Brain Child

by John Saul

  There was a long silence; then the slightest trace of a smile appeared at the corners of Lisa’s mouth. “You mean keep my chin up?” she asked in a tiny voice.

  Carol nodded. “And remember that it’s Alex who’s in trouble, not you. Whatever happens tomorrow, or next week, or whenever, your life will go on. If Alex comes through this, he’s not going to have a lot of time to spend cheering you up.” She stood up, and forced a grin she didn’t truly feel. “The ball’s in your court, kid. Play it.”

  Forty minutes later, Lisa Cochran came downstairs. She was wearing one of her father’s old white shirts and a pair of jeans, and her hair, still wet from the shower, was wrapped in a towel. “Who all called?” she asked. Her father lowered his paper and opened his mouth. “I mean besides Prince Andrew and John Travolta, Dad. I already talked to them and told them it’s definitely over.”

  “All the messages are by the phone,” her mother told her. “Anything going on you want to tell us about, or shall we read it in the papers?”

  “Nothing much,” Lisa said. “I just thought I’d get the kids organized for tomorrow. Do you know what time they’re operating on Alex?”

  Jim put his paper aside, looking curiously at his older daughter. “Early,” he said. “They want to start by six, I think.” As Lisa started out of the room, he called her back. “Mind telling me just what you’re organizing?”

  “Well, everyone’s going to want to go down there, but there’s no point in having everyone show up at once. I’m just going to sort of get them spaced out.”

  “Most of them already are,” Jim commented.

  Lisa ignored him. “Tomorrow’s Sunday, so nobody has to go to school or anything. We might as well all help out.”

  Carol frowned uncertainly. “I hope there’s not going to be a mob like there was last night—”

  “I’ll tell them not to stay very long. And I’m going to ask Kate if she’ll just sort of hang around, in case anybody needs anything.”

  Now Jim was shaking his head. “Lisa, honey, I know you want to do the right thing, but—”

  “It’s all right,” Carol interrupted. “But, Lisa? Can I make a suggestion? Why don’t you call Ellen and see what she thinks? She might prefer it if you just kept everybody away, at least until we know what’s happening.”

  Lisa’s face fell, and she groaned. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

  “ ’Cause you’re an idiot,” Kim said, abandoning the drawing she’d been working on to scramble into her father’s lap. “Isn’t she an idiot, Daddy?”

  “It takes one to know one.”

  “Daddy! You’re s’posed to be on my side.”

  “I guess I forgot.” Jim snuggled the little girl in, then turned back to Lisa. “Got any plans for your sister?” he asked mildly. “If you really want to do some organizing, why don’t you line up your friends to take care of Kim?”

  “I want to go with you!” Kim immediately objected.

  “That’s what you say now,” Jim told her. “That’s not what you’ll say tomorrow. And don’t argue with me—I’m bigger than you are, and can pound you into the ground.” Kim giggled, but closed her mouth. “Maybe someone could take her to a movie or something. And we’ll need a baby-sitter after dinner.”

  Lisa’s eyes clouded. “Won’t it be all over by then?”

  Carol and Jim exchanged a glance, then Jim spoke. “I talked to Marsh earlier,” he said. “He told me the operation will take at least eighteen hours. It’s not going to be any party, honey.”

  Lisa paled slightly, and fought down the tears that were welling in her eyes. When she spoke, though, her voice was steady. “I know it’s not a party, Dad,” she said softly. “I just want to do whatever I can to help.”

  “Your mother can—”

  “No! I can, and I will. I’ll take care of Kim, and see to it that there’s no mob scene. I’ll be all right, Dad. Just let me do this my way, all right?”

  When she was gone, and they could hear her murmuring into the telephone, Jim turned to Carol. “What happened up there?” he asked.

  “I think she just grew up, Jim. Anyway, she’s sure trying.”

  There was a silence, then Kim squirmed in her father’s lap, twisting around to look up at him. “Do I have to go to the movies with her dumb old friends?” she demanded.

  “If you do, I’ll bet they’ll let you choose the movie,” Jim replied. Somewhat mollified, Kim settled down again.

  “I hope Alex gets better soon,” she said. “I like Alex.”

  “We all do,” Carol told her. “And he will get better, if we all pray a lot.”

  And, she added to herself, if Raymond Torres really knows what he’s doing.

  As Carol Cochran entertained that thought, Raymond Torres himself was making his final rounds of the evening.

  Not, of course, that they were really rounds, for Alex Lonsdale was his only patient. He stopped first in Alex’s room, just across the hall from the operating complex. The night nurse glanced up from the book she was reading. “Nothing, doctor,” she said as Torres scanned the monitors that were tracking Alex’s vital functions. “No change from an hour ago.”

  Torres nodded, and gazed thoughtfully at the boy in the bed.

  Looks like his mother. The thought drifted through his mind, followed by a sudden flood of unbidden memories from a past he thought could no longer hurt him. Along with his memories of Ellen Lonsdale came memories of three other girls, and as their faces came into focus in his mind’s eye, he felt himself begin to tremble.

  Forget it, he told himself. It was long ago, and it’s all over now. It doesn’t matter. With an effort of will, he forced himself to concentrate on the motionless form of Alex Lonsdale. He leaned over and carefully opened one of the boy’s eyes, checked the pupil, then closed the eye again. There had been no reaction to the sudden incursion of light. Not a good sign.

  “All right,” he said. “I’m sleeping here tonight, in the room over my office. If anything happens—anything at all—I want to be awakened at once.”

  “Of course, doctor,” the nurse replied. Not that he need have said anything—the first rule for staff working under Torres was made very clear at the time they were hired: “If anything happens, let Dr. Torres know at once.” And everyone at the Institute adhered to the rule, quickly learning to suspend his own judgment. So tonight, if Alex Lonsdale so much as twitched, an instrument would record it, and Raymond Torres would be notified immediately. As Torres left the room, the nurse went back to her book.

  Torres crossed the corridor and went into the scrub room, his eyes noting instantly that everything necessary for tomorrows scrub was already there—gowns, gloves, masks, everything. And it would all be checked at least twice more during the night. He proceeded into the O.R. itself, where six technicians were going over every piece of equipment in the room, running test after test, rechecking their own work, then having it verified by two other technicians. They would continue working throughout the night, searching for anything that could possibly fail, and replacing it. They would leave only when it was time for the sterilization process to begin, an hour before the operation was scheduled.

  Satisfied, he moved on down the corridor to what had long ago become known as the Rehearsal Hall. It was a large room, housing several desks, each of which held a computer terminal. It was here that every operation carried out at the Institute was rehearsed.

  Tonight, all the desks were occupied, and all the terminals glowed brightly in the soft light of the Rehearsal Hall. The technicians at the monitors, using the model of Alex’s brain that had been generated earlier that day, were going over the operation step by step, searching for bugs in the program that the computer itself, using its own model, had generated.

  They didn’t expect to find any bugs, for they had long ago discovered that programs generated by computers are much more accurate than programs written by men.

  Except that there was also the possibility that somewhere in the sy
stem there was a sleeper.

  “Sleeper” was their term for a bug that had never been found. The defect might not even be in the program they were using. It could have been in a program that had been used to write another program, that had, in turn, been used to generate still a third program. They all knew, from bitter experience, that the bug could suddenly pop up and destroy everything.

  Or, worse, it could simply inject a tiny error into the program, creating a new sleeper.

  In this case, that would be a wrong connection in Alex Lonsdale’s mind, which could lead to anything.

  Or nothing.

  Or Alex’s death.

  Torres moved silently through the room, concentrating first on one monitor, then on another. All of what he saw was familiar; he would see it all again tomorrow.

  Except that tomorrow wouldn’t be a rehearsal. Tomorrow his fingers would be on the robot’s controls, and as he followed the program, making the connections inside Alex’s brain, there would be no turning back. Whatever he did tomorrow, Alex Lonsdale would live with for the rest of his life.

  Or die with.

  One of the technicians leaned back and stretched.

  “Problems?” Torres asked.

  The technician shook his head. “Looks perfect so far.”

  “How many times have you been through it?”

  “Five.”

  “It’s a beginning,” Torres said. He wished they had months to keep rerunning the program, but they didn’t. So even in the morning, they wouldn’t be sure there were no bugs. That, indeed, was the worst thing about bugs—sometimes they didn’t show up for years. The only way to find them was to keep running and rerunning a program hoping that if something was going to go wrong it would go wrong early on. But this time, they simply didn’t have time—they would have to trust that the program was perfect.

  Yet as he moved toward the little bedroom above his office that was always kept ready for him, one thought kept going through Torres’s mind: Nothing is ever perfect.

  Something always goes wrong.

  He pushed the thought away. Not this time. This time, everything had to be perfect. And only he would ever know what that perfection really was.

  At five o’clock the next morning, Ellen and Marshall Lonsdale arrived in Palo Alto. It was still dark, but all over the Institute for the Human Brain, lights glowed brightly, and people seemed to be everywhere. They were shown into the same lounge where Marsh had spent most of the previous day, and offered coffee and Danishes.

  “Can we see Alex?” Ellen asked.

  The receptionist smiled sympathetically. “I’m sorry. He’s already being prepped.” Ellen carefully kept her expression impassive, but the other woman could clearly see the pain in her eyes. “I really am sorry, Mrs. Lonsdale, but it’s one of Doctor’s rules. Once the prep-ping starts, we always keep the patient totally isolated. Doctor’s a fanatic about keeping everything sterile.”

  Suddenly the door opened, and a friendly voice filled the room. “Why do they always have to have operations at dawn?” Valerie Benson asked of no one in particular. “Do they think it’s a war or something?” She crossed the room and gave Ellen a quick hug. “It’s going to be all right,” she whispered. “I don’t get up this early unless I know nothing can possibly go wrong, and here I am. So you might as well stop worrying right now. Alex is going to be fine.”

  Ellen couldn’t resist smiling at Valerie, who was a notorious late-riser. Indeed, Valerie sometimes claimed that the real reason she’d divorced her husband was that demanding breakfast by nine A.M. was the worst sort of mental cruelty. But here she was, as always, coming through in the pinch, and looking as if she’d been up for hours.

  “You didn’t have to come,” Ellen told her.

  “Of course I did,” Valerie said. “If I hadn’t, everybody would have talked about it for years. Is Marty here yet?”

  “I don’t know if she’s even coming. And it’s so early—”

  “Nonsense,” Valerie snorted. “Must be nearly noon.” She gave Marsh a quick kiss on the cheek. “Everything okay?” she asked, her voice dropping.

  “They won’t even let us see Alex before the operation,” Marsh replied, making no attempt to hide the anger he was feeling. Valerie nodded knowingly.

  “I’ve always said Raymond Torres is impossible. Brilliant, yes. But impossible.”

  Ellen’s eyes clouded. “If he can save Alex, I don’t care how impossible he is.”

  “Of course you don’t, darling,” Valerie assured her. “None of us does. Besides, maybe he’s changed over the last twenty years. My God, if I had any brains, I’d marry him! This is some place, isn’t it? Is it all his?”

  “Val,” Ellen interrupted. “You can slow down. You don’t have to distract us—we’re going to get through this.”

  Valerie’s bright smile faded, and she sat down abruptly, reaching into her purse and pulling out a handkerchief. She sniffled, wiped her eyes, then determinedly put the handkerchief away. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just that the thought of anything happening to Alex … Oh, Ellen, I’m just so sorry about all of this. Is there anything I can do?”

  Ellen shook her head. “Nothing. Just stay with me, Val. Having you and Marty Lewis and Carol here is going to be the most important thing.” To know that her friends would be here to support her, to try to comfort her, would help.

  The longest day of her life had just begun.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  When the lounge door opened just after ten-thirty that evening, neither Ellen nor Marsh paid much attention. People had been in and out all day, some staying only a few minutes, others remaining for an hour or two. But now only her closest friends were still there: the Cochrans, Marty Lewis, and Valerie Benson. Only Cynthia Evans had not come.

  Slowly she realized that someone was standing in front of her, had spoken to her. She looked up into the face of a stranger.

  “Mrs. Lonsdale? I’m Susan Parker—the night person. Dr. Torres wants to see you and your husband in his office.”

  Ellen glanced at Marsh, who was already on his feet, his hand extended to her. Suddenly she felt disoriented—she’d thought it was going to take until midnight. Unless … She closed her mind to the thought that Alex must, at last, have died. “It’s over?” she managed. “He’s finished?”

  Then she was in Torres’s office, and the doctor was gazing at her from the chair behind his desk. He stood up, and came around to offer her his hand. “Hello, Ellen,” he said quietly.

  Her first fleeting thought was that he was even more handsome than she’d remembered him. Hesitantly she took his hand and squeezed it briefly, then, still clutching his hand, she gazed into his eyes. “Alex,” she whispered. “Is he—?”

  “He’s alive,” Torres said, his voice reflecting the exhaustion he was feeling, while his eyes revealed his triumph. “He’s out of the O.R., and he’s off the respirator. He’s breathing by himself, and his pulse is strong.”

  Ellen’s legs buckled, and Marsh eased her into a chair. “Is he awake?” she heard her husband ask. When Torres’s head shook negatively, her heart sank.

  “But it doesn’t mean much,” Torres said. “The soonest we want him to wake up is tomorrow morning.”

  “Then you don’t know if the operation is a success.” Marsh Lonsdale’s voice was flat.

  Again Torres shook his head, and rubbed his eyes with his fists. “We’ll know tomorrow morning, when—if—he wakes up. But things look good.” He offered them a twisted smile. “Coming from me, that’s something. You know what I consider success and what I consider failure. And I can tell you right now that if Alex dies in the next week, it won’t be from his brain problems. It will be from complications—pneumonia, some kind of viral infection, that sort of thing. I intend to see that that doesn’t happen.”

  “Can … can we see him?” Ellen asked.

  Torres nodded. “But only for a minute, and only through the window. For the time being, I don’t want anyon
e in that room except members of my staff.” Marsh seemed about to say something, but Torres ignored him. “I’m sorry, but that includes you. What you can do is take a look at him—Susan will take you over there—and then go home and get some sleep. Tomorrow morning’s going to tell the tale, and I want you to be here. If he wakes up, I’m going to want to try to determine if he can recognize people.”

  “Us,” Ellen breathed.

  “Exactly.” Torres stood up. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going up to bed.”

  Ellen struggled to her feet, and reached out to grasp Torres’s hand once again. “Thank you, Raymond,” she whispered. “I … I don’t know what to say. I didn’t believe … I couldn’t—”

  Torres abruptly withdrew his hand from hers. “Don’t thank me, Ellen,” he said. “Not yet. There’s still a good chance that your son will never wake up.” Then he was gone, leaving Ellen to stare after him, her face ashen.

  “It’s just him,” Marsh told her. “It’s just his way of telling us not to get our hopes too high.”

  “But he said—”

  “He said Alex is alive, and breathing by himself. And that’s all he said.” He began guiding her toward the door. “Let’s go take a look at him, then go home.”

  Silently Susan Parker led them into the west wing and down the long corridor past the O.R. She stopped at a window, and the Lonsdales gazed through the glass into a large room. In its center stood a hospital bed, its guardrails up. Around the bed was an array of monitors, each of them attached to some part of Alex’s body.

  His head, though swathed with bandages, seemed to bristle with tiny wires.