Machine Man - Max Barry [13]
NURSE KATIE bustled into my room. She seemed very happy. “Good news. You’re going home.”
I put down my phone. “What?”
“You’ve been cleared for discharge.”
“What?”
“Oh, you,” said Katie. “Would you like me to help you dress? Or do you want to do that yourself?”
“I don’t … why am I being discharged?”
“I guess because you’re ready.” Nurse Katie was happy. She had cheeks like apples.
“I don’t think I am ready.”
“Well,” said Katie, bending to retrieve a pajama top. “That is not the medical opinion.”
I didn’t understand how this had happened. No one had warned me. I hadn’t been consulted. It felt like an eviction.
“Your company has arranged a car. It’s out front. So let’s get moving! Did you want some help with your clothes?”
I looked around the room. I didn’t want to leave. Here was everything I needed. “Shouldn’t I talk with my doctors first?”
“Oh, I don’t think you need more doctors.” Nurse Katie flopped a hospital-issue bag onto the bed. “You need to get out there and start enjoying life again.”
“But …”
“It’s all taken care of,” she said. “Chop-chop.”
NURSE KATIE wheeled me out to the curb. This was slightly ridiculous because I was wearing the leg, but there were rules. A van was waiting, a white one, with a Better Future logo. I didn’t know why they had chosen a van until Katie helped me into the passenger seat and rolled the wheelchair around to the rear. The chair was coming with me.
“Good luck!” called Katie. She waved through the window.
“Where to?” asked the driver.
Back, I thought. But that was not an option. “Home, I guess,” I said.
I DECIDED to jerk myself off. I wasn’t horny. I had nothing else to do. I had been home a week and was sick of Netflix. I sat at my workstation and browsed some porn. I looked at a girl with red hair and lips and wondered what it would be like to talk to her. I dug myself out of my pajama pants. I was overcooked pasta. I thought: Kind of like a stump, and that was a terrible idea, horrible. I began to shrink. I wondered if I should search for amputee porn, by which I meant porn for amputees, then realized that was not what I would find. I searched anyway. I found a beautiful woman with one arm and another with no legs below the knee and I thought they were pretty hot and kind of inspiring but I did not want to masturbate to them. I remembered a study on male chimpanzees and how those on the lowest social rungs exhibited severely depressed sexual desire. I shut down the computer. I felt lonely.
I WOKE to a terrible cramp in my foot. Not the foot I had. The other one. I groped around in the dark, grimacing and clutching at empty sheets. I hauled myself upright and turned on the lamp and threw back the sheets. “See. Nothing there.” I was talking to my brain. “Nothing to hurt.” I leaned forward and pretended to massage the space where my toes would have been. As a scientist, I am not proud of this. But it seemed to help. I swallowed some pills and kept massaging. I was ahead of my prescriptions. But this was a temporary problem. Soon my brain would figure out it shouldn’t be feeling phantom pain, because I was a pretty smart guy.
I WAS on my sofa playing with my phone when it rang. I didn’t know what the hell it was doing. I was scrolling through an article and suddenly the whole screen changed and it made a noise I’d never heard before. I thought: Pop-up advertising? I saw: BLOCKED, DECLINE, ANSWER. I moved my thumb to the ANSWER button. It felt strange, as if I were attempting to microwave something in the TV. “Hello?”
“Dr. Neumann.” A woman. Not Lola. There was a lot of warmth in Dr. Neumann, like she enjoyed saying my name. It was a month for unfamiliar experiences. “It’s Cassandra Cautery. From the company. How are you?”
“Hello,” I said again. I was not good on the phone, obviously.
“I just wanted to reach out and see how things were.”
There was a pause, during which I realized this was a question. “Good.”
“Great!” Cassandra Cautery was quite hot, I remembered. I was talking to a hot woman right now. “I thought so. I’ve seen the