UnWholly (Unwind Dystology 2)

How often is this going on in Belgium and the Netherlands? Bioethics blogger Wesley Smith drew our attention to a conference report by Belgian transplant surgeons about organ procurement after euthanasia. As the doctors from Antwerp University Hospital explained in the 2006 World Transplant Congress (in a section called “economics”), they killed a consenting forty-six-year-old woman with a neurological condition and took her liver, two kidneys, and islets.

o;I would love to be your first,” she says. “You can do that, can’t you? I mean you’re . . . complete, right?”

“More than complete,” he tells her. “In fact, I have three.”

She just stares at him dumbfounded, and he decides not to tell her he’s joking.

He finds himself attracted to some, left cold by others—but in none of them does he find the spark of connection he has hoped for. By the time he gets to the last girl, a Boston scholar with New York fashion sense, he just wants to get this day over with. The girl is one of those who is intrigued by his face. She doesn’t just look at him, though, she studies him like a specimen under a microscope.

“So what do you see when you look at me?” he asks.

“It’s not what’s on the outside—it’s the inside that matters,” she responds.

“And what do you think is inside?”

She hesitates, then asks, “Is this a trick question?”

Roberta is exasperated when he refuses to accept a single one of them. Dinner between the two of them that night is all clattering silverware and intense cutting of meat. They barely look at each other across the table. Finally Roberta says, “We’re not looking for your soul mate, Cam, just someone to fill a role. A consort to help ease you into public life.”

“Maybe I’m not willing to settle for that.”

“Being practical is not the same as settling.”

Cam slams his fist down. “My decision! You will not force me.”

“Of course I won’t—but—”

“Conversation over.” Then the meal goes back to severe silverware. Deep down he knows she’s right, which just makes him furious. All they need to make Roberta’s scheme work is an attractive, personable girl holding his hand, convincing the public that there’s so much about Cam to love. But he finds no bit of actor in him. Perhaps he can feign it, but he dreads the moments alone when he has to face the emptiness of a false relationship.

Emptiness.

That’s what people believe is inside him. A great void. And if he can’t find a soul mate among the girls paraded before him, does that mean they’re right, and he has no soul?

“Incomplete,” he says. “If I’m whole, why do I feel like I’m not?” And as usual, Roberta has a calming platitude intended to ease his mind, but as time goes on her rote wisdom leaves him flat and disappointed.

“Wholeness comes from creating experiences that are solely yours, Cam,” she tells him. “Live your life and soon you’ll find the lives of those who came before won’t matter. Those who gave rise to you mean nothing compared to what you are.”

But how can he live his life when he’s not convinced he has one? The attacks in the press conference still plague him. If a human being has a soul, then where is his? And if the human soul is indivisible, then how can his be the sum of the parts of all the kids who gave rise to him? He’s not one of them, he’s not all of them, so who is he?

His questions make Roberta impatient. “I’m sorry,” she tells him, “but I don’t deal in the unanswerable.”

“So you don’t believe in souls?” Cam asks her.

“I didn’t say that, but I don’t try to answer things that don’t have tangible data. If people have souls, then you must have one, proved by the mere fact that you’re alive.”

“But what if there is no ‘I’ inside me? What if I’m just flesh going through the motions, with nothing inside?”

Roberta considers this, or at least pretends to. “Well, if that were the case, I doubt you’d be asking these questions.” She thinks for a moment. “If you must have a construct, then think of it this way: Whether consciousness is implanted in us by something divine, or whether it is created by the efforts of our brains, the end result is the same. We are.”

“Until we are not,” Cam adds.

Roberta nods. “Yes, until we are not.” And she leaves him with none of his questions answered.

- - -

Physical therapy has evolved into full-on training sessions with machines, free weights, and cardio. Kenny is the closest thing Cam has to a friend, unless you count Roberta and the guards who call him “sir.” They talk openly about things that Roberta would probably want to monitor.

“So the great girlfriend search was a bust, huh?” Kenny asks while Cam pushes himself on the treadmill.