by Jeff Rovin
Her lower lip shook as her father ran to the window and made a succession of twisted expressions.
“What’s wrong with him?” she wept. “Will he ever be—well?”
“Until I examine him and we know exactly what happened, there’s no way to determine his course of recovery.”
Megan said bitterly, “It’s West. Everything was fine until he came to Arkham.”
“Unfortunately, my dear, there’s nothing more we can do with our friend Mr. West. I’ve just been talking with President Felman. The expulsion will hold, but the university will not press charges. Felman wants this matter out of the newspapers long before the spring, lest new applications be affected. That’s why I need you, Megan.” He pressed closer. “I need you to sign a release so that I can perform exploratory surgery.”
“Is that absolutely necessary, Dr. Hill?”
The lanky surgeon turned Megan around. “It is. I know how difficult this must be for you, but we can’t treat what we don’t understand. Regardless of the cause, I’m convinced your father’s problem is neurological. And if I can find that cause, it’s conceivable that I can also find the cure.”
She looked up into Hill’s eyes. For as long as she’d known him, those eyes had always seemed strong to her, so wise and understanding—like Mr. Spock, she’d always thought. Now they were also soft and paternal, and she very much wanted to trust him.
“This cure,” she said. “It won’t include a . . . a lobotomy.”
Hill smiled warmly. “Of course not. I want my colleague back, too, Megan—the way he was.” The smile broadened. “You must trust me. We’ll take every precaution.”
The young woman sat down slowly in a leather armchair while Hill perched himself on the edge of his desk, his arm resting on an alabaster bust of a skinless human head. Megan snatched a tissue from his desk; dabbing her eyes, she reluctantly gave her assent.
“Good,” said Dr. Hill. “I want to take a look at the right frontal lobe.” He pointed to a spot on the bust. “I’ll open the skull here, and if there’s any—”
“Please.” Megan held up her hand. “I . . . don’t want to know.”
Hill was surprised. “You’ve studied with me. You’re not squeamish.”
“He’s my father, Dr. Hill.”
“Precisely. I thought you’d want to understand what was involved.”
“No,” she said quietly. “Just help him.”
He bowed once and then handed her a clipboard containing the release. Megan signed, after which she walked around the room. She paused by a framed picture of her father taken at the previous year’s commencement. He looked so elegant in his cap and gown, standing proudly behind the podium. She forced herself to look at the one-way mirror. Somewhere inside that wild figure was the same distinguished man; somehow they must reach him.
“Please, Doctor,” she said urgently, “let me talk to him.”
“I’m afraid that would be unwise.”
“But I may be able to get through to him.”
“Unlikely,” he said. “And what if he were to harm you in his delirium?”
She looked with disbelief at her father. “The way he’s tied up?”
“He still has teeth and a rather tough skull. And he can kick. Besides,” Hill pointed out, “think of him, Megan. Imagine how he’d feel, recovering and learning that he’d hurt his loving, beautiful daughter.”
“He didn’t hurt me in the autopsy room.”
“He hadn’t been straitjacketed for an hour. That . . . changes a man.”
Megan’s eyes became dark slits. “Dr. Hill, you’re patronizing me.”
“To the contrary,” he said effusively. “I’m trying to protect you.” The surgeon put his arm around her. “Megan, dear, I must insist that you leave his treatment up to me. Indeed”—he walked her from the padded cubicle, toward the sofa—“I want you to think of me as someone you can come to with all your problems. Or even if you’re just lonely. What with your father’s condition and Mr. Cain’s involvement in this unfortunate matter, I know you’re all by yourself now.”
Megan was confused, and before she could collect her thoughts the couple was pulled around by a loud rap on the one-way mirror. They turned just in time to see Dean Halsey bat his forehead against the glass a second time, and then a third. Breaking from Hill, Megan went to the glass and shouted for her father to stop. Dean Halsey did so, backing away and staring with amazement at the mirror.
“He listened to me!” she exclaimed. “He does know who I am.” Megan faced Hill, her expression resolute. “Doctor, I appreciate your willingness to help, but there isn’t going to be any surgery. I’m going to take care of Daddy myself.”
“I’m sorry,” he said sternly, “but I’m afraid I can’t release him to you.”
“In that case, I’ll take care of him here. I’ll sleep on the sofa if I have to.” Megan went to the cubicle window. “Do you hear that, Daddy? I’m going to help you!” Inside, Halsey cocked his head from side to side, listening. “I’m also going to find out what happened today, even if I have to wring Herbert West’s wormy little neck to do it!”
So saying, Megan Halsey grabbed her coat and shoulderbag and hurried from Hill’s office. Angrily slapping the mirror, the surgeon went to his desk and locked the medical release safely inside. Then, with a disdainful glance at Halsey, he phoned for a pair of orderlies to come and help him ready his patient for surgery.
Megan stopped at the Nocturnal Diggers Diner, ignoring the noise and activity of the upscale crowd while she sipped espresso and pondered her next move. Almost certainly she would need to hire a nurse so that her father could return to the house. She would give up classes, and, her relationship with Cain on hold—perhaps permanently, she had to admit—there would be plenty of time for her father.
It was ironic, she thought. What her father had been unable to do in health he had accomplished in sickness. Even if she had time again for Dan, she wasn’t sure she’d want to see him again. Whatever had happened back at the hospital, he’d had a hand in causing her father’s condition. He knew her father, and he was nearly a doctor; he should have sensed something coming on. And realizing that, he should have backed off.
It was some kind of intellectual macho, she reasoned. Her father had the upper hand at every turn but this one; Dan had obviously decided to stand his ground. She should have been flattered, she told herself, but she wasn’t. The gentleness she’d always loved in Cain had been tainted forever.
Wiping away tears with a paper napkin, Megan paid the check and drove home. As she rode slowly down Wengler Street in Arkham’s old-money North Side, she thought of how lonely the large stone home would be without either her father or Dan. Whenever her father was away, she stayed with Cain or he was there; there had never been a time when she wasn’t busy trying to repay one for all he’d done for her or please the other and ease his workload. Now she had a helpless man to take care of, and while that would occupy her she knew it could never fulfill her, not in the same way. She pulled into the driveway and wept with her head on the wheel.
“Dan, what have you done to everything?”
She wanted to go back a day, run away with Dan, and prevent all of this from happening. Satisfying both men as best she could had seemed so important just a few hours before. Now nothing mattered. She didn’t know how she would live without her father . . . without Dan.
Megan didn’t remember leaving the car. She went through motions mechanically, suddenly aware that she was standing in the large foyer. It didn’t matter how loudly her keys jangled; her father wasn’t asleep. She shucked off her coat, her bag dragging on the floor as she walked to the staircase. Where were the sounds she was used to hearing whenever she came home—professors laughing, Hill pontificating, her father settling an argument of some kind?
“Hello, Megan.”
The young woman spun toward the living room.
“Daniel?” She peered into the darkness as Cain rose and switched on the
light. His expression was dour, repentant, but she felt no pity; gazing at him, she despised him even more than she hated West. “Get out.”
“Megan, I know how you feel, but we have to talk.”
Part of her wanted to run at him and smack him; another part of her wanted to be held. She looked away and started up the stairs.
“Megan, please—”
“What more is left to say?”
“Things,” he said mysteriously.
Megan stopped. “What . . . things?”
“Facts,” he mumbled, “things we dared not tell the police. I tried to tell your father this afternoon, but he wouldn’t listen. You saw too . . . the cat.”
Her eyes were hard, her voice even harder. “What does the cat have to do with Daddy?” Megan started back down, and Cain’s eyes lowered to the hardwood floor. “Daniel, what did you and West do to him?” Cain turned away, and the woman stormed over, grabbing the front of his jacket and pulling him around. “Dammit, what happened? What did you and West do to him to make him like that?”
“It was horrible,” he admitted, his voice cracking. “I didn’t mean to—that is, I didn’t want to hurt him.”
Megan slapped him hard. “What did you do to him? Why is my father insane?”
“That’s just it. He—he’s not what you think.”
Megan slapped him again. “What are you talking about? Even Dr. Hill doesn’t know what—”
“There’s a lot Dr. Hill doesn’t know. Your father’s not insane, Megan. He’s . . . dead.”
The young woman froze. Her head turned slightly with disbelief, and then rage consumed her completely. She launched herself at his chest, both fists flailing.
“Liar! You’re insane! You’re the one who should be locked up!”
“Megan—”
Cain tried to hold her, but she pushed him back and continued punching at him.
“Get away! I wish you were dead!”
“I didn’t mean to hurt him,” he said at last. “Or you. You know me, Megan. I’d have died rather than do that.”
Her rage turned suddenly to confusion, and, sobbing heavily, Megan slid toward the floor. Cain caught her, easing her down. She struggled briefly to get away, but he clutched her close to him, whispering that he would tell her everything and work with West until they found a way to cure her father. Burying her face in his chest, Megan wept out her shock and sorrow, finally returning his embrace. Her arms stung the cuts he’d suffered battling the two bodies that night, but to Cain it was the sweetest sensation he’d ever felt.
After a few minutes, Megan quieted and then dozed off. It was more than an hour later, nearly three A.M., before she awoke. Curled against Cain on the living-room floor, she insisted that he explain exactly what had happened in the morgue.
His explanation was straightforward, but no less incredible. Megan sobbed repeatedly during the narrative, though she didn’t doubt a word of it. The transfer papers from Zurich had glossed over the details of West’s research, but they were explicit about his genius. And she had seen enough medical miracles at the hospital to accept one more, even one of this magnitude.
At Cain’s prompting, Megan then told him what had happened after he’d left. When she mentioned that her father was incarcerated in Hill’s office, he swore.
“Dr. Hill examined your father?”
“Yes. He even wanted to do exploratory surgery on him.”
“Shit. If he examined him, then he probably found the reagent in his system.” Cain rubbed his eyes, which were tired from the long day and having watched over Megan while she slept. “It’s too late to do anything about that now,” he reflected, “but just don’t let him do any cutting. If he gets a look at that saturated brain tissue, we’re all cooked.”
“He won’t,” she assured him. “I signed a release, but he knows I don’t want the surgery done.”
Cain shot her a look. “You what?”
“I signed a medical release. But that shouldn’t matter. Dr. Hill would never go against my wishes.”
Cain was on his feet. “Like hell he wouldn’t. The man’s a scientist!”
“Daniel, you’re overreacting. He may be a little stuffy, but he’s not irresponsible.”
“Don’t you see?” he persisted. “Never mind that you’ve given a very curious scientist a very unusual brain and permission to examine it. If your father doesn’t recover, what ambitious neurosurgeon stands the best chance of being named the next dean?”
“He wouldn’t dare! I’d fight him.”
“And lose, badly. He could always claim your father became violent and had to be put under the knife. You wouldn’t stand a chance against his word and the signed release. You know those papers protect the hospital against everything.”
Megan still wasn’t convinced that Hill would betray her, but she also wasn’t willing to take any chances. Leading the way to the car, she broke several laws en route to the hospital and several more once they reached the building. Using her father’s key to enter through a side door, they climbed the stairs to level C. There, outside Hill’s darkened office, Megan took a moment to brace herself.
“You all right?”
She nodded, then used the master key to admit them.
The room was cold, and they kept their jackets on. Megan hurried to the cubicle, Cain went to the filing cabinet. Jimmying it with a letter opener, the young man began flipping through the file of medical releases while Megan stared at her father through the one-way mirror. Dean Halsey was lying in a corner, unmoving, his face to the wall. His hair was brushed back and his straitjacket clean; he looked like a polar bear, big and innocent, and Megan ached to hold him.
“How is he?” Cain asked.
“Sleeping, thank God.”
Seeing that Cain was engrossed in the files, Megan went to the cubicle door and, opening it, tiptoed to her father’s side.
Across the room, Cain saw and heard nothing. He’d found a file with Megan’s name on it and pulled it out, expecting to find the permission document; instead, what he saw made his legs grow weak. Inside were artifacts—not just photographs of Megan going as far back as her high school graduation, but also a tightly knotted lock of her hair, a microcassette labeled “Megan poetry recital,” and various notes and letters written in her hand.
“Jesus,” he muttered as he went through the thick stack of material. There were postcards, ticket stubs, dinner checks, newspaper clippings from her days as a cheerleader, and even a soiled napkin.
“Megan, you’d better take a look at this. I think we’ve got a problem.”
When the young woman didn’t answer, Cain looked up.
“Megan?”
There was a scream from the padded room, and, spotting the open door, he ran over. Swinging through, he saw the young woman holding her hands to her cheeks and gazing down at her father. There was a dumb expression on Dean Halsey’s face, and his head had been shaved to the middle. In the middle of his forehead was a large white bandage.
Cain’s spirits plummeted. “Oh, Christ.”
Moving Megan aside, he gently pulled up a corner of the bandage and studied the wound. Dean Halsey neither made a fuss nor acknowledged Cain’s presence in any way.
“Dan, what has Hill done to him?”
Cain didn’t answer. He simply examined the sutured hole and, after a long moment, replaced the bandage.
Rubbing the back of his neck as he rose, Cain said, “It looks like a laser drill.”
“Which means?”
“It means we’re too late,” he said gravely. “I’m afraid your father’s been lobotomized.”
Daniel Cain would remember Megan’s long, terrible scream for the rest of his life. And as he stood there trying desperately to calm the hysterical woman, he vowed one thing above all: somehow he would make Dr. Carl Hill remember it, too.
CHAPTER
10
“Rufus, bless you—you’re worth more than all the bodies in China.”
West
was hunched over the microscope, intently watching cells scraped from Cain’s cat. The cells were alive but oscillating violently.
“Reagent applied to brain tissue of thrice-dead cat,” he said, scribbling frantically in his notebook. “There’s apparently no limit to how often tissue can be reanimated, but the trauma increases geometrically with each application.” He laid his pen aside and scratched his chin. At once frustrating and intriguing was the drumming on the roof from a sudden downpour. He would have to ask Cain if Rufus had been afraid of the rain in life, if the cells themselves were shaking in part from some form of racial memory.
“Regardless”—he continued writing as he spoke—“there must be some kind of analgesic which won’t upset the reagent and can restore stability without suppressing natural functions. Or should I be looking in the other direction, exciting it to a degree where it has the power to control itself?”
“I’d try the latter,” said a sonorous voice from atop the basement steps. West spun and saw a vague figure standing in the dark hallway. “After all, it works on hyperactive children; it should work on a mere cell.”
“Who’s there?” West demanded, twisting the desk lamp toward the door. The cone of light revealed a dark, wet trenchcoat topped by the craggy features of Dr. Carl Hill. His face looked tired, and there was the hint of grayish stubble about his hollow cheeks. But his eyes were elated. West frowned. “What do you want?”
“I think you know the answer to that, Mr. West.” West braced himself, said nothing. “I want to know why Halsey’s heart fibrillates—”
“I don’t have to talk to you.”
“Why his pulse is erratic—”
“I told everything I know to the police.”
“Why he cries out in pain—”
West stood, his expression petulant. “You can leave now, Doctor!”
Hill came forward, dragging his finger idly down the long table. “I want to know why he does all of this, Mr. West, when we both know that he is quite . . . dead.”
West nervously adjusted his eyeglasses and turned his head away.
Hill bent the light into the room and looked around. “Hmm . . . interesting little laboratory you have here.” His eyes settled on the microscope, and he wiggled a scolding finger. “Ah, Mr. West, I recognize this—no doubt taken without the proper requisitions. But then, a young genius like you has no time for formalities. You had your eye on this microscope, on our chemicals and . . . more perishable supplies when you were back in Zurich. You didn’t come here to study, did you? You came to use the best-equipped labs in the most out-of-the-way school you could find. You came, in short, to be anonymous.”
