Machine Man (serial)

CHAPTER TWELVE

“The company didn’t realize what Dad was doing for a long time,” said Lola. “I guess they couldn’t believe anyone would do that to themselves. Lose parts. He was down another three toes, a thumb, and an ear before they sent someone to the house, asking questions. Like: Did my father seem depressed? Had he ever talked about killing himself? You see, they still had it all wrong. Dad had never been happier.

“That’s how I figured it out. One night he was tucking me into bed, and his head was funny on one side because of the missing ear, and his eyes were full of love. And I knew. I said, ‘Thank you.’ He nodded. I felt so special. Nobody else’s dad would do this for them. Nobody’s.

“It became our secret. After a while, he let me help plan his accidents. We had a little notebook. He’d been silly with the hand, he said, losing it all at once. He said, ‘See, Lola? The sum of the parts is greater than the whole.’ It was true. The payout for death was a hundred thousand dollars. But if you added up all the individual body parts, it came to a lot more than that. Even the hand, if you lost it all at once, that was fifty thousand, but each finger alone was between ten and fifteen, and the thumb was up to twenty. You could play the numbers to maximize your return.

“It’s a good principle. ‘The sum of the parts is greater than the whole.’ I’ve held onto that, in prosthetics.”

Lola sighed. “Then Mom busted us. She must have been listening at the door. She burst in, screaming, and grabbed the notebook. I ran out of the house. When I came back, Mom gave me a long talk about how Dad was ill. In the head. That made me angry. I couldn’t stand her saying he only loved me so much because he was sick.

“She reported him to the company. But he was crafty. He knew the factory—where the cameras were, how the safeties worked. He managed three more claims. A foot. His arm. Then the leg. He was going bigger, because he knew it couldn’t last. The company was trying to transfer him, fire him, get him committed, anything. They assigned a guy to follow him around.

“One night, the last night I ever saw him, he came into my room on his crutch. He only had one, because he only had one arm, so it was hard for him. And I felt scared, seeing him hobbling like that, because it didn’t seem like a game any more. The fingers, the ear, even the foot, they hadn’t really slowed him down. They had seemed funny. But now it didn’t.

“He leaned down and kissed me on the forehead. And it was longer than usual, so I knew that tomorrow was another accident. I said, ‘Dad, don’t.’ He smiled. He said, ‘It’s okay. Last one. After tomorrow, when you need a new heart, you can have the best there is.’”

Lola burst into tears. “He was crushed under an engine block. He didn’t mean it. He just couldn’t move fast enough. I know, because after I heard, I ran to his study, where he hid the notebook. He was only trying to lose the shoulder.

“The company gave us one hundred thousand dollars. The death payout. The whole, which was less than the sum of the parts. Mom put it with the rest, and I guess she invested wisely, because by the time I turned eighteen there was six hundred thousand dollars.

“I told the doctor I wanted something that would last forever, because my dad had given everything for it. I wanted something steel. I wanted my dad to live on in my heart for the rest of my life.”

Her face contorted. Her fingers clutched at her chest. “And they took it out.”

54.