The Only Choice

Josh Lam sits in the waiting room and tries, painfully, to catch his breath. His knee bounces. He scrolls through his feed, blind to the headlines and posts. A number in the corner of the phone pulses: Four. Four. Four. When he’d arrived this morning, the nurse at reception had smiled tightly and swiped the number over to his cell. It had been one hundred forty-seven then.

The waiting room is nearly empty. It is more austere than Josh expected. No white lights or sliding doors, just a linoleum floor in need of waxing, plastic chairs, and stacks of magazines. An old television hangs in one corner. The sound is off, and the closed captioning seems to be slightly behind the action on-screen. Josh isn’t sure he could tell the difference between this room and his kids’ pediatrician’s office. There is a difference, though, a tension. Fortunately, the palpable anxiety in the room has drained with the steady decrease of the count and the crowd.

A man sits across from him. Behind the man sit two women, one middle-aged, one, Josh notes with a pang, a teenager. The older woman wears sunglasses. The younger wears a sickly pallor and hunches in a wheelchair. A bored-looking young woman swipes on her phone behind the glass of reception.

The man is wiry and tattooed from the pate of his shaved head down. His torn and stained tank top may have been white once. He holds a pristine fountain pen. The tip gleams like a dripping spear-point under the fluorescents. It scratches across the pages of a worn black notebook.

The man looks up. Josh tries to look away, but the man’s eyes catch him. Pale grey like water slithering down a storm drain. The man smiles. He has silver teeth.

“Who’s it for?” he asks.

“What?”

The man gestures vaguely with his pen. “I mean what are you doing here? Who you here for?”

“Oh. I have three children. Two boys and a girl.”

The man nods and absently touches a necklace dangling down his chest. It’s a locket, rose-gold, in the shape of a heart. “I have one. A daughter. Her name is Mila. Never made enough to get an exemption, myself—definitely not two—but I don’t mind it. One’s enough for me.” He looks Josh over, seems to come to a decision. “Name’s Val, you?”

“Joshua. Josh.”

“Good to meet you, Josh. What you got?”

“Cancer. Stage Four. Lungs. I work in the fallout zone. You?”

Val blows out a breath, shaking his head. “Sorry bud. Me? Nothing terrible here. Sometimes I get arthritis real bad in my wrists.” He flashes a grin.

Josh frowns. “I thought the waitlist was only open to terminal cases.”

“They opened it up a bit ago. Surprised you didn’t hear. They take prisoners too, now. Guess the streams are pulling in too much cash for them to resist. I’m what you might call a pilot case.”

“So, you’re—”

“Out on parole, you could say.” Val winks. Josh doesn’t know if he’s ever seen someone wink in real life. Josh coughs, his body spasming, the sound thick and wet.

A soothing feminine voice crackles from unseen speakers, filling the empty room. “Carolina Vasquez” it says. Then, again “Carolina Vasquez.” The girl in the corner looks up, then around at the few others left, as if only now seeing them. Val raises a hand in a gesture that’s half-wave, half-salute, and the girl—Carolina—fixes her eyes on him like he’s the only real thing left in the world for a desperate, clinging heartbeat. She straightens, clenches her jaw spasmodically, and wheels over to a wooden door which creaks faintly as it opens. Two orderlies wait beyond. She hesitates, then propels herself through the doorway. The orderlies turn to follow, and the door snicks shut. Josh notes the time. 5:07 pm. The number on the corner of his phone’s screen ticks down. Three.

Val gazes pensively after Carolina for a moment. He shakes his head, still looking at the closed door. “You ever watch them?”

Josh pauses a moment, catching as much breath as he can. “The streams? Try to avoid them mostly, but I’ve caught them once or twice.”

Val nods. “Me too. Seems like the folks outside have seen plenty, though.” Josh winces, thinking of the crowd of angry, pitying protestors he’d ducked his way through on the way in. Val goes on, seeming bemused. “I get it, I do, but it’s our choice, right? You got to do what you can.”

Josh shrugs. “I don’t know. Doesn’t feel like a choice. Feels like…” He pauses a moment, breathing shallowly. “Feels like when there’s only one choice left it isn’t a choice at all.”

Val turns and looks at him at him, washed-out eyes unreadable. He seems about to say something, but he doesn’t. Time moves. Josh’s mind drifts to his children: Samantha, Thomas, Raymond. To his wife, Lucille. He tries to remember the last time they went to a park, saw something beautiful together, something other than the insides of places like this. Not since treatment started. Park access became an extravagance they couldn’t afford. It’s hard to concentrate. His brain starves for air, slows his thoughts. He wishes there were more green in the world.

A shrill voice shatters the stillness, cuts through his reverie. The middle-aged woman’s face is pressed to the glass at reception—Josh did not see her get up—and she screams at the blank-faced young woman on the other side.

“I’ve been here all day and I’m still waiting. When is this going to be over? You need to let me in. Skip ahead. Open another room. Do something!”

The receptionist waits for the woman to finish before responding in clipped, precise tones. “I’m sorry ma’am, but there are only a limited number of spaces available at a given time. While we do expedite the process as much as we can, there are multiple variables that can extend the wait time. We apologize for any inconvenience.”

The woman stabs a finger against the glass. “You’re animals. Do you know that? You’re all animals. You’re disgusting.” She turns so quickly her sunglasses nearly fall off her face. She smashes them back into place and stalks over to sit down again. Josh can see a small smudge on the glass of reception where her nose pressed against it. The receptionist sees him looking. Josh shrugs. She rolls her eyes.

“Well,” Val murmurs, “we all got ways of coping.”

“I get it, I guess.”

“Yeah,” Val says, thoughtful, “Yeah, me too. Used to be a lot like that myself. Caught the journaling bug on the inside.” He wiggles the pen and the journal, both clutched in one hand now. “Less dramatic, but it does the trick for getting all that out. Hurts less people that way.”

Josh hears a story hiding behind those words, lets it pass. He checks the time. 5:13. He feels a little dizzy. Tries to breathe. Val seems to catch his mood.

“I was just thinking the same thing,” he says. “Carolina’s been in there a while now. That’s, what, a hundred k? More?”

“One hundred twenty thousand,” Josh responds, wheezing. “Twenty thousand dollars a minute.”

Val lets out a low whistle. “Hope that covers whoever she’s in there for. I’m going in for ten minutes. Got to. That’s what she needs: Mila. It was my fault. My family never would have gotten so far down the hole if I hadn’t—well, don’t matter now. I just have to stay in for ten.”

Josh just looks at him.

“Heather Fordyce,” the voice over the speakers announces.

The woman with the sunglasses is up before the speaker finishes her name. She rushes towards the door as it opens. The receptionist offers a cold smile which Heather doesn’t see as she breezes by the desk. The orderlies look at each other as she blows past, then scurry off in her wake. The number on Josh’s phone changes again. Val’s face twists in a humorless grin.

“Bet she stays in for twenty.”

He’s wrong. Less than two minutes later, the voice rings out again. “Blake Valentine.”

Val winces. “Hate when they call my full name. Always feels like I’m in trouble.” He sighs. “Doesn’t seem like there’s been enough time. Never does, I guess. Anyway. Good luck to you Josh. Glad to know you.” He nods once, places his journal and the strangely beautiful pen carefully down next to the pile of magazines on his right and stands, stretching. He turns, touches the locket again, and walks through the open door.

Josh ignores the small number blinking at him from his phone. One. One. One. The time is 5:16. The room is quiet. His labored breathing is the only sound, and it is loud. It is so loud. His gaze is drawn to Val’s journal. It feels wrong that it should be here. The man should have brought it with him. It will be taken out after the waiting room is empty with the rest of the trash, just more meaningless junk. Josh does not know why it bothers him so much.

The minutes stretch. He hopes Val makes it, gets what his family needs. He holds the same hope for himself. He didn’t tell Lucille about this. She thinks he’s staying late at work to make up for the time he was out sick. He tries not to think about how long he’ll need to stay in there with the terribly calm, professional man and his little case. Val has it easy, comparatively, at ten minutes. Josh will have to make it fourteen. Fourteen minutes at twenty thousand dollars a minute will be enough to pay back the bills for his hospital visits, his chemo. He would sob, but he doesn’t have the breath.

Josh checks his phone. 5:25. His heart skips a beat. Val’s almost made it. Josh stares at the screen, waiting for the number to change, for the confirmation that Val did what he came to. He holds what breath he has. Josh wills it to happen. Finally, it does, just after Josh hears his own name echoing through the nearly empty room.

Only nine minutes. Josh closes his eyes for a moment. He stands up slowly, walks in a daze towards the door.

Josh follows the orderlies, heart thundering, gagging on the suddenly thick air. They are quietly polite as they lead him down a long, white hallway past a seemingly infinite number of closed doors. They open the last door on the right, gesture him in. The room is empty save for the small teardrop bulb of a camera hanging from the center of the ceiling. It smells like bleach. Josh is ushered to the far end. The orderlies leave. Josh leans against the wall, gasping, head swimming.

He has seen the streams before, expects to see a man, well-dressed, with a briefcase. What’s in the little leather case varies, but the results, with few exceptions, do not. The man who steps through the door a few seconds later is bloody and staggering slightly instead. Josh frowns.

“Val?” he asks, incredulous. The other man looks at him, then raises his fists. There is metal gleaming dully on his knuckles. “Wait.” Josh says. “This isn’t how it’s done. I’ve seen the streams.”

“Pilot case” rasps Val. His silver teeth drip red. “Streams got to make their money.” Josh’s breath hisses out of him. He can’t seem to get it back. His vision stutters, dark at the edges.

“Wait,” Josh chokes out. “Wait.”

Val moves.

Less than a minute later, Lucille Lam receives an electronic transfer in the amount of twenty thousand dollars to her bank account. Thirteen seconds after, it is automatically deducted by the creditor who owns her husband’s debt. The streams that night experience a slight uptick in both viewership and ratings.