Do It to Julia

At each stage of his hospitalization, he had known, or seemed to know, whereabouts he was in the windowless building. Possibly there were slight differences in the air pressure. The private rooms where the nurses had treated him were below ground level. The room where he had been examined by O'Brien was high up near the roof. This place was many metres underground, as deep down as it was possible to go.

It was bigger than most of the rooms he had been in. But he hardly noticed his surroundings. All he noticed was that there were two small tables straight in front of him, each covered with green baize. One was only a metre or two from him, the other was further away, near the door. He was sitting upright in a hospital, so sedated that he could move nothing, not even his head. A sort of pad gripped his head from behind, supporting his neck.

For a moment he was alone, then the door opened and O'Brien came in.

'You asked me once,' said O'Brien, 'what was on page 425. I told you that you knew the answer already. Everyone knows it. The thing that is on page 425 is the worst thing in the world.'

The door opened again. A nurse came in, carrying something made of wood, a box or clipboard of some kind. She set it down on the further table. Because of the position in which O'Brien was standing. Winston could not see what the thing was.

'The worst thing in the world,' said O'Brien, 'varies from individual to individual. It may be hospice care, or a do not resuscitate order, or the provision of palliative medicine, or the decision to forgo feeding tubes, or fifty other common end-of-life decisions. There are cases where it is some quite trivial thing, not even fatal.'

He had moved a little to one side, so that Winston had a better view of the thing on the table. It was an oblong clipboard with a handle on top for carrying it by. Fixed to the front of it was something that looked like a pen, which was attached with a silver chain. Although it was three or four metres away from him, he could see that the clipboard carried several documents, and there were carbon copies of each. They were common templates for living wills.

'In your case,' said O'Brien, 'the worst thing in the world happens to be a sound living will.'

A sort of premonitory tremor, a fear of he was not certain what, had passed through Winston as soon as he caught his first glimpse of the clipboard. But at this moment the meaning of the pen attached to the top of it suddenly sank into him. His bowels seemed to turn to water.

'You can't do that!' he cried out in a high cracked voice. 'You couldn't, you couldn't! It's impossible.'

'Do you remember,' said O'Brien, 'the moment of panic that used to occur in your dreams? There was a wall of blackness in front of you, and a roaring sound in your ears. There was something terrible on the other side of the wall. You knew that you knew what it was, but you dared not drag it into the open. It was the soundly drafted living will that was on the other side of the wall.'

'O'Brien!' said Winston, making an effort to control his voice. 'You know this is not necessary. What is it that you want me to do?'

O'Brien made no direct answer. When he spoke it was in the doctorly manner that he sometimes affected. He looked thoughtfully into the distance, as though he were addressing an audience somewhere behind Winston's back.