F Paul Wilson - Novel 05

by Mirage (v2. 1)

  Her arms lay at her sides atop the sheet that had been folded back at the level of her breasts and snugged around her. She might have been Sleeping Beauty—except for the feeding tube, and the catheter bag, and the IV.

  Suddenly Julie was afraid. Of what, she couldn't say. She was just—

  Oh, Sam—what have they done to you?

  Startled, Julie stiffened. Where'd that come from? Almost as if the thought had leaped between them. Why think anything had been done to Sam? No evidence of trauma, no attempted rape, no assault, nothing... yet.

  She shook off the strange feeling. If anything, Sam had probably done something to herself.

  Still, Julie felt a little weak. The extra wine and too little sleep didn't help. She would have loved to sink into one of the chairs, but she had to touch Sam, convince herself that she was real, that she was alive, that this was really her sister.

  She reached out and laid her fingers on Sam's arm. The skin was cool, smooth, soft, coated with a fine film of moisturizing lotion. She knew that the nursing staff would be bathing her, turning her on her side, making sure her inert body didn't develop bedsores.

  And if Sam didn't come out of her coma, that kind of care would go on forever, until Sleeping Beauty slowly turned into an old hag.

  She moved closer to her sister.

  "Sam?" Absurd as it was, she could not resist the urge to shake her arm, the feeling that this was all it would take to make Sam open her eyes. "Sam, it's Julie. Wake up."

  No response, of course. Julie leaned over Sam and lifted one of Sam's eyelids. The pale blue iris tightened around the pupil in response to the morning light. She lifted the other lid. The pupil there was already constricted.

  "Her..." Julie's voice caught an instant in her throat. "Her third nerve seems okay."

  "All the cranial nerves are intact," Eathan said. "All the reflexes—corneal, deep tendon, abdominal, Babinski—intact as well. It's given me some ... hope."

  "Are her medical records here?"

  "Yes. I had them sent along when she was moved from the Paris hospital."

  "Can I see them?"

  "Of course, but Julie—you can do that later." She felt Eathan's hand rest gently on her shoulder. "You look done in. I'll get you over to the inn, and after you've had some rest you can spend all the time you want with them. And believe me, you'll need time. There's quite a stack."

  Julie knew nothing short of some IV diazepam was going to let her sleep now, and maybe not even that.

  "Just a quick look, okay? Just to get some sort of handle on theinn,a

  "Okay. I understand. I'll have the nurse bring them in." He squeezed her shoulder. "I'm so glad you're here."

  3

  They went over the records together. Julie began with the EEGs, the electrical signature of the brain. She found half a dozen fat, fan-folded recordings in the pile. She spread out the long pink-and-white-gridded sheets on the floor of Sam's room and crouched over them, scanning them blip by blue blip.

  She knew she wasn't a physician, didn't want to pretend to be. But she did know the human nervous system more extensively and intimately than most M.D.s, so that was where she focused her attention.

  "Damn!" she said an hour or so later as she straightened and stretched her cramping back. "They're all normal."

  "I could have told you that," Eathan said. "Dr. Elliot went over them too."

  "I know. But nobody's perfect. He might have missed something."

  But he hadn't. The overall pattern in all the EEGs was normal—eight- to thirteen-Hertz activity. She could see that from across the room. What she'd been looking for were bilateral, synchronous, paroxysmal bursts of slow waves in the one- to three-Hertz range—a sure sign of metabolic disease, or a toxin, or a drug effect. She'd also been looking for unilateral slow activity that might indicate a structural lesion.

  Nothing.

  Normal eight- to thirteen-Hertz all the way.

  Julie stared at Eathan, sitting across the room with a pile of reports on his lap, watching her.

  "This doesn't make sense," she said.

  "Exactly what Dr. Elliot said. He was very intrigued. In fact, he wants to come back and examine her again."

  "I can understand that. And he's ruled out alpha coma and locked-in syndrome, 1 gather?"

  Eathan nodded. "He says it must be psychogenic."

  "But I don't get it. Catatonics are awake. Their eyes are open. They sit up. They chew and swallow...."

  Eathan said, "I see here in one of Dr. Elliot's notes that he calls it 'catatonic coma.' Coma is described as unarousable un-responsiveness, and Sam certainly meets that criterion, yet she's neurologically perfect, which she shouldn't be. He says he's never seen anything like it. Which is why he's willing to fly back from London to reexamine her if she doesn't show any changes by next week."

  Julie rose and approached the bed again. She stared down at her sister. Her MRI and spinal tap were normal—no stroke, no tumor, no hemorrhage, no damage, no toxins. Her cortex and brain stem were both functioning absolutely perfectly.

  Sam, Sam, she thought. Always an enigma—even when you're unconscious.

  She felt baffled and helpless. Neither was a comfortable fit.

  "What if we—?"

  "Pardon?"

  She turned and saw a middle-aged woman in white. Her name tag said ELAINE MONCEAU.

  "Oui?" said Eathan.

  "Monsieur, ft me faut manipider demoiselle."

  Eathan said, "Ce n'est pas possible d'attendre quelques minutes?"

  The woman obviously needed to check Sam. Julie's French was atrophied from long disuse, but she managed to grasp that Elaine was a physical therapist and was here to give Sam her daily massage and range-of-motion exercises.

  "Let's leave her to her work," Julie said, stooping to refold the EEGs. When ail the reports were back in their respective folders, she picked up an armful.

  "Can we take these back to the inn?"

  Eathan hesitated. "They probably want to keep them here, but I'll see what I can do."

  Ten minutes and a few release forms later, they were driving away with all Sam's records in the trunk.

  4

  The inn, Le Bois Farrand, a two-story stucco affair with a slate roof and vines climbing the walls, managed to be luxurious while retaining a quaint country charm.

  Like an inn out of a storybook, Julie thought.

  Eathan had reserved her a bright, airy room with a four-poster bed and an enormous down comforter. She went to the pair of French doors—of course—that opened onto a small balcony and stared out at the poplar-lined road that led to the inn.

  The bed looked inviting but, tired as she was, Julie felt too wired to sleep. Besides, if she could last until after dinner, she could crash for the night and be a good way toward resetting her body's clock to Greenwich Mean Time.

  She wondered how things were going back in New York, then realized it wasn't even dawn there yet. She tried not to think about the Bruchmeyer grant. Sam's mysterious coma was the important thing here. Julie was baffled and challenged by the puzzle. She needed more pieces, and she thought she knew a good place to look.

  She crossed the hall and knocked on Eathan's door. He appeared in shirtsleeves with a towel in his hand. His beard was damp. For a moment he looked oddly different with his beard matted to his cheek. Almost like the old pictures of her father.

  He blotted droplets of water from his face. "Something wrong?"

  "I'd like to go into Paris."

  "Oh, Julie, come on. You're not too tired?"

  "No. I'll do better if I try to reset my clock in one day. But I'm too bleary-eyed to read any more medical reports."

  His smile was sympathetic. "I understand. Anyplace special you want to go?"

  She chewed her lip.

  "Sam's apartment. Do you have the address?"

  Five

  Marcel Proust: "The bonds that unite another person to our-self exist only in our mind. Memory as it grows fainter rela
xes them. . . ."

  —Random notes: Julia Gordon

  Uncle Eathan had insisted on driving her himself. The Latin Quarter was not the safest section of the city, he'd said. And besides, he'd met Sam's landlady a number of times already, Julie would have an easier time getting in if he was with her.

  Julie hadn't argued. Actually she was glad to have someone familiar with the territory along.

  So now they were fighting the midday traffic along the busy boulevard that followed the serpentine path of the Seine. And despite everything, Julie had to admire the beauty of Paris. The bateaux mouches, the sight-seeing boats, were already ferrying tourists up and down the river, while the dozens of bridges that spanned the murky river were filled with Parisians hustling to and fro, moving urgently from Left Bank to Right, or Right to Left.

  "A lot's changed since you've been here."

  "Yes, when did they stick that glass pyramid in front of the Louvre?"

  "Don't like it? A lot of Parisians consider it an eyesore. Your sister loved it."

  "That figures."

  They took a curve and ahead Julie spotted Notre Dame and the lie de la Cite. On her first visit, years ago, she had gone to the top of the cathedral and stood by the gargoyles who leered out at the city. A young couple had asked her to take their photograph, posed with a horned monster between them. Then they in turn asked Julie if she wanted to be photographed.

  The idea seemed funny to Julie. By myself? With a monster?

  She shook her head.

  "You never liked Paris?" Eathan said.

  "Oh, it's beautiful enough. 1 guess I found the mood, the air of the place too frivolous. And maybe because Paris was always Sam's city."

  She looked over to see whether she'd offended Eathan, but he showed no reaction.

  He made a right and Julie saw that they were on the Boulevard Saint-Germain. In a few minutes, they passed the entrance to the giant Jardin du Luxembourg.

  "Ever been in there?"

  "No. Too busy when 1 came for that conference."

  "You should take some time—"

  "And smell the roses?"

  Eathan laughed. "Your sister's studio is just off the Boulevard Saint-Michel, the 'boul Mich.' It's a lot like your New York SoHo, I imagine."

  Eathan turned down a narrow rue, passing a street cleaner in a green uniform wiping the pavement with a mop. Through her open window, Julie sniffed the pungent smell of the wet cobblestones.

  The smells and sights of Paris ...

  Now it felt exactly as she remembered it from her year at the Institut de Science. That was the nice thing about European cities—you could return after years of absence and, outside of some new monstrosity erected by a minister of "culture," everything would be pretty much as you left it.

  The closer to Sam's studio, the quieter Eathan got. Then—

  "When do you think it began to go wrong for Samanthar Eathan said.

  "Began? I can't remember when she was ever rigfit."

  "You're too hard on her. Always have been."

  Here we go again, she thought. The old why-can't'you'twO' be-friends routine. Why couldn't he ever bring himself to blame Sam?

  You've always been too damn easy on her, she wanted to say, but bit it back. She'd noticed new worry lines on Eathan's face. Maybe he was already blaming himself.

  "Maybe you're right," she said, not believing it. "But she was always so emotional about everything, always frightened of something. As she got older, she changed, almost seemed to embrace anything dangerous, but when we were kids, there was always something under her bed. Even Bugs Bunny cartoons scared her. And remember that scene in Harrods when we were Christmas shopping? How old were we then? Ten?"

  "I believe so. But do you remember what set her off?"

  "No."

  "It was by the Christmas village Harrods had constructed on the children's floor. You were standing right beside her. Are you sure you don't remember?"

  Julie thought back. They'd been leaning over the railing, watching the miniature train chug through the snow-covered English village that had been rendered in amazing detail, even down to the smoke puffing from the tiny chimneys. Suddenly Sam had stiffened beside her and begun screaming at the top of her lungs as if terrified for her life.

  "I don't think I ever knew what set her off. She just went hysterical for no reason. I was used to it by then."

  "I found out," Eathan said. "Later. She told her therapist at that time that she'd seen one of the village houses on fire and it had frightened her."

  "There was no house on fire," Julie said. "I was there. I know I'd have noticed that."

  "I went back and checked, and you're right. There was no little house on fire. But I did notice that the chimney on one of the models was blocked, and the smoke that was supposed to be going up the chimney was coming out the windows instead, making it look as if the little house was on fire."

  "Right. I remember that now. And I remember thinking it was strange looking."

  Another turn onto an even narrower road. They passed a shop with a giant ceramic horsehead outside. For lovers of "la viande du cheval." Julie didn't eat much red meat, and the thought of eating Trigger...

  "It didn't upset you? Didn't remind you of another fire?"

  "Not at all. It looked like a clogged chimney and that was that."

  Halfway down the block there was a cafe tabac, and a few rumpled, leathery-skinned workers—Algerian, maybe—sat outside, smoking cigarettes, as if waiting for a parade.

  "So you don't think about that fire?" He was staring at her intently. "Ever?"

  "When someone mentions it, yes. Witnessing that fire was a terrible thing, but it was twenty-three years ago. I wish it hadn't happened, but it did. And it's over. That was then, this is now. You keep going."

  Eathan stopped at the comer. A woman led her toddler across the street. In her free hand she carried a three-foot-long baguette, diapered around its middle with a single sheet of white paper. The bread, Julie had forgotten the bread, baked fresh three or four times a day. Her mouth watered.

  "You're very lucky to be able to put it in perspective like that. Sam never could put it behind her. That was her problem. All the therapists, the special schools, nothing could heal the terrible wounds of that night. I kept trying to get you two to talk about it. Wounds need air to heal. Lock them up and they only fester."

  Julie remembered how Eathan would sit them down at regular intervals and make them talk about the night of the fire, all the details they could remember. "Ventilate," he'd say. "Get it out. Let it go." It had worked for her, she supposed, but obviously not for Sam.

  "If Sam had only had a friend to confide in," he said—pointedly, she thought.

  Julie was not going to let him start this.

  "Her 'friend' would have had to be as reckless as Sam. Don't forget all the drinking and drugs. How many schools kicked her out for violent behavior? Three, wasn't it? I don't see how you can blame the fire or lack of a 'friend.' None of that ever happened to me. We're twins. We witnessed the same horrific tragedy. Could it have affected us so differently?"

  Eathan nodded as they kept on along the small rue.. "You're two different people. Your rather was a scientist, a chemist; your mother was artsy, in a way. You and Sam have the same genotype, but obviously you express those genes differently. You've always been the rational one, steady as a rock, while Samantha took everything to heart and seemed bent on self-destruction. I wish you could have ..."

  "What?"

  "Nothing."

  "Watched over her? Looked out for her? I was growing up too, you know. And not having such an easy time myself."

  Juiie didn't like thinking of her adolescent years, being considered one of the class nerds because of her grades, never having more than one friend, always feeling different, always "out" with the "in" crowd. She liked to think she'd put all that pain behind her.

  "I know," Eathan said. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that. I know you had proble
ms too. But somehow I always knew you'd pull through. Sam... I doubt she'd have made it even this far if not for her art. I think that's the only thing that saved her from self-destructing before she got out of her teens."

  Sam's art. Julie had to admit she'd had a real talent for it since day one. She began painting seriously in secondary school and whenever the class would put on an art show, Sam's display would always draw the most attention. Nobody would be standing too close, of course. More like a crowd around an accident. The violent, disturbing images that ran through her paintings fascinated as much as they repelled.

  She dabbled in everything "artistic," but painting seemed to be her real love. So much so that she enrolled in a London art school instead of a university, but just as she was beginning to gain some recognition—an art columnist had given her favorable mention in the Times—she dropped out and fled to the Continent.

  Self-sabotage, another of Sam's fortes.

  "If you remember," Julie said, "her art almost got her killed. If that theater director's wife hadn't been so drunk, her aim might have been better and we'd have lost Sam then and there."

  Eathan's smile was rueful. "She didn't need me to deal with that particular angry spouse, but there were others."

  Even Julie was forced to smile. Incorrigible, insatiable Sam; she went through men like a drunk goes through beers.

  "Lots of angry wives over the years, I imagine."

  He nodded. "And once, a very angry husband."

  Julie felt her jaw drop as the meaning registered. "You don't mean...?"

  He shrugged. "I've probably said too much already. Let's just say that your sister's tastes are, um, eclectic, and leave it at that."

  When am I going to learn never to be shocked by Sam? she thought.

  "Sounds like you've spent a lot of time running around the Continent putting out Sam's fires. Why? Don't you think that might have contributed to the problem?"

  "You mean am I—what's the fashionable term—an 'en-abler'? I don't like to think so. I certainly didn't think so at the time. I was mostly concerned with keeping her out of trouble and making sure she had enough money for food and rent so she could continue her work."