When he did manage to sleep, he had vivid dreams. His daughter was the subject most of the time. Alexandra was tall and beautiful, as always. She asked him why he had to stay at the lab so late. “Come home, Dad,” she said. “Come home and talk to me.”
His wife, Joanne, was often there as well, but she never spoke. She blamed him for what had happened. Only his daughter was willing to forgive. Alexandra called out to him and opened her arms. He was cured of his mental problems, acquitted of the murder. Those terrible things were only illusions. This was the reality.
They were wonderful dreams, and waking up was a disappointment. He would close his eyes and try to return, but it never worked.
The doctors kept coming to observe him. Usually the visits were easy. All he had to do was act normally. Interact without seeming unstable. He had done it for weeks with Mr. Simmons, and the simple-minded security guard had probably been his most critical audience.
There was one small scare, however: the interview with Dr. Sonya. She had pretty eyes, and she seemed kinder than the others. Kline was in the middle of a phase change when she arrived in the interview room, but he tried to give her his attention as Levoir made the introduction.
Suddenly, Dr. Levoir’s speech began to sound foreign, and Dr. Kline felt his chest constrict.
No, please.
If he went aphasic now, he would never be able to make the kind of humdrum conversation that was expected of him. Dr. Sonya would surely be fascinated by his inability to understand language, but she would not be likely to recommend his release. He had seen a tape of him trying to speak during one of these phases, and it was embarrassing. Instead of speech, he could produce only a series of strained bleating noises. It made him sound like a wounded sea lion.
Kline painted a permanent half-smile on his face and waited for the senseless jabbering to stop coming out of Dr. Levoir’s mouth. The aphasia was in full effect now, and he could no longer see how such sounds had ever held any meaning.
When Dr. Sonya reached out, he automatically did the same. They shook hands.
She was a real talker, which was a blessing. Kline watched her with a burning concentration. When her eyes seemed to brighten, he smiled in agreement. If she leaned forward in an earnest pose, he nodded and bit his lip. He did everything possible to keep her talking.
Dr. Sonya turned briefly to look at Dr. Levoir, as if to get his opinion on something. Levoir paused, then shrugged and looked at Kline. There was a question in his eyes. Dr. Sonya turned to face him as well. She waited.
Dear Jesus, Kline thought. They’re trying to ask me something.
He didn’t panic. He put on a thoughtful expression and looked at the two doctors, studying them. The wrong response now could cost him everything. If he shook his head when they were expecting a yes, his coherence might become suspect, and incoherent patients did not get released into the outside world; they got remanded for six months of additional high-security observation.
If the question required more than a yes or no, he was finished.
Kline looked again at Dr. Levoir, whose familiarity made him easier to scrutinize. The doctor’s face seemed open, neutral. Kline could find no real curiosity there.
The question was something simple, he decided.
He checked Dr. Sonya. Ah, there it was: her cheeks were waiting to fan out into another smile. All she wanted was a yes.
Dr. Kline nodded slowly, and the two doctors smiled back at him. Levoir rose immediately from his chair and went to the television that was mounted high up in the corner of the room. He turned it on and spoke to the mirror at the back wall, where unseen security personnel were watching every move.
The television screen switched from static to a clear picture, and Dr. Kline almost laughed out loud. He realized that they were going to watch a tape. A tape of one of his first interviews with Levoir, who always recorded everything for his research. Both doctors would want Kline to comment on it afterwards, but by then everything would be fine. It was a long interview, and he would be able to speak English again before it finished playing. He also might turn into a paranoid schizophrenic by then, or discover that he couldn’t remember his own name, but never mind. One problem at a time. He had developed techniques for getting himself through those phases.
Dr. Sonya left an hour later. By then Kline was able to tell her, in glowing tones, that he was sorry to see her go so soon.
After two weeks of these team-style examinations, Dr. Levoir finally arrived one morning without any extra doctors in tow. He sat down and looked at his patient, a little smile playing at his lips.
Kline held his breath.
“I’m not promising anything,” Dr. Levoir began.
Kline would have clapped his hands like a child at a birthday party, had it not been for the profound deficit affecting his right temporal lobe at that moment. His left arm and leg would both be useless for at least another half-hour, so he knocked his right fist enthusiastically against the top of the table.
“We’ll see,” said Dr. Levoir. “But I think we’ll get it. I believe in you, Nathan.”
Dr. Kline had vivid dreams again that night, but his wife and daughter were nowhere to be found. Instead, Frederick Carlisle appeared, wearing the same thin, yellow cardigan that had covered his sloping shoulders all the years they had worked together. He was standing right there, so close. Kline found himself wanting just to kill him and be done with it. But his arms didn’t seem to be working.
“Want to try it again?” his partner was saying.
Kline tried to shake his head no, but nothing happened. He was paralyzed. That didn’t seem fair, since total paralysis wasn’t one of his twelve symptoms. Carlisle seemed to take Kline’s silence as a yes.
“Let’s get you hooked up, then,” he said cheerily. “Stefan, if you would?”
Back from the dead, Stefan LeCoeur scurried around Kline like a monkey, double-checking the wires and straps that sprouted from the device resting on Kline’s head.
I changed my mind! Kline tried to yell at them, but nothing happened. The machine doesn’t work right! The prototype wasn’t constructed to specs! The field is compromised!
Nothing. His voice was useless. He could only bleat at them wordlessly.
“And you’ve taken the pill, I assume?” said Professor Carlisle.
I shouldn’t have done that! It was impure! Laced with something! Stop this, please!
“Good, then,” Carlisle said. “Let’s get moving.” He began speaking like a boxing announcer: “Dr. Nathan Kline! You are about to become the first man on the planet to experience the effects of a globally administered TMS treatment! With a few key modifications, of course!” He let out a small giggle, making him sound strangely like Timmy Hollingshead.
No! Dr. Kline shouted. But the sound was still only in his head. He searched in vain for Stefan, who was supposed to be in charge of safety. Stefan, where are you? Why don’t you stop this?
There was a humming noise. He felt no pain. The room went white, as though they had all been engulfed in the flash of a nuclear detonation.
Dr. Kline woke up, and he sprang from his bed as if someone had doused him with a bucket of ice water. A moment later, his limbs collapsed beneath him, and he fell awkwardly to the ground. After a moment, he saw where he was. His face tightened into an expression of forbearance, and he did not try to get up.
When the morning nursing staff arrived twenty minutes later, they were surprised to find Dr. Kline there, still crumpled on the floor. They had never known Patient Nathan to let himself be seen in such a vulnerable, compromised position. He even allowed them to pull him to his feet, which was a first. His eyes were wide open and unblinking, much as they had been when he was suffering from Xanax withdrawal eleven months ago.
The focused look, Dr. Levoir had called it.
Kline recovered himself before it was time for his daily interview. When Levoir asked if he had slept well, he replied, “Yes, wonderfully. Thank you.” He w
as not about to let a bad dream get in the way of his long-term plans. That would have been pointless. Instead, he used the dream as inspiration. As a way to clarify, and to re-commit.
To remind himself of the mother-fuckers who needed scolding.
2
From Getting to Know Patient Nathan:
On his last day at Clancy Hall, Nathan seemed distracted. I had been expecting him to be excited about his release. Or proud of himself, for his long months of steady progress. Nervousness would have been normal, too, I suppose. He was returning to the world after a long, long absence.
But Nathan was not excited, at least not in the happy sense. And I wouldn’t have described him as nervous. Keyed-up was more like it. He acted like a college quarterback on the night before a big game.
“You’re going to be fine,” I told him.
“I know.” His face was so serious.
“Remember that you can always call me if you need anything.”
He nodded.
“And you have the number for the rental agent I told you about?”
“In my pocket.”
“Good. Now, if you have trouble with sleeping during the first week, you should try to – ”
“Dr. Levoir?”
I stopped, and Nathan looked at me across the table. I couldn’t tell which phase he was in, but he suddenly seemed tired. As though the pressure of whatever big game he had tomorrow was finally starting to wear him down. “You helped me,” he said.
It was a nice thing for him to say, and I relaxed.
“Thank you for always being honest,” he said.
I grinned. “Maybe this was all for my benefit. You’re my prize case-study, remember?”
“That’s fine. You deserve it.”
“You deserve it, Nathan. You learned trust, which is a concept that’s almost as difficult for normal people as it is for paranoid schizophrenics. People are dishonest, and there is no real way to tell the liars from the truth-tellers. Trust is the only social currency. And you found yours again.”
Nathan turned his head half a degree, as if he had heard a strange noise in the distance. “That’s interesting,” he said.
“What?”
“You think it’s impossible to tell truth from lies.”
“Well. No sure way exists. You can’t tell. Not consistently. Not really.”
He looked at me then with sorrow in his eyes. Like a parent staring at a particularly well-meaning, particularly stupid child.
“Of course you can,” he said. “You just have to watch.”
He stood and shook my hand before I could ask what he meant. Then he turned to go. He left our facility the same way he had come in. Not on a stretcher, though. Not this time. He walked, and with purpose. His tall, gaunt frame looked stronger than I remembered it.
He walked like a man with places to go.
“I believe in you, Nathan,” I said to his back.
He put one hand in the air, acknowledging me for the last time.
3
Dr. Kline’s first significant encounter occurred one week after his release from Clancy Hall. It happened in the bus station at the corner of Atlantic avenue in downtown Boston, where he spoke with a ticket lady named Hanna Dee Corley. The date and time, September 14, at 6:20 PM, took on no special significance for Hanna Dee afterwards. Her name was nowhere on Dr. Kline’s list, and she survived the encounter.
There was a long line that night at gate seven, the New York route. Hanna Dee was thinking that it was funny with buses, that you could never tell when there was going to be an overflow. The computers were fine at printing out tickets and credit slips, but they didn’t work so well at anticipating customer demand.
A round man in a bulky, ill-fitting black sweater stepped up to her window. He had thick lips and a weak chin. He looked annoyed before he even started talking. “One roundtrip to Manhattan,” he said. “Lewinston. I have a reservation.” He nodded his head in the direction of Hanna’s terminal. “I have a reservation,” he said again.
Hanna Dee sighed as she typed the man’s name into her computer. Whether his name came up on the list or not, she knew it wouldn’t make any difference. This wasn’t the Delta Shuttle. “Sir, you’re probably going to have difficulty getting on.” She glanced in the direction of gate seven. “That’s the line for the New York bus over there.”
“No,” Lewinston said curtly. “No difficulty. I made this reservation two weeks ago.”
“Yes, sir, but seating on USA Coach service is on a first come, first serve – ”
“That’s not what they said on the phone. They said it would be fine.”
“Certainly. But that particular bus will be filled to capacity. If you’d like, I can give you a ticket for another coach to New York. That one would leave at – ”
“No, dammit! They said it wouldn’t be a problem!” He was shouting now, and people were turning to look. “I have a reservation on the 6:45 to Manhattan, and my name is Jake Lewinston, and I want a seat on that bus!”
The line of travelers waiting at gate seven became very quiet. Most of them could not hear exactly what the pudgy man in the black sweater was saying, but they had the general idea. Everyone knew that traveling on buses was a crap-shoot. Everyone except this guy, apparently.
“I want to speak to your manager!” Lewinston yelled. The skin around his fleshy lips was jumping. “Right now!”
“Sir, this is just a ticket booth. Anyway, Mr. Morse leaves at five. He’s – ”
“Bullshit! I want to talk to him right now! Are you deaf?”
Movement behind Mr. Lewinston caught Hanna Dee’s eye. She could see someone coming up to the booth. Someone very tall. She cocked her head to the side to get a better view. Lewinston did not appreciate the distraction. “Look at me, you moron! If you think I’m going to let you just brush me off like some – ”
A large, gaunt hand came down gently on the shoulder of Jake Lewinston’s sweater. The hand rested there for a moment, as if its owner were pausing for strength. Lewinston turned around to stare at the towering, hollow-faced man who had come up so quietly behind him, and his eyes narrowed into slits. “And just who the fuck are you?”
The tall man said nothing. He bent slowly at the waist. Hanna had the impression that the movement required some concentration. When his mouth was at the same level as Mr. Lewinston’s ear, the man began to speak.
His voice was just barely above a whisper.
Hanna could not make out the words, but she saw Lewinston’s face change. First there was surprise. Then confusion. Then, miraculously, calm. And then Jake Lewinston simply turned and walked away.
Hanna Dee was delighted. “Next!” she sang.
The tall figure stepped up to the window, and Hanna Dee looked up, preparing to give the friendliest two minutes of ticket service ever witnessed. When she saw the man’s face, however, her voice caught in her throat.
She saw something… unstable.
It’s like he’s holding his face together, Hanna thought. Through sheer will. And if he loses his concentration, even for a second, the whole thing will go flying apart like a big flesh grenade.
Hanna shuddered and tried to collect herself. She had encountered stranger-looking people than this during her three months behind the counter, and she had sold all of them bus tickets without a hitch. She couldn’t understand what had come over her. “Where to, sir?”
The tall man looked at her carefully. He seemed to be studying her mouth. If Hanna hadn’t just seen him talking to Mr. Lewinston, she would have guessed that he didn’t speak any English. Then she saw his upper lip begin to tremble, and she let out a startled little yelp. She put a hand self-consciously over her mouth.
The man closed his eyes and took a deep breath. When he opened his eyes, the lip tremor had stopped. Hanna returned her hand to her computer’s keyboard, waiting.
“I beg your pardon,” the tall man said. Hanna found his voice surprisingly deep. And rich. “Could you repeat tha
t, please?” he said.
“Of course,” said Hanna. All at once she felt much better. Warmer, and more relaxed. And something smelled very nice. “I asked where you would be traveling this evening.”
“Ah, yes,” rumbled the man. “Concord, New Hampshire.”
Hanna smiled. New Hampshire. Such a beautiful name. For a beautiful state. And now she realized that this man’s face didn’t look ugly at all. It looked handsome. And strong. “One way or round trip?”
“One way.”
Yes, one way. Nothing could be better. God, what was that smell? It was so beautiful. “Phone number?”
The tall man smiled gently, and Hanna almost melted. Someone else might have pointed out that the man’s teeth were dull and uneven, and that his lips seemed to slide open with a mind of their own. But Hanna saw only brilliance. “Do you really need my phone number?” the man asked softly. “What about if I just pay for the ticket instead?”
Hanna giggled. “It was worth a shot,” she said shyly.
“Yes,” said the tall man. “I understand.”
Of course he understood. He understood everything. “I knew you would,” Hanna said with a sigh. “Here’s your ticket. Gate eleven.”
“And where is gate eleven, please?”
“Over there, to your left,” Hanna said, and pointed.
The tall man hesitated. He stared at the mousy, love-smitten ticket lady before him, and his eyes were uncertain. Hanna Dee Corley felt a great wash of sadness and confusion come over her. She was afraid she would start crying soon if this feeling continued for too long.
“Where?” asked the man again.
“There. On your left.” Hanna was pleading now. If this man didn’t find gate 11, she thought, it would be a tragedy. A profound loss for her and for everyone at the bus terminal. She had to make him see. “Just turn to your left,” she said. “It’s over there.”
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