National Underwriter Life & Health Magazine has the insanely depressing story of comics legend Bill Mantlo, an incredibly prolific comics writer who created ROM and wrote Micronauts before getting a law degree and taking a huge pay cut to work as a crusading New York public defender, right up to the time that a hit-and-run driver left him with a near-fatal brain injury. Mantlo's insurer, Cigna, rode his family hard, pushing to get him moved out of top-flight rehab institutes (where he'd been making progress, even writing) and into a cheap warehousing facility for seniors and head-injury cases. Mantlo is still in that facility, in Queens, where his life is a kind of waking nightmare.
Bill can hear and recognize when people speak to him, but his own speech is slow, labored and typically consists of single words or very short sentences. Most times, he simply yells at anybody who enters his room. He has a history of lashing out violently at staff and patients, though in his current condition, the only person he is likely to hurt with a swing is himself.
His room is nearly empty. No television. No radio. No books, magazines or newspapers. No decorations on the walls. No mementos from previous visitors. Nothing at all to mark the individual who has lived here since 1995. A solitary prison cell has more personality than this, even though Bill is not prohibited from going anywhere. He just lacks mobility, and most times, the will. His average day consists of waking up, getting changed and cleaned by the morning shift nurses, and then a sit in his wheelchair, where he stares at nothing. When he has had enough, he is transferred back to his bed, where he closes his eyes and tries going back to sleep. At some point he will be fed, and after that, more sleep.
Today, however, he has a visitor. A man comes to his room, but immediately Bill wants no part of it.
"GO." he shouts. "GOOO!"
