"Ten after seven! Are you out of your mind?"
She turned and began tottering back to the couch.
"Whoa!" Karen piped, roadblocking the hallway with her body. She held out a mug of steaming hot coffee. "It's picnic time!"
Cass mumbled something which sounded both obscene and physically impossible. But she took the coffee. . . and smiled. When Karen was up like this, it was damned hard not to. The girl was nothing if not itchily contagious. And it relieved Cass enormously to see that finally the storm clouds were lifting, had lifted, if that beaming smile was any kind of barometer. To keep Karen in a mood like this, she'd probably agree to scale the Eiger.
"Picnic?"
"Yes, picnic!" Karen repeated. "In the woods. Or down by the Carp. Or both." She grinned. "C'mon, it'll be fun! We'll take the Polaroid along, go fishing maybe. Remember the catfish we used to catch off the bridge?"
"And remember who always had to clean 'em?"
"You can teach me."
Cass shuffled over to the table and sat, her green eyes squinty in the bright slanting sunlight.
"A picnic I can take," she conceded, adding a heaped spoon of sugar to her coffee. "But please, kid. No fucking catfish."
Karen laughed. Then she went back to packing the lunch.
Later that night alone in the house, shuffling through a stack of what she had playfully dubbed The Picnic Polaroids, Karen was struck once again by the remarkable process of memory-making, a function that went on well below the level of conscious awareness for most folk—as it had for herself, before the transplants started to work. But now. . .
The parallel to the unexposed Polaroid print did not escape her. Her brain was much like one of those blanks. Naked of images, yet armed with the potential to capture and store them. Like the unexposed print, all her brain had ever needed was a proper system of lenses. She had even possessed the shutter-release mechanism—her futilely blinking eyelids. Only the lenses had been missing. The process was so new to her, so exciting, it was impossible not to remain consciously aware of it. Every time she even so much as glanced at an object she could close her eyes and instantly visualize its afterimage, already trapped, already permanently stored. . . like in the photos. It was miraculous.
But draining. Burkowitz had been right. She could overdo it, and she had been. Who in hell wouldn't? There were all kinds of junkies out there, and since her own first fix—that intensely painful and yet gorgeously exquisite javelin of sunlight the student had unwittingly impaled her with—Karen had become an image junkie.
She sat on the bed, placed the prints in front of her, and fanned them out in an arc.
She had a decision to make.
Bath? Or bed?
Her head sagged sleepily toward the pillow. . .
"No," she said firmly, straightening again. "Bath. Even I can't stand the smell of you."
With a final, giggling glance at the Polaroids—in one of them Cass had chucked a skinny white moon at the camera—Karen padded into the bathroom and cranked on the faucets.
The tub was one of those deep, ancient, claw-footed lagoons you could sink into up to the chin. The faucets were made of copper, and the porcelain, though chipped in places, had yellowed only slightly with the passage of time. To Karen, those chipped spots looked like soulless black eyes. The feet were of tarnished brass, wicked-looking claws clasping smoky crystal balls, and the tub's metal slides held the heat like a thermos.
So hot. . .
Steam wisped up lazily, fogging the mirror and the single small window, misting the heavy air. Two or three times the book Karen had been phonetically sounding her way through had drooped almost into the water (the surface of which was heaped with downy Ocean Mist bubbles), and finally she had dropped it with a thunk to the floor.
Now she hovered dreamily on the doorstep of sleep, knees bent, arms draped almost majestically over the rims of the tub. She didn't want to fall asleep, at least not in the tub—one very clear memory was of her mother's voice warning her sternly against doing just that—but she was helpless to prevent it. The steamy, soporific warmth of the water, and the good fatigue of the day, conspired implacably to lull her away. . .
The water was cold when she jerked awake. Through her still-closed eyelids, she noticed that the light had changed in quality; it was flickering now, as if the bulb had chosen exactly that moment to die. And she noticed something else, something tickling the ball of her left calf, just above the stagnant waterline—
Karen opened her eyes and screamed.
There was a body in the tub with her, facing her, lounging like some macabre casual lover, a decayed, mummified corpse, eyeless and grotesque, its ulcerated legs intimately intertwined with her own. She screamed and thrashed at the water, the tickling thing on her leg was a maggot, there were maggots floating on the water, hundreds of them, spilling out of the vaginal slit in that cadaverous chest. She came out of the water like a performing dolphin, screaming and thrashing, vaulting out naked and almost falling, swiping the maggots off her legs—
Then the light brightened and the tub was empty. There was only the water, still sloshing slowly back and forth, spilling over the edges onto the floor.
The maggots were clots of suds.
Chapter 20
May 20
Here, in the fluorescent harshness of the doctor's waiting room, Karen felt suddenly unsure of herself. When she called the office last night—sick with panic, certain she was losing her mind—she had been desperate to talk to Dr. Smith. By the sheerest luck, the doctor's secretary had still been in, catching up on some billing, but she was unable to locate the doctor. The best she could do, she said, was an afternoon appointment tomorrow.
Now, five minutes away from that appointment, Karen was having serious second thoughts about being here at all.
Cass had returned from Arnprior about an hour after Karen's. . . dream or hallucination or whatever it had been in the tub, and Karen had finally, frantically spilled it all out, deciding that she had to, that if she didn't tell someone the weight of it would snap her mind like a string. Cass, alarmed at how far out of hand the whole thing had gotten, urged Karen to level with her doctor. It was all she could think of to do. Karen had trusted the doctors this far; why should she run from them now? In full agreement at the time, Karen admitted that she'd already made an appointment. Afterward, she kept Cass up as late as she could, yakking and playing cards; then, after Cass went to bed, spent the balance of the night almost painfully awake, half-watching hokey, late-night movies on the TV, incapable of even pondering sleep.
But now, her experience in the tub seemed very far away. And what seemed very close, so close and so huge that it filled the world, was what the doctor might think if Karen told her about any of his.
She might think Karen was crazy.
Might? Karen's mind shot back. Come on, let's be realistic. She's going to know that you're nuts. God help her, she even thought so herself.
And if the doctor thought that, then what?
She recalled once again the recipient in Europe, the one whose grafts were removed—whose perfectly functioning grafts were removed—and got to her feet to leave.
As she did, Heather Smith swung open her office door and bounded out. A sheepish-looking woman in her late forties crept out behind her, clutching a scrawled prescription. Slyly, Heather tipped Karen a wink. Then, she smiled and said: "C'mon in."
She was caught.
"So," Heather said, dropping into her chair. "Tell me."
“Well, there's not much to tell," Karen said, clearing her throat. She always did that when she was lying. "I missed my Wednesday appointment, so I just thought, since we were coming into Ottawa anyway. . ."
Heather arched a doubting brow. "That's odd. My secretary told me you sounded quite agitated over the phone last night." She studied Karen a moment, noting the pallor, the deepening hollows of her eyes. "And you certainly don't look well to me. Have you been sleeping poorly?"
Kare
n regarded the doctor uncertainly. Dressed in khaki, surrounded by as many bird photos as degrees, Heather Smith looked more like an off-beat biologist than a psychiatrist. But under the woman's scrutinizing gaze, Karen felt her psyche stripped curiously naked and had to avert her eyes as she made little of the way she was feeling.
"Honestly, Dr. Smith, I—"
"Call me Heather."
"Heather. . . I've just been steadily on the go. Not used to it, I guess. I mean, I feel like Cinderella. . ." She smiled, but the corners of her mouth twitched nervously.
"Bad dreams?" Heather said, and Karen felt more naked than ever.
"Some," she admitted hesitantly, clearing her throat again. "But they're not really bad."
"Want to tell me about them?"
"Can I give it some time?" Karen said, trying to disguise her relief. In the sway of that piercing gaze, she hadn't considered having choices.
Heather eyed her over the rims of her specs. "Of course you can," she said, her tone sisterly. "But if it keeps up, or gets worse, I want to know about it. Based on what scant knowledge we have, Karen, we feel that psychologically this is a critical period for an eye recipient, these first few months after surgery. Just from the look of you I'm tempted to admit you for a while"—Karen tensed—"but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt."
Heather stood, revealing a mannish leather belt. Turning her back to Karen, she made much of examining a framed photograph of a Canada goose.
"I know what you're afraid of,” she said after a moment had passed. "You're afraid to talk about your dreams because they're awful, and you think that we'll take back your eyes if you do." She turned to face Karen again. “Am I right?"
Karen dropped her gaze and nodded jerkily.
"I'm going to ask you to trust me," Heather said as she returned to her seat. "I suspect your wariness is my own fault. Maybe I shouldn't have mentioned that patient in Europe—"
"No," Karen cut in. "At the time I was glad that you did. Back then, I needed to know all that might happen. But. . ."
"But now it haunts you."
Karen nodded again.
"Look," Heather said gently. "I told you about that case only to inform you of the worst that might happen—barring any serious complications with the surgery, of course. But the odds against the same thing happening to you are high, Karen.
"Unless you hold out on me. If you're suffering and not letting on, then those odds decline. And sharply."
Karen's hands writhed in her lap like battling dragons, clasping and unclasping, shiny with sweat. One question plagued her mind: Should she trust this woman? Considering it rationally—which had become damned hard to do over the past several days—the doctor had only Karen's best interests in mind. She would not do anything that didn't need doing. The risks would be weighed before any action was taken. But the less rational, more childlike part of her mind, which had assumed almost total control of her thinking just lately, counseled sternly against uttering another word. As soon as you mention these. . . whatever the Christ they are, that child's voice cautioned her, she's going to press a button and a couple of orderlies will burst in and drag you away in a straitjacket.
"Trust me," Heather said again.
And before she realized it, Karen had opened her mouth and it was all spouting out.
"I think about him almost constantly," she said, frustrated tears already falling. "The donor, I mean. And I've started dreaming about him, too. Real nightmares. Sometimes, I'm. . . touching his dead body, and, oh, God, it's all rotting and real, and I'm touching him so intimately, and he just stares at me with those empty holes in his face."
Sweat beads blossomed on Karen's brow. "And last night. . ."
She described the apparition in her bathtub.
"It's like he’s. . . haunting me."
The button! She's going to push the button!
But Heather only nodded sympathetically.
"I just wish I could get him out of my head, Karen said, then chuckled mirthlessly. "No pun intended. But I feel so. . . I don't know. . . sorry? No, that's not it exactly. It's more like. . .
Guilt? Heather wanted to say. But she knew the importance of allowing Karen to pinpoint this emotion for herself.
"I want to thank him, or somebody. I mean, I know I can't thank him. . . he's dead. But there's got to be somebody: his wife maybe or his parents. . . somebody. "
She considered telling Heather about the phone call she'd made to the Crowell woman in Sudbury, but then mostly out of embarrassment, decided to keep it to herself.
"This is a difficult predicament," Heather said honestly. "One for which a solution will not come easily. I can help you. . . but only to a certain point. Most of it you'll have to sort out on your own. We can meet again, talk these things through, try to pinpoint the root of this all right, Karen, I won't mince words with you—this unhealthy obsession you've developed with the donor. Because that's exactly what it is." Her tone changed then, lightened, became suddenly reassuring. "'But that's all it is. You are most definitely not losing your marbles." She smiled sunnily.
"And you are not going to lose your eyes because of these dreams, which are merely a normal, if disturbing, expression of your preoccupation with the donor.”
Heather opened a desk drawer and brought out a prescription pad. She was a southpaw, and from where Karen was sitting her handwriting looked like tight little tangles of barbed wire.
"Here," she said tearing the script free and sliding it across the desk. "Try these. One a night only. In fact, I suggest you try just a half-tablet at first. They're very potent.”
"What are they?" Karen asked, a little suspiciously. Drugs frightened her.
"Sleeping pills. You'll probably feel a trifle hung over at first—don't use them at all if your sleeping habits improve on their own—but they should help interrupt this dream pattern."
Karen recalled the patient who had skulked out of the office earlier, the way she had clutched her prescription like a rescue rope, and slipped hers into her pocket.
Heather glanced at her watch and then stood.
"My secretary's arranged for you to see Bill Burkowitz at two. That's ten minutes from now. Where's your ride?"
"Cass? She's downstairs in the cafeteria. She's not real fond of hospitals."
Heather laughed. "'None of us are."
She strode out from behind her desk, wrapping an arm around Karen as she stood. The two of them moved slowly toward the closed office door.
"I understand you're speaking at the Transplant Meeting tomorrow?" Heather said conversationally.
Karen stopped short, as if suddenly on the brink of a cliff. "Oh Jesus, I forgot. . ."
She resumed walking, thinking Great. Something else to worry about. The transplant coordinator, Carole Longman, had called last Friday and asked Karen to attend. She was supposed to speak, but she hadn't even thought about what she was going to say yet, never mind draft a speech.
"Fake it," Heather said, as if reading Karen's, thoughts. "I always do."
"Are you going to be there?" Karen asked, thinking that a few familiar faces might help to ease her stage fright a little.
"Unfortunately not," Heather said. They were at the door now. "I'm off in the morning on a three-day birdwatching expedition in the Gatineaus. I watch birds," Heather quipped, indicating the photo-cluttered walls of her, office. "In case you hadn't noticed."
"'Have fun," Karen said.
"I will," Heather replied, opening the office door to let Karen out.
With a wave, she called her next patient in.
That night, Karen took half a pill. . . but it didn't stop her mind.
She rolled out of bed and flicked on a light, fleeing the thing in her dreams. Wrapped in her own arms, she crossed to the window and knelt on the floor, her mind a spillway of images. Fear and confusion quickened the flow, and soon her head sizzled like grease on a skillet. She felt violated in some inexpressible way, as if someone had, in the guise of a saintl
y benefactor, gained access to the cathedral of her mind, then set busily about its vile desecration.
Like a weary sentinel, she watched the night until the sun nodded up in the east.
Across the field, the binocular eye-ports pressed to his face, Danny Dolan watched her.
Part Two - Reunion with Darkness
Chapter 21
May 21
Karen's position at the head table was third from center, just three seats down from the Prime Minister of Canada. Though exhausted, she was nervous, aware of her heart thumping hard inside of her. Among those flanking her on the elevated stage were two members of Parliament, Chief of Cardiac Surgery Dr. Guy Hutton, three other organ recipients, and Carole Longman, transplant coordinator for the Ottawa region. Longman was chairing the meeting, which was being held in the Columbia Room at the Westin Hotel.
The gathering was larger than Karen had anticipated from Longman's brief description. Formally dressed groups of eight sat at maybe a hundred round tables, while reporters and TV cameramen dotted the periphery, portable equipment at the ready. The room itself, with its high ceilings and wood-paneled walls, appeared big enough to enclose a football field. Albert was seated with Cass near the front. Cass had the Polaroid clasped in one hand.
"It's a kind of P.R. thing," Longman had explained over the phone. "Just one of the many ways in which we try to increase public awareness. We need to demystify organ transplantation, Karen, help people see the good in it. Do you realize that it's been more than four decades since the first heart transplant, and still only twenty-eight percent of people sign the consent form on the back of their driver's license? And every day people are dying for the want of organs. The resources are there, it's simply a matter of educating the public, making them aware." She had gone on to say that Karen's recent "celebrity" status would make her a valuable participant.
At first Karen hadn't liked the idea. The thought of speaking in front of a crowd had always made her antsy, even when she was blind. But in the end, she had consented to appear and do whatever she could to help further the cause. After all, she owed these people a lot.
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