Eleven Years of Hope

When the doctors asked him if he wanted to hop into a frying pan, Alexander of Severe Level III, long acquainted with doctor tongue, knew they meant they wanted to trial a new drug or a new treatment. Alexander said okay because he was tired of being shut up all day in the institution, and wanted to travel to the testing lab. More importantly, he had lost a central piece of himself to shrapnel when he stepped on a landmine eleven years earlier, and continued to perplex what was left of his cerebral cortex with the hope of its recovery.

The doctors assured Alexander that the new treatment, which had to be administered far from the city to avoid electrical effects, had worked well on animal subjects, and if Alexander of Severe Level III would scrawl his agreement on the bottom of a standard form, he could find his way home again.

Home seemed a dream, but a pleasant one.

Once, when he was a small child at the county fair, Alexander, then of Innocence, had far wandered from the hand of his mother who was busy with cotton candy or ice cream. He had been blinded by the midway bulbs, deafened by the shouts of shills, and had begged a tall cowboy for help. Home at that time was not only a pleasant dream, but the possibility of its loss a nightmare.

Now, absent an essential piece of himself, and with the prospect of finding it again without the need to return to the war jungle of snakes and booby traps, Alexander scrawled his agreement, and climbed into an institution van with a doctor, and a driver who somehow resembled a beautiful cow. They both wore important badges and faces.

Alexander watched the bridges and buildings pass as the van moved through traffic toward the point where the natural earth escaped the clutches of the city. He hadn’t been outside the institution in eleven years and stared at the apartment towers with their multitude of windows and balconies. Some of the balconies held human figures aloft.

Why don’t they jump? he asked the doctor.

They aren’t missing a piece of themselves, replied the doctor.

That made good sense to Alexander of Severe Level III. He knew something in his head had blown into the treetops all those years ago when he walked point in the jungle with his brothers, but he wasn’t sure what it had been. He might have been a painter before the war, or maybe a carpenter. The only thing he knew with some certainty was a faith that tickled his blood. Somewhere lived a god that smiled.

Once outside the city, but still a long distance from the testing lab, they left the main highway, and drove past fields of corn and wheat.

Cultivation is the most vital labor, said Alexander. It was something he had read long ago. He wasn’t sure it was true, but it did make a certain sense.

Yes, said the doctor.

But why is that? asked Alexander.

Well, we all have to eat, I suppose.

Alexander of Severe Level III sat back in his seat, satisfied with the answer, and chewed a memory that had ripened into an edible fruit of a time in the war before the landmine blew him into the institution. He had stood around a fire with three or four other soldiers and tossed live shells one by one into the flames. The idea was not to flinch when they exploded, and with any luck, not to get bullet pierced. One guy did receive a hit that fractured his jaw, and through the wonder of medical evacuation and the benediction of medical discharge, returned home where the only institutions he had to suffer were those of reconstruction surgery, family life, and a dull factory job.

Those were the lucky ones, thought Alexander, as the institution van climbed into the mountains above the husbandry. Some never came back at all.

Some came back without a leg, without a functioning set of organs, or worse, without a memory of who they had been, or why they had thought it necessary to offer their youth when the government called.

If he had to guess, Alexander would say that, at the time, he had volunteered to protect his way of life, but since he had lost whatever that way of life had been, he couldn’t say for sure it was worth protecting.

The doctor reached over and poked Alexander’s arm.

We’re almost there, he said.

Alexander of Severe Level III nodded, and shifted in his seat. He was ready to find what he had lost.

They came to a gate with a sentry station, and after the ritual of identification, entered the grounds of the testing facility. It sat on a gently sloped hill, and had the look of a former ranch. Alexander thought he heard an animal.

Do you have cows? he asked. The long afternoon shadows could hide most things.

It’s just the wind, said the doctor. We’ll start in the morning.

The next day, the doctor came for Alexander early. After a light breakfast, they walked outside and sat on a bench. The sun birthed a blue day.

I wasn’t honest with you, said the doctor.

When?

At the institution, when I said the animal tests worked well.

What happened?

Some of them died.

The sun feels good, said Alexander.

Do you understand?

Not really.

You could die here, Alexander.

Why then?

I want to help you, son.

Alexander of Severe Level III nodded. That too made good sense. And he imagined it made his god smile. The way things were, he wasn’t living. Not as living should be, anyway. In the morning at the institution, they unlocked his door. In the evening, they locked it again. The food was predictable. Until yesterday, he hadn’t seen a real tree for eleven years.

That’s okay, Doc, said Alexander. Maybe I’ll find my missing piece.

The doctor stood. Let’s get started then, he said.

They walked toward the testing lab. Alexander raised his face to the sky. It hosted a few cumulus clouds, like pillowed kingdoms from a softer time. A hawk circled.