The Wooden Horse

Chapter Five

Alyssa Moran hated her job, lately. She was a Certified Nursing Assistant. For fifteen years now, Alyssa’s number one client was Greenbriar Nursing Home’s Mrs. Ann Taylor. She was a seventy six year old whose quality of life was almost nonexistent. She suffered from a condition known as pseudocoma, which left her body almost entirely paralyzed. The only muscles she’d used voluntarily in the past fifty years were the ones that controlled her eyes. Even with technology, there was only so much she could do with those. For everything else, there was Alyssa. Toileting, bathing, grooming, and turning and positioning, all of these things Mrs. Ann required Alyssa to do for her. It was grueling work. Alyssa monitored and maintained the machines that kept Ann breathing and fed. She spent long hours making sure Ann continued to live. She spoke to her, read to her, and was a friend to her. She even managed the equipment that allowed Ann to speak and write. The technology involved required a specially trained technician to maintain. Alyssa had trained for two years just for that purpose. Although the job was hard, that wasn’t why Alyssa hated her job. She her job because Ann was dying.

Fifty years is a long time to have Locked In Syndrome, which is another term for pseudocoma. Most people don’t live more than ten to twenty years with the illness. Mrs. Ann was an exception. She continued to astound doctors and specialists of all kinds over the years. She had survived long enough to take advantage of the myriad of technology that eventually allowed her to communicate with the world around her, despite her condition. Her gastronomy tube, trach tube and ventilator were all state of the art. The physical therapy she received daily helped keep her circulation active and muscles semi exercised. Her family spared no expense to provide her with every new scientific breakthrough for someone in her condition. Still, she lay there. Trapped in a coffin of living tissue. The only vestige of humanity she felt was when she was immersed in her Brain Computer Interface/Virtual Reality System. There she could use the most sophisticated technology in the world to speak, to write and even travel. The virtual world, prompted solely by pupil dilation and eye motion, was less than an ideal way to walk through life. It’s definitely better than life in a dormant shell. The past twenty years, Mrs. Ann had become the poster child for BCI/VRS and HiTechMed, the producers of the system. Until they had come along, Ann had only a primitive first generation spell and speak interface. Her three books she’d written, and published, brought her to the company’s attention. She took to the BCI/VRS like a genius prodigy to a new idea. She proved the prototype and set the bar for the product’s uses. People all over the world benefited, from others with LIS to video gamers. Therein lay the groundwork for a very lucrative partnership. That was now coming to an end with the waning health of Ann Taylor. Along with Alyssa Moran’s job.

Alyssa was in her third year of college when her mother died. She’d fought breast cancer for six years before it took her. Alyssa’s scholarship required a grade minimum which Alyssa didn’t meet on the last semester of her junior year. Goodbye scholarship. Hello loans and a full time job. Alyssa found work at Greenbriar Nursing Home, as a Hostess. She helped the Certified Nurses Aides by doing all kinds of menial jobs that didn’t require certification. Making up beds, passing fluids for hydration, helping the activity staff with decorating and many, many other tasks. Greenbriar paid CNA’s three dollars more an hour, and they had their own training program. Within five months of taking the Hostess job, Alyssa became a CNA and started a path into a world she never imagined she would be a part of. Another five years later, she graduated from college with a Master’s Degree in Applied Technology. She was definitely the best educated CNA in Greenbriar’s history. She had every intention of going on to bigger, and better, things. Then Mrs. Ann came along. She was transferred to Greenbriar during her last graduate semester. Ann Taylor had special needs, and her family made it clear that she required the best of everything the facility had to offer. The best aide was Alyssa. Even with her college studies, she’d become an excellent CNA. She had an enormous heart for the work. She cared. She was intelligent. She spoke to her residents with respect and empathy. She did every job, no matter how gross or small, with as much attention to detail and with as much love, as though it were for her own mother. That made her a great CNA. When the family doctor researched her education and technical degree, he realized that she was the perfect aide for Ann. They offered her an opportunity that she couldn’t refuse. On top of a salary that an experienced RN would’ve been proud of, they offered her a benefits and retirement package above and beyond what the nursing home provided. Plus, they would pay off ALL her student loans. All for a contract that called for her being Mrs. Ann’s exclusive aide, until such time that she expired. At the time, Ann was sixty one years old and had been an LIS survivor for thirty five years. Ann was in poor health, and had several close calls with death during the last few weeks of Alyssa’s graduate year. When she was contemplating the family’s offer, she did her research on LIS. At best, she figured Ann had, statistically speaking, very little time to live, at best. A great salary, benefits, and debt free on day one of her first post-graduate job was too good to pass up. She jumped at the opportunity, before they changed their mind. Now, fifteen years later, she was watching a woman she’d grown to love die, with the most intimate vantage point imaginable. It was liking losing her mother a second time. She deeply wished that she’d left the nursing home fifteen years ago, and taken a ground floor job as a lowly engineer at a tech company. She wished that she’d struggled to pay her loans, struggled to keep the lights on, and struggled to make ends meet, all while working her way up the ladder with determination and grit. Instead, here she was, watching another person die very slowly. It just didn’t seem worth the cost.

“What’s up, buttercup?” Walt took a drag from his Pall Mall.
The CNA sat on the bench next to Greenbriar’s front entrance, drinking a Dr.Pepper and enjoying the non-clinical air. Even if it included second hand smoke from cheap cigarettes.
“The sun and the moon, Walt. How you doin?”
“Don’t ‘how you doin’ me, nursey girl.” He smiled.
“I’m just taking my break, Walt. What’s up?” She smiled back.
They both shared a look. He knew she meant well when her “professional attitude” kicked in, but he wasn’t her “client” and didn’t want that kind of conversation.
“I’m just wondering how much longer you think you’re gonna keep doin this job? You shoulda been buildin robots a long time ago.” He took another long drag.
“I don’t know. Ann’s not been doing so great lately. I’m thinking it’s not going to be long now.”
Her sadness seeped in. She took a pull off the soft drink.
“She’s such a great person. She’s been a good friend. I’m really going to miss her.”
Walter snubbed out his smoke on the wall next to her, then flicked the butt towards the driveway.
“You’re a good gal, Ally. She’s been lucky to have you there beside her all these years.”
She looked at him with unconvinced eyes.
“I just wish that it made a difference, you know?” She looked up at a passing cloud and sighed.
“I know people die. I know it’s how life works. Why do things like LIS happen to folks like Ann, though? What ‘great purpose’ could there possibly be? She has a kind soul. She deserved a better life than just bad virtual reality simulations.” She took a last drink of her soda, and turned to look at the old man.
“You’re a good guy, Walt. I know you have your moments, but you’ve always been nice to me. You seem to care about what I say. You listen. You’re a good guy. I’ll miss you when I leave this place.”
Walt sat in his wheelchair, looking down at his feet. He folded his hands together in his lap.
“I preciate it Ally, but I ain’t all that good of a guy. I’ve been to prison. I’ve done things. Killed men. Maybe it was in the service of my country, but they’re still dead. I’ve hurt people, too. Sometimes I wonder the same thing you do. Why do bad things have to happen to good people? I’m an old man, and I still don’t know. It ain’t right. It’s how things are, though. Ain’t a damn thing you can do about it, cept try to make a difference in peoples lives. Just like what you do. You make a difference. Maybe it’s just to Ann, but hey, ain’t that somethin? There’s a sayin that goes kinda like “he who saves a single life, saves the entire world”. I think some Hebe said it.”
Alyssa’s eyebrows narrowed at him and she gave him a chastising glare.
“ Jewish guy, I mean.” His form of apology.
She smiled.
“How can you be such a wise old man, and an asshole in the same breath? Thanks, Walt.”
She leaned over to him, and gave him a light hug. Not a “bless your heart” hug, but a real one. Complete with a peck on the cheek. Her eyes watered a bit as she went inside. Must’ve been the sunlight.
Walt sat outside for a while, looking at the mums and begonias planted in the flower bed by the door. His weathered hands shook as he reached into his pocket. The box was still there. He took it out and covered it with both hands. He felt the edges in his palms as he looked at the flowers. The clouds rolled a little east and let the bright light of day cover him in it’s warmth. He looked up towards the sky and closed his eyes. One short, soft prayer he spoke, soundless to all but his own soul. He returned the box slowly to his pocket and headed for the door. His eyes were moistening as he went inside. Must’ve been the sunlight.