Code White (12 page)

“You mean Odin?”

“Odin. The cute little talking calculator that everyone takes for granted.”

Ali sought for an olive branch—something to soften his relentless sarcasm. “I never doubted the importance of your work, Kevin. One day you’ll find the recognition you deserve.”

“Recognition? Is that what you think I’m about?”

“Isn’t it?”

“Recognition is for pussies. One thing I’ve learned is that recognition isn’t something you ask for, like that stupid kid Oliver with a bowl in his hands. ‘Please, sir, may I have some more?’ Fuck him and his little bowl. Fuck all the medals. Fuck the Swedish Academy. Recognition is something you take. You don’t ask. You don’t give people any choice but to recognize you. You make your superiority a fact of life in the universe.”

“What do you want, then?”

“Triumph, baby. Not a bowl of oatmeal. Steak Chateaubriand, with seven courses.”

Ali felt sick. Not like from the baby. This was from something else inside of her—the curses she wanted to shout at him but couldn’t, the dammed up rivers of tears that she was afraid to let flow. Was it possible that this man, whom she had once loved more than moon and stars, had gotten so twisted in his heart? Who was responsible for that? Was it her doing? “Oh, Kevin!” she said. “Let it go! You’re just tormenting yourself by thinking this way.”

Just then there was another squawk from the overhead speaker. The speaker had been going for several minutes without Ali noticing it, but now she was startled to hear her own name.

“
Dr. O’Day. Dr. O’Day, please report to the neurosurgical recovery room
.”

She instinctively checked her pager, to see whether the battery had gone dead or she had missed a page. But the status bar read, “No Messages.”

Why didn’t they just page me?
she thought.
Why are they using the overhead?

“I’ve got to go,” said Ali.

“Then go.”

Ali’s feet didn’t move. “Listen, Kevin,” she said in a faltering voice. “I never wanted to hurt you. I just … I just couldn’t take—”

“Spare me your apologies. What’s an apology but a gaseous discharge of emotional waste products? Mere air, like a vow.”

Ali’s throat tightened with indignation. “You used to be so different, Kevin,” she said. “There was a time when I felt brilliant just being around you. But … but you haven’t been that man in a long, long time.”

“Babe, you always see what you want to see.”

The speaker squawked again. “
Dr. O’Day. Dr. O’Day, please report to the neurosurgical recovery room
,
STAT
.”

The recovery room. That could mean only one thing—a problem with Jamie.
Oh, God!
Ali looked at the pager in her hand, absently, as though it and not the speaker had been the source of the sound. “We need … we need to talk this out, Kevin. There’s … there’s so much that I need to say to you. But—”

Kevin laughed, a cold, perfunctory laugh. “You’ll never say it. You never can and you never do.”

“I … I … I’ve really got to go,” Ali stammered.
He’s right,
she thought.
I could never say it. To open my heart to him is impossible
.
Not with him smirking and scourging me with that look of betrayal in his eyes.

He had stung her—playing upon her guilt, as only he knew how to do—but she would not give him the victory of her tears. Without looking back, she clenched her pager and hastened out of the room.

*   *   *

The nurse met Ali as soon as she appeared in the doorway of the recovery room.

“It’s the Winslow boy. Look at how agitated he is.”

“He’s awake already?”

Ali peered across the room and saw Jamie tossing his head from side to side and flexing his wrists against the velcro restraints. As soon as he heard Ali’s voice, Jamie began to shout.

“Doctor! D-doctor!”

Ali hurried to the bedside and placed her hand on Jamie’s arm. “I’m here, Jamie. There’s no need to be afraid.”

“I can’t see anything, Dr. O’Day. I can’t see anything at all. Did I have the operation?”

“Yes, Jamie. It went very well.”

“Then why can’t I see?”

“It’s too early yet.” She was glad that he couldn’t see the redness that she was sure was in her eyes. “We’ve turned the SIPNI unit on, but it takes time to make the right connections. We’re trying to rewire parts of the brain that haven’t talked to each other in years.”

“It’s going to take
years
?”

“No, no, of course not.”

“How long?”

“I … I don’t know. You’re the first person ever to have this procedure. We don’t have enough experience to predict what will happen. Remember? We talked about all this.”

“But you must know
something
!”

The bed rails shook as Jamie thrashed at his restraints. His face turned red. He began to bawl like a three-year-old, his lips bridged with lines of spittle, his jaw quivering, his nostrils flaring wide.

The sound of his wailing was more than Ali could bear. “Nurse!” she shouted. “Two milligrams of Ativan. STAT!”

The nurse pulled a syringe from the top drawer of a cart and rushed to the bedside. While Ali held Jamie’s arm immobile, the nurse quickly injected the drug into the IV port.

“What’s that?” screamed Jamie. “What are you giving me?”

“Something to relax you.”

As the injection took effect, Jamie began to breathe more quietly. His jaw stopped trembling. At last, he lay quietly, letting Ali daub the tears from around his eyes.

“You know,” he said, “I don’t even remember what it was like to see. I could be seeing right now, and maybe I wouldn’t know it. I don’t even see things in my dreams.”

“The tumor did that to you. But soon that will all change. Trust me, Jamie. Believe.”

Jamie’s voice had shrunk to a whisper. “I do … trust you … Dr. Nefertiti.”

He sank back into unconsciousness, but the red flush of panic lingered on his cheeks. Ali checked his vital signs on the cardio monitor, then adjusted the electroencephalograph leads taped to his scalp. All seemed well. But was it?
Oh, God,
she thought.
What if we’ve let him down?
She knew that the SIPNI device had been a gamble. There were a hundred things that could go wrong.
Have we moved too fast? Did I let my feelings for Jamie cloud my judgment?

It was too late now for second thoughts. There was nothing to do but wait. Wait and see.

Whoosh!
The plastic pneumatic boots used to prevent blood clots started through another cycle of deflation and reinflation. The cardio monitor kept up its monotonous beeping. The EEG traced silently. Delta waves and sleep spindles …

Ali almost dreaded what would happen when Jamie reawoke.

10:07
A.M.

Kevin strode down the green-tiled corridor toward his laboratory on the first basement level under Tower A. Were it not for the eyes of the occasional passing janitor or cafeteria worker, he would have broken into a run. Two hours
incommunicado
in the operating room, cut off from developments on the most fateful day of his life, it had taken a superhuman effort to keep his cool. Now, free at last, with the safe haven of his lab in sight, he could scarcely brook a second of delay.

At the entrance, Kevin swiped his ID badge and the red light of the lock turned green with a faint beep. Pushing against the door, he entered a large L-shaped room—a place that had once been used for washing glassware. A visitor would have found it dingy, like going into a cave. There were no windows, and to cut down glare on his computer screens, Kevin had removed all but a single fluorescent tube from the main bank of lights. Of course Kevin himself did not notice the gloom, nor the dank smell of puddled sinkwater, old cheese and stale coffee that greeted him. He had long grown accustomed to it, as a fox does to the scent of its den.

Hastening to a large gray metal desk, where piles of papers and half-eaten food vied for space with a clunky old cathode-ray-tube computer monitor, he plopped into a leather swivel chair rigged like a starship commander’s seat, with a keyboard fastened to one armrest. Lifting his feet from the floor, he let the chair swing out to face a sixty-one-inch flat LCD screen on the back wall.

“Odin, display endo lobby,” he said, his voice quavering with excitement.

Instantly, the screen showed a security camera’s view of the Endocrinology Clinic waiting room.

Kevin did a double take. “What are you showing me—the morgue?” He had expected to zoom in on a scene of panic in motion, a bunch of Keystone Kops darting around or cowering behind the furniture. Instead, the lobby was empty except for a single technician in a white paper suit, who knelt by the window and dusted for fingerprints. A yellow police tape drooped between two plastic bollards that blocked the glass doorway. The paper bag behind the planter was gone.

“The Stones have left the stage,” he glumly observed. “Nothing left to do but send our greeting card.”

“MESSAGE 2 HAS ALREADY BEEN E-MAILED TO HARRY A. LEWTON, CHIEF OF SECURITY, AT 8:35 A.M.”

Kevin’s eyebrows shot up. “What? I didn’t authorize that.”

“ACCORDING TO THE PROTOCOL FOR PROJECT VESUVIUS, THE FOLLOW-UP E-MAIL WAS TO BE RELEASED UPON ARRIVAL OF FBI AGENTS ON THE SCENE. THAT CONDITION WAS FULFILLED AT 8:22 A.M. THIS MORNING.”

“The FBI here already? That’s way ahead of schedule.”

“YES. ACCOMMODATIONS HAD TO BE MADE.”

“The hell you say! Not without a thorough review of the situation.”

“I PERFORMED THE REVIEW MYSELF. IN DOING SO, I WAS ABLE TO ADVANCE THE PROJECT BY MORE THAN ONE HOUR AND TWENTY MINUTES. THIS SIGNIFICANTLY INCREASES THE PROBABILITY OF SUCCESS.”

“No! No! No! That gives ’em an extra hour and half to get the money up. I told you the plan, Odin—glue ’em to the clock. Squeeze ’em. Squeeze every minute. Watch the desperation running in little beads down their necks. That’s what gives us our margin of safety.”

“THERE IS NO NEED FOR CONCERN. I ALSO ADVANCED THE TIME FOR TRANSMISSION OF THE RANSOM FROM 1:00 P.M. TO NOON.”

“You did? Did you not see any fucking need to consult with me?”

“IT WAS NOT SAFE TO DO SO.”

“I’ll tell you what’s not safe—screwing around with plans that we worked out with a great deal of care.”

“YOU YOURSELF HAVE REPEATEDLY INDICATED THE IMPORTANCE OF AN EARLY EGRESS FROM THE HOSPITAL PRECINCTS. PHASE 3 WILL REQUIRE A MASSIVE PARALLEL CRYPTANALYTIC OPERATION OF UNCERTAIN DURATION. PREMATURE TERMINATION WOULD RESULT IN A SIGNIFICANT LOSS OF REVENUE. DID YOU DESIRE THAT OUTCOME?”

“Don’t be an ass.”

“THEN I HAVE DONE WHAT YOU WOULD HAVE DONE.”

“Have you?” Kevin kicked his swivel chair back and forth. “Okay, maybe. But Jesus, Odin, you’re giving me chest pains over this. We’re not running a simulation here. If this ship hits the rocks, I’ll spend the rest of my real-world fucking life in jail.”

Suddenly Kevin heard the shattering of glass, coming from the far “L” of the lab. His gaze shot, not toward the “L”, but toward a six-foot-tall wire cage on the floor to his left, between his desk and the dark monolith of Odin’s mainframe. Even in the dim light, he could see that the door of the cage was ajar by about six inches.

“Oh, hell! Loki’s out.”

“HE EMERGED FROM CONFINEMENT AT 9:28 A.M. HE HAS STOLEN TWO PEARS FROM THE REFRIGERATOR, OVERTURNED ONE WASTEBASKET, AND DRUNK WATER FROM THE LEAKING FAUCET INSTEAD OF FROM HIS BOTTLE. HE IS NOW CLIMBING ON THE SHELVES AT THE REAR OF—”

“I know where he is, Odin. I can hear him. He’s picked the damned lock again.”

Kevin got up and went to the “L.” When he switched on the back row of lights, he froze. Loki, a foot-and-a-half-long macaque monkey, wearing a diaper that gave him the look of a yogi in a loincloth, squatted on the high shelf, eight feet up, holding a human skull in his tiny, twitching hands. At the sight of Kevin, he screeched and chittered, jerking his hairless pink face from side to side. The skull looked like a basketball destined for a jump shot.

“Loki! Loki! Good monkey!” Kevin made a soft trilling sound to calm him, and for a moment Loki grew still. Kevin inched forward, stealthily raising his hands. “Good boy! Good Loki!”

This was no ordinary skull. To Kevin, who collected human and animal
calvaria
the way some people collect fine art, this was a Ming vase among skulls. It bore a half-inch drillhole in each temple and a black-inked inscription beside the
foramen magnum
:

S. Traversi, Patuxent River, MDd. 2/21/1955.

Operated: C. W. Watts, Geo. Wash. Hosp. 10/9/1938.

Here were the earthly remains of a woman who had had a prefrontal lobotomy for schizophrenia, performed by one of the American pioneers of the procedure. For two months’ salary, Kevin had bought the skull from the estate of a neurologist on the East Coast. And it was now about to do service as a simian basketball.

There was a formaldehyde smell and broken glass on the floor from the specimen jar that Loki had already knocked over. Loki chittered nervously as Kevin got closer. Kevin had to be careful not to smile or show his teeth or do anything that a monkey would interpret as anger. If Loki freaked out, the skull was as good as gone.

“Good Loki! Good monkey! What a pretty, little, fragile, and insanely expensive toy you have there! Can Daddy see it?” With hands outstretched, Kevin stepped up onto a stack of books. Loki screeched, exposing his half-inch canine teeth. But then, ever so gently, he lowered the skull within reach of Kevin’s fingertips.

Kevin snatched the skull and tucked it under his arm like a football. “Good, good boy! Come to Daddy now,” he said, extending his free hand. Loki gave out a couple of chitters, then bounded along Kevin’s arm to take up a new perch on his shoulder.

“Guess we’ll be making monkey sausage tonight,” said Kevin, as he ceremoniously reshelved Miss Traversi’s skull between the yellowed incisors of a beaver and the pearl-white fangs of a young wolf.

Sardonic remark notwithstanding, Loki owed his life to Kevin. Helvelius had bought him for an experiment in which his spinal cord was severed, then reconnected with a primitive version of the SIPNI device. Loki had come out of the procedure amazingly well. His nerve function was better than ever, giving him a heightened sensitivity to touch and pain, plus a humanlike manual dexterity. During his fifteen minutes of scientific fame, everyone connected with the project celebrated the little monkey’s bravery and powers of healing. But after a paper describing the breakthrough had been rushed into print, Loki himself was of no further use. The plan had been to euthanize him, to cut up his brain and spine to study the microscopic changes that took place in the nerve fibers. But, as luck would have it, the neuropathologist who was to carry out this work transferred to UCLA. Loki’s date with the dissecting room was postponed, then postponed again, and ultimately forgotten as the team’s interest moved on to dog-brain experiments. One night, a couple of months ago, Loki disappeared altogether from the Primate Center. Rumor spotted him hiding out in a cage in Kevin’s lab, or even walking on a leash with Kevin on the hospital grounds. On those rare evenings when Kevin went home instead of crashing on a cot in his lab, he would sneak Loki out the back door in a small traveling cage, and give him the run of his apartment in Wicker Park.