Magic, Machines and the Awakening of Danny Searle

by John McWilliams

  I sat on the driver’s side next to my mother. My father sat across from us.

  I stared at him.

  Then, without saying a word, we switched.

  16

  By the time we arrived at the East 34th Street Heliport, David had already landed and was on his way to Brook Howard University Hospital. His helicopter was standing by, blades turning. We said goodbye to my mother and watched as the blue and white Sikorsky S-76 rose, retracted its landing gear and banked south along the East River.

  My mother was on her way to give a presentation that the entire Quantum Bay team was supposed to have delivered. I felt proud, concerned, but there were other emotions pulling me in another direction. Getting back into the limo, we drove west toward Brook Howard’s famous “twin cube” buildings.

  Distantly, we could see them rising up above the skyline, each of the modern edifices looking like four cubes stacked, one on top of the other, and linked together by four glass-enclosed walkways.

  When we finally arrived at the campus’s front steps, I glanced over at the courtyard between the two buildings, where a fountain was shooting parabolic arcs around a golden caduceus. This place exuded confidence.

  We entered the East Building—Brook Howard’s medical research center—where we met Yuri, who was already wearing a light blue lab coat with the official Brook Howard “stethoscope/microscope” insignia on it. He escorted us across the expansive marble floor.

  “I know that look,” my father said. “That’s the look of a man with new toys.”

  “Facility here is state of the art. Is very impressive.” When the elevator door opened, Yuri waved us in.

  Of course I knew there was no reason why Yuri shouldn’t feel excited about his “new toys,” but all the same, I would have preferred a little distress. To him, I reminded myself, Danny really was just a sleeping beauty. He’d never actually met her.

  In the elevator, Yuri told us that because Brook Howard Medical Research Center was a part of Brook Howard University Hospital, Danny would be getting around-the-clock nursing care. But, unfortunately, until his assistants and equipment arrived tomorrow morning, monitoring her EEG was about all he could do.

  He added that Dr. Susan Saito would be arriving at around seven o’clock tonight and that David was presently upstairs with Danny.

  “Susan Saito?” I asked. “Danny once told me that David’s therapist’s name was Susan Saito.”

  “Dr. Saito is respected neuropsychologist,” Yuri said. “She has been treating Ms. Searle for several years. But I will let Mr. Levinson explain all that.”

  My father and I exchanged looks; however, neither of us pressed Yuri further. I think we both wanted to hear this—whatever this was—directly from David.

  On the fifth floor, Yuri led us down a hall to our sleeping quarters, telling us that David had leased ten of these rooms—just in case. Each of the rooms included a simple bed, toilet and shower stall—essentially, everything the dedicated researcher could ever want. I put Danny’s and my bags down on one of the beds, my father claimed another of the rooms, and we continued our tour.

  Next we came to the kitchen: a spacious room with four tables, a stove, a refrigerator, two sinks, and, over by the four-pot coffeemaker, two vending machines stocked with Coke and Fritos.

  A little farther down the hall from the kitchen were our three labs: rooms 513 and 515 on the left, room 514 on the right. Room 515 had an observation window that looked in on room 513. Through that window, we could see Danny asleep in a chrome-framed bed, all wired up with an IV, feeding tube, heart monitor and EEG. And there, beside her, in a button-down burgundy shirt, was David, holding her hand.

  “Perhaps we should give Mr. Levinson a moment,” Yuri suggested. “Coffee?”

  I wanted desperately to see Danny, but David looked like he was on the verge of tears.

  “I suppose,” my father said, turning from the observation window, “we could give him a minute. I’ll send him a text message to let him know we’re here.”

  Minutes later, David joined us in the kitchen, giving my father and me hugs, and thanking us for everything (though I had no idea what he was thanking me for). After a few obligatory words about the Gulfstream jet my mother would be flying to Chicago, we sat down at one of the tables.

  Yuri made us coffee.

  “So…” David said. “Where to begin?”

  “Anywhere you like,” my father said. “We just want to know what’s happening.”

  “Well, I think I better start with an apology.”

  “I really doubt that’s necessary.”

  “I’m pretty sure it is. And I am sorry, but I did what I did for Danny’s sake.” David took a deep breath. “About two years ago—just a few weeks before Christmas—there was another accident. Danny sustained a head injury that put her into a coma for twenty-two days, five hours and fifty-six minutes.”

  “Temporal lobe damage,” Yuri interjected from over by the coffeemaker, “affecting several cortical nuclei responsible for—”

  “Hold on.” My father halted Yuri, staring at David. “Is that what this is all about? Danny had a previous head injury?”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “Did you hit her?” I glared at him.

  “Of course not. What would make you think that?”

  “Why did you apologize then?”

  “Hang on, hang on,” my father said. “Danny had a head injury that put her in a coma a couple of years ago? Well, she obviously came out of it and didn’t appear damaged in any way—at least not to me.”

  “Me neither,” I said.

  Yuri came over and poured us coffee.

  David waited.

  “Milk?” Yuri asked.

  “No thank you, Yuri.” My father exhaled his frustration. “Okay… David?”

  “Danny didn’t seem damaged because, in a sense, she is the damage.”

  My father and I both leaned forward at once.

  “What is that supposed to mean?” I demanded.

  “Danny awoke from the coma, but it wasn’t Danny who went into the coma.”

  “Is that a riddle?”

  “Who then, if not Danny,” my father asked, “went into the coma?”

  “My wife. Someone I—everyone—knew as Daniella Levinson.”

  “Is this some kind of—” I leapt out of my chair and began pacing the floor like a caged lion. “Are you joking?”

  “Tyler, please…” David pleaded. “Just hear me out.” He waited. “Please.”

  I stopped.

  “Let me explain what happened.”

  I stared at him.

  “When Daniella first awoke, you see, she couldn’t remember a thing. They—the doctors—told me that temporary amnesia wasn’t all that unusual in cases such as hers, and that her memories would likely return soon. And they did. But that’s when I realized something was wrong. That’s when I realized her behavior wasn’t just a symptom of memory loss. She was actually another person; a person who had taken over my wife’s body and was, somehow, for some reason, altering her memories.

  “Later, Dr. Saito concluded that since Daniella’s personality was so much more aggressive than Danny’s, Danny’s subconscious had been forced to alter Daniella’s memories. Danny simply wouldn’t have done the things that Daniella had done.”

  “Danny took over your wife’s body?” I said incredulously.

  “Well, I suppose, technically, it’s no more Daniella’s body than it is Danny’s.”

  “Has Daniella ever resurfaced?” my father asked.

  “No. Never.”

  “But that’s what you’ve been hoping for all this time, isn’t it?” I said.

  “Daniella was my wife. Of course that’s what I was hoping for. In the beginning. But as Danny became more, well… Danny, things became complicated. I wanted Daniella back, but I was also now quite fond of this new person I was living with.”

  “Living with?”

  “Platonically. Ty
ler, you have to appreciate how difficult this was. I could see my wife, but I couldn’t touch her. Danny thought of me as a kind of older brother. And I know it’s hard to believe—because it took me long enough to believe it myself—but Danny and Daniella are truly two different people. I married Daniella, not Danny.”

  “So, did you get a divorce?”

  “Maybe you’re not following this.” David sighed. “Daniella is gone. She isn’t here to get a divorce.”

  “So when Danny wakes up, you won’t mind getting one?”

  “If you can get her to sign the papers. I’m telling you, she’ll think you’re insane.”

  “All right,” my father said, “let’s leave the divorce proceedings for another time.” He rested his elbows on the table and fixed his gaze on David. “Now for the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question: Why didn’t you tell us?”

  “Because, given the choice—” David paused. “Maybe I should explain this from the beginning.”

  “Yuri’s equipment won’t be here until the morning, so apparently we have the time.”

  “Daniella and I met about six years ago. She was just starting her MBA program at Columbia Business School and I was—”

  “Columbia?” my father said. “She went to Columbia for an MBA?”

  “She got her MBA from Columbia. She received it at twenty-three. So, I’m sure you’re now wondering why Danny has been taking finance classes at Suffolk Community College. Well, now you’re starting to see how deep this runs. These are two separate people; two separate lives.”

  I sat back down.

  “You ever notice how easy Danny finds her classes?” David looked at each of us.

  “Danny has access to what Daniella has learned?” my father asked.

  “As long as it doesn’t conflict with her identity, it seems she has access to nearly all of Daniella’s practical knowledge. Danny just thinks she has a knack for things. Imagine waking up one morning and suddenly you’re able to recall volumes of information from books you’ve never read, perform incredible illusions with perfect dexterity, and understand sophisticated financial problems intuitively. Daniella was gifted; Danny is pure magic.”

  “But how could Danny have gotten into a community college when she already had an MBA?” I asked.

  “Who’d ever check to see if someone had an MBA they forgot to mention?” my father said. “We didn’t.” He turned to David. “So, you met Daniella at Columbia. What were you doing there? Do you have an MBA you forgot to mention?”

  “I was invited to teach a theatrical workshop there on improvisation and showmanship. Daniella was only taking the class to make up an undergraduate requirement. But she stood out right from the start. Besides her looks, Daniella had this extraordinary ability to comprehend and perform magic with very little practice. Her eye-hand coordination and her ability to understand and manipulate the thoughts of her audience were remarkable. For me, it was like teaching Mozart piano.” He looked at me. “She was a lot like you.

  “After she graduated, I persuaded her to come out to Levinson Productions, where she became our Chief Operating Officer. She—we—had big plans.”

  “But I thought she was your assistant,” I said. “You even showed us those pictures of her from the show with the vampires.”

  “We always cast our biggest talents into our biggest productions. It just so happened that Daniella was our biggest talent. And if you remember the story I told you about Frederick Tilden, assistants aren’t always just assistants.

  “So, then we got married,” David went on, “and life was pretty great—until the accident.”

  “What happened?”

  “We were testing a steel enclosure for an escape routine when a locking pin broke and a spring-loaded door hit Daniella on the head. She seemed a little disoriented at first, but Daniella being Daniella, insisted that no one make a fuss. Thirty minutes later, however, she started to feel sick. I got her to the hospital as quickly as I could, but the moment we were through the emergency room doors, she was out cold.”

  “Intracranial hemorrhaging,” Yuri said.

  “The doctors told me that once the pressure in her head was relieved she’d start to come around, but she remained unconscious for twenty-two agonizing days.

  “You can only imagine the relief I felt when she did wake up. She had amnesia, but at least she was awake.

  “She recognized me, but not the fact that we were married; she could recall her childhood, but claimed that only her mother called her Daniella. Her mother, who she now believed was alive and well back in Ohio.”

  “She isn’t?” I asked.

  David looked at his hands. “Daniella’s parents were killed by a drunk driver when she was seven.”

  I thought back to the conversation I’d had with Danny out at Montauk Point. This certainly explained her evasiveness, but did she actually lie to me about her parents? About her “normal” childhood? She had believed it was the truth—isn’t that all that matters?

  I looked up. David was waiting for me. I nodded.

  “It was at that point,” he said, “that I went out and found Dr. Saito. Susan’s the director of the Santa Barbara Center for Psychology and Neuroscience. She agreed to work with Danny at the Las Vegas University Medical Center, and, after several weeks of observation, she concluded that Danny’s condition, her disassociation, actually stems from Danny’s parents’ deaths. That’s when she believes Daniella first appeared.”

  “Daniella first appeared?” I said. “Who was she before that?”

  “Danny.”

  “So—Danny is her original personality?”

  “Yes, but it doesn’t matter who came first.”

  “It does to me. Just a couple of minutes ago you referred to Danny as brain damage.”

  “I didn’t—I didn’t mean it like that. But don’t think that just because Danny was first she somehow trumps Daniella. Danny is no doubt a wonderful person, but she was Daniella for more than two-thirds of her life. Which one is more real? Believe me, I’ve mulled that one over a million times. They’re both real.”

  “But she was born Danny.”

  “And lived most of her life as Daniella.”

  “Yes, but underneath she was always Danny.”

  “Tyler—”

  “Okay, okay,” my father said. “Let’s try to stay on track. So, Daniella pops into existence when Danny is seven, to help her deal with the trauma of her parents’ deaths; she lives a remarkably productive life right up until she’s twenty-five; then she gets hit on the head and Danny shows up again.” He turned to Yuri. “I assume no one knows why that happened. But that’s got to be the reason you and Susan are so interested in this case.”

  “Is rare opportunity to study correlation between neurophysiology and behavior. Particularly because case was so well documented by Dr. Saito. I am surprised you are not familiar with her work.”

  “It’s been years since I’ve done anything in neuroscience,” my father said.

  “Of course.” Yuri looked at me. “Test subject grew up.”

  “All right,” my father said to David, “What happened after Dr. Saito finished working with Danny at the hospital?”

  “I brought Danny home. Susan and I had hoped that a familiar environment might shake Daniella loose. But Danny simply dismissed anything that conflicted with her identity—videos, pictures, clothing. She actually attributed our wedding pictures to a production we must have been in.

  “Then, several months later, she decided she wanted to go visit her Aunt Barbara on Long Island. By then I was actually torn. I still wanted my wife back, of course, but I had grown fond of Danny. She needed me in a way that Daniella never had—never could. But I suppose, all in all, I was still hoping that the stress of travel might cause the tougher Daniella to resurface.

  “But that didn’t happen,” my father said.

  “No, but then the strangest thing did. Not a week after her arrival, she called to tell me she had found a job work
ing for you.”

  “Why was that so strange?”

  “Because the night before the accident, Daniella had been up reading your book, Of Consciousness and Machines. And when Danny awoke, it was about the only thing she could remember. At the time, we just assumed it had something to do with how the brain stores memories. But when I received that call, well, I flew out as soon as I could.

  “I had every intention of telling you what was going on. But when I saw how happy she was, I just couldn’t.”

  “It’s not like I would have fired her,” my father said.

  “I know, I know…”

  “You don’t think that Daniella’s reading my book and Danny’s showing up at Quantum Bay might just be a coincidence?”

  “Not likely,” a woman said from the doorway. It was Dr. Susan Saito. She parked a carry-on bag against the wall and lowered its handle.

  Susan looked to be in her early thirties, though, given her credentials, she had to be much older. She was thin, wearing a yellow blouse and faded jeans with yellow flowers embroidered into their back pockets. Her long black hair reminded me of the twins. After our introductions, my father made her a cup of coffee and she joined us at the table.

  “David was just telling us the history of Danny and Daniella,” my father said, his tone adjusting for the pretty woman in the room.

  Susan sipped her coffee and nodded at David, indicating he should continue.

  “Well,” David said, “after Danny started working at Quantum Bay and I—”

  “And you decided it was okay to drag the rest of us into her delusion,” I snapped. I glanced at Susan. She remained expressionless. “From what we’ve been hearing, everything about Danny is a fabrication. Apparently, we only even met her because Daniella happened to be reading Of Consciousness and Machines. And I get that Danny wasn’t aware of this. Or at least I assume she wasn’t. But come on, isn’t this sort of the definition of someone who’s delusional?”

  “No, it’s not.” Susan set her coffee down. “Danny is quite rational in every aspect of her life except for her memories. And even those, in and of themselves, are quite rational—just inaccurate.”

  “They’re reshaped,” David said.