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Reginald gave a short, almost dark little chuckle. "No, I'm afraid I don't," he said. "Just the one character. Just enough to guess that you, Oliver, are an only child -- like Cecilia."
The elderly man took a breath and continued on. "To start at the beginning, the story I have told everyone else that has asked that I woke up in a cottage. It was seemingly somewhere in Great Britain, and one of the medical robots were there. You know the ones," he said looking to Owen and Cecilia. "From our exams early on. It had a speaker and a voice that sounded very much like that bloody phone woman my daughter is always talking to. It told me that I was very ill, and I knew that to be true. I'd been hiding it for a couple of days. We had no pharmacy in those days, there wasn't a thing Cecilia could have done for me. Though I know she would have tried anyway." He cast a brief smile in her direction. "When I was better, they continued giving me instructions over a computer. I did lots of puzzles and memory tests -- that sort of thing. That is the version of the story I have told everyone, and it is correct -- it simply leaves out a key chunk of the middle."
"I don't think I need to tell any of you what sort of agony pneumonia at my age is. I lost at least a day or two to utter incoherency, and that was perfectly fine. It was when I was awake and aware of my own suffering that was the problem." Reginald's expression grew troubled, a shadow of memory coming over him that he'd rather not have. "I suffered, and in that suffering, my mind withdrew into dark corners. There is no dignity in being bedridden and desperately ill. There is less so when removed from human compassion." Reginald could not -- would not -- tell them the immense humiliation of being put on a bedpan by a damned machine. "I began to think, why fight this? I'm not going to get out. Whether I survive this or not it makes no difference. I gave up. I take no pride in that, but my mind wasn't terribly right, and in those circumstances I don't think anyone can anticipate what they will do. I started refusing oxygen and food, pulling IVs. The machine kept replacing them and . . . that continued on for some time. Eventually I was restrained but my health declined again. Without any desire to get better my body seemed to consent to the decision."
He looked almost sheepish with this admission. It was subdued but there was still a small shadow of shame in his eyes. He felt oddly as though he owed Cecilia an apology. He pressed on.