THE LAST RESORT

—SAM STONE—

As they wheeled him over the threshold, Charlie Ericson knew that he wouldn’t be leaving. The last resort was a downtown hospital. The big C had finally caught up with him. and he was going down after a battle that had cost him both wealth and dignity. 

Charlie had money, all the money he would ever need for several lifetimes, let alone this one, and he had spent a good deal of it on doctors and medication since he received the bad news. He had lived on a cocktail of pills, injections and chemo therapy and had endured painful surgery—all to no avail.

His wife, Jasmine, had cried suitably when he told her, but he had seen the ‘look’ beneath the tears. She knew her time had finally come to inherit everything he had worked for. He didn’t mind though. She was young, but she had been a good wife the last five years, doing everything he said, and always being wonderfully well-groomed, just as he wanted her to be. He didn’t mind paying for all the beauty treatments, clothes, hair and nail appointments, that was all part of having such a beautiful trophy on his arm. And Charlie liked trophies. 

Charlie collected things: expensive art; rare wines; one-of-a-kind masterpieces of all descriptions; filling his several houses with these wonders because he enjoyed beautiful objects. It all meant nothing in the end though. There are no pockets in shrouds—a truer phrase had never been coined. Still, he reflected, it’s been a good life and I did my best.

A nurse placed an oxygen mask over his mouth and nose and someone opened his shirt and began pressing the small disks attached to the heart monitor onto his chest. Charlie felt it, but the pressure was distant as his mind floated in a morphine-induced daze. He felt no pain, only a warm certainty that this was final. The End. 

He floated. It was a lovely cosy feeling, like the moment when you are half-asleep, when you feel relaxed and safe. Charlie let his thoughts glide too. It even occurred to him that he was reliving his life, seeing it all before his eyes at his concluding moment. That was a good thing though wasn’t it? Surely he had no regrets.

He saw Jasmine, looking radiant on their wedding day. She was beautiful to the point of breath-taking. Hadn’t he always thought that? She was something he had to acquire, and it hadn’t been easy convincing her to leave her medical practice, after all that hard work. She was smart, he knew that, respected it, but had never had any need for it. He wanted her to be a woman, a goddess that he could put up on a pedestal, and she had never disappointed him.

‘I’m here, Charlie,’ she said beside him, as though she could feel the thoughts, or maybe he had said her name aloud as he thought of her.

He tried to open his eyes: they felt sticky and sandy all at the same time. 

He felt her hand on him, stroking, patting, there was love in it. Or at least he chose to believe there was. He could never be sure though, why she had married him. 

Charlie drew in a shallow breath, it hurt and his chest felt tight while his lungs screamed and he heard a sharp sound pierce the air.

‘He’s in pain,’ said Jasmine. ‘Can’t you help him?’

‘We’re giving him as much as we can,’ said the nurse. ‘He won’t suffer for long now.’

Charlie felt a small spike of fear. What would the afterlife be like? Was there a Hell? He had never really believed in any of that, though he had never disbelieved either. He had always known that this moment would arrive, but even when he was diagnosed with Cancer (and the word had to have a capital letter) he still refused to think that the end would arrive. And he had fought it. He really had.

It was hard to imagine not existing any more. Not owning his treasures.

Jasmine had cried so much when he told her. She’d had frequent nightmares afterwards, but it couldn’t change anything. His death, with her love or without it, had touched them both. There was no avoiding the obvious truth that the end comes to us all. Mortality was such a fleeting thing.

‘Charlie,’ she said. ‘I should have told you the truth. Everything about me.’

Charlie’s mind snapped back to the present. What did she say? His eyes fluttered again. He could see Jasmine through the slits, and sensed that they were now alone. The morphine was wearing off and pain worked its way around the edges of his consciousness.

‘I lied when I said I could accept being childless,’ Jasmine confided. ‘I wanted our child.’

Charlie wasn’t surprised by this revelation. He had known that at some point the old biological clock would kick in for Jasmine. It had happened with his last two wives. Each divorce had cost him a chunk of his estate, but Charlie had always recovered, and years later when he had seen the mess that childbirth had made of the perfection that once was, his resolve to never be a father had strengthened. Perfection was all he required from a wife, even if that meant surgery to maintain it. And he was always willing to pay for that kind of maintenance. 

Jasmine had been most diligent about keeping fit, eating the right foods, while all the time indulging Charlie’s wishes. She had never once mentioned children. In fact she complained when they came across the noisy little brutes in restaurants. Although the kind of restaurants they ate in rarely permitted that kind of disruption to the peace and quiet of their regular clients, and parents with rowdy offspring were politely asked to leave.

Charlie remembered one such incident when Jasmine had protested to the management in their favourite Italian. They boasted of exclusivity for their fine guests. But then there had been that one family they allowed in. Jasmine had ensured that the entire group was removed just because a child dropped his fork noisily down onto his plate. He had thought she hated children and it seemed a little excessive at the time. Now he considered it, he realised that Jasmine didn’t want to be faced with the one thing she could never have.

‘Do you believe in life after death,’ she had asked him once.

‘No, and I’m sure that someone with your background in science doesn’t either,’ Charlie had said, and the conversation was closed.

‘I couldn’t talk to you about anything,’ Jasmine said. She was still squeezing his hand. ‘Not even that I really do care about you. Not that I’m sure you believe that. It’s true though Charlie. I wish I could wave a magic wand and take all of this away.’

Charlie sighed into the plastic mask. It was nice of her to say the right things; she was so good at that. Probably it would assuage any guilt she would feel after his death. She had done her best, and cared for him the way he asked to be cared for. Charlie couldn’t have asked for more.

‘Of course I know what you did,’ Jasmine said. ‘About those two women.’

Charlie’s mind turned these words over. Did she believe he had been having an affair? Or multiple affairs? He would never have done that to her. He had needed no one else.

‘You like your trophies, I understand that. But it wasn’t fair of you to lie about the children.’

Charlie wasn’t sure where this was going. What did she mean?

‘Those two women who had your kids. The ones you refused to acknowledge.’

Ah.

‘If you had fathered them, why didn’t you care what happened?’

Of course, Charlie remembered. 

A slight glitch in his psyche. He had lost his mind for a short time. The news of his possible demise three years ago had come as something of a trauma. Panic had set in when he realised that all he was, all he had been, would one day just disappear. There was Jasmine, supportive, beautiful and perfect. He couldn’t ask her for the one thing he had said he would never need. He had let the idea fly unchecked through his mind for a week or two, then Jasmine had begun to feel sick, complaining of a pain in her side. She was rushed into hospital and while he was undergoing chemo, Jasmine underwent surgery for acute appendicitis. 

Charlie had expressed concern about the scar and damage to her flat stomach. Then, when she had healed, and Charlie had thought he had beaten the disease, he had persuaded her to undergo further surgery to improve the damage.

At the time she had agreed, not knowing Charlie’s real motives. He had arranged it all discretely. Money can buy you anything, even the loyalty of a doctor. Jasmine went in for the tummy tuck, but the plastic surgeon had only taken over after the gynaecologist had neatly removed the ovum that Charlie wanted.

They had stored her eggs for a while before the surrogates were found. Charlie had already given the sample needed before the chemo destroyed his sperm, making him infertile, and Jasmine need never know that he had left a piece of himself behind in a medical freezer. 

‘It wasn’t just you though, was it?’ Jasmine said. ‘You made a decision that involved me too.’

I did what I thought was right! I couldn’t ruin you. I couldn’t go to my grave after that destruction.

Her hand felt cold in his now. It was as though she disagreed with him. Charlie felt a pain deep inside his chest that had nothing to do with the lung cancer. 

‘I’m adopting them, Charlie. Those two little girls. My daughters. You made them in both of our image and I can give them so much of your wealth. Everything children of ours would deserve.’

Charlie squeezed his eyes shut, then tried to open them again. He wondered how she had found out. He had used the best people, spent good money for silence.

‘Who?’ he said. His voice was little more than a whispered croak.

Jasmine leant over him, raised his head and lifted the mask enough so that she could offer the glass of tepid water to his lips.

‘The doctor you used, Eric Shelman. He and I studied together. He was a brilliant young surgeon. When he saw me asleep and realised who I was he felt tremendous guilt at taking the money. The only way he could redeem himself was by telling me the truth. Of how you used those women...’

‘They were paid...’ Charlie said.

‘Yes. But these were our children, Charlie. How could you leave them with two women who didn’t care?’

She laid him back gently on the bed and replaced the mask. Then she stood, went to the sink beside the bed and dampened a paper towel. 

‘Here,’ she said. Then she wiped the gloop from his eyes.

Charlie blinked. It was more comfortable now. He could actually open his eyes a little more and look at Jasmine.

She was immaculate as always. Make-up, hair, nails all neat and beautiful. She smiled at him and then he saw the nurse come in behind her.

‘Time for another injection,’ said the nurse.

Jasmine held his hand as the nurse fed more morphine into his drip. He felt the immediate rush into his vein, and the wooziness as the crouching pain, and the world, diminished again.

He remembered the day he first saw Jasmine. He had still been married to his second wife at the time, but there were grumblings and she wasn’t taking quite the same care of herself as she had in the early days. Charlie had noticed fine lines across her brow but Melissa had been squeamish about injections and had refused the Botox he suggested she have. He was never forceful with his suggestions, but still he had expected her to take the hint.

Jasmine was working as an intern at the hospital. Even in her doctor’s scrubs she looked magnificent, not a hair out of place, and Charlie had known he could mould her even more if she would prove to be the type. He didn’t act on it then; he waited until Melissa put a few more nails in her own coffin. The late night binges, the excessive consumption of alcohol when they were out with friends, and the final, most unforgivable crime: asking to have a child.

Melissa was paid off quickly after that. Charlie could almost see that this had been her plan all along but he had no regrets, moving on to begin his courtship of Jasmine. Once she had agreed to marry him, and signed the pre-nuptial, everything had gone Charlie’s way from then on.

‘Of course there has only ever been your way,’ said Jasmine. ‘You can see how wrong it was to be so controlling can’t you?’

He tried to respond but his tongue felt thick and the words wouldn’t form on his lips. Already half-dead, Charlie drifted on the dream of perfection. His many treasures passed by as though they were on a conveyor belt, but Jasmine was there in the spot that said ‘Most Treasured.’ And it was true. Looking back along the line he saw Melissa and Anna as mere possessions he had bought and resold at a loss he was glad to absorb. 

Didn’t it say something that he had chosen Jasmine to have his children, even though he hadn’t told her? She was, and would be, always his favourite.

Over the years he had refused to see his own faults, but maybe he had been an idiot this time.

He opened his eyes a little once more. The light was shining on Jasmine, but this time her face was far less perfect. This is what you might look like in twenty years, he thought. At least I won’t have to see your perfection deteriorate.

He closed his eyes again. He dreamed of walks in the park. Two old farts, happy to be feeding the ducks. But Charlie’s life had never been that simple. He couldn’t see himself really accepting old age gracefully like a worn down cliché. 

His lungs heaved again. Pain like hot coals sat on his chest, burning their nova flame through to his heart. 

The chance had gone for good now. And his future was no longer a viable prospect. He accepted it finally, even though he wasn’t ready to give up on the images he was seeing of an alternative future.

He heard the sharp sound again. Felt Jasmine’s hand on his. She was squeezing as though she were trying to hold onto him.

I made a mistake, he thought. You’re right I should have given you the choice. You would have made a wonderful mother.

Jasmine gasped a small ‘no’ and Charlie slipped away. He heard the machine’s incessant bleeping turn into a flat tone as he drifted upwards, away from his body.

*    *    *

‘Jasmine?’

‘Eric. I didn’t know you worked here,’ Jasmine said, looking up as she waited in the corridor for the coroner.

‘I’ve worked here for some years now,’ Eric Shelman said.

‘Really?’

‘This may not be the right time... I heard about your husband. I’m sorry,’ Eric said.

‘Eric. No, please. I’d be glad to talk a while. It will take my mind off things. So you are in private medicine now.’

‘Yes. I wanted to talk to you about what I do.’

Jasmine frowned. ‘I’m not working as a doctor anymore.’

‘I know. In fact I know a lot about a lot of things that I... Look, please come to my office. I have something very important to tell you.’

She followed him down the corridor, not knowing that Charlie was there too. He had been with her since he had parted ways with his body. At first he had tried to talk to her, reassure her as she sobbed, head down, on the empty shell which had been his body. 

In his office, Eric offered her coffee, which she took politely even though she normally never drank it. 

‘I’m sorry about Charlie,’ he said again.

‘Me too. Just six months ago we thought we had this beaten. Then it seemed to come back with a vengeance,’ Jasmine said.

‘Cancer can be like that.’

‘I knew Charlie,’ Eric said. ‘I worked for him once.’

Jasmine frowned again as she sipped the coffee. ‘Oh? But I thought you only did...’

‘I’m still a gynaecologist. You see, the prospect of death can do strange things to the human mind. I was happy to help him at the time. But that was before I knew you were his wife.’

Jasmine’s cheeks were pale. She looked like a woman standing on the edge of a precipice, who knew that any moment she would fall, yet would have no way of stopping herself.

‘I don’t... understand.’

‘Three years ago, Charlie brought you into this hospital for an operation...’

Then Eric told Jasmine about the time he had helped Charlie, three years before. When she finally left his office, a few hours later, she had the name and address of two women.

‘It’s up to you what you do,’ said Eric. ‘We were friends at med school. I’ve tortured myself about this ever since.’

Charlie followed Jasmine back to the coroner’s office. His thoughts were confused. He must have imagined the conversation they had about the children. Maybe some guilt had slipped into those final moments? Yes. He should have told her himself in the end and didn’t understand why he hadn’t. We do such strange things in life, he thought. But I loved you Jasmine. I wanted you to live on with me.

‘Dr Franks? I’m Mrs Ericson,’ Jasmine said as the door opened.

‘Mrs Ericson, do come in.’

The door closed but it was only a thought that took him through to the other side. Charlie felt that he couldn’t leave her. He had to know she was all right.

‘The reason I called you here is that we have discovered that your husband is a perfect match for a heart transplant patient we have. I know this may seem insensitive right now, but some good could come out of his death. He could save someone else’s life.’

No! Thought Charlie, I’ve always hated the idea of being a donor. 

Jasmine looked at her hands as they rested in her lap. She said nothing for a while but Charlie was certain she would refuse. She would never go against his wishes on this.

‘My husband always wanted me to donate his body to medical science,’ she said. ‘He even mentioned it in his final moments. I’m not all that keen on the idea but I would never go against his wishes. You may do what you need to his body. I don’t believe he is still in there anyway.’

Charlie screamed but no one heard him. His ethereal body beat against the desk without impact. He swiped at the papers as he watched Jasmine sign the consent form, but he realised that he had no shape or form, only knowledge, sight and hearing.

He plummeted, losing control of his direction. When he tried to follow Jasmine, he found that he couldn’t leave the hospital. His feet became glued every time he made an attempt to cross the threshold. Eventually, after several failed attempts to move forward, he stood in the doorway watching her walk out to the limo. He saw his chauffeur open the door for her, and what shocked him most was how she tugged her hair free of the severe bun, shaking it out over her shoulders like some street harlot. 

The limo drove away and so, not knowing where else to go, Charlie went in search of his body.

He found himself in a fridge in the basement, lying on a cold trolley like a piece of discarded meat. He was naked under a white sheet, his body had been washed and his heart removed. There was a huge wound down the front of his chest, roughly sewn together. Not the neat stitches of a surgeon who cared.

He floated over himself, wondering what to do. Was this it? Was this the afterlife? Where was the tunnel? The light? Where were the burning fires of Hell or the musical world of Heaven? If this was all there was, then perhaps Hell would have been a better place to be.

Charlie drifted out as the fridge door opened and his body was pulled free. He could see his still handsome face. He looked as though he were sleeping.

‘Well done, Eric,’ said Doctor Franks. ‘This is an excellent specimen. I’ve already implanted, so now we need to get the body out of here.’

Where are you taking me? asked Charlie. What implant?

‘Well I knew when I told her the truth she would want her revenge. Who wouldn’t?’ said Eric. 

‘You never did tell me when and how you gave him the cancer cells though. That was a stroke of genius,’ Franks said.

‘He was obsessed with his health. He had pure oxygen circulated into his office. I just made sure that the canister was changed when I knew he was there alone. He breathed it in, just as surely as he would have breathed in nicotine had he been a smoker. Two hours is all it took and then months of incubation in those lungs did the rest of the job.’

‘Naturally the chemo didn’t work,’ smiled Franks.

‘Placebos,’ Eric confirmed. ‘Pure saline injections, sugar coated aspirin... you know the score.’

The door to the mortuary opened and an orderly came in.

‘Just in time,’ said Franks. ‘This one is to be placed in the ambulance to my clinic just outside.’

The orderly pushed the trolley towards the door. Charlie followed as though compelled to remain by its side and so did Eric Shelman.

He saw his body loaded into the back of the ambulance, and then floated inside as Eric sat down beside him. The orderly closed the doors.

‘Ready?’ said Franks from the front seat.

‘Definitely. We should hurry though. Colour’s starting to return to his cheeks. He’s going to start coming round at any time and we don’t need that to happen until we can get him sedated and hooked up to the life support machines.’

The ambulance moved off. Charlie was confused. He was dead. How could he possibly come round? He abruptly zoned out. Blessed darkness took him like sleep and he could hear no more.

*    *    *

A warm rush of sensation and feeling came back into his body. He felt pins and needles. Charlie blinked. He tried to run his tongue over dry cracked lips, only to feel the chocking pressure of a plastic tube that had been fed down his throat. His eyes fluttered and panic flooded his body as he felt himself choking. The sensation was worse than death had been.

‘How’s the patient?’ Franks asked, his voice muffled at first, and then clearing.

‘Drugged enough not to feel anything. That is if there is any brain capacity left after being clinically dead for several hours,’ said Eric.

Charlie opened his eyes slightly, peering through the slit. He tried not to gag on the tube and concentrated on calming his breathing as he took in his environment. This looked like an operating theatre, but Charlie couldn’t be sure.

‘Well he certainly kept himself fit. This is an ideal specimen,’ Franks said. 

‘How’s the implant looking,’ asked Eric. 

‘All good. The tissue has grafted well. He’s a perfect incubator.’

Charlie opened his eyes a little more. Above him was a monstrous painting on the ceiling. It was of some hideous creature, naked and covered in sores, with a swollen lump protruding from his chest. The monster was wired up to several machines. He recognised a heart monitor, and the oxygen and life support devices that had been around him in the hospital. 

He squeezed his eyes shut. Why would anyone put such a horrible image up on a ceiling? He drifted in and out of sleep. Confusion and medication was clearly making him hallucinate. He hadn’t died after all. 

Where was Jasmine? Why wasn’t she at his side like a good wife should be?

When he opened his eyes again the monster was still there, only this time he could see Doctor Franks and Doctor Shelman too. They were in scrubs and masks and wearing rubber gloves as though they were prepared for surgery.

‘Have you got a Petri dish ready?’ asked Eric.

Franks held out the plastic pot as Eric began to slice into the distorted mass with a scalpel. Charlie felt a momentary discomfort, a tugging sensation that quickly developed into a sharp pain. He watched as Eric lowered a slither of skin into the dish.

The heart monitor spiked. 

‘What was that?’ asked Franks as he placed the lid on the dish. He put it down beside him on the surgical trolley.

‘Slight spike. Nothing serious. Doesn’t matter anyway, he’s brain-dead.’

Charlie began to make sense of the image. He was looking up at a polished steel ceiling. His mind began to scream, while his throat gagged and choked again on the tube. He tried to move his arms but his limbs were paralysed or tied down, he wasn’t sure. But he knew what the thing was now. He recognised the eyes in the bloated face.

‘Let’s take a sample from the face,’ Franks said.

Franks came into view, blocking out the horrible sight above him. Then Charlie stared in horror as the scalpel came down, cutting out a piece of his swollen cheek. 

‘Let’s hope that this shows up something we can use for an antidote. Those kids don’t deserve to suffer,’ Eric said.

Charlie felt a scream bubbling inside him again, but it had nowhere to go. As Franks moved away he saw a gaping hole in his face; red blood mixed with oozing yellow pus. His stomach turned. 

This is me, he thought. Oh my God this is me!

He saw it all now, his naked glory exposed to the world. There was a tube in his gangrenous penis, two in his nostrils, and a vile looking substance, black as faeces and as rank as poison, was being pumped out of his body through a shunt in his stomach. He saw what was left of his arms, grotesque stumps that were raggedly sewn off at the shoulder. One leg remained, though it was swollen like a bloated sausage that was ready to burst in a hot pan, while the other was severed at the knee. He felt heat emanating from his flesh. He knew he was rotting from the inside out.

The horror dawned on him even as the reality of his life/death situation sank in: they were taking pieces of him, while keeping him alive. This was what Jasmine had done, perhaps never knowing how deep her revenge would go.

He had spent his entire life looking after his body, only to see Cancer eat away at him. A Cancer he had been given, not something that had developed on its own. Now they had done this to him. 

In his mind’s eye he saw Jasmine smiling as she signed the form. The pen scratched. Again. And again. And again. Taking away the rights he had taken for granted all of his life.