The man who’s wife called him a robot

Elly watched Brad head for his upstairs office for the second time one Saturday.  First after breakfast, now after lunch. “You’re a robot,” she called out, as she cleared the dishes from their lovely lunch of whole-grain pasta stewed with fresh-cut vegetables and a side of steamed brown rice. She worked hard to keep him healthy, and she deserved a little attention.

Not today. Butt back in his chair, he refreshed the computer screen and continued entering data for the third medical report of the day. Pushing sixty, preparing for retirement, he thought of Mo dying alone in his beat-up trailer, or Natalie waiting for the next government so she could pay her bills.

“A robot – ha!” he muttered to himself. His wife was mocking him for trying to make their lives easier.  But he couldn’t deny that the years of hard work and striving to maximize how many dollars he got paid for his time had resulted in a regimented lifestyle. But he couldn’t deny that he had been almost penniless when he met Elly, after getting ransacked by his second wife. But she didn’t need to call him a damn robot.

Moonshadow the cat, came to visit and jumped on his desk begging for attention. Elly was still busy in the kitchen. The shhh of water running and the clatter of the dishwasher being loaded mixed with meowing and a furry tail hitting him in the face. Brad gave Moonshadow ten pets from her neck to her tail, mechanically, not too quickly and just the way she liked it. Knowing it was the minimum number of pets she needed to leave him alone and let him continue with his work, he tolerated the interruption. When it was over Moonshadow waited a moment hoping for more, then jumped to the floor and trotted downstairs to see Elly.

The stack of medical records on his left measured eight inches high. The patient’s questionnaire was sixteen pages of mostly illegible scrawled fill-in-the-blanks, with his notes added sideways in the margins.  It was one of those big cases. He guessed it would take him until  8:00 p.m. He liked to guess how long it would take and was thrilled when he beat it.

The work didn’t bother him. Chopping wood and carrying water, that’s what it’s all about, and a big ass paycheck at the end of the month so he wouldn’t have to die alone in a trailer. But he would die alone. Some things couldn’t be avoided.