With Nothing Left

Emma Burnett

I buy us some printed burgers. One for you, two for me. One because you always loved them. Said they tasted almost like the real thing, not that I would know, you’d say, but just believe me. Two because you like me soft, for comfort, and this body needs to eat to keep the padding fed, all wrapped around and through the metal subframe.

I unwrap the three burgers and hold one up under your nose, and although you don’t do much more than breathe in the smell you say it’s delicious. I position four pillows, tucking them behind your head and your back to keep you upright. You thank me, although you don’t have to, you always have, and I sit myself next to you on the bed and eat. Burger juices run down my chin. Burger nutrients course into my padding. You rest a hand on the warm burger sitting on crinkled paper on your lap and smile.

Five days ago, you didn’t need me to tuck you in, didn’t need me to clean you up after every accident. I was a preventative assistant, a just-in-case. You said I was more friend than carer, and you had precious few of those left because the older you got the fewer folks remained. And I never corrected you because ten billion is objectively a lot of people, but none of them came to visit you.

At the height of your favourite month, the one you say used to be the warm one before everything was too warm all the time, you were still able to lean your bony body against my well-padded one, and my programming told me to wrap an arm around you, although you said I needed the closeness just as much. Programming is just one way of getting to the same six basic needs, you said. I said you were making them up, but you rattled off a list, and I agreed that things like food and health and security overlapped with my own needs. But you mentioned love, which I said I didn’t require. And you snorted and pulled my arm tighter around you.

Seven months ago, when I was assigned here by a company that was hired by a daughter who promises she’ll visit when she has more time, you were well enough to want to go out. Museums, university lectures, the local Women’s Institute. You told me we should go dancing, and although I hesitated, you were so joyous it was easy to agree. We dressed ourselves in neon and Lycra, and went to a club filled with students who might have been shocked, but we never cared to check. I tapped into the emergency lighting system wired into my body, and rechanneled the energy and design, and instead made rainbow freckles appear across my cheeks and bare arms. It cost me, that rainbow body decor. I had to replenish the following day to make up for the weight loss, drinking three chunky nutrient shakes instead of just one, generating a warning email about over-consumption from the company. But it was worth it because it made you smile. Like rainbow glitter, you said. Like the stuff that didn’t biodegrade and is still to this day stuck in the guts of fish and turtles. It’s better this way, you said. I didn’t tell you about the extra drinks or the warning.

I carried you home at the end of that night, worn out from dancing and drinking, continuing to pump energy into my rainbow freckles, which you traced with a finger, giggling as my nose wrinkled itself. It was a reaction I hadn’t known I’d have, and we’d both laughed. I’d gotten another warning on my system later, instructing me that hospice care doesn’t involve fun, but I deleted the message, and the eight others that followed, and eventually just muted the notification package. It seemed to me that you’d taken care of yourself well enough up until now, and could make these decisions for yourself. Even if they were fun. Even if they were silly. You could decide. So could I. So I did.

Nine weeks ago, you tripped on the edge of the carpet and fell, unpredicted, unpredictable. It was a hospital visit for you, worrying for us both, and an in-person warning for me, a stern reminder from a hard HR bot with no padding that my job is to protect you at all times. I didn’t say that I couldn’t catch you from the other room, or that I could barely eat whilst waiting to find out if you’d come home. The HR bot wouldn’t have cared. That wasn’t its job. Although you didn’t need surgery, things changed. I ate more. You ate less. I suggested outings. You suggested sleep. I reached out to your daughter, but got no reply. I made sure to stay close, sure to be a cushion for you.

Time passes, here in this bed. Ten minutes, ten hours, maybe more. I stop really knowing. My burgers are gone, and yours is still whole. I sit here, soft for you. You lift an arm, a world of effort, and touch my face, greasy from too much burger and leaking from the eyes, and you say I am all the things you needed and you’re grateful. I miss your smile and I have all the extra burgers just sitting in my padding, so I channel their power into rainbows across my skin, and there is nothing better than the endless freckles shimmering across my cheeks, reflected in your eyes. You smile softly, your fingers resting on a long-cold burger.

And now, with nothing left, I hold you.

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