Jefferson stared in shock. "She left here with you? My God, the receptionist hasn't stopped talking about it! Did you know there was a gang of thugs in here not five minutes after she left, threatening everyone in sight and demanding to know where she was?"
Louis nodded. "I know all about it. Keep it under your hat, would you?" He rose, hoisted his travel bag and started for the door.
"Louis, wait. Just a minute more, please."
Louis stopped and turned back to his friend. Jefferson sat facing away.
"I think I bought you your four months. But you ought to know how it's going to be from now on." The resident slid forward in the metal chair, elbows on his knees, chin in his hands. His eyes were fixed on the empty hospital bed.
"The pain from the surgery will abate, if you don't overextend yourself. But you're not well. There's malignant tissue throughout your body by now. Eventually it'll get the upper hand."
"I know, Miles."
"I did manage to get your organs cleaned up. They're actually in pretty good shape, all things considered. You're not likely to have any more of those nausea attacks. The main trouble site will be your spine. There was no way to get to the tumors there without killing or paralyzing you."
Jefferson massaged his forehead with his fingertips.
"Eventually you'll start to have CNS incidents. Surges of transitory pain, loss of motor control, fits of localized temporary paralysis. At first they'll probably affect only your legs, but that will change. Toward the end, your control of your body will be very unreliable. Without medication, you'll have frequent bouts of intense pain, blackouts, and irregular stoppages of breathing. Your vision and hearing might start to come and go."
The young physician turned to look over his shoulder at Louis.
"Will you come back here when it starts to get like that, please?" The words were soft.
Louis nodded. "I will, Miles, I promise."
Jefferson nodded and turned toward the bed again. He covered his face as the door closed between them. Louis strode toward the stairwell, fighting down the agony from his guts. He wanted to run from the hospital at top speed, lest Miles find some way to compel him to remain. He wanted to run back to Miles and give him what comfort he could.
I'll be back, Miles. But not to stay.
***
It was late in the afternoon when Louis reached Malcolm's trailer. The sight of the gaunt, haggard creature that opened the door to greet him, indisputably Malcolm and yet not Malcolm as he should be, was as much of a shock as he could withstand.
"Dear God, what's happened to you?"
Loughlin smirked. "You took the words out of my mouth. Get in here and leave the flies outside."
The trailer was a mess. From the plenitude of dirty dishes and leavings of meals, one might have guessed that Loughlin had hosted a dinner for fifty the night before. Louis tried not to gawk at the disarray.
If he wants you to know, he'll tell you.
"It's been a while." The older man seated himself at the dinette table.
Louis grinned without humor and joined him. "I know. I've been horribly busy. Forgive me?"
Loughlin shrugged. "Forget it. How's your charity case getting on?"
"About as well as could be expected." Louis drew a deep breath. "Malcolm, a few years ago, when we were in the thick of my training, you told me that there were some advanced pain management techniques you could teach me, if I ever had a need."
"You have a need?"
Louis nodded, trying to relax the muscles of his abdomen.
"Big time."
==
Chapter 16
Christine was quiet for days after Louis's return. She refrained from asking him about where he had been or what he had been doing. She was cheerful enough, and showed all her previous enthusiasm for her studies, but Louis couldn't shake the conviction that she was holding something in. Twice he started to ask about it, then checked himself.
By the week's end, the pain from the operation had subsided. He was far from well and knew it, but at least he didn't need to stay in one of Malcolm's semi-trance states all the time. It would be another two or three weeks before the muscles of his abdominal wall had healed enough to allow him to return to a modified version of his exercise regimen.
He caught himself in the middle of thinking about it and began to wonder. Why continue to expend so much of his time and energy on exercise, anyway? He could see the end of his life from here. He wasn't training for a reason anymore. His muscle tone wouldn't deteriorate that much in six months. What would it matter if he died no longer being able to bench press three hundred pounds?
The whole train of thought tasted wrong. He could find no logical fault with it, but it smelled of danger, of betrayal. He put it aside.
On the following Sunday after he had come back from Mass, over an ordinary brunch of bacon, eggs and crisply toasted English muffins, Christine finally asked him to explain religion.
***
Louis declined to answer Christine's question. Instead he directed her to put on jeans and sneakers, and then join him in the back yard. He took her through several minutes of stretching, then positioned her with her back against the northern run of his split-rail fence. He measured a distance of forty yards from where she stood, laid a large rock there, and brought out a stopwatch.
"When I say 'go,' Chris, I want you to run as fast as you can to that rock over there. You don't have to come to a stop at the rock. Just get to it as fast as you can, okay?"
"Okay." She flexed her knees, zeroed in on the rock and made ready to sprint.
He looked down at the watch. "One...two...three...Go!"
She shot forward, legs pumping with everything she had in her. The rock was twenty yards behind her when she slowed to a stop.
Louis was staring at his stopwatch in disbelief.
"What's the matter?"
"Nothing, nothing." He blinked. "You did that in four point five seconds, is all. Would you like to hear what the world record for that distance is?"
"Huh?"
"Four point one. That's the men's record. The women's record is four point four. Chris, do you remember anything about your past life?"
"You know I don't, Louis."
He shook his head as if to clear it. "Never mind. You're fast. Very, very fast. But suppose you had to make that run in one second flat, or you would lose your life?"
Is he serious? "I don't think I could do it."
"I don't think so either. But tell me why you don't think so."
"Well, you just told me the record is four point four."
"Yes, but you just came within a gnat's whisker of that, and I'll bet you've never trained as a runner in your life. What if you had lots of time to practice?"
She thought about it. "I still don't think so."
"But why not?"
He was wearing that irritating grin again, the one that said there was something to be found here that she just had to look at to see.
"I'll bet even a fast car couldn't do it, from a standing start."
He nodded. "You're right. They couldn't. But why couldn't you do it?"
"Because these are just legs, damnit!"
He held up his hands. "Okay, okay. You're close enough. Yes, they're just legs. And there's something about 'just legs' that limits them to no better than four seconds in the forty-yard dash. Come on inside."
***
They descended to the basement. He took her into his exercise room for the first time. To her it appeared a Sargasso Sea of oddments, some without imaginable purposes.
"I've got a lot of stuff here for bodybuilding, a few items for combat training, and a couple of pieces of junk I don't use any more." He pulled her toward a worn-looking contraption in a corner. "This is called a universal. It's sort of a safe dumbbell. I set these pins and runners for the motion I want to perform, load as many iron plates on that chain back there as I think I can lift, and then I move this bar in the appropriate direction. Wa
nt to see how much you can lift?"
She nodded, and he guided her onto the bench and under the lift bar in the standard bench press position. She gripped the bar's rubber-covered ends as he squatted to put weights on the resistance train.
"Okay, Chris. Try to push smoothly. Jerking the weight can hurt you."
She took a deep breath and pushed against the bar. The resistance was considerable, but it rose to the full extension of her arms. When she had locked her elbows, she looked over at Louis, who was watching with an expression of approval.
"Very good. Lower it carefully."
She complied, and he squatted to add more weight to the train.
"Again."
She took another deep breath and pushed. He'd added more weight, all right. A lot more. It took everything she had to force her elbows straight. As she locked them, he stepped forward and caught the center of the bar with both hands.
"Jesus, Mary and Joseph!" There was fright in his voice. "Carefully now, Chris. Let it down very slowly and carefully."
Between them they controlled the bar's descent. He helped her to slide out from under the bar and pulled her to a sitting position.
"You might be able to lift more than that --"
"How much was it?"
"-- but I'm not going to take a chance on hurting you." He led her around to the back of the machine and pointed at the stack of iron plates attached to the lift chain. "They weigh ten pounds each. Count 'em."
She did. There were twenty.
"I just lifted two hundred pounds?"
He nodded.
"With practice and the right nutrition, you could probably get well beyond that. When I lie on that bench, I can lift about three hundred pounds, and I'm only a little heavier than you. But I've never been able to get beyond that. Why is that, Chris?"
She turned from the pile of iron on the resistance train to stare at Louis's lath-slender frame. Three hundred pounds was about twice what he weighed himself.
"I know guys a lot bigger than you who couldn't do that."
Most of them couldn't do what you just did, either.
The Nag had chosen to put in an appearance. This time, she found that she didn't mind. She was still absorbing what she'd just done.
Louis scowled. "Forget them, Chris. Look at me and tell me why I can't get beyond three hundred. I've had trainers tell me I'd never break two hundred, but I proved them wrong. So why is three hundred a limit for me?"
He hesitated a moment, then pulled his sweatshirt over his head. For the second time, she gazed upon his bare chest. He spread his arms and raised his chin slightly, the better for her to see how he was built.
Her gaze traced his contours with appreciation. She had seen a lot of men's bodies, albeit unwillingly. His was worth a close look. His musculature was smoothly faultless in appearance, chest flowing into shoulders and thence to arms in utter harmony. Nowhere was it bulging or overdefined, yet it was as visibly hard as a granite crag. It was a powerful body that might have been designed specifically to conceal its potency. Clothed, no one could ever have known how perfect it was.
The guy in the drug store didn't stand a chance.
"Chris?"
She forced herself to meet his eyes. "I don't know. Maybe you just can't pack any more muscle onto your bones."
She had thought it an evasive answer, but his face split with his characteristic grin of satisfaction. "Very good. And that would be because -- ?"
"You're only so big, and the muscles have to have somewhere to go."
"Indeed they do." He wriggled back into his sweatshirt. "Come on upstairs."
***
In the kitchen, Louis took a small saucepan from the cabinet beneath the cooktop, filled it half-full with hot water, and set it on a burner. From a drawer he produced a large bulb-type thermometer, attached it to a pair of wooden grips, and passed the combination to her.
"This is going to be a little different. I'm going to make a prediction, and then we'll see if it comes true." He gestured at the saucepan. "I'm going to light the stove and heat the water in the pot. You put the thermometer in and watch the reading, but don't let the bulb touch the pan! I predict that no matter how high we turn the flame, and no matter how long we let it heat, the temperature of the water will never rise past two hundred twelve degrees. Okay?"
"Okay." She dipped the bulb into the pot. The reading rose to a hundred fifteen degrees. He lit the burner, turned the flame up high, and they watched.
When giant bubbles began to rise through the water, the thermometer read two hundred twelve. She kept it as steady as she could, never allowing the bulb to touch the metal of the pan. The water level dropped and the kitchen filled with steam, but the reading stayed at two hundred twelve until Louis quenched the burner ten minutes later.
"We've boiled away too much to keep going safely. So? What does that mean to you?"
She shrugged. "I don't know. Is it supposed to mean something?"
"Well, maybe not. But what does it mean to you that my prediction came true?"
"You knew it would be that way."
"And what does that mean?"
She started to speak and stopped herself. She knew his style. There was a pattern in the sequence of apparently unrelated things he had shown her that day. He was waiting for her to see it. The Nag lent a hand.
Limits. He's shown you three limits. Three things that wishing can't do anything about.
"Water's just that way, right? It always stops at two-twelve. You can't force it any higher."
He nodded as the huge grin returned to his face. "That's right. Not at sea level, anyway. That's one of the unvarying properties of water." He took the saucepan to the sink and emptied it. There was a hiss and a new cloud of steam as the water ran over the cold porcelain.
"Scientists study the properties of things all the time." He set the pan down in the sink and turned back to her. "They look for patterns in the way things behave, and then they test their understanding by making predictions. When their predictions work, they gain confidence that they're on to something. When their predictions fail, they junk their theories and start over. Mostly by little steps, sometimes by big ones, always building on the learning of those that came before them, this is how scientists come to know the world."
He leaned back against the counter and folded his arms against his chest. There was something in his demeanor she hadn't seen before, a kind of all-pervading delight that transformed him and made it impossible to look away from him.
"Scientists always look for the widest, most comprehensive patterns they can find, and then they try to explain them. And they've noticed that, the wider and deeper they go, the simpler the explanations seem to get.
"The great discoveries of the past three centuries have all pointed toward the existence of an enormous central fact, a single law for the whole world and everything in it. All the little patterns we see in things, like legs only being so fast, or arms only being so strong, or water never rising past two-twelve Fahrenheit, are just special cases of that central law, like the differently shaped shadows a statue will cast depending on how you turn it in the sun. Does that suggest anything to you, Chris?"
It took her a moment to register the question. She began to think. He waited in silence.
A million million details. A single truth giving rise to them all. Human reason sifting the details for the patterns that hid in them. Human knowledge of the patterns accumulating over the centuries, gradually reconstructing the statue from its innumerable shadows.
"The more you know, the simpler it all gets," she whispered. "The parts might be confusing, but it's made to be understood whole." The thrill of discovery was coursing through her like an electric current. "Louis, it couldn't have happened that way by chance, could it?"
He folded his hands and looked down at them.
"Some people think it could have, Chris."
"Do you?"
"No."
"And that's religion?"
He nodded.
==
Chapter 17
"Louis, come on." Christine's voice carried thinly from the base of the stairs to Louis's office.
"Patience, Chris. Don't you have any more reading to do?" He closed down his editor, slid a tape cartridge into the drive and started the backup program.
Her voice remained soft, but her tone was pure adolescent exasperation. "Not for three days now!"
Oops. You're getting sloppy. But who'd have thought she'd run through The Lord of the Rings in under forty-eight hours?
"Okay, come on up. I'm just about finished." The stairs resounded with her bounding stride. Lately she always took the stairs two at a time. In high heels, no less. It made her sound like an approaching disaster.
She was behind his chair before he could turn around. Even the way her hands landed on the backrest screamed impatience. He could imagine her struggling not to pull the chair out from under him. A giggle welled up in him that he could barely suppress.
She's learning my trade faster than I did. Maybe faster than anyone ever did. She's reading her way through the world's greatest fiction at an unlawful speed. This morning she benched two hundred fifty pounds and wanted to try for more. And she never gets tired. Just what have I got by the tail here?
When he swiveled to face her, the giggle broke through. What little control she had over her facial expression was insufficient. His wasn't showing too well either, this afternoon.
"I take it you're anxious to get on with your project?" He made no move to rise and let her at the computer.
"Louis!"
"All right, all right." He could no longer restrain the laughter welling up inside him. He pulled his backup tape out of the drive, got up, and slid to one side just fast enough to avoid being shoved out of the way. She dove at the machine and was punching keys before she had seated herself. He might as well have ceased to exist. Shaking his head, he retreated from the room, descended to his kitchen and began to fix coffee. The impact of Christine's fingers against the keys was loud even there.
On Broken Wings Page 12
