The Ones Who Really Care

   “Some of them think she’s real, bless them,” said Adrienne, drinking deep of her mug of tea. There was a saying about tea so strong you could stand a spoon up in it. Well, that didn’t really exist, of course, but Adrienne, the “head of the care team” as she called herself, at the Tall Pines Care Home (which had a few stunted conifers bought when they were on offer at the local garden centre dotted at irregular intervals around the grounds) seemed determined to prove that it was not just a figure of speech. “And am I much better? It, I mean, not she.”

“But she is real,” pointed out her colleague Eliza. “Not a figment of our imagination.”

“Oh, you know perfectly well what I mean! Don’t be pedantic.”

“Takes one to know one,” muttered Eliza.

Ever the peacemaker, Maxine appeared with a plate of biscuits. “I shouldn’t,” said Adrienne, helping herself to four of them.

“But I do see what you mean, Eliza,” Maxine said. She’s quite uncannily lifelike. Only the residents don’t see it as uncanny. Even the ones who are normally crotchety, or the ones who – who aren’t as quick witted as they used to be.”

“Well, there’s some excuse for them, poor loves,” said Adrienne. “But so far as anyone else is concerned, Rita – they even had to give the thing a name, for heaven’s sake – is just a bit of machinery – ruddy clever machinery, I grant you.”

Even as they spoke, Robot In Therapy Ambience, generally known as Rita, walked into the staff lounge. Yes, WALKED. Didn’t glide or trundle. True, Rita’s gait was a little awkward, but it was fairly swift, and not too noisy. She had prosthetic limbs that were frankly more realistic than the couple of residents who had artificial legs, and dressed camel coloured trousers and a powder blue sweater. “It is time for Irene’s medication,” she reminded them, in that voice that was well modulated but most certainly didn’t, as Adrienne had once rather distastefully said (though the others couldn’t help laughing) sound like Stephen Hawking in drag.

“Oh, bother that woman,” Adrienne muttered, draining her tea, her face seeming to register pleasure and pain at the same time as it seeped down her windpipe. “She’s getting beyond us. Should be in a proper nursing home – or at least they could train that useless lump of metal to do medications as well.”

Irene was a fragile, lonely old lady, who didn’t make friends easily. Nobody was actually unkind to her, not even Adrienne, and the other residents did their best, but she stayed determinedly in her shell. She had not exactly been a recluse before she came to Tall Pines, but had been happy in her own neat, cosy little cottage with her beloved spaniel Mitzi. Oh, how she missed her! It was a comfort of sorts to know she was very well looked after but it wasn’t the same as fondling her silky ears and seeing those faithful, limpid eyes look into her own as if they knew exactly what she was thinking.

She had thought she would never experience that again.

And yet now she did. Once Adrienne had administered the medication, not roughly, but with no great patience or tenderness either, Rita came and sat beside her bedside. Oh, those big blue eyes of hers were so kind and gentle. “It hurts, Rita,” she said, and was trying to keep the tremble out of her voice, but couldn’t completely suppress it. “And I know that inside a half hour or so I’ll start feeling sick and it will be horrible and humiliating ….”

“I can’t stop it being horrible, Irene,” Rita said, quietly, “Though I think you should have a word with the doctor when he comes – maybe he can give you something that doesn’t have so many side effects. But there is no need to be humiliated. You know that I will see to anything of that nature, and I don’t mind in the slightest, and it will soon be over. And later on I will give you a bath, with that lovely scented bath lotion your nephew gave you for your birthday.”

“I look forward to that,” Irene said. “I thought I would hate others having to bath me though – I like to be clean, you know I do. But when you do it, it’s fine. You don’t see anything disgusting about my old body ….”

“There is nothing disgusting about your body, Irene,” said Rita. “It would be beautiful to have a body like that.”

Maxine was passing and she smiled indulgently. She supposed that Adrienne was right, but there was something about the rapport that Irene had with Rita that honestly made you wonder. And she could have sworn she just heard Rita sigh. She hurriedly shook her head and gave herself a little shake. No, of course Rita didn’t sigh. Robots didn’t sigh. Not even ones like Rita. It was probably something to do with her electronics and they ought to mention it to the mechanic next time he came. Heaven help them if anything went wrong with Rita! We could really do with two of them, she thought, but knew that wasn’t going to happen. One of them cost more than their annual salary and they were reckoned to be a long term investment. The staff had a theory – and this was one matter on which they were all agreed – that they had, in fact, got Rita by accident and a very human administrative cock-up, and that she was really meant for Tall Trees, the posh elder care home on the other side of town. But she was programmed with all the necessary details for Tall Pines now, and they certainly had no intention of alerting anyone to the possible mistake. Anyway, Maxine had mixed feelings. Though she was a caring sort of person, and not squeamish, there was no point to pretending that working in a home was always a brilliant job. But it was a job, and she’d had worse ones, and though the pay wasn’t great, it was above minimum wage – which she suspected as also an administrative blip. And – this was an uncomfortable thought – another robotic assistant might mean the departure of the human variety, and last in, first out, and all that …..

Rita tarried by Irene, patting her hand and chatting about things she was interested in, and the injection stopped hurting, and Irene began to hope that perhaps she wouldn’t feel sick after all. Just talking to Irene was a tonic. Irene smiled, remembering that had been a saying of her mother’s. If somebody made you feel better, they were a tonic. “You’re smiling, Irene,” said Rita, softly. “I like to see you smile.”

“I was thinking about my mother,” she said, and Rita sighed again. “I can’t think about mine,” she said, wistfully.

“Oh, my poor child. You were an orphan.” Rita did not seem to understand the word, and did what she always did in such circumstances, changed the subject but did so with tact and kindness, and Irene barely noticed that she had done it.

But she knew that she must not monopolise Rita. She was there to help everyone. “Do come and see me later, though,” she said.

“Of course I will.”

And Irene knew she would. She never let her down.

As she had said, Rita could not administer medication. But there was something she could do. She came into the staff lounge where Adrienne was watching The Chase and proving out loud that she knew the answers to questions the competitors didn’t, even if they were the wrong ones.

“You may want to talk to the Doctor about Irene’s medication,” she said, “It is not agreeing with her.”

“Oh, stop telling me how to run this place, you quacking lump of metal,” Adrienne snapped.

“I just reported such things, as I am trained to.”

“Bugger off, will you?”

Rita obligingly buggered off. She had promised Randolph she would watch the horse racing with him. He sometimes asked her to place a bet – and she had an uncanny knack for picking winners! – but she shook her head sadly and said, “I can’t do that, Randolph.”

“Oh? You have some notions about gambling being a sin and all that? Wouldn’t have thought it!”

“No, I don’t have any such notions. But I cannot leave the building.”

“You can’t? Blimey, you’re even more of a prisoner here than we are,” he shook his head, but gave his attention to the evening card at Kempton Park.

Adrienne was still fuming over Rita presuming to tell her her job, but then she decided there might be an advantage to it after all. She would tell the doctor that SHE had noticed about the medication having bad side effects. That would impress him.

Life went on its predictable way at Tall Pines. That was until there was an email from Marcus Del Mar (who was really called Malcolm Shuttleworth) who was the owner of the Del Mar Home from Homes, the group of care homes across the East Midlands to which Tall Pines belonged. Adrienne thought him a pretentious prat, but always treated him with indulgent politeness, whether in his presence or over cyberspace. The latter was easier, especially when she asked Maxine to help out. It pained her to admit it, but Maxine had more of a way with words than she did. But this wasn’t just a courtesy email. It had what Eliza called News with a Capital N. He had been approached by a Television Production Company to make a fly on the wall documentary about how Androids like Rita were revolutionising Elder Care.

Adrienne liked what she heard, and though of course she would have to be magnanimous about Rita having her – its fair share of air time, there would be plenty of time for human interest and didn’t reality TV sometimes make stars of people? Oh, of course there was the legal stuff, and nothing would be shown without the permission of those involved, staff, residents, or visitors. She knew they had to say things like that. Anyway, what else but good things would they have to say about Tall Pines?

Things moved quickly. Adrienne barely had time to get her hair done and her roots touched up. Fresh flowers were put in every resident’s room, though she was narked that that ruddy Rita had to remind her that, “Margaret has a pollen allergy. It might be wiser to put artificial ones in her room.” Still, she had to reluctantly concede that it was as well she had been reminded. She never quite trusted Margaret whose eyes were too beady for her own good, and wouldn’t put it past her doing her drama queen act and staging a sneezing fit on camera even if she wasn’t really having one. Still, she was looking forward to it, and didn’t try to hide the fact. Irene was another matter. “I don’t like the sound of this,” she confided to Rita. “I’m a private person, Rita, you know that!”

“But you know you won’t have to appear in the programme if you don’t want to. You have to consent to it.”

“Yes – I know that’s what they SAY, but – I don’t trust them, not entirely, and I know I shouldn’t say it. But things can get twisted round.”

“You won’t be on screen if you don’t want to be, Rita. You have my word. You don’t even have to see anyone if you don’t want to. It will be fine.”

“Well, I suppose they wouldn’t be that interested in me anyway,” she said, both sadness and relief in her voice.”

The “folk from the telly” as Eliza had taken to calling them, torn between irritation and her own sneaky desire for five minutes of fame, turned up with remarkably little to do and fuss. There were also fewer of them than people had expected. The programme’s creator was also going to present it. Adrienne didn’t hide her disappointment that she hadn’t heard of him. What had happened to Nicky Campbell, or Paul O’Grady or Davina McColl? Even his name vaguely irritated her – Dai. And it wasn’t even as if he had much of a Welsh accent. Still, when he’d arrived she’d thought he’d be a doddle. She’d soon have him trained. There were compensations to having some know-nothing wannabe (she had picked that expression up off Randolph’s rather truculent granddaughter whom she generally thought an insufferable brat) running the show – or thinking he was – rather than an established personality who would have the ego to do with it.

But the wretched man wasn’t nearly as tractable and manageable as she’d hoped. Oh, he was polite. Unfailingly polite. But tediously insistent on matters such as consent. Adrienne had even practised her lines. Worked out her script. If she said something like, “Oh, we can see to that later, and I’m sure we all value flexibility round here,” in her most reasonable but in charge voice, Dai was having none of it. “I do appreciate your being prepared to be flexible, Mrs Reynolds,” he said, “But I’m afraid that’s not how we work. We have a good reputation and intend keeping it.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t want to ruin your good reputation, “ she said, and if he noticed her sarcasm, he gave no indication of it.

But the residents got on famously with him. Even Irene was coaxed out of her shell! Rita asked her if she’d like a chat with Dai, and said, “And don’t you worry. I meant what I said when I promised you that you won’t be made to do or say anything you don’t want. He feels just the same way about it as I do. But I did mention – I hope you don’t mind – that your father was an architect, and he’s very interested in that kind of thing ….”

“Well, I wouldn’t say architect, and he certainly wouldn’t have done,” Irene said, but her face flushed pink with pleasure. She had worshipped her father and loved to talk about him and how he had done so much for the local history society.

Dai was such a good listener, and asked some interesting questions, too. Though there was sometimes one that seemed very simple and she was surprised that someone so obviously educated didn’t know. But she realised that he wasn’t having her on. He was ever so respectful and friendly. And though he didn’t take any notes, either on paper, or that new way, on a phone, she was sure he was remembering everything he told her. And though she could have talked to him for hours she knew that she must not be selfish and childish when he said apologetically that he had to have a word with Adrienne. “I know I shouldn’t say this,” Irene said, “And don’t misunderstand me, she’s never cruel or anything like that, but Adrienne always seems to be here on sufferance, and often she doesn’t remember a thing we tell her. Even little things but – those little things that make life here more bearable. You wouldn’t forget, would you, Dai?”

“It’s true I have a good memory,” he said.

Dai worked on the programme throughout the night, in the little room he had been allocated. He would have to remember to dispose of the cup of tea that Maxine had kindly left for him. They were working on that for the next stage of development, It shouldn’t prove too difficult.

Amazing, really, when it hadn’t been that long since they had relied on good (or bad) old fashioned oil, though not nearly as often as some of the movies made out. Advances were being made every single day. And though he was always polite to Rita, Dai was – well, somewhere between a small step and a giant leap further down the line than she was. He was the Dual Android Interface.