When We Turned Into Numbers

Beep. Beep. 6.30 am. Tuesday. 

In an instant the relentless ringing of my alarm jolts me out of sleep and thrusts me into the new day. The song of blackbirds. The indiscernible chatter of street workers. Life is budding outside in its myriad of colours and my desire to feel it, smell it, taste it, tugs me out of bed and to my pink, bulky wardrobe. I open the doors and proudly pass through my assortment of trousers to select the mood of the day: Vivacious yellow, serene purple, inquisitive orange, white. White trousers. Why haven’t I thrown them away yet?  White trousers are for the common crowd or is it for those who dread judgement…? Inquisitive orange it is. I finish dressing, brush my teeth, grab the car keys and head off to work. 

Through the car window I turn to my diurnal inspection of the High Street people: colonies of bees swarming through the street and attending to their mundane habits. The coffee shop is being bombarded by the I-need-my-morning-coffee colony whilst the road is buzzing with the I-need-to-get-to-work colony whose car honking pierces through the crisp morning air. I arrive at my destination: St John’s Hospital. 

Upon entering the common room for neonatal nurses, I scan through the white-trousered crowd, trying to seek out my friend Annie by her usual, bright-green trousers. A figure in white approaches me. Annie. Annie, my friend, a white sheep; I‘ve lost her to the manipulative hands of conformity. Clusters of sheep eyes slowly turn towards me, burn holes through my orange trousers, and stumbling back through the door, I seek cover in my work in the newborn nursery: Note down their name and physical features. Name and physical features. I am surrounded by a screeching silence. Where is the whining? The wailing? Strange. I get to work. 

James, blue eyes, blond hair, 3.25 kg. 

Tom, blue eyes, blond hair, 3.25 kg. Twins, how sweet. 

Linda, blue eyes, blond hair, 3.25kg. 

Wait. A flood of anxiety propels my limbs down the row of cribs.

Blue eyes, blond hair, 3.25 kg. 

It can‘t be. Each baby, each life looks the same, behaves the same, carries the same genes. 

Back on High Street: One hand on the steering wheel, one hand on my pounding heart. Through my window I can see the colonies rushing back home, nervously honking their way through the traffic, queuing for their afternoon coffee. They all behave the same. They all are the same. The throbbing in my skull gets bigger, louder, absorbs me, engulfs me as the cars, shops, people emerge into one, one entity, one number, and I realize: Individualism was once a choice; Conformity is now law.

Beep. Beep. 6.30am. Wednesday 

In an instant the relentless ringing of my alarm jolts me out of sleep and thrusts me into the new day. I open the doors to my wardrobe and pass through my trousers: Yellow, purple, orange, white. White trousers it is.  

White and alien and customary is the figure replicated by the mirror. A repeated image. Good. I can now go to work. The hospital’s doors open, and I am welcomed by a morgue-like stillness. With every step I take towards the newborn nursery, my white disguise slowly tightens around my thighs and by the time I enter the room, it has glued, burned itself into my skin. There’s no crying nor wailing, only blue-eyed, blond, 3.25kg babies sharing the first minutes of a predetermined life. I get to work. At times when I am recording their features, relaxing in the unprecedented ease of it, relishing in the sweet silence, I am injected with a treacherous appreciation for conformity. Is conformity really that evil? Could it not be the solution to perpetual peace? After all, if there’s no distinction in appearance, there’s no envy; no divergence in skill, no pride; no imbalance in money, no greed; no variance in opinion, no wrath, no fight, no war. 

A scream. The silence is broken. The law of conformity endangered. The high-pitched, persisting, anguished cry of a baby floods the corridors, followed by the unwavering pulse of tramping footsteps. They are coming. Still, I can feel the suffocating white trousers gradually squeezing out the person I had once been.

I am encircled by a herd of neonatal nurses. The screaming gets louder and closer and my neck wildly twists in yearning for that one face which is dear, one face to lend me escape, one face that belongs to my friend Annie. A white sheep dissociates from the circle and advances towards me- it’s Annie. My friend, my liberator has come to help me flee this preying ambush. A stretch-of-an-arm away to touch, and a gathering of my senses to realize: It is not salvation that she shall bestow. It’s Death. 

Blind ecstasy has skinned me of my sight, my hearing, and I did not notice – Oh why, why did I not notice?- that the screaming had arrived, that it was a stretch-of-an-arm away to touch, that Annie bears the screaming, newborn baby in one hand and the syringe that will kill it in the other. It’s Death. I’m looking straight at him, I now see how he pinched and pulled and contorted Annie’s amiable face into that of blankness. I now see how he has starved her of her last droplet of life, her last droplet of identity that had shaped her into Annie. It’s not Annie. It’s not anyone. I am encircled by a herd of white, dead sheep. 

Before I could revolt or run away or utter a syllable of dissent, pressed into my hands I now hold the warm, frail child and the cold, unforgiving syringe. Then the bleating began. “It is an error. Eradicate it from the system.” I examine my fate. “It is an error. Eradicate it!” A baby cursed with green, not blue, beautifully innocent eyes. “It is an error. Eradicate it!” A syringe filled with green, viscous liquid. “It is an error. Eradicate!” My fate. “Eradicate!” My doom. “Eradicate!” Green, innocent eyes drowning in tears, “Eradicate!“, a red, scrunched face bleeding with agony, “Eradicate!”, it screams, “Eradicate!”, and screams, “Eradicate!”, and screams, “Eradicate!”, and stops, stops screaming.

Silence. Peaceful. Murderous. A heavy lightness in my hand divulges my sin: I glance down at the pressed-down plunger, the empty syringe. Then at the lifeless lump of flesh in my hands. Then at the lifeless lump of flesh of my hands. Did my hands kill? Did I murder? No. No. There is no my and there is no I. Two lives have been taken; Two errors have been corrected. One was deleted from the system; One, finally, turned into a number.