twenty five
- Alex -
Madness isn't that bad. I wonder if my father day dreamed about my mother. It was something that I thought of that morning. How long was he able to hold out for? He was there for years, did he think about her? Was it as painful as it was for me? All these questions and the only thing I could possibly think of, is that he went mad and died a totally demented person. It is what they tell you are the first thing to go when you are in the Crypts. Most of the time people from Portland say it is because of the disease but here experiencing it first hand, I think it might have been due the place that you are in.
My finger begins to trace the L that is nearest to me. It took me another hour just to pull myself up onto the bed. The good thing about living in the Wilds is that sleeping on the ground becomes natural and really doesn't bother me anymore. My finger loops the cursive writings of the "L" that is so embellished; it must have taken Lena's mother so long to do. It is then that I start to see the deliberate actions of not a crazy person but of a mother who was thinking about her child. The "L" of different sizes is littered all over the place. I examine the nearest one carefully, and find that the depth is deeper than the other letters. I imagine her mother starting to etch the letters and realize that it was about her. Just like everything in my life, it is about her.
I close my eyes and see the trees. The sunlight piercing through the branches, it reminds me of a happier time. My fingers touch the blanket and then finally I feel her hand next to mine. My pinky loops her pinky and I can feel the warmth in his hands. My head stands still, not wanting to break the delusion. That is what this is; a delusion of something that my heart wishes was reality. It reminds me of a book I read about a man who accepted a dream as reality and decided to stay in the dream world because it was better than living in the real world alone.
"What are you thinking about?" I say.
A couple of birds land on a branch and begin to sing their happy tune. From this angle, I can tell that the trees are the same ones from 37 Brooks backyard garden. It was our favorite place to spend the day. I wish I could have spent more days with her. We had to keep up appearances so in the mornings I would go to work in the labs, and she would go to her uncle's store. We would always meet up afterwards; it was my favorite time of the day. Even when it rained, it was the best times, because I spent them with Lena.
Everything reminds me of her. It is all that I can think about.
"I am thinking about, eating," she says letting out a laugh. "I am hungry."
I turn and see the smile on her face.
"You are always hungry," I say. "It is probably why you took the job over at your uncle's store."
She gives me a playful shove and when she tries to do it again, I grab onto her hands and pull her in. She doesn't resist and of course I just wish that this was real. The book that I remember reading was about a man who could only love someone that he met in his dreams. It turns out that at the end, he was given a choice, to live forever in the dream, and in reality be alone forever. It was the hardest decision that I think to make. Could someone even make it? If it came down to it, could I? The choice to live here in the dream forever and always being alone, it sounds like an easy one. If he were faced with the same choice as I, being locked away forever, the choice would be easy. I never did know how the story ended.
"Did I ever tell you, that I think this is all a dream?" I say.
There isn't a response, and immediately my heart begins to beat quicker in fear. I turn my head and still see her there. Focusing on her, I see the rising and falling of her chest, and the blinking of her eyes. I turn to face her, and she turns to face me. Her eyes are warm and for the first time, I see the smallest speck of yellow in the iris of her eyes.
"Why do you say that?" she says with a small smile on her face.
My hand reaches up and when it touches her cheek, she closes her eyes. My mind knows that this is truly not real, and that when I finally open my eyes, that I will still be in the cell of the Crypts with no possibility to ever see her again. This is something that I know all too well, the dreams that I wish were reality and nightmares that happens when one wakes up.
"Can you feel this," I say placing my hand on her cheek. Her hand comes up to meet mines and it is there that I can see it. The small dark mole that I had mistaken for an ink blot the first time I saw it. Licks my finger tips and tried to wipe it off of her, which of course she just laughed and said that it would more than saliva to get off. It was the smallest things that I noticed. Her nails and how she sometimes chews on them when she is nervous.
"Of course," she says.
"Good," I say and then realize that this path takes me back to reality. As hard as I try it seems that my mind cannot live here, although it seems it is easy for my heart to. If she isn't real, then why do I have to admit it, why can't I just let it go, and pretend that I am really here? What is keeping me from accepting it, I am giving my heart what it wants, and I am allowing her to invade my thoughts again. The weeks I spent being beaten and tortured, I kept her from coming in, and I kept myself from remembering. But now that I finally gave in, it is as if something is fighting to discover this as a fraud.
"Tell me a happy memory?" I ask trying to keep my voice from cracking. I try to mask my emotions, but know for a fact that I am simply no good at it, when it comes to her.
Her smile disappears, and now is replaced with a look of worry. It is as if she knows something is wrong. The one thing I prided myself in was the ability to never let anyone see my true emotions, to be able to read me. With her, though, it was as if we could always tell when the other was not being truthful, or at least when something was wrong.
"You haven't been sleeping," she says.
I stand up which for some reason is a lot harder and takes me a lot longer to do. I stand there hunch over placing my hands on my thighs. My legs creek and crack with pain especially on my left thigh. I close my eyes and shake my head. It is as if although I know she isn't here, it is what she would say. I feel like the defenses that I had constructed, that I spent all of my life putting up is fracturing. The dam that is controlling everything, my emotions, the pain that I have held in for so long, is fracturing. Control is the only thing that I have left. Even when they were torturing me, I didn't lose control, I didn't feel this vulnerable.
I finally suck in some air and then with a little effort I push myself up from my thighs. Looking down at my hands, I see the cuts, the bruises, of all that I had to go through. The shoulder begins to ache, each breathe becomes harder to hold, without feeling the bullet edge in between the ribs.
"Nightmares," I say. "It has been hard to shake them, even harder to accept them."
My eye sight begins to blur and I start to feel light headed. I don't know why, but I feel like I might pass out. I see her there and see her hand out and wait there for mines. The shakes are the worst when I think about what has happened. I try to move towards her, but instead of having any strength in my legs, I feel myself tip towards her. My left leg catches me from falling, and her arms reach around me to hold me up.
"Okay, okay, a happy memory right?" she says. "Ummm, did I tell you about the time the time that I danced on top of a high near a farm?"
I want to laugh but all I can do is try and breathe. It is that inability to concentrate that I am guessing has caused her to give in to my demands of a change of subject. I lift my head and find that she smiling at me. The grimace on my face changes to a smile, because she thinks of it as a happy memory. I try to remember the song that was playing but of course the pain that radiates from my entire body is distracting and I am unable to focus.
"No you haven't," I say. "But tell me about it."
She helps me finally straighten up. It takes me a couple of seconds before finally everything calms down and my breathing goes steady. I see her there and a couple of strands of her hair have come loose and it just softly touches her face covering her right eye. She is strong, it is surprising. Here I thought that I would be the one to keep her from falling apart, and now it is her that is keeping me from coming apart.
"It felt like flying," she says.
It is the same thing that I felt, when I kissed her. It was like for the first time ever, I knew how it felt to be her. The way the warmness radiated through my body, and instead of going out, it went inside of me, deep inside. It found its way through the places that I never knew existed, and it turned on something that I never knew was off. For the first time, it felt like I could breathe.
"I know what you mean," I say. "Dog peed tool sheds do that for me."
There is a slight red coloring on her face and then the smile grows just a little bit wider, almost as if she is going to finally laugh. It goes small for a tiny second and then goes wider again, like she is reliving it. My hand goes up to the strands of hair and finally I move it back away from her face. The heat from her face is undeniable.
"Is that your happy memory," she asks. "A dog peed tool shed? Sounds a little bit too typical."
"Typical?" I say a little taken back by the response.
"Are you sure that being like everybody else will make you…" she says.
It was the same thing that I told her. Just like that I am back in the peed filled tool shed. The way the moon light caught her face, I still don't know. All the books, about poetry and the epic love stories and still there is just not one word to describe how I feel about her.
"You forgot the word 'happy,' I say.
"Are you?" she asks as if it was the next line in the story.
"Am I happy? Well around you I really don't know any other way," I say smiling. I nudge her and she just blushes. My hands reach up cheek. The warmness from her skin is evident and causes my hand to touch her cheek. It is the next words that I told her that brought this whole thing around.
She stands on her tippy toes and I lean in to hear her whisper.
"Here, let me show you," she says softly. Her lip touches mine and like that I feel the same warmness that I did the first time. A tear streams from her cheek and I feel it touch face. Moving away from her I see that her happiness is now gone and all that there is, is the same sadness that I tried to forget. It feels all wrong, like the colors are too bright, or the sounds too crisp, almost as if it is too perfect. Is that even possible that she is too perfect?
"What's wrong?" I ask. "Is it my breathe?"
She nods no.
"I only wish..." she starts before she stops her eyes travel towards the ground. She begins to bite her lower lip. My hand reaches for hers that are now cupped together. She takes a step back and then looks at me in the eyes and says.
"What?" I say.
"That this would be real, that you would be real," she finishes a little hesitant. My hands feel metal, and it is confusing to my mind that although my hand is still on her hand, I don't feel the warmth anymore, but something hard and metal.
Suddenly there is a loud noise that causes us both to stop and look around. We try to find where it came from. Without warning it is as if something has caused me to lose every little bit of breathe in my lungs. When I try to breathe it, there is another sharp blow to my stomach, and everything goes black and when I try to open my eyes I see the grey walls and the etching of Love all over.
"So you can walk?" I hear a gruff voice. "Well we will have to fix that, won't we?"
I instinctively put up my arms to cover my face, leaving my mid-section exposed. It is the realization that I am back in my cell, and that Roman is beating me into the ground that I focus on what he had said before. 'So you can walk?' It seems that I was experiencing some sort of sleep walking and he caught me. I feel his steel toe boot connect with my rib which my body reacts to by rolling around trying to lessen the blow. He finally stops and I can hear the huffing and puffing of his breath. I hear him hock up some spit and then feel it a second later on my face.
"Filthy garbage," he says in between breathes.
Garbage? The word just resonates inside me. We are held here in these cells for doing absolutely nothing but think for ourselves. It would be so easy. I mean I could do it in less than five minutes. The burning desire rises inside of me, the images of my hands around his neck, come quickly and stay lingering there for a second. I wonder what it would feel like, to feel my hand squeeze the breath out of him, to feel the snap of his wind pipe in my hands. I could easily do it, right now as he struggles to gain his composure. Trip him up right now and grab him by the neck. I close my hands into fist, testing my strength.
'On the count of three,' I think to myself. It would probably be the end. They wouldn't keep me alive after I kill one of their own. It wouldn't matter; it is not like I am going anywhere. It would give me what I have wanted since the first day. It would be better.
'Don't,' I hear her say in my mind.
'You aren't real,' I say to myself, knowing full well that she probably didn't make it and died in the Wilds. The winters are not the easiest to survive even if she was able to make it to a homestead. It is hard to quiet but I still hear her in the back of my mind, it is faint but it is there.
'This isn't you,' she says softly. The tears start to form in my eyes, so I place my hands on my face, wiping off the spit on my face. Roman lets out a loud laugh as he finally starts to stand back up.
"I wonder what is over here," he says walking towards the corner. I open my eyes slowly and see him pick up the metal bucket that is hardly ever cleaned out. I had to smack it against the wall in order to get it to a point. This allowed me to be able to dump it out. If not the smell would be unbearable. It is why after a while the hallways have to be cleaned with bleach. Well that is what they do in other five wards. Here in Ward Six, it is never done, and people in those rooms go from being unable to dump it out, to simply not caring and going anywhere. The good thing about this is that the summer months are coming to an end and the hot humid weather, the smell will be less.
He picks up the bucket, and begins to walk towards me. It is what I had feared he would do. He beats his hand on the bucket as he walks over here. If I get up it would show that I can still stand up, and probably then I get knocked down. If I try to defend myself, it would only bring more pain.
'Let it go,' she whispers as I see the bucket thrown in the air. It comes down and splashes all the urine over me which I was able to deflect with my arms.
My hands start to shake, and I begin to count down.
'Three…two…one,' I say and then inexplicably my fist relaxes and I let the pain hold onto me. It is as if she is in the room and all I can do is think of her. It is extensive, but I made sure to keep my legs from blocking the blows. Although it is important to be able to breath, the use of my legs is something that I haven't been able to do in a while. The only thing that I would have to remember is to do any healing in the night time when there is not that many guard patrols.
- Julian -
Everything that happens in the last couple of days is a blur. Although I had promised Congressman Pine, that my dedication was absolute, my doctors however are another story. They had filed motions in the court system stating that I was incapable to make my own decisions and that I am suffering from some sort of break of reality. It is the simple terms to say that I must be crazy to want to have a procedure that can at the end of the day, kill me, or leave me brain dead. They argue with the lawyers saying that no one in their right mind would choose death over living, that I must be either depressed or suffering from some sort of strain of the deliria.
My father leans in to my lawyer who sits down next to me.
"Object to that," he says. "How can we not submit my son to the cure of a disease that they are now saying is causing him to want the cure? It doesn't make any sense."
My lawyer stands up and objects. He clears his throat and makes the argument to the mediator that stands before us. The mediator ponders on the argument and then finally declines this argument as 'trying to have their cake and eat it too.'
"So is he depressed, suffering from deliria, suicidal?" The mediator says. "I am confused but aren't you doctors? Didn't you take an oath to save people?"
"It is more complicated than that," one of the doctors bursts out. "His case is a special one."
It is then that in that little room of the New York Department of Justice, that the doctors and the lawyers begin to argue amongst each other. It took a call from my father to the Governor of New York to get this special session approved after someone leaked that the decision was made to get the procedure done without the approval of my doctor. There were even allegations that my father was trying to get falsified documents, to pretend that I was someone else in order to get past the initial medical history check. I had only heard of this rumor from a couple of the servants that said they overheard my father talking to someone on the phone.
"This is all a circus, a farce," my lead doctor barks out to the judge. "This is all motivated by a political agenda. Mr. Fineman doesn't care about Julian's well-being, he never has."
The room comes to a halt and then finally the Judge addresses the doctor.
"You have first-hand knowledge of this?" the judge asks.
"We have a source," the doctor says. "But to respect the well-being of this source we cannot name them."
So it is true. Someone on my father's team has betrayed him, feeding information to my doctors. There is a change in the demeanor in my father's face. He goes from calm to a slight annoyance. I have only seen him once really upset before. There is a vein that begins to throb from his neck. It is his tell, that something has finally gotten to him. Betrayal always has that effect on him. No one really knows about this tell my father has, and I don't think he even knows about it. The only way I know is because once I caught him lying to a police officer, that night when they found Ben.
"Enough," the judge says. "I request that everyone in the room leave with the exception of Julian."
The doctors are the first to protest saying that I wouldn't know the medical ramifications to my decision. The question is on my ability to make sound decisions and how it might be impaired by the disease, which it is the reason why they are here. There is protest on the legality of it all.
"I will make that decision when I hear from him," he says.
Everyone finally stands up and once they all leave, the judge lets out a big sigh of relief. He looks like he is in his forties, and the grey hair, shows me that his stress levels are usually high.
"First time I have actually had to deal with this," he says to me with a smile.
"I am sorry about this," I say.
He lifts up his hand in protest.
"Not your fault," he says. "But I am curious on why you want to do this, knowing full well the health risk behind it."
I sit there looking at my hands, and for a moment I do not have the politically correct answer. It is there that I see my watch. It is what I never have enough of.
"Have you ever been to the Aquatic Center down by meat packing district?" I ask. He looks at me puzzled on what this has to do with the question he just asked. I reassure him that it will make sense in a minute, so he says yes that he has been there. He tells me about his children and how took them there to show them how to swim. It is the place where most if not all government officials take their children to learn how to swim.
"My father took me there to learn to swim," I say trying to recall the memory. The smell of chlorine still gives me the shivers. "Must have been four or five, and of course we had instructors there to teach us how to swim. After an hour of hearing the instructors, my father was fed up and took me by the hand to the deep end and threw me into the pool."
The look of shock on the judges face and I know that he wouldn't have done that to his own child. It is true that my father had always been a cold and hard man but it is probably because that is the only way he knows how. He never talks about his father, and I never know him. My mother doesn't even know him. The only thing we do know is that he died when my father was young.
"Of course I panic and my father had to yell at my instructors to leave me alone. That either I drown or swim, those were my only two options," I say. "Now the question is this, if you were drowning because you never learned how to swim, would you fight to keep alive anyways?"
He looks at me, and then finally he understands what I was trying to say.
"If I had the choice of living or dying, wouldn't you think that I would fight to take that chance that I could live without the fear of it coming back again and again," I say. "The cure might be risky, but there is the smallest chance that it could take away the ticking clock from me."
He stands up and thanks me for my honesty. I shake his hand and he escorts me outside, telling me to let the lawyers know that he will need time to decide. Walking outside the door, I see the doctors there and the lawyers. They all look at me, and when I tell them what the judge said, my father already gives me a smile. It is as if he knew that some way somehow I would make the case. We walk down the hallway and then get into the elevator. The judge's assistant told all of us that he would give us a call when the decision had been made and that it would take anywhere from an hour to probably a day to decide.
The car is brought around and as we get into it my father tells the driver to go to the Jarvis Center. I don't know if the silence between my father and me is out of respect, or anger. He sits there looking out the dark tinted windows as the car zigs and zags through the streets of New York. I look down at my watch and see that we have a couple of hours until the meeting starting. Today is the DFA's monthly meeting for new members. It is where we go over what is on the agenda for the next couple of weeks and months.
The snow on the streets always made everything so calm. No one is walking on the sidewalks and even rarely do we see cars on the road. I always loved this time of year in New York. The snow mans that we would built in the front yard was always a epic battle to see who can make the better snow men. It is only about five minutes or so from our destination that my father's cell phone rings, removing all silence from the car.
"Yes?" he says calmly. He nods as he listens to the person on the other side of the phone. "So it is set? When? The sooner the better. Tell them that we will shoot for March twenty-third. Okay, thank you."
He hangs up the phone and then looks at me.
"It is done," he says. "March twenty-third has been set for the procedure, like we had originally planned."
The date is set. I don't know if I should be relieved or anxious. It was the only thing that was holding up funding for the DFA. Now that we have it, the next phase of my father's vision can happen. Additional chapters of DFA's in the other cities, to push for earlier procedure age limits, to advances in the actual cure. The complete eradication of the deliria in all of North America, it is what he has always wanted and now we have the funding to do it, we can finally start expanding.
We arrive to the Jarvis Center and taken backstage to prepare for today's meeting. The preparation team starts by getting me into the correct 'look.'
"Our audience today will be the younger demographics, so we will need to appeal to them," Marcy says handing me a red polo shirt and dark jeans. "The suites will make you seem out of touch, and well this look will work better."
I nod and take the clothes walking to the dressing room. Marcy calls out to me not to forget that a prep security meeting is in five minutes and that I would have to hurry. Every function, whether it is at home or in locations, we always have these ridiculous security meetings, to know what to do in the event of a terrorist attack. Ever since Ben, we have always been on high alert, for any attacks by the Invalids. They say that they are amongst us here in the city. That they can mimic any normal person, which of course sounds a little farfetched, but I do it to please my mother. It is the only person I wish was here today. She couldn't come to court today because she was feeling under the weather. There in my dressing room, I finally have just a tiny bit of privacy.
The security meetings are routine, and everything goes smoothly. The people fill the auditorium that has every member of DFA supporter in the state of New York. They all come in with their wool jackets and gloves. My father goes up and of course begins to welcoming everyone to the auditorium. He talks about the humble beginnings of the DFA, and how even the brochures where folded by his family. It was back then, that we would always do it as a family. In my father's study we would fold brochures all through the night, and make it a game to see who can fold them neatly but still fast enough to beat my father.
"They talk to us of risk and harm, damages and side effects. But what risk will there be to us as people, as a society, if we do not act? If we do not insist on protecting the whole, what good is the health of a mere portion?"
My father's speech is of course took weeks and several drafts to complete. It was tested on focus groups and even changed due to the current political climate. It was always the way he did it, that I found the most powerful. He always left it as a choice between the good and bad. He presented a case and then at the end left it to the person to decide what they will choose.
"This must be our single, unified purpose. This is the point of our demonstration. We ask that our government, our scientists, our agencies, protect us. We ask that they keep faith with their people, keep faith with God and his Order."
I look around and see people there listening to him, hanging on his every word. It is the way he inspires people. The questions he puts the people in the audience. He doesn't tell people to do anything but through his words he has them do it anyway. He is the grand puppet master, always in control of the situation even when people think that he isn't. Even now when I think about it, earlier when the doctors saying that they have an inside source, it didn't rattle him, it only provided him with either a name or at least validated the person's existence.
Marcy nudges me and I look over to her. "It is time for your speech."
She hands me note cards and I nod to her. Looking back towards the stage I see my father and he is already introducing me.
"…Members of the DFA, please welcome to the stage my son, Julian Fineman."
Without any hesitation I stand and begin to walk towards the stage. Thank God that they are clapping loud enough to hide the hard beating of my heart. A little trick that my father taught me when nervous, that a head nod gives a heads up to the other that their hands are sweaty and that to avoid the traditional greeting.
I stand at the podium and place my notes on it. It is the same speech that I had written weeks ago. Just like my father's speech it was tested on focus groups and then rewritten a couple of times until it tested well. I scan the room looking for a person to focus on. It was something that I learned from Marcy the first time I had to give a speech in front of people.
'Focus your speech as if you are talking to one person. Personalize it and then it is just a conversation. People focus on the large crowd when they should focus on the person instead.'
My eyes land on a girl, in the back row. She is a pretty girl in a light colored blouse, her hair is up in a bun and her eyes lock on mine. I think to myself if I can talk to that one girl about the important of the cure what would I say? I imagine myself sitting in a coffee shop her in front of me with a cup of coffee. I can picture it in my head. Someone who is in doubt of the cure sitting in front of me wanting to know why she should. The notes on the cards simply won't do. The talk of the history of the disease isn't what will convince her of it. It will have to be something more.
"I was nine when I was told I was dying," I say and pause. It is the truth of the story, that the cure is like being told that you are dying. "That's when the seizures began. The first one so bad I nearly bit off my tongue…"
The blood that I spit out was really what freaked me out the most. My teeth had gotten a hold of the inner part of my cheek and when I started shaking shredded it.
"…During my second seizure, I cracked my head against the fireplace. My parents were concerned."
It wasn't really the truth. The only one concerned was my brother and my mother. The image however that we have to maintain is that we are a loving family and not what we truly are, a bunch of strangers who cannot even look at each other.
"The doctors told me a tumor was growing in my brain and causing the seizures. The operation to remove it would be life-threatening. They doubted I would make it. But if they did not operate – if they let the tumor grow and expand – I had no chance at all."
Looking down I see the watch. 'Not enough.' My father looks at me and I know that if he would have seen it, he wouldn't attribute it to not enough time, but that my brother wasn't good enough.
"No chance at all," I repeat. "And so the sick thing, the growth, had to be excised. It had to be lifted away from the clean tissue. Otherwise, it would only spread, turning the remaining healthy tissue sick."
My eyes lock on Marcy and she grabs the papers in her hand. Looking over to my father, I can tell that he is not pleased, that I have gone off topic and off subject. To him, this means nothing, my past, and almost dying, he would consider a test of character, and right now I am failing because I am complaining of it. I look down and catch the paragraph on the operations.
"The first operation was a success, and for a while, the seizures stopped. Then when I was twelve, they returned. The cancer was back, this time pressing at the base of my brain stem."
That was when Ben died. The memory still fresh, the nightmares still echo, him yelling for me to help him. My hands tighten on the podium, wishing I could just be honest with them. Tell them how the disease has taken everything from me, my happiness, destroyed my family, and has left me to wade through this life alone.
"I've had three operations since the first one. They have removed the tumor four times, and three times it has regrown, as sicknesses will, unless they are removed swiftly and completely."
Three times, the doctors were too scared to take it all out, saying that I might become brain dead if they mistakenly remove an area that is not cancerous.
"I have now been cancer free for two years," I say focusing on the free part of the statement. The crowd all begin to applaud loudly. I put up my hand in thanks and to quiet them down.
The cure would be the only thing that can give me the freedom that I seek. It is the only way to be completely safe.
"The doctors have told me that further surgeries may endanger my life. Too much tissue have been removed, too many excisions performed," I say. "If I am cured, I might lose the ability to speak, to see, to move. It is possible that my brain will shut down entirely."
I focus in on the girl in the back row. It is to her that I am now speaking to. In my mind we are still in the coffee shop and she is still not convinced.
"They have refused to cure me for this reason. For more than a year we have been fighting for a procedure date, and finally we have arranged one. On March twenty-third, the day of our rally, I will be cured."
They begin to applaud, but I continue with my plea now to everyone in the crowd.
"It will be a historic day, even though it may prove to be my last. Don't think I don't understand the risks, because I do. But there is no choice, just as there wasn't when I was nine. We must excise the sickness. We must cut it out, no matter what the risks. Otherwise it will only grow. It will spread like the very worst cancer and put all of us – every single person born into this vast and wonderful country – at risk. So I say to you: We will – we must – cut away the sickness, wherever it is. Thank you."