Brain Child

by John Saul

  They left Torres’s office and walked down a corridor that led to the west wing of the building. A security guard looked up at them as they passed, then, recognizing Torres, went back to gazing at the television monitor at his desk. Finally they turned into a scrub room, beyond which was an operating room. Wordlessly Torres stood aside and let the two others precede him through the double doors.

  In the center of the room was an operating table, and against one wall was the customary array of O.R. equipment—all the support systems and monitors that both Marsh and Frank Mallory were used to. The rest of the room was taken up with an array of equipment the likes of which neither of them had ever seen before.

  “It’s a computerized microsurgical robot,” Torres explained. “In the simplest terms possible, all it does is reduce the actions of the surgeon—in this case, me—down from increments of millimeters into increments of millimicrons. It incorporates an electron microscope, and a computer program that makes the program you just saw look like simple addition in comparison to advanced calculus. In a way,” he went on, the pride in his voice belying his words, “with the development of this machine, I’ve reduced myself from being a brain surgeon to being little more than a technician. The microscope looks at the problems, and then the computer analyzes them and determines the solutions. Finally it tells me what to attach to what, and I make the movements relative to an enlarged model of the tissue. The robot reduces my motions and performs the procedures on the real tissue. And it works. Physically, that machine and I can repair much of the damage done to Alex Lonsdale’s brain.”

  Marsh studied the equipment for several minutes, then turned to face Torres once again. When he spoke, his voice clearly reflected the uncertainty he was feeling. “What are the chances of Alex surviving the operation?”

  Torres’s expression turned grim. “Let’s go back to my office. The computer can tell us that, too.”

  No one spoke again until they were back in the old core building, with the door to Torres’s office closed behind them. Marsh and Frank Mallory took their seats, and Torres switched the computer back on. Quickly he began entering a series of instructions, and then the monitor flashed into life:

  SURGERY PERFORMED SURGERY NOT PERFORMED

  PROBABILITY OF SURVIVAL

  PAST ONE WEEK 90% 10%

  PROBABILITY OF

  REGAINING CONSCIOUSNESS 50% .02%

  PROBABILITY OF

  PARTIAL RECOVERY 20% 0%

  PROBABILITY OF

  TOTAL RECOVERY 0% 0%

  Marsh and Mallory studied the chart, then, still staring at the screen, Marsh asked the first question that came to mind.

  “What does partial recovery mean, exactly?”

  “For starters, that he’ll be able to breathe on his own, and that he’ll be both cognizant of what is going on around him and able to communicate with the world beyond his own body. To me, anything less is no recovery at all. Though such a patient may be technically conscious, I still consider him to be in a state of coma. I find it inhuman to keep people alive under such circumstances, and I don’t believe that simply because such people can’t communicate their suffering, they are therefore not suffering. For me, such a life would be unbearable, even for a few days.”

  Marsh struggled to control the inner rage he was feeling at this cool man who was able to discuss Alex so dispassionately. And yet, deep down, he wasn’t at all sure he disagreed with Torres. Then he heard Frank Mallory asking another question.

  “And full recovery?”

  “Exactly what the words say,” Torres replied. “In this case, full recovery is simply not possible. Too much tissue has been destroyed. No matter how successful the surgery might be, there will never be total healing. He might, however—and I want to stress the word ‘might’—recover what anyone would consider a remarkable number of his faculties. He might walk, talk, think, see, hear, and feel. Or he could recover any combination of those abilities.”

  “And you, I assume, are willing to perform the surgery?”

  Torres shrugged. “I’m afraid I don’t like the odds,” he said. “I’m a man who doesn’t like to fail.”

  Marsh felt a knot forming in his stomach. “Fail?” he whispered. “Dr. Torres, you’re talking about my son. Without you, he’ll die. We’re not talking success or failure. We’re talking life or death.”

  “I didn’t say I wouldn’t do it,” Torres replied. “In fact, under certain conditions, I will do it.”

  Marsh’s relief was apparent in his sigh, and he allowed himself to slump in his chair. “Anything,” he whispered. “Anything at all.”

  But Frank Mallory was suddenly uneasy. “What are those circumstances?” he asked.

  “Very simple. That I be given complete control over the case for as long as I deem necessary, and that I be absolved of any responsibility for any of the consequences of either the surgery or the convalescent period.” Marsh started to interrupt, but Torres pressed on. “And by convalescent period, I mean until such time as I—and only I—discharge the patient.” He reached into a drawer of his desk and withdrew a multipage document, which he handed to Marsh. “This is the agreement that you and the boy’s mother will sign. You may read it if you want to—in fact I think you should—but not so much as a comma of it can be changed. Either you sign it or you don’t. If you do, and your wife does, bring the boy here as soon as possible. The longer you wait, the riskier the surgery will be. As I’m sure you know, patients in your son’s condition rarely get stronger—if anything, they get weaker.” He rose from his chair, indicating his dismissal. “I’m sorry this has taken so long, but I’m afraid there was no choice. Even my computers need time to work.”

  Mallory rose to his feet. “If the Lonsdales decide to go ahead, when will you do the surgery, and how long will it take?”

  “I’ll do it tomorrow,” Torres replied. “And it will take at least eighteen hours, with fifteen people working. And don’t forget,” he added, turning to Marsh. “The odds are eighty percent that we’ll fail, at least to some extent. I’m sorry, but I don’t believe in lying to people.”

  He opened the door, held it for Marsh and Frank, then closed it as soon as they had stepped through.

  Raymond Torres sat alone for a long time after showing the two doctors from La Paloma out of his office.

  La Paloma.

  Odd that this case—the most challenging case he’d ever been given the opportunity to work on—should not only come from the town he’d grown up in but also involve someone he’d known all his life.

  He wondered if Ellen Lonsdale would even remember who he was. Or, more to the point, who he’d been.

  Probably not.

  In La Paloma, as in most of California during those years of his childhood, he and all the other descendants of the old Californios had been regarded as just more Mexicans, to be ignored at best, and despised at worst.

  And in return, his friends had despised the gringos even more than they were despised themselves.

  Raymond Torres could still remember the long nights in the little kitchen, when his grandmother listened to the indignities his mother and her sisters had suffered at the hands of their various employers, then talked, as she always did, of the old days before even she had been born, when the Meléndez y Ruiz family had owned the hacienda, and the Californios were preeminent. Back then, it had been the families of Torres and Ortiz, Rodríguez and Flores who had lived in the big white houses on the trail up to the hacienda. Over and over, his grandmother had told the legend of the massacre at the hacienda, and the carnage that followed as one by one the old families were driven from their homes, and slowly reduced to the level of peones. But things would change, his grandmother had insisted. All they and their friends had to do was maintain their hatred and wait for the day when the son of Don Roberto de Meléndez y Ruiz would return and drive the gringos away from the lands and homes they had stolen.

  Raymond had listened to it all, and known it was all useless. His
grandmother’s tales were no more than legends, and her certainty of future vengeance no more solid than the ghost on which her hopes depended. When she had finally died, he’d thought it might end, but instead, his mother had taken up the litany. Even now, the old legends and hatreds seemed to be all she lived for.

  But there would be no revenge, and there would be no driving away of the gringos, at least not for Raymond Torres. For himself, he had taken another path, ignoring the slights of the gringos and closing his ears to the hatreds of his friends and their plans for someday avenging their ancestors.

  For Raymond Torres, vengeance would be simple. He would acquire a gringo education and become as superior to the gringos as they thought they were to him. But his superiority would be real, not imagined.

  Now, finally, the day had come when they needed him.

  And he would help them, despite the fury he would face from his mother.

  He would help them, because he had long ago decided that all the years of having been dismissed as being unworthy of the gringos’ attention would best be avenged by the simple act of forcing them to realize that they had been wrong; that he had always been their equal. He’d always been their equal, though he’d never had their power.

  Now, because of an accident on the very site of the ancient massacre, that power had come into his hands.

  The skill he would need he had acquired over long years of hard work. Now he would combine that skill with the power they would give him to rebuild Alex Lonsdale into something far more than he had been before his accident.

  Slowly and carefully he began making the preparations to rebuild Alex Lonsdale’s mind.

  In the demonstration of his own genius, he would have his own revenge.

  “But why can’t he do it here?” Ellen asked. Several hours of fitful sleep had eased the exhaustion she had felt that morning, but she still found it impossible to absorb every word Marsh had spoken. Patiently Marsh explained it once again.

  “It’s the equipment. It’s extensive, and it’s all built into his O.R. It simply can’t be moved, at least not quickly, and not into our facility. We just don’t have the space.”

  “But can Alex survive it?”

  This time it was Frank who answered her question. “We don’t know,” he said. “I think he can. His pulse is weak, but it’s steady, and the respirator can go in the ambulance with him. There’s a mobile ICU in Palo Alto, and we can use that.”

  There was a silence, then Marsh spoke, his voice quiet but urgent. “You have to decide, Ellen. This waiver needs both our signatures.”

  Ellen gazed at her husband a moment, her thoughts suddenly far in the past.

  Raymond Torres. Tall and good-looking, with dark, burning eyes, but no one anyone would ever consider going out with. And he’d been smart, too. In fact, he’d been the smartest person in her class. But strange, in a way she’d never quite understood, nor even, for that matter, cared about understanding. He’d always acted as though he was better than anyone, and never had any friends, either of his own race or of hers. And now, suddenly, the life of her son depended on him.

  “What’s he like?” she suddenly asked.

  Marsh looked at her curiously. “Does it matter?”

  Ellen hesitated, then slowly shook her head. “I don’t suppose so,” she replied. “But I used to know him, and he was always … well, I guess he seemed arrogant, and sometimes he was almost scary. None of us ever liked him.”

  Marsh smiled tightly. “Well, he hasn’t changed. He’s still arrogant, and I don’t like him at all. But he might be able to save Alex.”

  Once more Ellen hesitated. In times past, she and Marsh used to spend hours discussing their problems, listening to each other, balancing their thoughts and feelings, weighing what was best for them. But in the last few months—or had it become years?—that easy communication had been lost. They had been too busy—Marsh with the expanding Medical Center, herself with the expanding social life that had accompanied the building of the Center. What had been sacrificed, finally, was their ability to communicate with each other. Now, with Alex’s life hanging in the balance, she had to come to a decision.

  She made up her mind. “We don’t have a choice, do we?” she asked. “We have to try.” She picked up the pen and signed the waiver, which she had not bothered to read, then handed it back to Marsh. A sudden thought flashed through her mind.

  If Raymond Torres thinks it will work, why won’t he take responsibility for it?

  Then she decided that she didn’t want to know the answer to that question.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Carol Cochran covered the telephone’s mouthpiece with her right hand and called up the stairs, “Lisa? It’s for you.” She waited a few seconds, and when there was no answer, she called out again: “Lisa?”

  “Tell whoever it is I’m not here.” Lisa’s voice was muffled, and Carol paused a moment, wondering if she ought to go upstairs and insist that Lisa take the call. Then she sighed. “She says she isn’t here, Kate. I’m sorry, but she just doesn’t want to talk to anyone right now. I’ll have her call you back, all right?”

  Hanging up the phone, Carol mounted the stairs, and found Kim standing in the hall.

  “Her door’s locked, and she won’t come out,” the six-year-old reported.

  “I’ll take care of it, dear. Why don’t you go find your father?”

  “Is he lost?” Kim replied with the same look of innocence Jim always wore when he tortured her with the same kind of response.

  “Just go, all right? I need to talk to your sister.”

  “Do I have to?” Kim begged. “I could talk to her too.”

  “I’m sure you could,” Carol observed. “But right now I want to talk to her alone.”

  Kim cocked her head, her eyes narrowing inquisitively. “Are you gonna talk about Alex?”

  “Possibly,” Carol parried.

  “Is Alex going to die?”

  “I don’t know,” Carol replied, sticking to the policy of total honesty she’d always followed in raising her children. “But that’s something we won’t talk about until it happens. I hope it won’t. Now, run along and find your father.”

  Kim, who had long since learned when she’d pushed her luck as far as it would go, headed down the stairs as Carol tapped at Lisa’s door.

  “Lisa? May I come in?”

  There was no answer, but a moment later Carol heard a click as Lisa turned the key from the inside. The door opened a few inches, and Carol saw Lisa’s retreating back as the girl returned to her bed, sprawled out on her back, and fixed her gaze on the ceiling. Carol stepped into the room and closed the door behind her.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” she asked. When there was no reply, Carol crossed to the bed and sat down on the edge of it. Lisa moved slightly to one side to make more room. “Well, I want to talk about it,” Carol went on. “I know what you’re thinking, and you’re wrong.”

  Lisa’s tear-streaked face turned slowly toward her mother, who reached out to brush a stray hair from her brow. “It was my fault, Mom,” she said, her voice bleak. “It was all my fault.”

  “We’re not going to go over it all again,” Carol told her. “I’ve heard the whole story too many times already. If you want to feel guilty, you can feel guilty about talking Alex into going to that party. But that’s all you can feel guilty about. It was Alex who drank the beer, and it was Alex who was driving the car.”

  “But he had to swerve—”

  “Only because he was driving too fast. He caused the accident, Lisa. Not you.”

  “But … but what if he dies?”

  Carol bit her lip, then took a deep breath. “If he dies, then we will all feel very badly for a while. Ellen and Marsh will feel badly for a long time. But the world won’t end, Lisa. And if Alex does die, that won’t be your fault any more than the accident was your fault.”

  “But Carolyn Evans said—”

  “Carolyn Evans is a selfish, spoiled br
at, and you weren’t the only one who heard her say it was all your fault. I’ve talked to Bob Carey and Kate Lewis tonight, and they both told me exactly what Carolyn meant. She meant that if you hadn’t left the party, then Alex wouldn’t have either, and that the accident might not have happened. And do you know what she was worried about? Not you, and not Alex. The only thing that concerned darling Carolyn was the fact that her party was no longer going to be her little secret. Also, as far as I know, Carolyn was the only person at the party who didn’t bother to go to the Center last night. All she did was go home and try to clean up the house.”

  “It doesn’t make any difference what she meant,” Lisa said, rolling over to face the wall. “It still doesn’t change the way I feel.”

  Carol sat silently for a few seconds, then reached out and pulled Lisa close. “I know, honey. And I suppose you’re going to have to get over that feeling your own way. In the meantime, what about Alex?”

  Lisa stirred suddenly, and sat up. “Alex? What about him?”

  “Suppose he wakes up?”

  “He will wake up,” Lisa said. “He has to.”

  “Why? So you can stop feeling sorry for yourself? Is that why you want him to wake up? So it will make you feel better?”

  Lisa’s eyes widened with shock. “Mom! That’s an awful thing to say—”

  Carol shrugged. “Well, what else can I think?” She took Lisa’s hands in her own. “Lisa, I want you to listen very carefully. There’s a chance that Alex may survive all this, and there’s a chance he may wake up. But if he does, he’s going to be in bad shape, and he’s going to need all the help he can get. His parents won’t be enough. He’s going to need his friends, too, and he’s going to need you. But if you’re spending all your energy feeling guilty and sorry for yourself, you’re not going to be much good to him, are you?”

  Lisa looked dazed. “But what can I do?”

  “None of us will know that till the time comes. But for starters, you could try pulling yourself together.” She hesitated for a moment, then went on. “Alex is going to be operated on tomorrow.” Lisa’s eyes reflected her surprise, but before she could say anything, Carol went on. “I know you’re going to want to be there—we all want to be there—but you’re not going to sit on a sofa and cry. If anyone’s going to do that, it’s going to be Ellen, and I suspect she won’t do that either. It’s going to be a long operation, and Alex might not make it through. But if you want to be there, both your father and I expect you to behave like the girl we hope we raised.”