda put me in mind of Melanie Anderson, remember her?—why wouldn’t you dipshits let me know where you were going?”
Stopping in his tracks, Ben thought, Melanie, of course, the familiarity he’d felt in Roxanne’s presence clicking in his mind with an almost palpable force. It was so clear now, it amazed him he hadn’t made the connection right away.
Something in those shining eyes…
He could still hear Quinn bitching, could see the men advancing along the path…but the scene appeared gauzy now, almost transparent, more dreamlike than real.
What seemed real now was the teenage girl opening her locker in the hallway in front of him, autumn sunshine from the tall windows at Hillcrest High smoldering in her straight blond hair, and it took his breath away, as it had all those years ago, this girl appearing out of nowhere, the most beautiful creature he’d ever seen in her flower-print dress and sensible shoes, stooping in front of her locker to retrieve her knitted bag.
He’d stopped dead in his tracks that day too, the end-of-class rush parting around him like a tide around a pylon. As if sensing his attention, the girl had risen to her full height and glanced his way. And when their eyes met, she’d smiled as warmly and as unabashedly as if they’d known each other forever. Ben had no idea what he had done, other than stand there with his mouth hanging open, whatever urgent after-school plans he’d had forgotten in the face of whatever this was. Instead of looking away, the girl had held his gaze and he wanted to say something. But the power of speech had abandoned him, and he only stood there, unblinking.
Now she closed her locker and the moment was gone, the girl striding away with quiet grace, her compact bottom shifting wondrously beneath her thin cotton dress. There was another moment as she passed one of those tall windows, a sunbeam transilluminating her dress, and he could see her legs silhouetted through the wash-faded fabric. Then she was gone, engulfed by the scurrying crowd—
Something…
Ben said, “What?” an animated shape coming into focus in front of him.
“I said snap out of it, you dozy mutt.” It was Quinn, pointing down the footpath at Wilder, the man unlocking a greenhouse fifty yards away. Quinn saying, “You look like you saw a ghost,” pulling on his arm now, leading him away from the blissful place he’d just been.
In Quinn’s bony grasp, Ben remembered lingering by the girl’s locker until the hallway cleared, dazzled by her beauty and the smile that had so thoroughly undone him. He’d made regular trips past her locker after that, hoping to repeat the experience, but his timing was always off. He’d drifted by her in the stairwells a few times, but the opportunity to speak to her never presented itself—and even if it had, he wasn’t sure he could’ve framed a sentence. It was Melanie who finally broke the ice, asking him to the Sadie Hawkins dance that November, sparking a love affair that would wax and wane for the next six years.
Feeling that emptiness again, the withering sense that he’d missed the point, Ben followed Quinn to the greenhouse, the man still bitching about his ‘friends’ leaving him behind.
* * *
The atmosphere in here was thick and humid, and Ben felt his airways tighten with his first breath. He’d been asthmatic as a child, and just lately it seemed that long-absent affliction was trying to gain a fresh foothold. He’d have to bring it up the next time he saw his family doctor, see about getting an inhaler. If he remembered.
Wilder was nowhere in sight, lost in the tidy rows of aeroponic pillars, all manner of fruits, vegetables, and herbs sprouting in lush profusion from the numerous pockets on each eight-foot tower. The system worked without soil, the exposed roots bathed in nutrients stored in a reservoir at the base of each pillar. And the harvest, staggered across twenty greenhouses, was virtually uninterrupted, the yield sizeable enough to provide year-round produce for the Center.
They found Wilder partway up a stepladder at the far end of the structure, pruning buds off a ten-foot marijuana plant, one of about a dozen growing bold as you please in an earthen bed, a prominent label in Wilder’s blocky script identifying the plants as Acapulco Tea. Ben knew about the man’s clandestine horticultural activities, but clearly Quinn did not.
Leaning in to sniff one of the distinctive leaf clusters, Quinn said, “Is this what I think it is?”
Grinning down from his perch, Wilder said, “Indeed it is. And if you say word-one to anybody about this, Quinn, I will beat you to within an inch of your life.” Quinn snorted laughter and Wilder said, “You think I’m playing?” the grin vanishing.
Quinn shook his head, knowing full well the man was not only capable of carrying out the threat, but had just enough of a mean streak to go through with it. He said, “No worries, man. I’m just surprised. I always assumed you were buying it somewhere.” He made a ‘my lips are sealed’ gesture and Wilder’s grin returned, lighting up those dark eyes.
“Cannabis sativa, my fossilized friends,” Wilder said. “The finest daytime high on the planet. Uplifting, energizing,”—looking at Ben as he said it—“spacey as hell.” And to Quinn: “A sissy like you might even hallucinate on this particular herb.” He pointed at an adjacent greenhouse. “In number three over there we’ve got sativa’s kissing cousin, indica, your basic nighttime high. Soothing body buzz. Sleep like the dead on that bad boy. I make tea for the nuns out of the sativa, gets ’em giggling and hiking up their skirts.”
Quinn said, “That’s a bad habit to get into,” and laughed all by himself.
Coming down the ladder now, Wilder said, “The indica mellows out the Parkinsonians. They pay damn good money for it, too.”
“Great,” Ben said, “I’m hanging out with a drug pusher now.”
“The shit’s been legal for a decade,” Wilder said, holding one of the conical buds under his nose, eyelids drooping as he inhaled the exotic aroma. Then, with that evil grin: “And every now and again, I get paid with something far more interesting than money.”
Quinn said, “Let me guess. Blue-rinser hippie chicks with Parkinson’s and no teeth.”
Wilder laughed. “It’s a winning combination.”
Ben said, “I’ve got to get out of this humidity,” and the men left the greenhouse, Wilder locking the door behind them.
* * *
They found a bench in the shade of a basswood and Wilder rolled a joint, saying, “It’s a little damp, but it’ll get the job done.” He lit up with a lime-green Bic, the glowing ember sparking as he inhaled a double lungful and closed his eyes, stifling a cough to keep the smoke in for as long as he could. As he passed the joint to Quinn, the Olympian toke jetted from his nostrils and Wilder laughed his hippie laugh, regarding them with merry eyes shot red from the assault on his lungs. Now Quinn took a hit, losing it quickly in a barking cough and earning a chastising string of profanities from Wilder.
Eyes watering, Quinn took another quick pull, then held the joint out to Ben.
“No thanks,” Ben said, raising his hands in a warding-off gesture. “I’d better pass.”
Wilder said, “Too good to smoke with your friends?”
“It’s not that, it’s—”
“It’s what? What is it, Benji?”
Quinn held the joint out again, and this time Ben took it, thinking, Why not? He hadn’t smoked-up since his twenties, having decided once he hit med school it was time to grow up. But it occurred to him now, with the force of revelation, that being a grownup hadn’t done him much good.
He thought, Screw it.
As he raised the spit-dampened joint to his lips, he glanced down the bench to see Wilder’s knowing grin, urging him on.
Giggling, Quinn said, “Reefer madness.”
Ben closed his eyes and inhaled, his airways instantly objecting, as they had in the muggy atmosphere of the greenhouse. But gradually, as he drew on the joint to the full capacity of his lungs, the urge to expel the smoke diminished, and now he could hear the other two cheering him on. When he opened his eyes, he saw Wilder’s big hand in his face, the man telling him not to Bogart the damn thing, and Ben handed it over, the sweet smoke bursting from his lungs on gales of stoned laughter.
* * *
Roxanne drew the curtain around her grandfather’s railed bed, one of four in this cramped, chronic-wing room. Then she sat in a chair by the radiator and took his hand, its limp chill making her shiver. As always, part of her hoped for some response: a slight flexion of his fingers, maybe, or a twitch of awareness in his vacant gaze. But, as always, there was none. He only stared into an emptiness that had already claimed everything but his body.
She said, “Hi, Gramps, it’s me. I met a man at the anniversary celebration today. A retired doctor. He’s a resident here now, but he used to work for the Foundation. I told him about you, and he said I should base my decision on what I think you’d want. I’ve already thought about it. A lot.” The tears came now, hot on her cheeks, spilling onto their linked hands. “And I know you wouldn’t want to live like this…
“Gram’s waiting for me to make up my mind…so I’ve decided to let her go ahead. I wish you could tell me if I’m doing the right thing—”
Roxanne gasped and held her breath, focusing every brain cell on her hand now, reaching deep into nerve memory to determine whether the tiny stirring she’d just felt had come from her own tense muscles—or from her grandfather’s hand. A response of some kind? An affirmation?
She said, “Gramps?” and rose to search his face, squeezing his hand now, hopeful. “Gramps?”
But there was nothing.
Deciding she’d imagined it, Roxanne said, “We’re meeting with a counselor in the morning. To sign the paperwork. So this one last time, Gramps, if you can—please—let me know if I’m doing the right thing.”
A cloud pulled the light out of the room now, and Roxanne released her grandfather’s hand, the downy hairs on her arms standing straight up, an unbidden image piercing her psyche like a hot needle. She imagined the Reaper hovering over the bed like a vulture on a desert thermal…and in that moment, she understood that the man she’d known and loved had long-since abandoned this shell of a body.
Dry-eyed now, she bent to kiss him on the forehead. Then she left his lonely deathbed for the last time. She did not look back.