After the Greatest Medicine

Love still emanated from his mother’s crafted eyes. Her young son appreciated the doctors’ performing the surgery to preserve them. It brought a sliver of normalcy back to his life.

Once as natural as a chicken’s eggs, the eyes now consisted of translucent alabaster and lapis lazuli stone perfectly cut and centered to form eye balls. They memorialized her beauty, commemorating the common expression she inherently wore. The gaze permanently etched on the eyes of her face made her impart a peaceful feeling as one might get when looking into ocean waters sometime right as about the sun is about to set.

Before the explosion that rocked the sewers, upset the power plant and imparted visual darkness to a deluge of witnesses, the boy and his mother would laugh when their cat would bring home a bird. It was comical to them how meticulously it would lay the prey at their feet.

The hairless cat now looked more like a child that walked agilely on all fours. When it did bring home a bird or a rat, which were also usually glabrous, it signaled breaking out of the fry pan and the government subsidized corn oil. The smidgen of protein the meat provided sometimes meant the difference in having the extra strength to get through a work shift. When the cat came home empty pawed, it made the days feel pass all the more lethargically.

On this day the boy would have to go meet with those he called the “mens”. They were human, however the only reason the boy would ever meet with such people is that they offered work. This is how he referred to them when he spoke at his mother. Since money was no longer being used as a viable form of currency, the mens compensated the workers with essential necessities, a type of bartering.

Working conditions got worse as the nuclear fallout crisis wore on. The boy would work for hours doing heavy labor for days at a time. There was little time for breaks or even sleep between shifts. He would then be sent home with enough food to feed his mother and himself for a week. While working, the boy made little conversation with the mens. Some were even his age but chose to have nothing to do with them. At the warehouse everyone was mens to him. The boy imagined to see tears when he’d tell his mom he had to go do a brief stint with the mens but in actuality she could only provide a feeble nod.

When the boy got to the warehouse, he noticed the unusual scene of a sedan, a station wagon and a police auto parked by the front entrance. Upon entering, a neatly dressed man asked the boy to sit down and politely told him that big changes were happening. Gradually joy filled the boy’s heart as he learned from men, not mens, comingling in front of him that the government had now become hell bent on restoring order and decency to the work place. The absence of his administrator put a smile on his face as perhaps his desire had come true that the man would be arrested or taken away.

Uniformed police were coming and going. The man at the desk was distributing large bags with enough food to last three weeks to workers who were being allowed to go home early and individually being told that things were getting back to normal. He said the market place would again soon be opening and that their money would regain its value.

The boy heard a familiar vociferation approach from the hallway leading up to the office. “You do what you’re supposed to do and things will be just fine this time. I’m not with law enforcement but I know a thing or two about justice!”. As the voice came closer, the figures appeared of a man with a suit and tie. It was his mom’s doctor accompanied by a constable.

The boy convulsed in his astonishment. He had thought that the doctor had been transferred to a distant medical facility. He knew the doctor was very active in the community and frequently worked with civil leaders and workers to keep things running smoothly. He was truly looked upon as a celebrity.

The boy did not know if the doctor still remembered him nonetheless he lunged to embrace him, his tears creating water marks on the doctor's tunic. The doctor recognized the boy and bent down share in the embrace.

The doctor told the nodding officer who the boy was. He then glanced back at the boy and confided that the government made him wear a tracking device and programmed it such that it would appear that he was far away. They did not want him to be able to communicate with patients he treated in their community.

The boy told the doctor that his mom was just ok but not able to move. The doctor explained as simply that he could that the Nuclear Protocol Commission mandated that he supplant alabaster eyes but this material had poison in it that debilitated patients over time.

They went outside and the boy got into the doctor's sedan. As they rode, he showed him a suitcase with hard plastic material shaped into what looked like golf balls. He explained that these would not seep and that would safely replace the alabaster. He asked the boy if he remembered when he told his mom that she would be better off just keeping her natural eyes in place even though they were discolored but she wouldn’t listen. He remembered.

Four flights of tenement stairs later the boy opened the door so his mom could again experience their long-lost friend. “Mom, mom…” he lamented as they drew closer. Hey eye sockets were empty and the sight threw the boy into an abyss of existential emptiness.

The emergency phone device which was in front of the mom was playing a recording over and over again. One glass eye was on her dining table and the other had fallen to the floor. She slowly turned toward them and in the recesses of her skull they could see the glisten of a golden heart shaped locket, one in each socket. The doctor shoved the boy aside. Reaching into the tunic pocket he obtained a common fabric ripper to procure the treasure.

An officer came out from behind and grabbed him by the arm. A lengthy trial verified the lockets to be wrought of 16 Kt gold. One of them held the micro key for entrance to the capital's municipal works and the other to the nuclear power plant located just outside the capital. The doctor proved his ineptitude in law enforcement and received sentence to learn volumes about justice.