“Get him flat before he hurts himself.”
Lifted. He was being lifted.
And from someplace outside of his body, someplace above the ceiling, he watched them lay him on the slick sheets, the tendons of his legs stretching painfully flat on the bed like a long, bent child. He heard himself making gasping sounds. His eyes snapped open, and for a second he froze, his eyes huge and gaping at Marcy in nameless horror. Then his body spasmed and a scream rose out of his chest.
“Jack. Calm down. Everything’s okay. Just relax.”
He heard himself whimpering as awareness closed in on itself and warm hands cupped his little fist, rubbing open the tight ball of sad, small fingers.
Ah mahn seedem.
And the moment before the world pulled itself into a pinpoint and blew itself out, Jack felt a small flutter in his throat.
“Maideek.”
“HE HAD ANOTHER FLASHBACK.”
René had arrived at Broadview a little before noon when Nick met her in the lobby. As he led her to the locked unit, he explained how it had happened during a visit Louis had with his wife and daughter. “They were having a nice time when Louis began flipping out about the Red Tent and Fuzzy somebody. I guess it was pretty bad, especially for the wife.”
“What did the nurses do?”
“Gave him a shot of Diazepam.”
They almost never had to resort to needle sedatives in the homes.
“Except for the bad one,” Nick continued, “his daughter says she prefers the hallucinations to his fading away. A few flashback seizures she could live with.”
“What about Mrs. Martinetti?”
“I suppose she’ll have to adjust. It’s better than losing him completely.”
“Except he’s resisting taking the other meds that have helped reduce the number and intensity of flashbacks.”
They arrived at the locked unit, where Nick tapped them in.
“What bothers me,” René said, “is what happens if Louis gets stuck in a flashback and can’t come out, or doesn’t want to.”
Nick nodded grimly. “That would be a problem. But that’s not why I called you. Have you seen the recent patient census?”
“No.”
Nick walked her to a small sitting room down the hall from the Activities Center. “It’s another thing the president didn’t see the other day.” He opened the door.
There were three residents sitting in wheelchairs before a television set playing on low volume. Two of them René knew—women in their eighties who were in advanced stages of dementia. The third woman René did not at first recognize. She moved closer, and for a protracted moment fixed herself on the woman’s face. Then recognition hit René like a fist.
Clara Devine.
Over the six months at McLean’s Hospital her body had atrophied to the point where she was bound to a wheelchair. She did not look up when René and Nick entered, as did the other women. Instead, she stared blankly at the television, her eyes clotted with fog.
“They brought her back two days ago,” Nick explained. “McLean’s decided that she was no longer a danger to others or herself.”
That was evident, for Clara looked like a pathetic effigy of the once-feisty woman who had eavesdropped on the nursing staff and tapped her way out of the unit. “My God,” René whispered.
“Of course, she was taken off Memorine right after the murder. Then about two months later the plaque had begun to return.”
The aide held a cup of water with a straw to Clara’s lips, talking softly to her. But Clara didn’t respond. She was clearly incapable of speech and the ability to feed herself. Her skin hung on her frame like a too-loose seat cover. From her appearance, she didn’t appear to have much time to go before she was bedridden. Then it would be a matter of weeks before she’d forget how to eat or before her heart or kidneys failed or her lungs filled with fluid.
“Her sister had asked that the staff not take any extraordinary measures.”
Clara’s reversal was kept quiet. But there would be no legal repercussions since in the fine print of the consent forms was a clause exonerating the clinical team, researchers, home and pharmaceutical company, et al., from the possible return of the disease. Clara Devine was the only patient to have been withdrawn, and given the extreme circumstances, her sister and legal guardian had raised no complaint. And since she had been removed from Memorine, her existence was simply a brief countdown to her death.
They left the room, and Nick walked René to the door. “They did an MRI on her before they sent her back,” Nick said. “The plaque’s all back. She’s a mess.”
“Oh, no!”
“That’s the bitch of it: Once a subject is on the stuff we can’t withdraw them or the dementia returns.”
“Which means that if the flashbacks become problematic, taking them off Memorine isn’t an option.”
“Not without renewed deterioration.”
“But nearly everything we use to combat the seizures only dulls them.”
“The lesser of two evils. But I do have some good news,” Nick said. “Jack Koryan woke up.”
JACK KORYAN.
When René left, Nick sat alone in his office and from his window watched René cross the parking lot. She looked so lovely as she made her way. A beautiful and bright young woman. He could still hear her gasp of delight at the news, tears of joy filling her eyes.
His eyes fell to a copy of the report of Dr. Heller’s interview with Jack Koryan. He fingered open some of the pages that held Jack’s answers to standard questions that determined his basic cognitive functionality: Where were you born? Where did you go to school? Name the president of the United States. What state is this? What is your mother’s maiden name?
It was that last one that fixed his attention.
What is your mother’s maiden name?
And from the opaque, still water well of past time, it rose up like a phosphorescent bubble expanding all the way until it broke the surface with a blink.
What were the chances—maybe one in a million?
Or maybe not.
He watched René pull out of the lot. In a couple of days she would visit Jack Koryan, driven by all the best sentiments—photographic positives of what would drive him.
“I REMEMBER YOU,” JACK SAID. “Weren’t we once husband and wife?”
Beth nodded. “I’m sorry, Jack,” she said with a choke. “I waited and waited, but you didn’t wake up and …”
“Nothing to be sorry about. You didn’t know.” He patted her hand. “I’m just glad you didn’t have them pull the plug.” He could hear the false brightness in his voice.
“They said they didn’t think you’d ever recover.”
“Forget it. I would have done the same thing.” That wasn’t true, but what the hell difference did it make? He remembered their marriage was headed for the shoals anyway. The coma had spared him all the anguish.
Beth wiped her eyes with a wad of tissues.
“You’re still the best-looking woman I’ve seen in six months.”
“Very funny,” she said, half laughing and half crying.
Jack stroked her hair lightly, and his mind flooded with memories. Although he had been told of all the time that had passed, it still seemed like just the other day he had last seen Beth, and overnight she had got divorced and remarried.
But Beth looked older: Her face was fuller than he recalled. She still looked good, dressed handsomely in smart gray slacks and black blazer, a pearl necklace lighting up her neck. He recalled none of the outfit and tried to repress the thought of her posing for her new husband as she would with him in the dressing rooms of Saks or Potpourri or their bedroom. The diamond on her finger was the size of a small olive. But on her other hand she wore an emerald ring he had given her for Valentine’s Day, 1998—presented over dinner at Aujourd’hui at the Four Seasons Hotel. In an arrangement with the maitre d’ it was delivered as her dessert under a silver dome. He remembered speculating on his reaction had the man swapped the ring for a wedge of cheesecake.
Five days ago Nurse Marcy Falco had telephoned Beth in Texas with the good news. She arrived last night. For the reunion Falco and the therapist sat Jack in a wheelchair with a new pair of New Balance running shoes.
“How are the feet?”
“Okay, but they’re going back to school.”
Jack had been scheduled for intensive physical therapy, which he welcomed, since he couldn’t believe how weak he was. According to Marcy, he weighed 127 pounds—a loss of a quarter of his body weight. Yet, just last week he had bench-pressed ten reps of 175 pounds at the gym with Vince. Just last week—six months ago.
“So, who’s the lucky guy?”
“His name is George King. He’s a great guy, and I know you’d like him.”
“I’m sure,” he said, and tasted acid. It was impossible to get his mind around the fact that what seemed so fresh—his marriage to Beth, who for seven years had been a fundamental condition of his being—had been cleanly snipped away. He felt like some sci-fi character who takes a star-drive trip to the next solar system only to return a few weeks later to an earth that had aged by fifty years. Suddenly it was the future.
“I just wish I hadn’t let you go alone,” she whimpered. Then in a sudden gush: “Why the hell did you have to take a damn swim in the dark … and all those jellyfish around? Huh? What was the point?”
“It wasn’t dark, and the water was warm, and I didn’t see the jellyfish until I got out to the rock. And my cell phone was in my pants.” He smiled, but she did not smile back. A prickly silence fell between them. He had gone alone as a private thing—to connect to a lost artifact of himself—something Beth couldn’t understand. “I barely remember what happened.” Dark water. Swimming like hell. Stroboscopic flashes of lightning. Aunt Nancy.
Don’t rub. Don’t rub.
She was standing on the beach frantically waving me in. Then she disappeared. Then she was back. Or someone else. Last-ditch hallucinations before the curtain dropped.
“All I remember was swimming to shore. Next, I’m in this bed.” He pulled up his sleeves with his fingers. Faint white scars striped his arm.
“You can barely see them. And they’ll fade.”
“Not that.” He raised his arms. “They look like starched swan necks.”
“In six months you’ll be Popeye again.”
“Until then, Olive Oyl in drag.”
She smiled. “At least you haven’t lost your sense of humor.”
“Speaking of which, who’s paying for all this?”
“It’s all taken care of,” Beth said and explained that when Jack went into the coma she petitioned the court to be his guardian and promptly hired a
Medicaid attorney who devised complicated strategies to preserve some assets and convert others to defray the cost of his hospitalization and nursing care. When Beth sold the house, she had put away half in a trust fund, which would co-pay with Medicaid for continued care, the excess of which would be available to him were he to wake up.
“Vince says he’s going to help find a place for you. And when you’re ready to leave, I’ll come back and help you settle in. So don’t worry about that. You’re going to have plenty of support.”
Jack nodded. But she had her own life, and once she left he didn’t expect to see her again.
Beth checked her watch. “I’ve got to go.” The nurses had given them only a few minutes, and his next PT session would begin shortly.
“You can come and visit us. Really. We’ve got plenty of room. I wish you would when … you know … you’re able to. It’s only five hours by plane … really.” She made a helpless gesture with her hands to apologize for crying. “I’m sorry.”
Jack nodded and felt his throat thicken. “Have a nice life,” he whispered.
“Don’t be so dramatic,” she snapped. “This
isn’t
good-bye.”
“‘Course not.” In the familiar cast of her eyes, Jack could see that Beth had decided that seeing him again would only make matters worse. And she was right.
She got up and put her arms gently around him. As best he could, he raised his arms around her shoulders, and he closed his eyes for an infinite moment. The aroma of White Linen filled his head as a hundred images flickered in his mind.
“Get well soon,” she said, and broke their hold. “Vince will be by tomorrow.”
She started to leave, then stopped. “By the way, does the name Mookie mean anything to you?”
“Who?”
“Mookie?”
“They got you doing memory tests on me, too?” He’d had three already, a fourth later today or tomorrow.
Mookie.
The name was like a small node sending up microwaves of recognition, but he couldn’t catch them. “I don’t know.”
“It’s not important.” She started toward the door again. “Oh, I almost forgot : You’re famous.” And she pulled out of her bag a newspaper clipping and laid it on his chest. She hesitated again.
“Go! You’re going to miss your plane.”
She nodded and left.
And Jack watched her pass through the door and listened to her heels against the tile receding down the hall, and for a long moment he stared at the space that she had occupied—a void, a negative space sucking at his soul—thinking from his perch of grief that his old life was over.
The article was from yesterday’s
Boston Globe.
JELLYFISH COMA VICTIM RECOVERS AFTER SIX MONTHS
A 33-year-old Carleton man who had spent nearly two hundred days in a “persistent vegetative state” recently regained consciousness at the Greendale Rehabilitation Center in Cabot, Mass.
The case has been described as “absolutely extraordinary.” A former English teacher from Carleton Preparatory Academy, Jack Koryan slipped into a coma after nearly drowning six months ago in Buck’s Cove on Homer’s Island off the Massachusetts coast, where he was stung by rare and toxic jellyfish. According to experts, the tropical creatures were apparently attracted to the unusually warm coastal waters at that time … . Miraculously, Koryan survived the attack and has spent most of the last year in the Greendale nursing home, unresponsive to all contact in spite of the constant stimulation efforts from the nursing staff.
Specialists comment that most patients spend only two to four weeks in a true coma. Contrary to expectations, Koryan is not cognitively impaired. In fact, his mental abilities are “extraordinary,” according to his doctors … .
Mookie.
The word was like a deep itch that stayed with him for the rest of the afternoon.