The Good Reaper (5 page)

Ranjisi don’t fear death. We don’t believe in an afterlife
or reincarnation. Our basic and simple belief is that if we have lived an
honorable and passionate life and we have left our footprint among the living,
death is nothing more than a final resting place. Those of us who have lived an
unselfish life of philanthropy and service to others will be completely
comfortable passing on with Tseen Ke. We don’t worship a creator of all things
although we do believe in the possibility that such a creator may exist. No one
knows for sure since no one ever returns from death. All things are possible.

Over the years, researchers figured out how to perform Tseen
Ke without the drugs. Tseen Ke can be performed using several long needles
which are inserted into precise points on the body. This method takes
considerable skill and only Ranjisi with specific clearance are permitted to
learn this technique. All CIPE recruits are taught the Tseen Ke puncture
procedure. It was thought that if for some reason our identity was exposed
while on assignment, we could end our own life. I knew there was a bit of
dishonesty and denial with this. Although we were taught how to perform Tseen
Ke with puncture needles, we had no idea how or where to obtain the needles.
Also, self-administered Tseen Ke is not mandatory and it is intended to be left
up to the recruit. At the time I arrived on planet Earth, to my knowledge, no
Ranjisi had ever performed the self-administered Tseen Ke puncture procedure.

 By the time Frank and I finally finished our
discussions I felt completely overwhelmed. It really hit me that each CIPE
recruit was responsible for not only the success of the program but also for
concealing our identity. One thing I knew for sure was that I did not want to
be the one responsible for accidently revealing our true identity. Before
leaving, Frank gave me a cellphone with all the emergency contact information
and said goodbye. I immediately felt alone and somewhat scared. It was the same
feeling I had when I said goodbye to Alexis at the airport. It was the
loneliest feeling I had ever had. I hoped that I would feel better when I began
interacting with people at the hospital. 

There was plenty of food in the kitchen so I decided I
wouldn’t go anywhere until the following day. Saturday morning I took my first
walk out in public. The area I was living in was known as Queens. It was a good
location. I could walk to the food store. I didn’t really need any food but I
went in and looked around the store anyway. Although I had studied human foods,
I didn’t see anything I recognized from the pictures or videos. I got a knot in
my stomach as I realized I wouldn’t even know what to buy. Even if I read the information
on the packaging, I still wouldn’t know what most of the items were. I let out
a loud sigh of relief when I approached the section with fresh fruits and
vegetables. I knew what they were. A woman standing near me heard me sigh and
smiled at me. “The oranges are so expensive and they have no flavor,” the woman
said. I was still having difficulty with human age. The woman looked like she
would be around my age if she lived on Ranjisan and she had a punkish look
about her. Her black hair was short on one side and long on the other and her
bangs were cut short right up to the top of her head. The back of her head had
white streaks of hair underneath the layer of black. But it was the rings on
her eyebrows that made her look rebellious.

I suddenly realized that I had been staring at her and she
was probably uncomfortable. I immediately thought of a common saying, “A deer
in the headlights.” That’s what I probably looked like as I stumbled to say
something. “Is there a substitution for the orange?” I asked.

The woman looked at me with an odd half-smile and I realized
my response was probably too formal or too clinical or something. “Try the
honeybells. They’re a few cents more and they are delicious with hardly any
seeds.”

“Thank you mam,” I said as I reached for a honeybell.

“Mam?”
I heard the woman mumble as
she turned and walked the opposite direction.  She sounded angry and I
wondered what I did or said that was wrong. I was disappointed that the woman
didn’t seem to want to stay and talk to me and I didn’t understand why so I
grabbed three honeybells and a soda and headed for the counter where people
were paying for things. I had no idea how much it would cost so I handed the
person behind the counter a fifty dollar bill. “Do you have anything smaller?”
he asked.

“How much is it?”

“Three dollars and sixty cents.”
I
handed him a five dollar bill. He gave me an odd look as he handed me the
change. I realized I needed to get a general idea of how much things cost. That
was enough excitement for me for one day. I walked back to my apartment, trying
to make eye contact with people. No one looked at me and I began to wonder if
my punk hairdo was making people avoid me but I knew I would figure it all out
eventually.

Sunday morning I made a test run to the hospital to see if I
understood Frank’s directions. I walked two blocks to the elevated subway and
watched people using the token machine for a while. I waited until no one was
around before using it. I tried to put money in and I thought I was reading the
instructions correctly but nothing seemed to work. I tried another token
machine but still nothing seemed to work. I was confused and I began to panic.
I was wondering if every simple thing I would have to do would be so
embarrassing and frustrating. I tried a few more times before I felt a light
tap on my shoulder. “You need help,” I heard a soft voice say from behind me.

It was time to speak up more confidently than I had done at
the grocery store. It was time to be one of them. My voice cracked a little and
my words seemed to die as they came out of my mouth. I wondered if it had
something to do with the gravity, or perhaps it was just my Ranjisi voice.
“What am I doing wrong?”

“Your bill is wrinkled. You’re obviously not from around
here.” The young woman stepped up beside me and took my five dollar bill. I
watched as she flattened out the bill and unfolded the corner. It slid right
into the machine and the tokens came out. “Don’t they have soda machines where
you’re from?” the woman said with a little laugh.

I laughed along with her thinking to myself, “No we surely
do not have soda machines on Ranjisan,” but what came out of my mouth was, “Oh,
I forgot about that.” Of course I knew it didn’t make sense but there was
nothing else I could think of. Apparently anyone and everyone on planet Earth
knew how to use a simple machine you put money into; everyone except me that
was. I thanked the woman and wondered if I should try and have a conversation
with her but I just stood there looking and feeling awkward. I had missed two
opportunities to try and have a conversation with a human.

When the subway pulled in and opened its doors, the young
woman hurried to a seat at the far end of the car. I wondered again if I should
go sit with her. She seemed friendly enough. But then I remembered reading that
people in large cities on Earth are sometimes unfriendly. On Ranjisan it would
be considered perfectly normal to sit with a stranger and begin a conversation.
I walked to the far end of the car and sat opposite from her. She looked up at
me and smiled. “Thanks again,” I said. “I’m Luke.” I expected her to say hello
and tell me her name but she just smiled again and looked back down at her
phone. I was thinking that she probably thought I was strange or that I was mentally
delayed in some way.

The subway ride to the city put things into perspective. I
assumed that people generally live out in Queens where I was living and they
worked in the city where all the big buildings were. When I reached the
terminal in the city, I had to look for the 1, 2, or 3 train headed downtown.
It was simple. I took the number 2 train eight stops to Franklin Street. When I
stepped out onto the street level, I could see the St. Elizabeth Medical Center
on the opposite side of the street. I was ready to begin my new life as a
human.

Monday morning I arrived at the hospital about an hour
early. I waited in the lobby until just before 9:00 and walked into the Human Resources
Department. I already knew from Frank that my HR contact was human. I spent a
half hour with Millie Walker, completing all the tedious paperwork. I realized
that Frank couldn’t tell me all the details of how the position was arranged
but I assumed that somewhere higher up in the hospital administration there was
someone from Ranjisan.

I spent the first two days shadowing an experienced
transportation person. Harry looked to be older than most of the patients he
pushed around the hospital. He was a short cheerful man who didn’t seem to mind
that he was missing almost all his teeth. The patients all seemed to know and
like him. He was friendly and outgoing and always seemed to be just familiar
enough with the patient’s health problems to have a light conversation. I
thought he was a good role model for the position.

Wednesday morning I began my real working life as a human.
Technically I already was living as a human but when I reported to the hospital
I would be having an impact on the lives of people I came in contact with. I
would be a part of the human world that was spinning by each day.

The first few days I didn’t do much and I had the feeling I
was being observed. It was ironic. The observer was being observed. When I
clocked in on the Monday morning of my second week, things were different. I
was told by my supervisor Connie that I would be given “ongoing” assignments
each week and random assignments as they came in.

My first ongoing assignment was for Mondays, Wednesdays and
Fridays. I would be transporting a patient to and from the cancer transfusion
wing. Marie was quiet and pleasant considering she had difficulty breathing and
felt sick almost all the time. Marie had been battling cancer in the lymph
nodes for about two years. She had just turned 84 years old. I attempted to
slowly make small talk with Marie but on the second week she just made hand
gestures to let me know she didn’t want to talk. I understood and just smiled
quietly as I pushed Marie to and from her appointments. Marie didn’t seem to
care about life enough to talk about it. It was a sad situation but I was
determined not to let it affect me too much. I transported Marie back and forth
to the transfusion wing for two months before she finally passed away. I felt
relieved that she was no longer in pain or discomfort.

Although I knew that all the pain and suffering that humans
endured near the end of life was unnecessary, I thought I was adjusting to it
and accepting it well. Coming from a culture where end of life comfort and
assistance was as common and normal as sleeping, I knew I had to strive not to
get too emotionally invested in each person I watched suffer and die. I handled
it well for the first few months. Again I wondered if I was being observed. It
wasn’t until my fourth month that I began getting assignments in the pediatric
and young adult sections of the hospital.

The first assignment that really began to eat away at me was
Eli Bartlett. Eli was a 21 year old diagnosed with a soft tissue cancer first
appearing in his legs and then spreading throughout his body. Eli seemed
fearless as he joked about his illness but I knew that he was drifting in and
out of pain each time I heard him unconsciously moaning. It was if a sudden
sharp pain was stabbing him somewhere. I suspected it was his legs. It was the
third time I brought Eli back to his room from the infusion wing that he showed
me pictures from before he got sick. He was playing the drums in a rock band.
He looked so completely different wearing a sleeveless shirt, with his tattooed
muscular arms holding his drum sticks straight up in the air. He looked happy
and invincible with his jet black shoulder length hair and bluish streaks
running through it.

Eli wasn’t that much younger than me. On my hospital
paperwork it said I was 28. The CIPE program had some kind of complicated
calculation to estimate our Earth age based on our Ranjisi age. On Ranjisi I
was 54. I guess we were lucky living on Ranjisan. Not only did we live longer
but due to the much lower gravitational pull, we appeared to age much more
slowly. On Earth, I looked to be around 28 years old.

Eli seemed to take a liking to me the first day I met him.
Although I didn’t have any tattoos or piercings, he must have sensed that I
liked punk and new alternative rock music. I had been listening to as much
music as I could since arriving on Earth so I was familiar with some of the
bands that Eli talked about. I spent a little extra time hanging out with Eli
after each treatment. Considering I was from a planet in a faraway solar
system, I thought it was cool that we always seemed to find things to talk
about. Talking to Eli made me feel like I belonged there.

In the evenings as I had time to think about it, I knew in
my heart that I was making a mistake becoming friendly with Eli. I knew I
shouldn’t become close to any of the patients that had terminal illnesses.

Eli had plenty of visitors. There were plenty of people who
loved and cared about him. He was never lonely so I knew the time I spent with
him was not about keeping him company. It was more about me. I was lonely and I
liked Eli. Sometimes when I wheeled him back to his room, his room was full of
his old friends and band mates. I often watched for a few minutes as they joked
around. Old friends are special, I thought. But new friends can sometimes be
special too. It seemed to be like that with me and Eli. There was some kind of
connection. I often had the feeling that he sensed that something was different
about me.

I had been transporting Eli for about three months when I
noticed he was going downhill. His illness was taking control and he was
deteriorating fast. If we were on Ranjisan, the doctors would have been
bringing Tseen Ke into the conversations with him. But we were on planet Earth,
living in a culture that had some kind of moral or religious objection to
ending life in comfort and dignity. Humans still believed that their creator
would be more willing to welcome them into the afterlife if they had suffered
in hideous pain before dying.

As the days and weeks went by, Eli seemed to be sleeping
more and more and moaning loudly in his sleep. When he was awake he rarely
joked around anymore and he frequently just slipped down low in his wheelchair
and moaned loudly. I wondered how much longer it would be. I wondered how much
longer he would have to suffer. I tried not to think about Tseen Ke but when I
went home at night it was almost all I could think about. 

One morning I arrived a little early to take him for his
treatment. That feeling I had about how I thought that he suspected something
was different about me was confirmed. “He Luke, what’s up with you?”

“Not much Eli.
Same old thing.”

“No, I mean, what’s really up with you? You never talk about
your family. Do you have a girlfriend, or is it a boyfriend? Does your family
live here in New York? There is some deep, dark secret you are keeping.” Eli
paused a moment and continued, “You know, I’m the perfect person to talk to, if
you know what I mean.” It was the first time I saw Eli smile like that in
weeks.

I was stunned and frozen. I felt like a rabbit in the
headlights. Eli just sat there staring at me while I stood there on the verge
of panic. I decided I could make a joke out of it. “I wish I could tell you
Eli. I could tell you, but then I would have to kill you.” I said it with a
straight face. We just stared at each other for a long moment. Eli laughed
first. It started as a slight giggle and grew into an uncontrolled roaring
laughter. I followed along with him and began laughing until Eli began coughing
and having trouble catching his breath. Eventually he relaxed and began
breathing normally. Again we stopped and stared at each other. It was then that
Eli knew. He knew he was right. We were joking but we were serious. There
was
something different about me.

“In the end,” Eli said slowly and softly before pausing for
a long moment. “You should tell me. It will do you good. I am sure of that.”

“You are a wise man Eli. But more than that, you are a
friend.”

Eli seemed to be having a revelation. He seemed to
understand that whatever was different about me was something extraordinary.
“Yes, we are friends Luke,” Eli said as tears filled his eyes. “In fact,
although I haven’t known you very long and we don’t actually spend much time
together, you are in many ways, closer to me than people I’ve known for most of
my life. Why is that?”

I sat quietly thinking for a few long moments. “I know what
you feel,” I said. “I feel it too.” Eli didn’t know it but I was thinking about
the differences between humans and Ranjisi. Ranjisi don’t often cry, but we do
feel things. Ranjisi have a highly developed sense of awareness. We often tune
into the feelings and emotions of others. I didn’t think it would be possible
to feel what a human was feeling but the feelings were actually more intense
than with other Ranjisi. I wondered if it was because humans were more
emotional than Ranjisi.

“If you truly know what I feel, than you know my big
secret,” Eli said.

“Of course I do. I don’t think it’s a secret to anyone who
cares about you.” I paused for another awkward moment. “I wish that it was a
choice. I wish that I could make is so.” It was all too overwhelming for me. I
just flopped down in the chair and put my head between my knees. The feeling of
despair was so intense I felt as if I couldn’t move. Here was a friend
suffering. I could help him. I knew exactly what to do. I could give him his
wish and help him to pass on in comfort and with dignity, and yet I could not.
I was bound by commitment to the CIPE oath. Eli reached for my hand and I took
it in mine. I wished the tears could flow like a human. I wondered if it would
give me a feeling of relief. But there were no tears, just a devastating
feeling of helplessness.

When Eli’s parents and younger sister walked into the room,
I was holding his hand with my face still between my knees and Eli was sobbing.
Eli’s parents looked a little startled. Eli wiped his face and looked up at his
parents. “Luke and I have become friends. If things were different, maybe we
could start a band,” Eli said.

I forced myself to stand up and say goodbye. “I’ll see you
Wednesday Eli,” I said as I smiled at Eli’s parents and left the room.

That night I didn’t sleep at all. Ranjisi are not too
different than humans. We need as much sleep as any race I was familiar with. I
assumed that all higher life forms needed sleep to survive, but I went to work
the next day with no sleep at all. My supervisor Connie said I looked terrible
and she asked me if I was out partying all night. Connie was born and raised in
New York City. She lived right downtown and never learned to drive a car. She
was pleasant enough although she never talked about anything too personal. I
guessed that she wanted to maintain some distance between herself and other
hospital staff.

“Some nights I just have trouble sleeping,” I said. “I
really don’t party or drink. I mostly just read or listen to music.” Connie
gave me a half-hearted smile and handed me three assignments. By the time I
finished them, she had six more so I stayed busy all day. That night I figured
since I was so exhausted, I would be able to sleep but sleep just wouldn’t
come.

In the morning I went to the shower, bleary eyed with one
burning thought: I wanted to end Eli’s suffering. I thought about contacting
Frank and asking for some kind of special permission to break protocol. I
decided against it but I wasn’t sure why. I wondered if somewhere deep in my
subconscious I was actually thinking of performing Tseen Ke on Eli. If it did
come to that, it would be wiser not to let anyone know I had been agonizing
over the CIPE golden rule: Do NOT interfere with human life.

Two weeks later Eli stopped going for treatments. He was
getting ready to be released from the hospital. I stopped by his room early to
say goodbye. Eli hugged me from his wheelchair and handed me his address. “If
you feel up to it,” Eli said, “Stop by. We can rock out until it’s time.” I
felt sad hearing Eli’s words but it was much less awkward for me since I had
said final goodbyes to several people on Ranjisan. When my grandfather was in
the last two days of Tseen Ke I slept in the room with him. Although I can’t
say it was a fun experience it was nothing like the devastating death
experience on Earth. At least in Eli’s case he could spend his last days at
home with his family. Medical treatment was reduced to just making the patient
as comfortable as possible.

Sunday morning I decided to visit Eli one last time. His
mother came to the door with tears in her eyes. “Eli just went back to the hospital.
We’re leaving in a few minutes.” She didn’t need to say anymore. I was thinking
that either he is in unbearable pain or they are intending to keep him on life
support until he passes. When I walked into his room at the hospital, I quickly
realized it was both. He was obviously in a great deal of pain or discomfort
and he was connected to several life support machines.

“I’ve had enough,” I screamed silently in my mind while
Eli’s family huddled around his bedside. I decided I would do it. If I could
find the right kind of Tseen Ke needles and I had enough time alone with him, I
would do the right and honorable thing. I would end Eli’s life.