An unusual Sunday Brunch

The two young women had come as soon as the restaurant had opened up, and had dawdled around after their Mimosa and Eggs Benedict were long finished. The beignet’s were long gone, and they had almost licked their plates clean. But they were both here for a reason other than just brunch and they didn’t want to leave.

“Do you think that’s her?” Sally asked her sister.

“I don’t know” Denise replied. “She does look like the picture.” Denise said, looking at her tablet.

“Well that was taken a long time ago.” Sally said.

“Yes, but the name matches and so does the description. I think this is her.”

“Well, what do we do now?” Sally asked.

This was the real challenge. How do you approach someone about the stories your father had told you, and try to get the truth about your mother. Especially when it happened a long time ago.

When the owner wandered by their table, as she did every Sunday morning, Denise worked up her courage and asked her “Ms. My name is Denise Wright and this is my sister Sally. Do you have a few moments to talk with us?”

Seeing the woman’s face turn towards them with a slight frown, Denise continued “It isn’t anything bad. We just want to ask you about our Mom. Her name was Marjorie Wright. Did you know her?”

Slowly, the middle-aged blonde focused at a spot over the women’s heads for a moment. Then it came back with a sad smile and a hint of a tear. “Yes. I did. And I guess you have some questions. Why don’t you have another drink, and after our crowd thins out, we can sit and talk.”

“Really?” Sally asked. “We would really like that. We sent e-mail, but we didn’t get any response. I know this is a real imposition, but we wanted to talk with you. Your lawyer said that you weren’t talking about anything from that time, and to leave you alone. We didn’t know what to do, so we figured we would just come here.”

With a small smile the owner muttered quietly, almost to herself “You sure are your mother’s daughters.”

Gesturing toward a waitress, the owner signaled to have the Mimosa glasses and pastry plate refilled. “I’ll be back shortly. Need to let my partner know I will be a bit busy. Grace, why don’t you show these two to my table, and bring refills to them there?”

Smiling as she walked away, Christine Mitchell thought back to when she had met Marjorie Wright. And was very sad that she ever had.

Twenty years earlier

“Dorothy, isn’t there anything else besides this?” Marjorie asked her oncologist. “Pain management, Hospice, something? Continuing treatment is not how I want to live.”

“Marjorie, I am afraid you fall outside the parameters. Your cancer is listed as treatable, and you are too young to move to Hospice or Pain management. I admit the survival rates are pretty slim, and we have done three sessions of chemo, but the government statute still calls this as a treatable condition. I’m sorry.”

Marjorie had been through a fifth long and exhausting series of treatments and the stubborn cancer still would not go away. She was thirty six, a successful engineer with two lovely little girls and for the last three years had been wracked with pain and suffering. She was at the end of her rope and couldn’t go another round.

“Dorothy, is there anything you can think of that I can do?”

Sitting back in her chair, Dorothy looked around her office and at the open door. Carefully she stood up and walked over to the doorway and closed it, and walked around to her chair.

“Marjorie, here is the issue. Hospice is out of the picture, you are too young. Voluntary suicide is out of the question, even in Oregon today. The bills and expenses we ran up are off the chart. And life insurance won’t pay as long as there is any medically accepted treatment applicable to your condition. If you have an “accident” insurance will tie things up forever. I don’t have any legal recommendations.”

Thinking on her children and her husband and co wife, Marjorie realized the real pickle. She didn’t want to strap her family further. Financially, she was a burden that was fast draining everyone. The kids didn’t want to see another round of Chemo, and the sickness that went with it. And the medical community was focused on saving every person they could (for as long as the health insurance lasted).

“Don’t get too discouraged, Marjorie. We are making strides every day. There is no reason for you to get depressed. We can lick this.”

“You are not going through this. I am. And my family is. And this is killing everything that I really love in life. I am just tired.” Marjorie said sadly.

“Marjorie, I know what you feel. Not how, but what. And I have to tell you, I get pretty depressed myself. The damn selection act picked my best nurse last month after us working over a year to cure her uterine cancer.”

“Now that would suck.” Marjorie said.

“Yes. She is on a delay over at Findley’s right now, and they are using her as staff. A nurse of her caliber working in a slaughter-house. Can you imagine?” Dorothy said in disgust. “We get mail from her every now and then, and she runs their intake discussion sessions. She went through almost what you did and then after all of that she ended up being selected.”

“That does seem unfair.” Marjorie replied.

“What is the worst thing is that everything is up in the air until she is terminated. Estate, insurance, everything is on hold. Frozen in time.”

“What happens then?” Marjorie asked.

“Well, with any term, insurance has to pay up. There are no exemptions due to the PCA. And I guess they do things differently there. I talk to Cathy almost every night and she seems to be doing pretty good, mentally”.

Marjorie suddenly looked at Dorothy with an understanding smile. Dorothy could not talk about any early termination options, due to the Federal Healthcare law. But she could talk about people who could.

Marjorie was scared but determined when she logged into her computer that night. A quick search and she found “Findley’s Processing” based in Chicago Illinois. Drinking a glass of wine and looking at the opening page, she felt a sense of control for the first time in years. Now to see what this is about.

“We had one last night that was a bit odd.” Cathy said to Candy at breakfast.

“Odd how?”

“She wanted to talk about voluntary termination. But was worried we would not find her acceptable. Cancer.” Cathy said in reply.

“Well, what do you think?” Candy said in response. “You have more knowledge than any of the rest of us in that arena.”

“I don’t know what the policy is.” Cathy replied. “After all, she isn’t asking for exception. She already is.”

“Well, talk with Carol about the legal angles, and we will fly it by David at dinner.” Candy replied. “But that isn’t what I asked you. What do you think?” Candy continued.

“I think her situation sucks. But I have to admit we treat people pretty good here. And we are a lot better than being hooked to a set of tubes hacking with the last breath. Should I set up an interview?” Cathy asked.

“Once we have David’s take. We have to get the economics fixed, but I will support it if you want. “ Candy followed up. “If she left you contact information, set up an interview, and we will see what we can do.” Candy said. “It will have to be special handling, but I am sure we can work that out.”

Tuesday afternoon

“Charles, I am just going over there to talk. Nothing today regardless.” Marjorie said.

“Honey, I don’t want you going over there. How do we know anything about those places?”

“Honey, we have been over all of this before. The bills and incidentals are driving us to poverty. I won’t have you and the girls destitute. Besides, I am just going there to talk with their legal counsel. I won’t sign anything. This is probably a dead end anyway.” Marjorie said.

Looking at the shock on her husband’s face, she laughed. “Honey, I am just going over there to talk. I will be home. I promise.”

Arriving at 4:30 in the afternoon, Marjorie was surprised that there was almost no one in the reception area. The large open room with scattered tables and chairs could easily be mistaken for a restaurant. “I guess I seat myself?” Marjorie thought to herself.

One of the nude women at the back of the room looked up from her computer and then got up and approached Marjorie. “How can I help you?” the very young blonde asked as she approached.

“Hi. I am Marjorie Wright and I have an appointment to meet with Helen and Carol?”

“Sure. Have a seat here and I will get them. They are just wrapping up a few things and will be right back up. I’m Candy by the way. Would you like something to drink?”

“Thank you. That would be great.”

Returning to the table where Marjorie was sitting, Candy passed her the water bottle and opened up the appointments guide on her tablet.

“Marjorie, I looked at the notes on you and I see you are not here for a normal intake. If you don’t mind my asking, how can we help you?”

“I have a Metastatic Glioma that has not responded to treatment. I have had three runs of Chemo and I am tired. But I can’t self terminate or go for hospice because I am too young and we have too much in bills to keep going this way.” Marjorie said as she started to break down.

Candy nodded her head. This was obviously the case Cathy had talked about earlier and evidently this was about follow up.

“Well, it seems we have a bit to talk about. Assuming we can help you, do you have any ideas of what you would like your end to be?” Candy asked.

“Painless. I have had enough pain in my life. I just want it to end.”

“Well, we have a couple of those that are pretty painless. Or at least the transition is fast enough that it isn’t painful for long.”

“How long?”

“Electrical transition is about sixty seconds, Guillotine is about two. We are pretty sure medically that they are both pain free due to the circumstances. Long drop hanging is supposed to be pain free due to spinal severance, but the duration of the event is longer.”

“There is a fee for those, right?”

“Yes, but we make some adjustments. Carol is our Legal eagle here. She and Margaret would be doing the business arrangements and legal placement.”

Sitting back in her chair, Marjorie took a sip of the water and looked at Candy and asked, “Do you think they can help me?”

Looking up from her tablet, Candy stared straight into Marjorie’s eyes. “Yes we will. I think we just have to figure out how.”

Candy was surprised at the look of relief and tears in Marjorie’s eyes. “I don’t want to deal with the pain and the drugs anymore. I don’t want this to keep up.”

Today

Looking across at the two young women with her in the “Chef’s Corner” Candy reached for her drink.

“We sent your mom home that night. We had a lot of worries about how we are going to manage this. You see, as an active patient, she was exempted from the Lottery. But Carol thought there was a clause in the rules that would allow us to include her into a substitution list. That would draw against all Illinois selectees.”

Candy stopped for a moment then before she continued. “That would mean your mother would have to pick the person who would live out of the almost six hundred a week we were processing at the time. I didn’t think she was strong enough to do that.”

Both of the girls quietly nodded after Candy said that.

Candy continued, “If that didn’t work we could file a volunteer application for humane substitution, but we had to find a suitable donor for that. Carol needed to look for a person who would be close enough a relative under either Illinois or reciprocal states.”

Looking wistful, Candy continued “That took some time. So we had a couple of weeks with your mom coming over every Sunday afternoon and going over the lottery list with us to see if there was a relative that was familiar. She got pretty depressed with each name she saw that she recognized, but that didn’t fit in the legal filter for substitution. In the meantime, she did design work with us and designed the acoustic setup for the microphones in the gallery area.”

“We heard about that from her. She had a funny way of talking about it. Said it was like doing stage acoustics again in college.” Denise said.

Stage Sounds

Marjorie was going to see all that there was to see when she came back on Saturday afternoon. Findley’s had ended operations for the day, but she had talked with Carol and Margaret about an exchange of services so she was going to get the major tour after operations hours. And the thing she knew most about was acoustical engineering.

“I guess what we want to do is use sound as a relaxation or enhancer, depending on the circumstances. For the standard, we want to use it as a sonic pacifier.” David had said when he interviewed with Marjorie. “I think Muzak is kind of cheesy, but if that is something that will work, I am all for it”.

“So, we are looking to increase the personal touch?” Marjorie said with a smile.

“Exactly. We want people to be treated with respect and courtesy. If they have a kinky scene in their minds, let’s provide it without embarrassment.” David continued.

“I have to say, your point of view is different from what I had thought you were going to do. I feel kind of embarrassed being the only person here wearing clothes” Marjorie said with a smile.

“It’s optional for you. We don’t have any legal problems with you being clothed here, and Helen said you may be embarrassed”. David said, with a quiet glance.

Three rounds of chemo had ravaged Marjorie’s body. Her remaining hair was fragile and desiccated, her skin was fragile and thin, and her weight was as if she was a concentration camp survivor. A woman who once was a stunning brunette was now a stick figure with a wig.

“Thanks. With all the great bodies you have working here, I do feel a little intimidated”

“They make me feel intimidated. Honestly.” David said with a laugh. “Do you want me or someone else to show you around?”

“In consulting, you always work with the sponsor. I think that’s you.” Marjorie said with a smile.

“Well, then, let’s be about it.”

Marjorie’s notebooks about David’s became pretty extensive. As they went from room to room, she took careful note of the items and areas she wanted to improve on. Baffle panels on the walls of the reception room, and heavy drapes across the windows deadened the sounds that would otherwise bounce around from the uncarpeted floor. Adding acoustic sound traps to the ceiling tiles with baffles between the light fixtures would dampen things considerably more.

The hallway down to the interview rooms had industrial carpeting, and there was a substantial steel door at the end of it going into the event’s center. But the interview rooms were bare-floored, and needed some acoustic treatments on the walls. The keynote was to add commercial carpet there as well. And keep plenty of Kleenex is them. She also noted that they should paint the rooms and hallways a cool relaxing blue/grey. She also noted 3 places to put sonic wave generators in the hall and one in each of the six interview rooms.

The notebook on the Gallery and Events room was pretty extensive. Marjorie had brought her portable laser ranger-finder with her and had a sonic mapper that replicated the entire room into an image for her computer. David had to both open and close the bleachers to allow an accurate rendition of the room, as well as a to get a sonic image as well.

Candy came into the Gallery while Marjorie was capturing the sonic image of the room and sat down with her and studied what Marjorie was doing. A few moments later, David’s portable pinged an alert.

“Marjorie, I have to go up front. Can I have Candy stay with you and help you here?” David inquired.

“Sure.”

After watching Marjorie for a few minutes, Candy asked, “Is there anything I can do to help?”

“Sure. I am taking an image of the room that will allow me to build an acoustic model. Once that is done, I can model the changes we need to make. That will tell me where to put microphones and where to put speakers. And also to make sure I don’t get noise from the bleachers and gallery to disturb what is going on here on the floor.”

“Wow. Really? You can do that?” Candy asked, wide eyed.

“Sure can. Let me show you.” Marjorie replied.

For the next two hours, Candy stayed with Marjorie and worked with her to go over the virtual image on a laser projection of the room to identify where microphones, speakers, and acoustic dampening tiles would be located. Marjorie gave Candy a set of headphones with built in microphones and told her to wander around to the different locations where people would sit or stand to watch so that she could provide test spectrum and sounds to all of the locations from where the primary projections of sounds would be.

This was the first step. The second step was to find the desired and undesired sounds to be captured and relayed from the gallows and deck of the guillotine. Identifying and properly repeating the sounds from the microphones being placed on the different platforms, and making sure that sounds from the gallery would not be projected to them from the gallery required some sophisticated and careful planning.

That took triggering the trap-door, and also the drop of the guillotine onto the stops. And from there setting up some upper and lower limits on sound captures while maintaining voice frequency captures and repeats.

And the last step was to model how to capture and contain the sounds of the gallery and the bleachers so that they did not overpower the sounds from the operations area.

“This place is like an airplane hanger.” Marjorie said to Candy as they were working on the model. “Getting acoustics tuned here will be a pain. And proper deadening and sound traps will cost a fortune. Do you think that there is budget for this?”

“I don’t know about the dollars and cents.” Candy said. “Production is sure a lot higher than it was at first, and I am pretty sure that the custom work has been pretty high margin. Margaret does the P&L, so I don’t know what is out of bounds and what isn’t. I do know that they put a lot of money back into this place.”

“So the services sell pretty good these days?” Marjorie said.

“Most of our high margin is from this side.” Candy replied. “Chops, drops and drains are all service operations”.

“Drains?”

“Sure. Let me show you. Tub is cleaned out”.

Candy lead Marjorie back to the room where the Hot tub lounge was set up, and showed the hot water circulation in the extra deep tub.

“So you boil us starting early?” Marjorie asked partially in jest.

“No. We do a catheter in your wrist, sit you in here nice and comfortable, give you some wine and cheese, and when you say when, we let you bleed out. Being in hot water means you don’t feel cold.”

Feeling queasy in her stomach, Marjorie asked, “So someone preps you and you sit here and just die?”

“No. Not just. You haven’t been here during production, but no one ever really is alone from beginning to end. Someone is with you all the way. That is what I do most of the time here”.

“Really? I thought you were just pretty much guides and such.” Marjorie said.

“Marjorie, that is one of the biggest secrets here. If you like, some Monday we can show you standards and interviews. And Tuesday we do specials all around as well as some standard production. Give you the flavor of what we do. “ Candy said with a smile.

“You sound pretty proud of it.” Marjorie said.

“I guess I am. This is really the first real job I have had, and it was an accident. So I try to do it right and treat people right.”

“Well, you will have to show me what you really do. I don’t like surprises.” Marjorie said.

“Dad said that mom told him that the day she came over for the operations review after the changes were made was one of the most emotional days of her life.” Sally said.

“I wasn’t with her the whole time. She was with Cindy in the Events area for most of the morning and afternoon. But from the team members who were with her, I heard that she had all of our typical up’s and downs. “ Candy said. “I spent the last part of the day with her, and she seemed to be pretty well centered when she left.”

“Honey, I am just going over there to validate the work we did over the weekend.” Marjorie said in exasperation.

“I hear you, but I don’t want you to go over there without me” Jeff said. “I worry that you are there during their operations.”

“Darling, that is silly. Nothing is going to happen. And you have to go to work, and the girls are going to school. I am just going there to see if things work as I thought they would when I was there last week. “.

“Darling, I am not comfortable with this. It’s too dangerous.” Jeff said.

“Nonsense. I trust these people. And they have been so honest with me so far that I cannot help but feel comfortable. Today is not my day. At least not at Findley’s.”

“Darling. Every day, every minute, is precious to me. I don’t want to loose any of it.”

“Thank you, dear. I feel the same. And I don’t feel threatened by anything at Findley’s. We will have some time. Drop me off and we will talk tonight.”

The Tuesday after the changes was the first production day that Marjorie was going to be at Findley. She was going to be in early to evaluate the installation of the sound dampeners that had been mounted over the weekend, as well as the placement of the microphones and sound buffers in the auditorium. Still, with getting the kids to school, and getting Jeff to finally drive her over there still meant that she didn’t get there until almost nine thirty. By then Findley had been open for over an hour.

Walking into the reception area, Marjorie was taken aback at the number of people. The undercurrent of conversation was very muted, thanks to the panels now suspended from the ceiling and mounted on the walls. The measurements ambient were supposed to be nine Decibels down from last week, and the sense of hush was readily apparent.

“Hello, Marjorie.” Helen said from the front-end desk. “I have to say that things are greatly improved.”

“Good. I would hate to think that David’s money was wasted. The drapes helped also. And the matte tint on the windows helped too.”

“I never would have thought of the tablecloths being a part of the solution”. Margaret said as she walked up.

“Softening up all the hard surfaces is the key. The more things that absorb sound, the better. Reflections almost always increase the noise and distraction. “ Marjorie said.

Looking down at Margaret’s feet, Marjorie noticed that they were wet. “Your feet are wet. Did we spring a leak somewhere?”

Looking down, Margaret smiled as she responded. “No. We have some wet floors in the back of the process area. I’ll show you later as we go. So, where would you like to start and do measurements? Standard or specials?”

Looking at her screen, Helen said” We don’t’ have any specials until 10:30. You could look now if you want. Or wait and watch the group from the bleachers and get some accurate measurements.”

“Or you could follow me through standard and do an improvement check” Margaret continued. “We won’t have you go through the processing floor, though. We can peel you off at Stripping”.

Feeling a little queasy, Marjorie thought to herself about what this meant. Getting up close and personal removed all the abstraction from the operations, that’s for sure. “When would I be getting back up to here?” Marjorie asked.

“Total circuit takes about forty-five minutes. But we would be in Stripping in thirty or so. From there we could go through normal or have you wait in the special events area” Margaret said.

“I guess following the normal route would be a good start. And you can leave me in the Stripping area. I can go through the special events area and wait in the upper bleachers from there.”

“Your mom told me later she hadn’t put things in perspective until then.” Candy said. “Up until then, it was all going through the motions. I don’t think it hit her until she was in Stripping and she was called over to the window at medical results while Margaret worked with the rest of the string and took them through the door. Then it was real.”

“You must have done a lot. That night, you were the one Mom talked about.” Sally said.

“You had impact on Dad, too”. Denise said. “He said you were her friend and champion.”

“I don’t know about that. Carol and Helen were the real linchpins for all of us. “Candy said. “My thing was mainly to help her get done what she wanted to accomplish in the time she had”.

“She never told us what the “Standard” practice was for Termination” Denise said. “We had to read that in a book later”.

“We kept that pretty close. “ Candy said. “We didn’t even show your mom until late in the day on that first trip”.

Marjorie didn’t know what to think when the nurse kept her at the window to talk with her about her results. After the others in the group had moved back to the tables, and were boxing up their clothing, the nurse kept talking with her about the status and progress as indicated by the hematology diagnostic machine. After a few moments another of the collar wearers came over and asked if there was an issue.

“No issue we didn’t know about.” Barbara said. “I was just keeping Marjorie here while you moved the rest of the group along. She isn’t in the track today”.

“Oh. I didn’t know. Margaret has already gone through and she hadn’t said anything. I ‘m Casey. Are you here for standard or special?”

“Neither right now.” Barbara, the nurse said. “She is the engineer that did the acoustic modeling in all of the rooms here.”

“Oh, wow. You did a great thing then. It’s so quiet now that it is a hush. It’s quiet without being oppressive. And it seems calmer than last week, so far.”

“We put a white noise generator in each of the work areas. This one got the last three we had available. David dropped a lot of money in acoustic conditioning here. More than the last two hospitals I did.” Marjorie said. “So, from here, where do I go?”

“Well, I would say we should take you over to special events and have Margaret catch up with you there. It’s quiet now.” Casey said. “I’ll tell her when she finishes up to come over there.”

“So Mom didn’t go through the normal processing area?” Sally asked.

“Not that first morning. She went with me later during the afternoon trips. Cindy was running a Gallows event at 10:30. That was her first term to watch.”

After talking with Barbara for a few more minutes, Marjorie noticed that the last woman of the group she was with was walking into the turnstile. The hush of the room acoustics was almost perfect. She had tried for a quiet that was soothing, not oppressive, and that would have a tranquil influence on people. It was so quiet she almost didn’t hear the group coming down the hallway from the restrooms. Turning her head she saw a youthful, pale skinned redheaded young woman coming into the area with the evident “goat” collar and carrying a tablet. She was followed by an attractive brunette and two other women, and two men.

Marjorie recognized Cindy from her visit Sunday. Looking at her watch, she saw it was almost 10:30. She had been here for almost an hour. And as she looked she saw the turnstile spin again and realized that the woman who disappeared would be dead very shortly. With a strange fascination, she wondered what was awaiting the woman who had just disappeared around the door. “I guess I will have to check it out later” Marjorie thought to herself.

“Ladies, please go over to the table and place your clothes into the baskets with your names on them, and I ‘ll get your medical documents so we can get them together and do the last of the paperwork.” Cindy said as she directed the group behind her over to the tables where Casey had aid out three fresh boxes, and was stacking the other four on a cart.

“Hi there, Marjorie” Cindy said as she approached. “You going to audit the sounds in the event center with this group?”

“I suppose. If I am not in the way” Marjorie replied.

“You won’t be for this group. They are pretty tame. Do you need to set up any of your sound apparatus?”

“No. I think everything is in place from the weekend when the installs were done. All I need is a seat in the gallery with my wireless set up to my Laptop. “ Marjorie said.

“Ok. Let me get you over there and settled quick and then get these hens in place. We are doing a triple today, so there will be some setup time” Cindy said in a matter of fact voice. “Helen, do you have weights and measures for me?”