“With all due respect, Dr. Bainbridge.” This time, one of the female nurses took Sharicka’s side. “She’s four years old. How much can she even know about influencing adults?”
Another of the nurses laughed. “Clearly, Calida, you don’t have any children. When my daughter was four, she had her father and grandparents wrapped around her little finger. There is nothing in the world more capable of manipulation than a preschool child.”
Bainbridge made a gesture that implied he had proven his case.
Susan had heard enough about Sharicka Anson. For now, she appreciated that she had not managed to run into the girl on her first day. Had she not become focused on Starling’s A-V malformation and Diesel’s syndrome, she might have gotten snared by Sharicka’s superficial charm. Instead, she had had the opportunity to watch the child in secret, which had allowed her to see things she otherwise would have missed. To know Sharicka was to watch her actions without preconceived notions or personal interaction.
Susan returned the conversation to its long-lost starting point. “If no one objects, I’d like to try assigning only female nurses to Monterey Zdrazil for a while. Presumably because of some issue with her father, she seems to respond better to women.”
Several of the nurses nodded silently. No one seemed to take umbrage, and one even added, “I’d noticed that myself.”
Susan continued. “And I’d like permission to take her off the unit.” It was an odd request. Usually, taking a child from the PIPU was a prerogative reserved for parents and guardians.
Bainbridge rested his buttocks against a desk. “Where do you plan to take her?”
“I’d like to commandeer one of those car-gurneys they use on the peds unit and take Monterey to visit the resident robot.”
Whispers suffused the group, but they all waited for Bainbridge’s response. The attending’s face bunched in confusion. “The resident robot? I thought they dismantled that thing.”
The idea rankled. “No, sir! What a horrible thought.”
Susan’s vehement answer drew curious looks, but Bainbridge took it in stride.
“I’m not saying they should. Just that I hadn’t heard ‘boo’ about it for years. People objected, they took it out of commission, and it disappeared.”
“He’s still working,” Susan announced, unable to use the gender-neutral pronoun on someone as obviously male and sentient as Nate. “And, since Monterey lost her father, I thought it might help for her to get to know a man who’s not mortal.” There was more to her plan, but she did not want to elaborate on it yet. She did not want to raise hopes until she felt more confident it would work.
Monk added his piece. “Far be it from me to question a doctor with your history of success, but doesn’t it seem a bit ironic to take a virtual robot and bring it to visit . . . well, a literal robot?”
Several of the nurses bobbed their heads in agreement.
Susan had anticipated people clambering all over her to learn about the robot in their midst, so Monk’s line of questioning took her by surprise. She answered lamely, “Why not? Nothing else has worked.”
Bainbridge hopped up onto the desk. “Why not, indeed? Make it happen.” He glanced at his Vox. “And as we seem to have wasted a perfectly good fifteen minutes, you’re excused to upstairs. I promised you to Goldman and Peters.”
“Thank you.” Susan glanced around but had nothing to gather. The researchers would have their own palm-prosses upstairs. Without another word, she headed out of the staffing room.
The procedure room in the research towers was a cold, sterile white. Rarely used, it appeared brand-new, the countertops clean and flawless, the steel taps and cupboard handles gleaming. Payton Flowers swayed on the sheeted table, watching Susan’s every move, his manner definitively odd. His parents and sister sat in plastic chairs along the wall. A towel was wrapped around Susan’s equipment, its bright orange color signifying its successful passage through the purifier.
Susan knew from his chart that Payton was thirty-five years old. His short blond hair lay neatly combed, his nails properly clipped, and his face freshly shaven. He wore a standard hospital gown, which brought to mind one of Kendall’s quips: “The only garb in the world that’s rated G in the front and X in the back.” Despite his cleanliness, the patient gave off an aura that set every nerve jangling. Susan could not explain it. She felt unsafe, hunted, as if the patient might leap from the table at any moment to chew out her throat. Payton Flowers seemed to radiate some sort of ions that told her, in no uncertain terms, to go away. Although she relished her part in the project, she wanted to be anywhere other than where she was.
Susan addressed Payton directly. “Good morning, Mr. Flowers. Do you know what brought you here today?”
Payton studied her like a snake examines prey. She almost expected his tongue to flick out, forked and testing. “I walked.” His speech emerged pressured, separated into strange bursts, oddly enunciated, and a bit slurred. “Ninety-three billion miles.”
Susan glanced at the parents, who squirmed. They, too, would have preferred being elsewhere.
“Oh.” Susan tried to sound interested rather than repulsed. “Where did you come from?”
Payton spat out, “Da sun!”
Because of his bizarre pronunciation, it took Susan a moment to make sense of the words. She suppressed the urge to correct his science; it seemed absurd to point out that the average distance from the Earth to the sun was only ninety-three million miles. “I see.” Susan could think of nothing more significant to say. Obviously, Payton Flowers was in no condition to give consent to anything. “Well, thank you for coming.” She turned her attention to the family. “I assume you have guardianship.”
The mother gave a weary nod. She looked elderly, frail, and tired. Her eyes sank darkly into her wrinkled face. “We do. I know it’s hard to tell now, but Payton was his high school valedictorian and a talented basketball player, too. He had an A average in prelaw when he decided he could fly off the roof of his dorm.”
“I’m so sorry,” Susan said. She could think of nothing else. She knew about schizophrenia, how it came out of nowhere, striking young adults with a madness most people could scarcely comprehend. “I wish I could have met him then.” She could imagine the call that had come from Payton’s college, the desperate rush to the hospital, the certainty that illegal drugs had played a role. The parents had probably fought a losing battle to jaded hospital staff far more accustomed to experimentation than a sudden break with reality. Then would have come the clean toxicology screen, the hallucinations, delusions, and a diagnosis that left the parents wondering why they had so fervently prayed against drugs. Rehab might work for those; schizophrenia was forever.
There followed years of promising medications, lost to ineffectiveness or intolerable side effects. Some schizophrenics preferred the disease to the medications, and forcing treatment on someone required a criminal history most schizophrenics did not have.
Mrs. Flowers seemed to read Susan’s mind. “We try to keep him on his meds, but he gets so miserable. Even when he’s on them, he’s not . . .”
“Normal,” Mr. Flowers inserted in a slow, raspy voice. He said nothing more, almost as if conserving syllables.
“Not himself,” Mrs. Flowers asserted.
Susan commiserated with a problem that existed for as long as effective treatment. “When they’re lucid, they notice only the side effects. It’s hard to remember the side effects are the price for lucidity.”
“Yes,” Mrs. Flowers said, and the sister nodded enthusiastically.