Jack O'Connell - The Resurrectionist

“What I believe, and what my father believes, is that if you shut down all sensory information to the brain, you do, in fact, separate the patient from our universe. From consensual reality, I’ll call it. And maybe there is a period of passage through a void. A black hole. But I don’t believe the patient’s mind, their consciousness, dies. I don’t believe they reside permanently in the void.”

Her last words pulled him loose from the memory and he said, “Then where do they reside?”

“I think,” she said, “they construct another reality. Another universe. One that doesn’t need the prompts of touch and taste and smell and sight and sound.”

“And what,” he asked, “do they build that universe out of?”

“Who knows? I don’t know. To say I do would be worse than arrogant. It would be a lie. But I can guess that, whatever the building materials, the comatose universe is entirely alien to our own.”

Sweeney got up without being asked, moved to the fireplace, sat down on the floor and started to rearrange the logs.

“It’s an interesting theory,” he said. “But how does it help Danny? How do I get him back into my universe?”

“I want to answer your question,” she said, “with another question. But it’s a hard one for you to hear.”

She got up from the couch and joined him, but left her shoes under the coffee table. She sat down on her heels and he watched her skirt ride up her thighs.

“I’m guessing,” he said, “that I’ve withstood worse.”

“How do you know,” she said, “that he wants to come back?”

He lit a match, held it beneath a piece of kindling, and watched strands of wood start to glow. “He wants to come back,” he said, “because he wants to be with me. Because his father loves him more than his own life.”

“And he knows that?”

It seemed like a test, so even though he felt the anger coming on, he tried to keep ahead of it.

“He knows that, yes.”

She didn’t respond, just opened her eyes a little wider. It made her face lose a good deal of its beauty and he shook out the match just before it burned his finger. Then he lit another.

“He knows because before the accident I showed him every day. And since the accident, I’ve stayed next to him as much as I could and I’ve told him that I love him.”

“There’s a good chance,” Alice said, “that he doesn’t hear you.”

He felt himself slip a bit, felt the defensiveness pushing its way into his voice. He said, “He hears me,” and felt her shrug even though he didn’t see her shoulders move.

“He’s stage six,” she said. “I’m not saying it isn’t possible. But it isn’t probable.”

“Danny hears me when I talk to him.”

“Do you think I’m being cruel?”

“You’re being,” Sweeney said, pausing, “a doctor.”

“I’m preparing you,” she said. “You’re going to be invited to the first team assessment soon. It can be a difficult experience for the families.”

“I’ll cope.”

She finished her drink and said, “I’m not so sure. You’re functioning under some really debilitating stress. That takes its toll on everyone over time.”

“I’ve spent a year being patronized by the best neurologists in Ohio,” he said. “I’ll handle the meeting.”

In a week, he hoped, he’d be back in Cleveland, visiting Danny at the St. Joseph every day, working third shift at a Wonder Drug or an independent. Taking his medication and waiting for it to build up in his system. Waiting for the drug to accumulate enough power in his brain to numb down the rage and the fear.

“I’ll help you out,” Alice said, “as best I can. In spite of what I’ve said, I think Danny’s a promising candidate for waking.”

“Let’s say the rest of the team agrees with you. What happens then?”

“Danny would be put in the RAT program.”

He stared at her.

“Radical Arousal Therapies,” she said. “We’ve gotten approval recently to start using a new battery of drugs and procedures. If Danny’s recommended for the program, I’ll go over all of them with you.”

“And if he’s not recommended?” he asked because he thought she’d expect it.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself. Let’s wait and see what happens at the assessment.”

The second match managed to burn him. He dropped it and put his thumb in his mouth. She took his wrist, pulled the hand to her, and inspected the damage.

“Do you want me to get some ointment?”

He shook his head and she released his hand and he wiped the thumb on his pants leg and nodded toward the logs.

“I don’t think it’s going to catch,” he said.

Alice hugged her knees. “There’s something wrong with the flue. It’s never worked right. I guess my mother was the only one who could make a fire in here.”

“How old were you when she died?”

“I was about Danny’s age,” she said. “About six. I’ve got a few memories.”

“Was it sudden?”

He watched her look down on her knees.

“It was to me,” and she let out a small and awkward laugh. “She spent a year stockpiling Valium. And then she took them all in a single night.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, and thought of all the times he’d heard the same, feeble words.

“I guess she had a problem with it. I was a child. I didn’t know anything. She went away once for treatment. But it didn’t take.”

“In my family,” he said, “they called it the creature.”

Her face lightened. “The creature,” she said. “I like that.”

Sweeney nodded. “It works,” he said. “I had a couple of uncles. They were legendary.”

“It’s a genetic malady,” Alice said. “People like you and me need to be careful.”

He wondered if she’d smelled the beer off him this morning. “I don’t know,” he said. “It’s never done much for me one way or the other.”

She gave him a long look that he thought was going to evolve into another lecture. But then she smiled and turned her body and stretched out on her back on the floor next to him. It would have been a surprise move had there been a fire burning before them. Without the blaze, he found it just short of bizarre. She closed her eyes for a second, opened them, reached out, and put a hand on his knee.

That it made him feel like an adolescent was off-putting. But the sight of her, in the tight skirt and the silk blouse and the thin gold chain around the neck, was making him hard for the first time in a year.

And so, before he could think, before he could remind himself that he planned on running home in the next week, he leaned over and kissed her. Her eyes closed again and her hand found his head and the fingers plowed through the hair over his ears and he kissed harder, leaned lower, and brought a hand to the side of her waist. And then her tongue was easing into his mouth and they were like high school kids, panicked and thrilled by the rush of enzymes and hormones, sweat breaking, noises building in the throat. He swung a leg over her, straddled her, and came down chest to chest. He felt her wedge a hand between them and grab at his crotch through his pants.

He reared up in a kind of amazed fear, born of both the realization that he was still functional and the lack of control that he’d never before known. His hand pushed down her thigh, found the hem of her skirt, and started up again and the sensation of touching the warm, silken skin brought him, almost instantly, to the verge of coming. He began to clench and something changed and she began to push him off her body. Then he heard the car door slam in the drive outside and understood that her alarm had nothing to do with his hesitation and everything to do with the return of her father.