The Last Patients
By: Gabe Fonseca
“‘Mercy Virus’—a grimly ironic play on the technical name considering how mercilessly it had carved through the human population.”
“You know what I remember most about summertime?” Mrs. Dorothy Garrison asked the robot sitting beside her hospital bed.
CARA didn't look like a robot—at least not what most people thought of when they pictured robots. She could easily be mistaken for a human nurse in her early thirties. CARA had the kind of face that patients instinctively trusted: soft cheekbones, a gentle jawline, and lips that curved into expressions of concern or comfort. Her auburn hair was pulled back in a low ponytail that somehow never showed a single strand out of place. Her floral scrubs—soft pink roses against cream fabric—complemented her warm complexion. But her eyes gave her away. Those honey-colored irises were too flawless. Pupils that dilated with mechanical precision and tiny lens adjustments visible to anyone who looked closely enough. A glassy quality that reflected rather than absorbed the emotions of those around her.
“The strawberries,” Mrs. Garrison whispered, answering her own question. “My grandmother's farm and the smell of them cooking down into jam.” Her focus moved to something beyond the ceiling tiles, beyond the hospital walls. “Sweet and sharp at the same time, so thick you could almost see it in the air.”
The eighty-three-year-old woman had been reminiscing about old memories for days now, sometimes repeating the same stories. CARA had learned to listen with the kind of attention that only the sleepless could maintain, sitting vigil with mechanical devotion that never wavered, never tired, never looked away.
“She had this enormous copper pot,” Mrs. Garrison continued, her breathing interrupted by brief coughing spells that made CARA quietly increase the morphine flow. “My job was to stir the jam so it wouldn't stick. Round and round. The berries melting from solid little hearts into something you could spread on toast, each bite tasting like summer.”
Mrs. Garrison’s hand moved slightly on the blanket, as if she were stirring that long-ago pot. Something in the gesture moved CARA to extend her own hand—synthetic skin warm and impossibly real—to meet the woman's fingers.
As she held Mrs. Garrison’s hand, CARA’s gaze drifted to the window where the sun was setting across an empty parking lot. Another day ending in a world that had grown very quiet. Day 33 since the last new admission. Day 1,192 since the first case of what virologists called M1-RC but what everyone else had dubbed the “Mercy Virus”—a grimly ironic play on the technical name considering how mercilessly it had carved through the human population.