Exit Exam

Daniel Dawson, followed by two uniformed men, entered the doctor’s room. His eyes, hazel and long-lashed, were full of hope and disbelief. Occasionally, he looked down at his wrists, marvelling at their freedom. They still had raw, pink marks from being constantly in handcuffs for the last who-knew-how-long. A doctor, who had donned gloves and dressed all in white, was seated behind a highly-polished mahogany table, leaning his chin on his interlaced hands.

Various medical paraphernalia littered Dr. Macintosh’s office. A large metal machine, with no discernible use, sat behind the doctor, glinting quietly in the fluorescent light. Daniel looked at it curiously, then glanced at the doctor, who averted his eyes with an expression that looked vaguely like chagrin.

Macintosh motioned to a chair to the side of his desk, and Daniel sat down. The uniformed men sat on chairs alongside him. One, dark with a balding scalp, wrung his hands, and his eyes darted warily around the room. His colleague subtly stamped on his foot. The bright lights of the medicinal practice glinted off their guns and handcuffs.

“So, here for a check-up, are you, Mister Dawson?” The doctor inquired casually.
“That’s what the wardens tell me.” The ex-prisoner shot back. “Not that I’ll have to listen to them much longer.”
“Of course, of course,” Macintosh replied idly. “Now, if I could just weigh and measure you, Mister Dawson? Just to check your BMI, and the like…”

A scale was produced, and Daniel stepped onto it. Being a fairly tall man, he was quite underweight. Not surprisingly, considering the conditions that he had been subjected to for the previous months. The twenty-four year old had been convicted for the murder of his own father. The evidence was damning, but Dawson still stuck to his assertion that he was innocent, and merely in the wrong place at the wrong time. And rightly so – he had had no involvement with the crime, and, in fact, mourned his father to this day.

Shockingly, the day before, his old lawyer – who he hadn’t seen since he’d lost his trial – announced that he had been acquitted of all charges, and would be released from prison the following day. No reason for this startling acquittal had been given, but Daniel was too euphoric to be suspicious. So now he was in Dr. Macintosh’s office for a final check-up on his health before being released.

The two wardens, O’Toole and Reilly, shifted impatiently in their seats as Dawson was examined from top to bottom. Daniel was a bit confused and irritated. They’d only been in the office for about ten minutes, and surely watching an acquitted criminal being examined was better than punishing criminally insane men beating the shit out of each other. Again. Dawson grimaced as this thought came to him. He had been on the receiving ends of those beatings too many a time for him to be comfortable thinking about it.

After Macintosh had finished listening to Daniel’s heart, he wheeled the strange looking metal machine out from behind his desk. The ex-prisoner only now noticed that the machine had wires reaching out from it, with electrodes attached to the ends. They looked vaguely like the tentacles of some electrical octopus.

“Now, er, this, um, machine is a lot like a, er, electrocardiogram machine… “ The doctor lapsed into a nervous babble of medical jargon, that, frankly, Daniel had no interest in. He let out a small sigh, and looked at the clock. He was healthy as a horse, apart from a couple of bruises and being a bit underweight, and he was starting to feel a bit impatient with all this. Judging by their restlessness, O’Toole and Reilly felt the same way.

Dawson was jolted back to reality as Macintosh started to dab some cold, sticky substance onto his right wrist. He gave out a bit of a yelp, and the doctor jumped as well.

“Sorry, sorry, I’m just gluing down the electrodes – “
“No, it’s fine, you just gave me a fright, is all.” Daniel cut him off impatiently, not wanting another lecture on the intricacies of an electro-whatever machine. He relaxed again, letting the doctor do his work. As the doctor walked back to his machine, and starting flipping some switches, the two prison warders’ heads snapped up from where they had been muttering together, suddenly paying utmost attention to what was happening.

Dawson found this pretty odd, but was distracted from wherever that thought would have led by the faint tingling that suddenly started down his limbs and throughout his body. Daniel scratched instinctively at the sticky substance coating the electrodes that were attached to various areas all over his body.

“Hold still, now, please,” Macintosh asked. Then he pressed a large, silver button. Daniel heard the whir of a machine, and the buzz as electricity sped down the wires connected to the electrodes that covered his body… and then he keeled over, quite dead.

The two wardens stood up, and the doctor walked over to them, wiping his forehead with a handkerchief. The three started removing the electrodes from the prisoner’s dead body in silence.

“I still don’t really agree with this mercy-execution idea that has come about, do you?” The doctor asked, after a couple of minutes.

“But isn’t it kinder that they not know what’s coming?” O’Toole replied quietly, after a pause.

“I suppose, but just seeing the hope in their eyes as they walk into the room… Then seeing it erased in a flash like that,” Macintosh replied. The he slowly reached out, and, using two fingers, closed the eyes of the dead man who lay slumped between them.