Hospital wards are no place to recover. Maybe the rich can afford privacy, quiet - but those are luxuries: more coveted here than a painless night, or the opiates that would allow them. But like the opiates, space had to be given sparingly lest folks get too familiar with the ease and the peace and just refuse to live without them. The pandemic had only made it worse: the building was overstuffed with the sick, floor to ceiling. But perhaps that was the way Millie was special here - all the other patients she shared her rationed space with could remember a life before pain, sickness, and public wards - she could not, and so had nothing to covet.
Millie’s life was, in many respects, this place. More of her life was inside Dignity Health than out. Not all of her life, mind - she couldn’t fathom a life like Lucas’s from pediatrics: body so broken from the moment of his birth that an hour free of mechanical mediation meant a painful death. No, Millie had her mercies - she was sitting across from one at this very moment, as she contemplated her small world.
Dark black eyes like beads pressing into crumpled parchment, the toothy smile of an ancient trickster god, and a real slick motherfucker when it came to games. Today the method of execution was chess, yesterday abalone, tomorrow it would be go. George had ten games he deemed ‘worthwhile’ and cycled through them religiously, one system every day, unyielding even when the lung cancer had him coughing his lungs into gruel. One of Millie’s strongest memories was of an intubated George, eyes bloodshot with pain, swimming through a sea of anesthetics, schooling a flabbergasted nurse in othello.
George tapped the stopwatch with a crooked finger, “Drawing it out just makes it hurt more.” His voice was wet, always on the edge of drowning in his own lung-fluid.
Millie made a dismissive gesture at him, drawn out of her reverie - her refuge from an inevitable defeat.
“This hurts me, watching this hurts me.”
“Nnng, fuck off.” replied Millie, a sharp grin hiding genuine frustration at yet another loss.
“You were close for a moment there! Next time you’ll be closer.” Sometimes she hated that smile. He tapped the clock again - 21 seconds.
“I hope the cancer metastasizes your ass.” Millie grumbled, sliding their bishop back to block an implacably advancing pawn.
“To your ass.” George’s rook slid across the board cutting off a leftward retreat for Millie’s king.
All Millie had to hope for now was George messing up, and he never did when it came to the mechanics. So she ignored the imminent mate and moved her Queen to set up her own. An awful move in this case, garbage even to the untrained eye - an amateur's blunder. Yet it had the desired effect.
George glanced up at Millie and sighed, cautiously maneuvering themselves onto their back - they’d been reclined on their elbow, reminiscent of ancient Greeks painted on ancient urns. Imagining a Greek older than George, Georgios in full, seemed almost impossible. Millie glared for the full minute it took for him to lie down, every movement a calculation of efficiency versus agony for his decaying body.
Around them the ward humed along, every movement of the great machine practiced to the point of automatic process. Nurses drifted in and out, checking patients and their readings, delivering necessities and luxuries as they could be afforded. A crow stood on the windowsill, head tilting as it observed the complex mechanism with evident curiosity. Behind it sang the city; noisy traffic and LA summer heat. The one TV in the ward was muted on some talk show - meaningless background mimes. Andrew, yellow with liver disease and chronically exhausted despite sleeping fourteen hours a day morosely scraped at a pudding cup while watching Millie get drawn and quartered. Brandon, fresh to the ward and still a total unknown, chatted with Paul about visitation stuff and foosball. Wyetta, arthritic and ever composed, snored over it all - wafting the pungent lily of the valleys on her bedside table. The beeping machines could barely be heard over George’s occasional wet cough.
Millie groaned, “Come on man, I wanna start a fresh one.” George had just over three minutes on his clock.
George put his hands on his chest and closed his eyes, “No point if this is all you’ll do with it.”
Millie glanced down at the board, and up at George, “Don’t do that. We both know you aren’t getting through the rest of the day without another game.”
“You’re happier losing effortlessly than working for a win.”
Millie was taken aback by a sudden shift in George’s tone - rare sincerity.
George continued, “Play every game like it’s the only one you’ll get.”
“But there is going to be another game.” Millie pointed at the clock, not even lunch yet. “Why waste my time drawing out a loss.”
“Bide Millie. Learn to bide. There was a line for you up to that last move. A narrow line, a hard line, but a line. You ignored it to gamble a win on me being an idiot.”
“I didn’t see it.”
“You didn’t look for it. You got lazy. You’re lazy. No one cares about a near-win. Especially when it’s an easy distraction from a real win”
“Come on man, I really didn’t see it.”
“Bah!” Exclaimed George, rolling a shoulder and looking about at the rest of the ward. Back to their aloof, normal, self. “Maybe I’ll play with Andrew, maybe he will actually try.”
“No thanks.” Said Andrew, still scraping at his pudding. “Don’t need another source of suffering in my life.” He gave the spoon a pensive lick - and Millie saw her play.
“Got any games you like, Andrew? Maybe we can bust that out next.”
Andrew considered for a moment, holding the little plastic spoon in his mouth as he contemplated. George was moving back towards the board. But right before the window closed Andrew plucked the spoon from his mouth.
“I guess Monopoly.”
“Bah! Monopoly.” George spoke the name like it belonged to one of the devil’s own. He turned from the board once again.
“An idiot’s game for children to play with plastic toys and fake money. Brandon! Do you play chess?” George leaned to look around Paul, who was still chatting with Brandon. “Maybe go? You must play go.”
“Hm? What?” Replied, Brandon - realizing he should be affronted only after Paul sighed and rubbed at his cheek in his usual gesture of defeat.
“Is that because my dad’s Chinese?” Continued an exasperated Brandon, as he turned to Paul for confirmation that he had, in fact, just been stereotyped. “Am I meant to play go because my dad’s Chinese?”
“Your ancestors made one of the most perfect games of the mind ever devised, why would you not be proud of that?!” George proclaimed, leaning up in his seat - consternation adding further wrinkles to an already craggy brow.
“Jesus, George - you gotta cool it with that shit.” Interjected Millie. “We’ve talked about this.”
“What?” Said George, turning back to Millie. “How was that racist? That was a compliment.”
“U-huh.” replied Brandon, unimpressed.
“Better than the last one.” Said Paul, moving over and adjusting one of the many devices that hung off Wyetta like lampreys. “He really doesn’t mean anything by it Mr. Lee.” Wyetta slept through it all. You had to master sleeping through anything to make it in here.
“U-huh.” Replied Brandon again, shrugging it off. “No, I don’t play go. Don’t know a thing about it. Hm.” He snorted, “Or mahjong, before you ask. But I’d be up for Monopoly.”
Millie couldn’t help snickering at George, he looked as if he’d been dropped in a world gone mad. She plucked her cane off the bedpost and pushed herself to her feet with a grunt. George looked at her as if she was walking into a lion’s waiting maw. Not much longer now.
“It is bad. Am I crazy?”
“Hey, maybe it won’t be so bad with a group. You’ve probably never tried it.”
Millie shuffled the games around until she found her prize, plucking out a battered old Monopoly Classic box. Andrew looked genuinely excited, Millie thought Brandon had actually caught on - judging by the smirk.
“Garbage. I won’t do it. I’d rather play with Paul.”
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“Hey!” Replied Paul, as he checked the compression bandages around Wyetta’s legs. “I’m not that bad.”
“Paul, I am very old, have met very many people, and have traveled very many places. I am blessed to have never known a worse chess player.”
“Hahaha! Ouch, man.” Millie cackled, and couldn’t help but feel bad about it. Both because Paul looked a little offended, and because by the time George turned back to the game, it was far too late.
Beep. Beep. Beep. His clock hit zero, he’d lost on time.
Millie took on a gleefully maniacal edge. “Hahaha, Gotchu old man!”
George just stared back at her, dumbfounded, and Andrew realized the score a moment later.
“Hah, huh.” Andrew pointed at Millie with his spoon. “How’d you know I’d say Monopoly?” Andrew glanced at a still silent George, whose mouth was settling into a thin line.
“I didn’t. But I figured whatever you’d say was gonna set off George. I would guess you ain't a hipster board game nerd, or a thousand years old, or stuck hanging out with one all the time. Figured it’d be Risk or Catan or something else involving a lot of luck and little plastic pieces.” Millie tossed the Monopoly box on Andrew’s bedside table and hobbled back onto her bed, still giggling. “Hehe. Monopoly though? Couldn’t have asked for better.”
“So… that means we aren’t playing Monopoly.” said Andrew, grabbing the box and putting it on his lap, dejected.
“When George takes a nap or something, sure. Brandon, you keen?”
“Sure, whenever.” called Brandon, as he watched the TV mimes.
George came out of a coughing fit as Millie moved to reset the board, interrupting her with a bark. “No! No. Boastful, deceitful, crook! Lazy!”
“Yeah, well, you too.” Millie moved to reset the board again. “And full of yourself… and easily distracted.”
“I’m an old man.” stated George, as he blocked her with a hand that looked like it had come out of a mummy's tomb. “We’re all proud and easily distracted. What happens when you play someone who isn't?”
Millie stared at George, unyielding - and he stared back equally so. Millie broke first.
“Then I’ll beat ‘em.”
“No! Fool. You beat the game.” He tapped the board with the same gnarled hand. “For any one game there are many players. It may take a lifetime to master the game, but it’ll take countless to master every player. You give up on the easy part so quickly for the satisfaction of tricking an old man.”
“It was the only way I could win.”
“No, it wasn’t. You’re just lazy.”
Millie gave it up. She wasn’t one to argue - she didn’t need more stress in her life. Stress could kill her, afterall. She stared down at the board balefully, and began searching for that path to victory - really looked. She wasn’t seeing it.
A few moment’s of Millie’s evident focus on the lesson softened George’s expression and he let out a wet, weary sigh. He waved dismissively at the board, “At least play out the ending... and then we can go again.” He paused, then added, “After I show you the line you missed.”
Shrugging, Millie looked down at the board, and wrapped up the game. It wasn’t too hard - she always knew how she was going to lose once it was staring her in the face. George never let her surrender, and that much, at least, taught her a lot about the mechanics of defeat. Six moves: George’s rook would dance around a bit, racing Millie’s queen for mate position, George would check, Millie would be forced to block with the bishop, freeing the pawn, another check - this time from a knight in reserve, which would force Millie’s king out of cover. The rest was just clean up - checks moving the king across the board until George could queen the pawn with a checkmate. Surgical, clean, no chances given for a turnaround and not a drop of style. George nodded with approval.
“And why you can’t play when you can still win is a mystery.”
“Come on man, I’ve gotten better.”
“Barely. After six years.”
Millie moved the pieces back into starting position while George arduously maneuvered themselves back onto their shoulder.
“No one else in the hospital is worth a game anymore, I don’t have anyone else to practice with - how am I supposed to get one up on you?”
“You can learn by winni-” George was taken by a brief coughing fit, “Mh… By winning. If you pay attention.”
“No wonder you got so good.”
“Well, I’m sure he wasn’t always a strategy game guru.” Cut in Andrew, finally finished with his pudding. “He’s had three thousand years to get all his losing out the way.”
Laughing, Millie added, “I bet Alexander the Great whipped his old ass at backgammon.”
“Wait, was he still old back then?” Said Paul, one ear on the conversation as he helped another nurse with a delivery of supplies.
“George is probably Socrates' grandpa.” Chuckled Andrew, “I bet he invented half the games he makes Millie play.”
“Tavli.” Corrected George, provoking the others to pause and look at him as he grinned his trickster grin. “Alexander the Great ‘whipped my ass’ at Tavli.”
The chuckling was enough to wake up Wynetta, who cast an imperious eye over the proceedings, calculated it less worthwhile than her nap, and closed her eyes once more. The nurse that was with Paul - Julliet - refreshed the mix of pills next to Millie’s bed, nodded at her, and moved down the row. All the nurses knew Millie - they knew she knew the routine. Millie glanced over at her rainbow array of mandated pills: pain killers, immunosuppressants, steroids, and a myriad mix of additional chemicals that, the doctors supposed, was proving the most effective method of keeping Millie alive and barely functioning. The mix was adjusted regularly, usually for more, not less.
George politely watched the board as Millie made it through her chemical assortment, she grabbed the cane hanging from her bedpost once more, groaned, and pushed herself to her feet again. As usual George palmed her his pills as she hobbled by, eyes never leaving the board.
“Bathroom.”
“Mh.” George coughed.
The bathroom, the cane - everything Dignity tried to provide - was clean, simple, and ergonomic. To Millie it was just ‘familiar’. She almost knew this cane, or more accurately the many copies of this cane, better than the fancy one at home she inherited from her grandpa - same with the bathroom. Could have used them both with her eyes closed if pressed, though she wouldn’t want to be responsible for the consequences to the upholstery.
The bathroom was about as quiet a place as you can get in the public wards. She enjoyed sneaking off to the quiet corners of the hospital when time would allow, but she wasn’t sure she could make the walk at the moment. It had been a bad week. She did her business, flushed George’s pills along with it, and stood in front of the mirror for a while.
You get a lot of practice at introspection when you’re too sick to do anything else for large chunks of your life, and Millie found herself prone to drifting because of it. She just leaned on the sink, thinking about what George said for some reason. Saying in his own complex way that she quit when things got tough.
“Fuck that…” She said to herself in the mirror: ghoulishly sallow, dark hair lank and short, dark eyes hard and heavy. Looking deader than death.
Living was already tough, tougher than anything. She spent the time she had away from suffering to get away from all of that - to be free of struggle, of fruitless, terminal, endless struggle. Struggle against the inevitable - what came for everyone but was coming for George first, and her after. George and his hypocrisy, but I guess you have a right to hypocrisy when you’re pushing ninety against a cancer that should have got you at eighty. Hell, maybe he was just following his second principle - when defeat is truly inevitable either surrender with grace or turn it into a lesson. Millie glanced at the toilet, waters still and artificial-blue, and wondered which this was. Or if it was both.
A knock at the door, it was Paul - professionally concerned. “Everything alright in there? Need any help?”
Millie awoke from her reverie, she must have been drifting for a while. “Yeah, nah. I’m good! Still pretty!”
Paul acknowledged her with an amused hum and moved away, Millie vaguely heard Brandon calling him over. Poor guy, Millie couldn’t fathom Paul’s patience. She collected herself and splashed some water over her face, which did absolutely nothing to dispel the wretched image staring back at her from the mirror.
A voice from nowhere, toneless and cold, “Connection established.”
“Holy what the fuck!?” Millie jolted away from her equally shocked reflection, she heard a startled yelp outside and the sound of glass breaking.
“Assessing.” Responded the voice. “Please stand by.”
It wasn’t from nowhere, it was from inside her - it felt like a stray thought but it distinctly wasn’t hers. A robotic worm whispering into her forebrain.
“Assessing.”
“Nope!”
She grabbed for her cane as the confusion began to bubble into panic. It wasn’t just her: it was happening outside, she could hear people beginning to react in about the same way she was - badly.
“What’s going on!” exclaimed Brandon. Sounding like he was trying and failing to get up from the bed.
“Is this a new hospital thing?” asked Andrew, probably realizing it was stupid as soon as he said it.
She stepped to the door and pushed it open, just as Paul was lifting his hands in a calming gesture - eyes clearly wide with panic equal to any of theirs, but doing his damndest to marshal it. “Everyone stay calm, whatever this is, everything's fine.”
Someone had dropped a plate, which had shattered. George, bless his heart, was protecting the chess board with his body against the invisible robot demon that had apparently invaded all of their minds. The others were in various stages of rising alarm, except for Wyetta who was awake and appeared unbothered by everything happening around her. Her monitor didn’t even register a rise in pulse.
“Assessment complete.” The voice became feminine and rich - pleasant. “Profile created. Greetings: Millicent Armstrong.”
“Holy shit it knows my name.” muttered Andrew, bemused.
“The devil knows every name.” replied Wyetta, utterly certain in the… maybe not-so-wild claim.
Millie speed hobbled to her bedside table and tried to grab her bag. Outside, traffic noises were turning into rising voices of alarm, whatever was happening wasn’t confined to the hospital. This was going to get way worse before it got better.
Paul was about to say something, but got cut off by the voice in all of their heads. His head shooting back like he’d been struck. George laughed so hard he began to cough violently at the thing’s next words.
“Warning. Warning. Unplanned multiple-system merger commencing. Contact in ten minutes, forty two seconds.”
There was a moment of silence after that one, besides George’s hacking laughter. Whatever Paul was about to say was lost to the implications.
George collected themselves, and caught Millie’s eye as she stood frozen, free hand around the strap of her bag, “Getting you to flush my pills the last few months seems like a waste now.”
It took another message, coming a second later, to break the spell, “Emergency shelters arriving in five seconds. Maximum occupancy, total: One-point-two-billion. Maximum occupancy, region 0652711: one thousand two hundred. Please proceed to an emergency shelter.”
Paul tried once more to speak, but then came the explosions.