As You Wish

As You Wish

 

MONDAY

“Please, Alex.” She holds the spoon, her hand trembling slightly.

He shakes his head, his eyes staring hard into hers.

“Just a little, Alex. Please.” The head shake again, more emphatic this time. But if he doesn’t eat now he’ll want to eat in an hour, or maybe less, and that will mean he’ll be late going for his sleep, and then the afternoon will seep into the evening, and the evening into the night, and there will be another day gone, another day when she went nowhere and saw no-one and simply disappeared into the gaping maw of his needs.

 

TUESDAY

She sits in the consulting room. The doctor gives her a friendly smile across the desk.

“There’s nothing I can do, Miss Field. I did explain, right at the beginning, that the contract is binding for the life of your invalid. You signed the papers.”

“I didn’t know,” she says.

He says, “You were given all the information.”

“But I didn’t understand." She looks at her fingers, pressed against the sharp clasp of her handbag.

“I’m sorry,” says the doctor gently.

“Sometimes,” she says, looking up at him, “I think I’ll just make a wish.”

His eyes are full of compassion. “What would you wish for?”

She polishes the clasp with her fingertip. “A new world. A brand new start, for everyone.”

“Yes,” he says. “I think we’d all wish for that.”

She looks back up at him. “But I mustn’t, must I, Doctor? I’m not allowed to wish.”

He frowns. “Miss Field…”

She gets to her feet. “I will try not to,” she says. “I will try, not to wish.”

 

The memory of her despair remains with the doctor all that day. How terrible, he thinks, to have lost all hope, to feel that one could not even wish to make it better. Her parting words continue to disturb him, and he wakes that night flushed and trembling from a nightmare whose details have vanished but whose feeling still haunts him.

 

WEDNESDAY

They live in one of the small brick bungalows by the lake. The bungalows are all the same: main room, a kitchen, his bedroom and attached bathroom, her bedroom and bathroom. And the Office, with the double locks and the alarm button.

On good days she wheels his chair to the window so he can look across the lake to the distant hills. She always chooses to sit with him, the box strapped to her wrist. That way she can pick up the first alteration in the box’s gentle vibration and press the control button before his change properly starts. She prefers to anticipate and avert a crisis. And the box is just a machine. She’s not sure she trusts it, or the restraints that pin him to his chair, that much.

Today is not a good day. Today he is in his bedroom, under total restraint, and she is secured in the Office, trying hard not to wish.

That night the doctor is woken by the sound of his own shout. He stares around his darkened room, bewildered, and then suddenly his mind clears.

“Oh,” he whispers. “No. Surely not. Surely it can’t be that.”

He makes a phone call, but the recorded voice at the other end tells him it is out of hours and he will have to call again in the morning.

 

THURSDAY

Today is a better day and so today she will give him a shower. She says, “Shower day, Alex,” and wheels him to his bathroom. The hard eyes watch her as she manoeuvres the shower hoist into place, but he is quiet as the hoist lifts him from his chair and lowers him into the bath. She turns the shower on. The water is impregnated with cleansers, and the sponges in the hoist activate to clean him gently and thoroughly. He closes his eyes as the water cascades over him. She leaves the bathroom. There are few sensual experiences in his life now, and she cannot bear the animal hunger on his face at this one.

 

In the judge’s office, the doctor wonders if he is about to make a fool of himself over a nightmare.

The judge looks at the papers on his desk. “So what’s the problem with Miss Field?”

The doctor says, “She doesn’t want to continue.”

“She was given all the information?” asks the judge.

The doctor nods. “Yes. Everything signed and logged. She’s got no legal case. But there are issues.”

“There are always issues,” the judge says, “and there is always a point when the family don’t want to continue. We can’t give in every time someone doesn’t want to continue.” He looks again at the papers. “She’s the aunt, I see.”

The doctor nods. “Both his parents died before the War.” He exhales. “At least they never had to see what happened to him.”

The judge purses his lips. “Non-parents tend to find it harder. I’ll put this case in for review, but I very much doubt the Board will do anything.”

“She told me,” says the doctor, hesitantly, “that sometimes she just wants to make a wish.”

“What?” says the judge, looking up.

The doctor's eyes are uncertain. “She said sometimes she thinks she’ll just make a wish and then she said, she wasn’t allowed to wish. And she’d try…she’d try not to…” his voice fades.

The judge roars, “God damn it, man, why didn’t you say?”

“I thought she might just be…I mean it’s natural to want things to be different, we all want that…” his face crumples. “I’ve never come across one of them before. There was nothing in her background checks. I mean, we’d know, wouldn’t we, if she was one of the War Affected. If she could wish…” his voice dies again.

The judge says coldly, “You have more faith in our record keeping than I do. We’d better get out to the lake.” Rising from his chair he adds, “I don’t suppose she said what she would wish for?”

 

The shower turns off automatically, and the dryer comes on. She waits until she hears it go off, then returns to the bathroom and says, “There, lovely and clean.” Back in the bedroom she dresses him in freshly laundered clothes. Some of the restraints have to be loosened while she manoeuvres and wriggles him into underwear, trousers and tunic, and she avoids looking at his face as she does it. She hates the thought that her touch might be another of those few sensual experiences.

She wheels him into the main room, says “Lunch now” and places his chair by the dining table. She goes into the kitchen to fetch his bowl, with the soft food already prepared, and then feels, insistent against her wrist, the suddenly sharpened pulse of the box.

The change will be well underway by the time she gets back into the main room, and she cannot bear the thought of that face.

She closes her eyes.

“I wish,” she says deliberately, under her breath. “I wish.”

 

The judge stands on the pebbled shore of the lake. “Shit”. He looks at the brick bungalows, shimmering in the air, fading in and out of sight. “Goddamn shit.”

The doctor whispers, “Can we stop it?”

The judge says, “Only if we find her and kill her. Removing the source is the only way to stop a wish.”

The doctor whispers again. “How far will it spread?”

The judge shakes his head. “Depends on precisely what she wished for. Perhaps she just wanted her invalid to disappear.” He looks at the scattered empty spaces where bungalows once stood. “But I’d say she wanted considerably more than that.”

“It’s my fault,” the doctor says. “I should have done something sooner.”

“Yes,” says the judge. “But not only yours. Whoever did her background checks. Whoever didn’t pick up any of the signs. Whoever started the damn war, and the damn experiments, and the whole damn mess. Whoever stood by and let them do it.”

The doctor is silent

The judge’s body shakes with a deep sigh. “The ones who can wish are supposed to be contained too. Drugged out of their minds so they can’t think, never mind wish. And then one slips through the net.” His voice falters. “Ever since the war we’ve seen the invalids as the main problem because there’s so many of them, and what they can do, when they change, is so terrible. But the ones who can wish…” he shakes his head.

“She said she wanted a new world,” murmurs the doctor. He looks towards the hills, as their outlines dim and blur in the distance.

“Yes.” The judge glances towards the water.

Across the lake, the hills flicker out.

 

If you would like to hear a reading of this story, it's on Soundcloud here: Stream episode As You Wish by Jane Ayrie podcast | Listen online for free on SoundCloud

Cover Photo by Bill Nicholls, free to use at Wikimedia Commons: File:Mist on long lake - geograph.org.uk - 979724.jpg - Wikimedia Commons