Free Nano by Robin Cook

humor.
This was not the way human beings should back out of life.
    He had gotten used to the procedure he went through before he saw her, but the necessity for it still eluded him. While he waited in the lounge of the assisted-living home, a young male nurse made preparations for the visit, tidying the woman’s room, making sure she was comfortable and properly dressed, and making two cups of the wretched tea, one of which would sit on its coaster by his chair, untouched.
What did all this matter?
the man thought.
I don’t much care how she looks, and if there’s any embarrassment, she won’t remember anyway.
    Zachary Berman looked at his mother, who was staring out of the ground-floor window of her one-room home. There was a tree outside with a bird feeder, and at the best times of year, she sat here all day and watched the birds fly up and feed and squabble over where they would stand on their perches. She put the teacup back on the saucer and looked at her son. Zachary reached behind him and took a picture frame off the bureau that had stood in their New Jersey home for years. It was too big for this room, but Zachary thought it was a good idea to have as many reminders of home as possible. That was before she was completely lost to the world.
    The frame held ten small pictures. There was one of his mom and dad on their wedding day; of Zachary and Jonathan as kids; of the next generation of couples and their own children. Zachary held the frame out to his mother and pointed out a picture of his brother.
    “This is Jonathan, Susan. Do you remember Jonathan? He was about ten when this picture was taken. I remember that day very well.”
    “Why do you remember?” she asked. Zachary no longer maintained that Susan was his mother, or Eli his father, as both these notions upset her terribly. Eli was someone she obviously guarded somewhere safe in her mind.
    “I remember it because I took the photograph. We went up to the Poconos in the spring to look at a camp. I borrowed the camera and took the picture. See how he’s smiling? Jonathan always loved that picture, it was his favorite.”
    “How do you know it was his favorite?”
    “He told me, Susan.”
    “What time is it?”
    “It’s after seven, why?”
    “Well, what day is it, dammit?”
    “It’s Sunday, Susan.”
    “My program’s coming on. At seven.” Susan resumed her watch of the darkened inner courtyard. “I better not miss it.”
    The nurse appeared at the door. “How does she seem?” he asked.
    “She’s the same as she was several weeks ago, or so she seems to me. Have you noticed any change?”
    “She’s getting very agitated, and more frequently,” the nurse said. “There’s a show on TV she’s fixated on seeing, but we can’t figure out what it is. You know she tried to get out through the fire escape last week. It’s such a shame there’s nothing we can really do for her.”
    Berman was surprised at the young man’s candor, but he was right. Alzheimer’s had a death grip on his mother and her brain was wasting away, and with it her personality, everything that made her Susan Berman. To all intents and purposes, that person had been erased and replaced by this horribly reduced version of her, one who would soon lose the ability to control any bodily functions as the brain proceeded to shut down completely. His mother was now less functional than a small child, but that wasn’t precisely the right analogy for her. Berman thought she was less capable than even that.
    Thanks to his extensive research, Berman knew what was happening to his mother. Her brain was a collection of neurons or nerve cells that passed information from one to another. Thoughts, ideas, memories, such as the ability to recognize her surviving son—all these could be described by chemical or electrical interactions among nerve cells. In some people like Susan, these interactions started to become interrupted, blocked by abnormalities called amyloid plaques, made