“Latrese Oliver.”
The man nodded. “Okay, let her in.”
Dr. Durgin pressed the microphone button. “Releasing the door lock. Let her in.”
She pressed another button. An audibleclick!popped from the speakers, and a red light above the control board blinked to life.
Through the observation glass, they watched the door swing open, and Stella Nettleton stepped inside. Thirty seconds later, the event repeated on the video monitors.
Dr. Durgin saw the man’s eyes bouncing from the window to the monitor at his left. “Because of the delay, it’s easier to observe on the monitor and ignore the realtime events at the window.”
The man nodded, his gaze returning to the monitor.
Through the glass, Dr. Durgin saw the guard close the door behind Stella. The red light above the control board went off. Durgin raised the remote. “I’m releasing the lock on the mask.”
Thirty seconds later, the man from corporate watched Subject “D” put his hands to the mask and remove it from his face. He smiled up at Subject “S.”
The man from corporate couldn’t take his eyes off the girl. She certainly was beautiful.
—Charter Observation Team – 309
1
Auntie Jo died on Wednesday at two thirty-seven in the afternoon, the last week of April, 1993. It had been three months since she left the apartment. I used the last of my cash to buy a hospital bed and pay a moving company to haul it up through our building, get it through our door, and set it up at Auntie Jo’s favorite window in the living room, her chair pushed off to the side to make room.
The woman who took her last breath on that Wednesday was no longer my aunt but a shell of the woman I remembered. The medication and treatment took her hair long before. On any given day, she either wouldn’t eat or couldn’t eat, and the weight melted away until there was nothing left. Her eyes sunk deep into her head, and her lips thinned to a tiny, chapped line on her face. When she opened her mouth to try to speak, nothing came out but stale air, as if she died from the inside out, spoiled somewhere deep.
On that Wednesday, at two thirty-seven in the afternoon, the spring sky was blue, and a handful of white puffy clouds rolled through the heavens. The temperature was seventy-three degrees, and the people moving about their day on the sidewalk below had no idea what was happening in our small apartment on the third floor. I remember thinking that and hating all of them as I sat on the edge of the coffee table beside Auntie Jo in her bed, looking out her window at everyone below. Some laughing, others deep in thought, all moving about briskly toward some destination, toward some event, toward some happening that had nothing to do with cancer or death.
Auntie Jo’s hand was limp in mine, small and so frail. If not for the occasional twitch as she slept, there was nothing to signify life. No warmth or movement, no pressure or relaxing of grip. I doubted she knew I was there at all, holding her hand.
I didn’t want her to wake. She appeared peaceful in sleep, content. Every few hours when she did break from slumber it would begin with a tightness in the lines on her face, soft groans and moans, finally the fluttering open of her eyes. That was followed quickly by the disjointed feeling of wonder at where she was. Then the pain would come, always the pain. At the end, the pain filled her every waking moment as surely as the little bit of air she managed to drag down into her tired lungs.
Each time she began the inevitable rise from sleep, as the first of those grimaces twitched across her face, Danny Reams, the nurse provided by Pennsylvania Hospice, would set down the tattered paperback that had engrossed him since his arrival, open his black leather duffle bag, and prepare another syringe of morphine, carefully measuring out the draw from a tiny glass ampoule, tapping the needle to expunge any air that may have found its way in. When satisfied, he would set the needle aside on the coffee table and wait.
Always the same sequence—a groan from Auntie Jo in her sleep, the setting down of his book, the drawing of the needle, and wait. There would be a short period of lucidity in Auntie Jo’s eyes, a minute respite between the second she woke and the moment her pain realized she was awake and came rushing in. For that briefest of moments, my Auntie Jo was back—she spoke, she laughed, she even found cause to curse my father. And each time I saw her coming back from slumber, when those dry, sunken eyes of hers opened, I considered asking her about the dream, about the box. The selfishness of that thought sickened me, and I quickly forced it away, but it would come again the next time, as surely as her pain would come again.
Danny Reams would watch her closely, take her blood pressure, and make note of her vitals in a small logbook. Then he would wait for the pain to come. It never took long, a few minutes at most. He would swab her frail arm, take the needle from the table, and jab it into her flesh, forcing the drug into her blood.
Then there was sleep again.
Then there was peace.
Danny Reams went back to his book, and I went back to holding Auntie Jo’s hand.
On this Wednesday in the last week of April, 1993, at two-thirty in the afternoon, Auntie Jo groaned, Danny Reams reached for his needle, and he filled it from the ampoule of morphine. Only this time he didn’t fill it to the line just beyond his thumb, he filled it nearly to the last line of the needle, before setting it down on the edge of the coffee table and returning to his paperback without so much as a glance in my direction.
I stared at that needle. My eyes fixed on the liquid inside, on the air gathered at the tip, air he hadn’t expunged.
Auntie Jo woke, and this time the pain didn’t grant her that short respite. This time the pain came on with a vengeance, this time her hand did squeeze in mine with enough pressure to turn my fingers white, and this time I found myself crying. I tried my damnedest to hold those tears back, to project strength and resolute, to somehow tell Auntie Jo that everything was going to be all right, very soon.
Danny Reams marked his page, set down his book, and retrieved the needle. He took a moment to force out the air that had gathered near the tip before plunging the needle into Auntie Jo’s arm.
Her grip on my fingers loosened.
A breath escaped her lips.
She closed her eyes.
