Marc Stiegler: Kath in Winter

“Rationality is much overrated. Even you, Mr. Herrick, don’t hold it in too high a regard, as your actions demonstrate.”

A large smile crossed his face at this opportunity to replay Kath’s own words back to her. “Why, I should say I do! I demand, Miss Tepper, that you produce examples.”

“Very well. First of all, Mr. Herrick, do you have a contract for, um, let’s see now, ‘suspension,’ as you call it?”

He reached under his shirt, pulled a chain from around his neck, and handed it to her.

She peered at the small steel medallion dangling from the chain. She moved it around, squinting, trying to find a distance where she could read it easily without first finding her glasses. Finally, she read, “Push 50,000 U Heparin IV and do CPR while cooling with ice to 10C. Keep PH 7.5. No autopsy or embalming.” She looked back up at her tormentor. “Sounds rather ghastly, Mr. Herrick.”

“Not as ghastly as what the worms would do to you after being buried.”

She lowered her head in acknowledgment of his point. “Yes, I suppose so. Still. That’s all very fine, but I’m curious: what happens if you get killed up on the mountain? Will they still be able to suspend you?”

“Probably not,” he admitted. “By the time they got me down, it’d be too late. There’d probably be so much deterioration of my neural pathways, they’d never be able to put me back together again. Like Humpty Dumpty, I guess.”

“How much deterioration can you suffer and still revive?” she asked.

“No one really knows,” he explained, “there’s plenty of reason to think that the brain has lots of redundancy. It could be reconstructed even after terrible damage. But there are surely limits, even if we don’t know exactly what they are. That’s why they use liquid nitrogen for suspension—they want to make absolutely sure that they’re keeping you cold enough so that no further damage can occur.”

Kath thought that sounded rather soft and fuzzy for such a careful and correct individual, but she decided not to press the point. “So let me get this straight. When you climb the mountain, you risk not only temporary death, but real, everlasting, permanent death, even though, if you stay here, you believe you are safe from real death.” Her smile turned triumphant. “Am I correct, Mr. Herrick?”

He smiled. “Quite right, Miss Tepper. I see your point. It’s not perfectly rational, is it?”

“I should say not. You see, Mr. Herrick? Rationality is not everything.” Time to go for the kill, she thought. “Next, I’ll show you just how irrational, in your own terms, you really are.”

Mr. Herrick raised his eyebrows in anticipation.

“Suppose I offer you the following deal. Suppose I agreed to let some vampire of a surgeon perform this bloodless operation on me, Mr. Herrick. Would you agree, in exchange, not to go on this expedition to the Himalayas?”

Mr. Herrick pondered her, laughing. “Nice try, Miss Tepper. But no,” he countered, “good though it is, it is not good enough.” He turned serious. “Miss Tepper… whether or not you have this operation makes little difference. Facing facts, you are about to die—if not of this aneurism, then of another stroke, or of pneumonia, or of any of the thousand other ills that come with old age.”

“I see. Well. I suppose I shall have to up the ante. Suppose I also agreed to have a ‘suspension’ as you call it? Would that be enough? Would you promise never to climb a dangerous mountain again?”

This time his eyes filled with the strange intensity, the passion that reminded her so much of Spence. “Yes,” he said fervently, “I’d make that deal.”

She looked at him for a long moment, and knew, looking into his soul, that he was telling the truth. She had upped the ante enough, all right; indeed, she had upped it more than she was willing to pay.

“Well, Mr. Herrick, you have surprised me again. You are more rational, inside your own twisted view of the world, than I had given you credit for. I commend you.”

But now he wouldn’t let go. “Do we have a deal, Miss Tepper? I can call from here to cancel the expedition.”

She looked at him sternly. “Mr. Herrick, I was speaking hypothetically.” Settling back, she smiled tiredly. “Please do visit tomorrow. I find our conversations most, ahhh, entertaining.”

“I’m afraid that won’t be possible, Miss Tepper. We leave in the morning for Katmandu.”

“So soon?”

“So soon, Miss Tepper.” She could see in his eyes that he regretted it.

“Will I see you again?”

“That is entirely up to you, Miss Tepper. I shall be back in just a few months.”

“Yes. Well… good luck, Mr. Herrick. I hope you reach the top of the mountain.”

“And I hope you get to share it with me one day, Miss Tepper. When you are young again.” With that, he departed.

Kath sighed. People made so much ruckus about living and dying. She had seen so much of both. There were certainly ways of living that were worse than dying. And yet… somehow, she felt her conversation with Mr. Herrick had gone awry.

So he would be back in a few months. The main question, then, was whether she would still be here in a few months. Reading between the lines of what her doctor had said, she could see that the answer was a resounding no.

Damn that Mr. Herrick! Clearly, she had only one path to ensuring that she would be able to finish her work upon him. Even if her doctor was acutely hostile to this bloodless operation business, she would have to pursue it. Strengthened by her irritation, she reached for the phone, to call the surgeon Mr. Herrick had recommended. She would start by asking the man whether he liked draining the blood out of people, that should get them off to a nice start.

The room was cold, as cold as the light was bright. Both features heightened her irritation. Kath sat stiffly upright on the rolling bed that would take her into the operating room and contemplated her folly. Dying most certainly would have been simpler than this wretched undertaking. She blamed her failing memory for the error: she should have at least remembered how much she detested doctors. After all, what had doctors ever done for her—except stick needles in her and generally make her uncomfortable, and then tell her that she was sick, which she had known all along anyway. And then there were those hospital bathrooms. Had she ever spent time in a hospital when she was able to go to the bathroom like a normal person?

But here she was again, less than a month after her last incarceration. She had no doubts about whom to blame.

It was that Mr. Herrick’s fault. She would settle with him the next time she saw him, when he returned from his mountaintop. Assuming he made it back from his mountaintop, that is. The last she had heard (cleverly asking Dolly how her son was, rather than asking any questions specifically about Mr. Herrick), he was above 20,000 feet, making good progress. He was also hurrying because a truly wicked storm was brewing there. She had no idea what a storm might be like at 20,000 feet, but it sounded even more unpleasant than this hospital hallway.

Well. Mr. Herrick was not the only one facing imminent destruction. In minutes they would whisk her away to the operating room, where they would, as their first step, kill her. Supposedly they would bring her back again within the hour, but she had much less faith in their ability to pull off that crucial second step.

There was some good news. At least, whichever way it went, she would get some relief. The pain was continuous now, and for several days she had been seeing double.

A ridiculously cheery fellow in uniform—not a hospital uniform, however-interrupted her reverie. “Miss Kathleen Tepper?”