John Saul - Brain Child

“He’s still alive, and in the ICU,” Mallory told them, gesturing for them both to sit down again. “But it’s bad, Marsh. Real bad.”

“Tell me,” Marsh replied, his voice toneless.

Mallory shrugged. “I can’t tell you all of it yet — you know that. But there’s brain damage, and it looks extensive.”

Ellen stiffened, but said nothing.

“We’re setting up right now for every test we can give him. But it’s going to be tough, because he’s on a respirator and a cardiostimulator.” Then, as Marsh and Ellen listened, he described Alex’s injuries, using the dispassionate, factual tone he had learned in medical school, in order to keep himself under control. When he was done, it was Ellen who spoke.

“What can we do?”

Mallory shook his head. “Nothing, for the moment. Try to stabilize him, and try to find out how bad the damage is. We should know sometime early in the morning. Maybe by six.”

“I see,” Ellen murmured. Then: “Can I see him?”

Frank Mallory’s eyes flicked toward Marsh, who nodded. “Of course you can,” Mallory said. “You can sit with him all night, if you want to. It can’t hurt, and it might help. You never know what people in his condition know or don’t know, but if somehow he knows you’re there … well, it can’t hurt, can it?”

Barbara Fannon glanced up at the clock on the wall and was surprised to see that it was nearly five in the morning. To her, it seemed as if it couldn’t have been more than an hour since the ambulance arrived with Alex.

There had been so much to do.

There had been all the tests that needed to be set up, and it had fallen to Barbara to coordinate the testing so that Alex was subjected to the least amount of movement possible. Not only had she coordinated the X rays and CAT scan, but everything else Frank Mallory had requested. And, as far as Barbara could determine, he hadn’t forgotten anything: he’d ordered ultrasound imaging and a cerebrospinal tap, as well as an arteriograph and an EEG. The only thing he’d left out was a pneumoencephalograph, and Barbara knew the only reason he’d skipped it was that Alex would have had to be put in a vertical position to carry it out. In his present condition, that simply wasn’t feasible. It had taken Barbara nearly an hour simply to contact all the technicians necessary and get them to the Center. And then, of course, there had been the people in the waiting room.

They had thinned out after the first couple of hours, when Barbara had finally told them that there would be no more news that night — Alex was undergoing a series of tests, but the results would be unavailable for an indefinite period.

Now, at five o’clock, she could at last go home. Everything that needed to be done, or could be done, was finished, and she realized she was bone weary. All she had to do was check the waiting room, and she could go. She pushed the door open, expecting the room to be empty.

It wasn’t.

Sitting on the couch in the far corner was Lisa Cochran, her parents flanking her. She was dry-eyed now, and sitting straight up, her hands folded quietly in her lap. Barbara hesitated, then went into the waiting room, letting the door swing shut behind her.

“Can I get you anything?” she asked. “Some coffee, maybe?”

Lisa shook her head, but said nothing.

“If you can think of a way to convince her to come home with us, that might help,” Carol said, rising to her feet, stretching, and offering the tired nurse a resigned smile.

“I can’t, Mama,” Lisa whispered. “What if he wakes up and asks for me?”

Barbara crossed the room and sat next to the girl. “He’s not going to wake up tonight, Lisa.”

Lisa regarded her with bloodshot eyes. “Is … is he going to wake up at all?”

Barbara knew it wasn’t her place to talk to anyone about Alex Lonsdale’s condition, but she also knew exactly who Lisa was, and how Alex felt about her. God knew he’d spent enough time perched on the edge of Barbara’s desk telling her how wonderful Lisa was. And after watching her through the last several hours, Barbara was convinced that Alex was right. She sighed heavily. “I don’t know,” she said carefully; then, when Lisa’s eyes turned suddenly frightened, she went on: “I said I don’t know. That doesn’t mean he’s not going to wake up. All it means is that I don’t know, and no one else does either.”

“If he wakes up, will that mean he’s going to be all right?”

Barbara shrugged. “We don’t know that, either. All we can do is wait and see.”

“Then I’ll wait,” Lisa said.

“You could go home and try to get some sleep,” Barbara suggested. “I promise I’ll arrange for someone to call you if anything happens. Anything at all.”

Lisa rubbed at her eyes, then shook her head. “No,” she said. “I want to be here. Just in case.” She looked at the nurse beseechingly. “He might wake up.”

Barbara started to speak, then changed her mind. She’s right, she decided. He damned well might wake up. And as she absorbed the thought, she realized that she, like most of the staff at the clinic, had only been going through the motions of administering to Alex.

For all of them, all the trained medical people who had seen injuries like Alex’s before, it was a hopeless case. You did what you could, tried not to overlook any measure, no matter how drastic, that might save the life, but deep inside you prepared yourself for the fact that the patient wasn’t going to make it.

And at the end of your shift, you went home.

But Lisa Cochran wasn’t going home, and Barbara Fannon decided she wasn’t going home either, even though her shift had ended long ago. Coming to that decision, she stood up. “Come on,” she said.

The Cochrans looked at her uncertainly, but followed her down the hall. Without knocking, she opened the door to Marshall Lonsdale’s office and led them inside. “If we’re all going to stay, we might as well be as comfortable as possible.”

“This is Marsh’s office,” Jim Cochran said.

“Nobody else’s.”

“Should we be here?”

“You’re his friends, aren’t you? It’s been a long night, and it’s going to be an even longer one. I was going home, but if you can stick this out, so can I. But not out there.” She lowered the lights a little, and closed the blinds to the windows. “Make yourselves comfortable while I go find some coffee. If you want something stronger, you might poke around the office while I’m gone. I’ve heard rumors that sometimes there’s a bottle in here.”

Jim eyed the nurse. “Any rumors about just where it might be?”

“No,” Barbara replied. Then, as she left the office, she spoke once more. “But if I were you, I’d start looking in the credenza. Bottom right.”

Ellen Lonsdale sat in a straight-backed chair that had been pulled close to Alex’s bed, her right hand resting gently on his. He lay as he had been placed, on his back, the cast on his left arm suspended slightly above the mattress, his limp right arm extended parallel to his body. His face, covered with the respirator mask and a mass of bandages, was barely visible, and totally unrecognizable. Around him was an array of equipment that Ellen couldn’t begin to comprehend. All she knew was that the monitors and machinery were somehow keeping her son alive.

She had been there for nearly five hours now. The sky outside the window was beginning to brighten, and she shifted slightly in her chair, not as a reaction to the stiffness that had long ago taken over her body, but so that she could get a clearer look at Alex’s eyes.

For some reason, she kept thinking they should be open.

The night had been filled with odd thoughts like that.