Author's Note:
Hello! This one's a few years old, but I decided it was time to put it up here. I just want to set a couple of expectations before it begins. Suicidality is a through-line in this story. It came from a pretty dark place emotionally, but I'm doing a lot better these days. It's a slow-burn, and it was originally published as a novella. I think it works well as a self-contained story, but I do have about half of a second part sitting unfinished in my documents folder. If you'd like to see more from this character, let me know!
All characters depicted are over the age of 18.
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Chapter 1 - The Doctor
"When was the last time you seriously thought about killing yourself?" asked the medical assistant distantly, her tone utterly incongruous with both the nature of the question and the implicit assumption it held.
"Last Thursd- no, uhm, yesterday, actually," Felicity responded, unphased by the callous questionnaire. She had long since become used to this sort of thing. That didn't mean it wasn't painful, of course, but damned if she was going to let this drone see her pain.
The assistant scratched down the answer on her clipboard and continued in the same disinterested tone, "How many times per week do you think about killing yourself?"
"Four, I'd say. Usually. Unless it's summer, in which case at least seven," Felicity said, formulating an answer that would deliberately befuddle the idiot piece of paper that some doctor had decided was worth putting patients through ceaseless indignity.
"Five," The assistant regurgitated with no emotion, having been apparently trained to completely ignore suicidal people's agency as a form of treatment.
"Thank you for your answers," she said with the enthusiasm of a DMV clerk. "The doctor will be with you in a moment."
The assistant did not even look at Felicity as she left the room with haste. Felicity knew that she was a lot to handle, that it was almost impossible to get anyone to even listen to her feelings, let alone understand them. It would have been nice if the people that were supposed to be helping her didn't treat her like a pariah.
And they wondered why she was suicidal.
Frankly, she was running out of reasons not to do it. She felt the void of her pain and darkness staring into her, threatening to swallow her whole, from the moment she woke up in the morning to the moment she finally slipped into the momentary relief of unconsciousness. The medications they had given her made her feel wrong. Like a different person was taking over residence in her skin. Therapy was next to useless. No councilor could fix any of the things that made her life so fucked up, and seeing as how it was still fucked up, trying to recover from it as if it were a thing of the past was an exercise in futility.
An existential dread had been creeping over Felicity for quite a while now. This dread consisted of the knowledge that the reasons her life was so miserable were structural, systemic, and unable to be changed. At first, she thought this was just an irrational self-pity trying to trick her into an even darker depression. But as time went on, she began to wonder if this was the rational assessment of her life. The fact that no doctor or psychologist seemed willing to contradict this dread was the most alarming part of it all.
The fact that nobody, including herself, wanted to face, was that suicide might be a rational response to her life and environment, and no one had yet presented her with a reason to confidently believe otherwise.
Felicity was a sane person destined to be treated as if she were crazy. And she often wondered if the treatment had worked.
The doctor entered the room and silently nodded at her in greeting. He sat down on his stool and took a deep breath before addressing her. Felicity braced herself for the inevitable indignities of this conversation and plastered a forced smile onto her lips. She had to suffer through whatever torments this man could throw at her and provide whichever responses he needed to consent to giving her what she needed. This was the essence of medical practice, in her experience, and this conversation was going to be even more so.
"I understand you're requesting a referral to the Personhood Eradication Treatment program," he spoke.
"The PET program, yes," she said casually.
"May I ask why?" he asked, confusion and incredulity spreading over his face.
"Have you read my chart?" she said, raising an eyebrow at him and forcing herself to keep a lid on the snark she felt.
"Yes, I--" he trailed off, looking down at the floor. "I just don't understand why a person would voluntarily submit themselves to this."
"I don't expect you to understand, doctor. I'm just asking that you respect my agency to make the choice," she said, as un-defensively as she could manage.
"Well, I..." he looked back at her finally. "I want to respect your choice, Felicity, but this is a very extreme step, and I will feel some degree of responsibility for referring you to it. I want to know why, or I'm afraid I cannot help you."
She looked at him for a long time, teetering between the defiance she felt and her desire to get what she wanted. "Frankly, doctor, I don't know that you have the capacity to understand my choice," she knew she should not have said that part, but it was a compromise with the raging defiance in her heart.
"But I will try and explain. Just remember that you're forcing me to tell you this, and I suspect you will regret it by the time I'm done," she warned, not wanting to feel any kind of guilt for unleashing her darkness upon another person, no matter how patronizingly she was being treated.
"I'm running out of reasons not to kill myself. I've been through every treatment there is, and truthfully, it has only ever made things worse. The unvarnished truth that nobody wants to admit, including myself, is that my life is factually unbearable, and that any reasonable person in my situation would be contemplating killing themselves. I understand this is a position that does not fit within the rules of society, and for that I am cast out into the street to deal with it on my own."
She paused, giving him a moment for all of that to sink in. "The fact is, human beings are not supposed to live with this much misery, and our country is so fucked up and dysfunctional, biased toward human misery, that there is no viable way out for me. I am trapped by the trauma of my past and present, and there exists no ladder to get me out of that. Myself, my personhood, has become the cruelest and most effective tool for society to inflict further pain on me- trapped in this hell, aware of it, and completely helpless to escape. You cannot help me with that. Medicine and psychology cannot help me with that. Nobody can help me with that."
"So, when I read about the PET program, it felt as if somebody had finally invented an answer for my problems that works within the context of this fucked up, shithole of a world we live in. Do I wish there were another answer? Yes. But I've already tried them all, and I have decided that submitting myself to the program is better than killing myself. I think there's a good chance that becoming something lesser and having the security of being taken care of and comforted, would be far more pleasant than my life experience currently. And frankly, my dignity is nothing but a constant source of torment, so having the entire concept eradicated from my consciousness sounds very appealing," she finished.
He looked at her intently for a long time before responding. "You do understand that this program was developed specifically to deal with the most violent and dangerous criminals? The creators pitched it as a more humane alternative to execution, and frankly I'm not sure I agree," he said.
"Yes, I understand that. And I agree it would be incredibly cruel to subject a person to this treatment against their will. But that is not the case here," she said simply. "And isn't there a long precedent of treatments being found to be effective for radically different purposes than they were originally developed for?"
"Yes, but this is not some cancer pill that happens to treat depression, it is an irreversible, profound transformation of the very core of you as a person," he said.
"I understand the implications, doctor. Wouldn't you agree that I've already tried everything medicine has to offer?" She asked.
"Yes, but-"
She cut him off, "Then I'm just informing you, not as a threat or an attempt at manipulation, that if I am not referred to this program, I will be dead by next week," she said dispassionately, simply stating a matter of fact.
"Goddamnit," he signed in frustration, pinching his nose with his thumb and middle fingers. "I don't want your blood on my hands, Felicity, but neither will I feel responsible for what they're going to do to you once I sign this piece of paper," he paused, staring into her eyes defiantly. Her heart began to race at the words. He was going to do it.
"So, I'm going to read you every single disclaimer they have in here, and there is a lot. And you are going to specifically consent to be subjected to every single one of them. Understand?"
She nodded at him. "Once I have read you all of this, and you have provided your consent, I will sign this referral and my hands will be washed of what happens to you next. Do you agree?" He asked, pleading in his eyes with the guilt he seemed to feel for being put in this position.
"Yes," she said, bracing herself for the final onslaught.
"Very well, let's get this over with," he said, pulling out the packet of papers that contained the program referral.
"The PET program consists of drastic modifications to the patient's brain structure and chemistry and results in an irreversible change to the patient's self-perception. Do you understand and consent to this?"
"Yes."
"The purpose of the PET program is to alter the personality and disposition of the patient. The patient will likely not remember who they were prior to treatment and will be unrecognizable to friends or family. Do you understand and consent to this?"
"Yes."
"The publicly available sector of the PET program's treatment is extremely expensive, and as such each patient will be sponsored by a donor. The patient will have the opportunity to select from a pool of donors and will be given detailed information about the donor's psychological profile as well as a description of what the donor intends to do with the subject after treatment. Following treatment, the patient will be permanently remanded into the custody of the donor, and the donor will assume all future responsibilities for the care of the patient. Do you understand and consent to this?"
"Yes."
"Due to the nature of the changes to the patient's self-perception, consent to any meaningful standard will become impossible for the patient. As such, the patient must understand that by consenting to undertake treatment, they are issuing permanent, irrevocable, and blanket consent to their donor. This consent includes, but is not limited to, the consent for sexual relations, the consent to modify the patient's body, the consent to submit to arbitrary rules, and the consent to surrender any and all agency over the patient's future, care, and bodily autonomy. Do you understand and consent to this?"
"Yes."
