Flashback

by Michael Palmer

  You can't keep letting him rule your life."

  "I don't let him rule my life. I'm doing just fine, thank you"

  "And you've got a great job and a great kid and a lot of interests and you don't need anyone messing things up for you again. I know.

  I know. You've said all that before."

  "So…"

  "So there's more. It's out there waiting if you'd just stop running scared and give it a chance."

  "Helene, I'm perfectly happy, and my life is perfectly under control.

  "Okay, okay. But if you ask me, you could do with a little less control and a little more-"

  "Meyer, enough."

  Helene held up her hands defensively. "Just trying to help, " she said.

  "I know."

  "So, this Zachary that you're not going to see again outside the hospital, tell me about him."

  "Helene, I thought we-"

  "Tall? Kind of a Clint Eastwood face? Great eyes? Dark brown "How did you-" At that instant, the door behind Suzanne opened. She whirled, and tensed visibly. "Hi, " Zack said. "I thought so, " Helene muttered.

  "Glory be…"*** "I'm sorry to have popped in on you like this,"

  Zack said, sipping the cappuccino Suzanne had made him. "I know you said Wednesday."

  "That's okay. I needed a break."

  They were perched on cherrywood stools on either side of a glass case that doubled as a sales counter and jewelry display. Following introductions, small talk, and a nudge that Suzanne had tried unsuccessfully to find annoying, Helene had gone off on "errands."

  Across the gallery, a dowager tourist and her diminutive husband were eyeing a Gerard Morris, entitled typically, The Forest Is a Symphony.

  Life in Itself. "How's the incision? " Zack asked. "No problem…"

  The atmosphere between them was subdued, but not strained. And despite her efforts to pull away, Suzanne sensed that her connection to him, forged on the hillside behind her house and later in her hospital room, had not softened. Silently, she cautioned herself against giving off any encouraging signals. Helene meant well, but she simply didn't understand. "I'm sorry about Guy, " she said. "He was a nice man."

  "Yeah."

  Zack debated telling her about the envelope, but decided against it — especially since it still lay unopened on the seat of the camper.

  "Are you off for the afternoon? " she asked. "Nope. I'm due at the office in a couple of minutes. I… um… actually, I came by for a consultation."

  She eyed him suspiciously. "Seriously, " he said. She started to protest, but held back. Helene was right. He did have great eyes. Damn you, Paul, she thought. "Annie? " she asked. "No, thank goodness. Norman seems to be hanging in there all right with her. She doesn't care much for him, though. She says she doesn't trust him. No, I don't need advice from Suzanne Cole, cardiologist. I need it from Suzanne Cole, mother."

  "Interesting, " she said. "In that case, let me just change my expression from knowledgeable and unflappable to disheveled, bewildered, and exhausted. Okay, you may proceed."

  Across the gallery, the dowager and her husband had shifted their attention to Morris's Three Deer, a Stream, and the Cosmos, a garish rendering with luminescent stars and tiny sparkles in the water. "It's a consult I've got to do for Phil Brookings, " Zack said. "An eight-year-old boy."

  "Name?"

  Reflexively, Suzanne picked up a pen and doodled 8 years on the corner of a pad. "Nelms. Toby Nelms. The kid hasn't spoken more than a word or two to anyone in five months. Brookings is ready to enter therapy with him, but he wanted me to evaluate him first. I think he's terrified at the prospect of spending hour after hour locked in his office with a kid who won't talk."

  "That does sound awful-especially for a shrink. But the child doesn't exactly sound neurosurgical."

  "Probably not, but he might be neurological. Apparently he's been having some sort of psychomotor seizures."

  "Psychomotor?"

  "Sort of a grab-bag diagnosis, meaning, I don't have a handle on what's going on. Some variant of temporal-lobe epilepsy is as close as I can come, based on what Brookings told me. During the first seizure, just before he stopped speaking, he destroyed his room. There have been a number of others since then."

  "So why isn't it temporal-lobe epilepsy?"

  "Well, for one thing, although there is this rage component like we see in temporal-! obe patients, there's also an enormous fear component. The kid acts as if he's absolutely terrified of something. And for another-and this is what's really disturbing-the recovery time is getting longer and longer with each episode. It sounds as if these seizures, or whatever they are, are associated with some actual increased pressure in the boy's brain."

  "Cerebral edema?"

  "Quite possibly."

  "That's frightening."

  "Until now, the swelling's been reversible, but as you know, at some point a vicious cycle sets in, edema causing high fever, causing more edema, and so on."

  "Are there any triggers?"

  "Triggers?"

  "You know, something that sets off an attack."

  "Oh, no. Not that anyone has picked up on. Brookings wants to put him on Dilantin or one of the temporal-lobe epilepsy drugs, but he wanted me to check the boy out first. I thought maybe you could give me some hints about dealing with kids around his age."

  "Has he had an EEG?"

  "I want to get both that and a CT scan, but according to Brookings, the little guy gets so agitated when he gets anywhere near the hospital that it's been next to impossible to get any kind of technically satisfactory study."

  "The hospital?"

  "Brookings swears that the kid looked through his office window at the hospital and bolted. He had to chase him across the parking lot and actually tackle him."

  Absently, Suzanne had scribbled the words and hospital on her pad. "I assume Brookings has looked for the obvious-a bad experience in the hospital, something like that? " she asked. "Uh-huh. Repair of an incarcerated hernia a year or so ago is all.

  Your pal Mainwaring did the work. I reviewed the record. The boy was in overnight, but there were absolutely no problems."

  Suzanne added hernia and no problems to her list. "Was it done under local?"

  "Something like Pentothal and gas, I think it was. Why?"

  "No reason. Just throwing out thoughts. I had the same anesthesia, and I'm still talking up a storm, so I don't think that's it."

  Across the room, the tourists were embroiled in a heated debate, the dowager gesturing toward Cosmos, and her husband toward Symphony. "Any suggestions? " Zack asked. Suzanne scratched lines under several of the words on her pad. "Just one off the top, " she said. "Don't see him in your office."

  "What?"

  "And do your best not to look like a doctor, either, or to call yourself doctor. He'll probably know you are one, but there's no sense in making a big deal of it. Unlike most grown-ups, kids don't get impressed with our title. They just get scared."

  "You mean, see him at my place?"

  "Or even his place. Or better still, somewhere neutral. What about that plane you were telling Jen about? She's very excited about that. Is there any way you could put on a show for this child?"

  "Excellent idea, " Zack said. "Of course I could. That's perfect.

  I have just the place. The Meadows up at the top of Gaston Street. You know where that is?"

  "Uh-huh. We've been there. That sounds just right. When are you seeing him?"

  "Wednesday. Wednesday at one-thirty. Say, listen, that being Wednesday and all, why don't we meet up there at, say, eleven-thirty. We can have some lunch-a picnic. You can bring Jen and-"

  "I can't, " she said too quickly. "What I mean is, we already have plans."

  "Zack, I'm sorry."

  "Yeah, sure. Another time… Well, thanks for the coffee." He cleared his throat and pushed off the stool. "I… um… I guess I'd better get back to the hospital."

  "Zack…" she said as he headed off. He turned back
. "Zack, I… I really am sorry about Guy."

  "Yeah, " he said, the hurt in his eyes unmistakable. "Me, too." He turned again and was gone. Stonily, Suzanne tore the sheet from her pad and balled it in her fist. Perhaps it was time she herself made an appointment with Phil Brookings. Sterling had been every bit the refuge she had hoped it would be. Peace and beauty, a good job, and time to spend with Jen. That was all she had wanted, and all she needed. Why was this happening now?

  "Excuse me, Miss?"

  The dowager, her husband hovering behind, stood by the stool Zack had just vacated. "Huh? Oh, sorry, " Suzanne said. "I see you're interested in Gerard Morris's work?"

  "Yes. Is he local?" f "One town over. He's growing more popular every year."

  Why had she lied to him about Wednesday? Jen did have plans with friends, but she was free. Why had she lied?

  "Well, " the woman said, "my husband and I are most interested in the work on the left. The one with those lovely deer. Could you tell me its price?"

  "It's eibhteen hundred."

  "Oh, " the woman said. "I see." She scanned Morris's mimeoed resume.

  "Has he had any gallery shows outside of this area?

  Boston?

  New York?"

  "No, " Suzanne said, realizing that, despite her taste in art, the woman was no novice at buying it. "I don't believe he has."

  Maybe Helene was right. Maybe it was time to stop running scared. "Well,

  " the woman said, "that being the case, don't you think the asking price for his work is a bit high?"

  Suzanne eyed her for a moment, and then flipped the crumpled list into the wastepaper basket. "As a matter of fact, " she said, "I do."

  For years people had called her the Witch of West Eighty-seventh Street.

  But Hattie Day had known better. They called her Batty Hattie and filed petitions claiming her cluttered apartment was a health menace and her family of cats against the law. But Hattie hadn't cared. On her infrequent trips to the store, children taunted her and even sometimes threw things at her. But Hattie had understood, and still loved them as much as she loved her cats. For years, people had said that she was crazy. But because she had known better, Hattie had just smiled at them But now, since the terrifying events that had followed her trip to V, Hattie smiled at no one. Because now Hattie knew they were right. It was nearly two in the morning. Exhausted, but reluctant to sleep, Hattie hobbled to her stove, lit a cigarette from the burner, and then put on a pot of tea. She was only sixty-two, but with her pallor, her long, unkempt hair, and her cadaverous thinness, she looked eighty. She sank into a tattered easy chair and studied her hands. There was nothing about the bony, nicotine-stained fingers and the long, curving nails to suggest the wonderful music they had once made. The death of her parents in an accident had, in effect, ripped the violin from her hands-pulled her out of Juilliard and into a succession of mental hospitals. But over the years, she had made do. She had her apartment, and her cats, and her battered stereo, and more than enough records to fill each day with music. But that was before Quebec. Shakily, Hattie stubbed out her cigarette, hesitated a moment, and then limped to the stove to light another. The water had not yet boiled. If only she had refused the invitation to Martin's wedding, she thought, if only she had stayed home where she belonged, none of this would have happened. But Martin, her cousin's son, was really the only family she had. And when he was at Juilliard he had stopped by often, bringing food and usually a record or two, and staying long enough to tell her about his studies. Once he had even brought his guitar and played for her-Bach, and several wonderful Villa-Lobos pieces. Hattie smiled grimly at the memory. The bus ride up to Canada had been easy enough, and the wedding had been beautiful-especially the chamber groups made up of Martin's friends. It was during the ride home that the dreadful ache in her leg had begun.

  The bus driver had turned her over to the ambulance people in Sterling, New Hampshire, and within an hour she was in the operating room having a cloth artery put in to bypass the clot in her groin. They had called her recovery a miracle. After just a week in the hospital and two weeks in a nursing home, she had gone home. Martin had driven her back to Manhattan and had even gotten one of her cats back for her from the animal protection people. A miracle. It was just a day after Martin had dropped her off that the frightening episodes had begun. Without warning, her mind would go limp. For an hour or more at a time she would sit, staring at nothing, unable to move or to focus her thoughts, knowing what was happening but powerless to control it. The colors in the room would become uncomfortably bright, all sounds unnaturally muted. Sometimes she could force herself out of her chair. Other times, she could only sit and wait for the terribly unpleasant episodes to pass. Twice she had wet herself. She knew she was becoming insane. Then, as if verifying her fears, some of the bizarre episodes had begun exploding into horrible, vivid, distorted reenactments of her surgery. The teapot began whistling. Hattie pushed herself upright, put a tea bag into a chipped stoneware mug, and poured in the boiling water.

  On the way back to her easy chair, she stopped and put on one of the albums Martin had left with her-Elizabethan music and English folk pieces, with Martin featured on his guitar. Perhaps, she thought, it was worth calling Martin and telling him she was going mad. She looked about for Orange, the cat he had retrieved for her. During the last of her nightmares, she had hurt it somehow-knocked out a tooth and cut its lip. Since then, the animal had spent most of its time under the bed or behind the bookshelf Hattie sank heavily into her chair. For a brief time, Martin's playing brought her some serenity and even some sweet glimpses into her dim past. There was a set of dances that she felt sure she had once played at a recital, and a lovely rendition of a song by Thomas Stewart. Next came her favorite, a gentle and haunting flute and guitar duet of "Greensleeves."

  Bit by bit, her fears began to loosen their grip. Then, as they had twice before that day, the colors in the room began to intensify. No!

  Hattie's mind screamed. Please, God, not again. The mus,^. grew faint, and gradually faded into the hum of traffic passing on nearby Columbus Avenue. No. Hattie felt the unpleasant inertia begin to settle in. The glow from the lamp across the room hurt her eyes. Please, God…

  Desperately, and with all her strength, she forced herself to her feet, and grabbed her cigarettes, and stumbled toward the stove "Not this time, " she said out loud. "Goddamn it, not this time." She thrust a cigarette between her lips and shakily turned the burner knob. The gas flame flashed on. "Hattie… Hattie, just relax."

  The voice, deep and soothing, seemed to be coming from everywhere at once. Then, from above her, Hattie saw the blue-gray eyes smiling at her over the mask. "Just relax now. There's nothing to worry about. Nothing at all. I want you to begin counting back from one hundred."

  "Please…"

  "Hattie, count!"

  One hundred… ninety-nine…"

  Good, Hattie. Keep counting. Keep counting."

  "Ninety-eight…"

  "She's under."

  "Ninety-seven…"

  "Ready, everyone. Okay."

  "Ninety-six… No, wait, please. You're wrong. I'm not asleep. I'm not asleep yet."

  "Suction up."

  "Wait!"

  "Knife, please."

  "No! Not yet! Not yet!"

  Hattie Day screamed as the scalpel cut into the wall of her lower abdomen. Her screams intensified as flame leapt from the stove and ignited first her hair and then her robe. "Snap, please. Now another.. "

  Hattie reeled across her apartment, knocking away pieces of fiery cloth.

  The rug began to smolder. She fell to the floor as the scalpel cut down her abdomen and over her groin. Flames seared her face and scalp. She retched from the smoke and the acrid smell of her own burning flesh.

  "Retractors ready, please…"

  The voice bored through the pain. The knife cut deeper. "Sponge. No, over here. Right here!"

  Her clothes now a mass of flame, Hattie Day lur
ched to her feet and plunged toward the window. "Okay. Now, retract here."

  Shrieking, and now engulfed in flame, the woman they all called the Witch of West Eighty-seventh Street hurled herself through the glass and out into the summer night, ten stories above the street. TUESDAY MORNING descended on Zack in the guise of one of his sneakers, set neatly and carefully on the side of his face by Cheap dog. "Self-centered brute," he mumbled, working his eyes open one at a time. "The world has to turn upside down just because you have to take Cheap dog responded to the rebuke by licking him on the mouth. "Okay, okay, mop-face. You made your point." Zack scratched the animal behind one ear and made yet another in a long series of promises to get him a haircut. "I'm afraid I haven't been paying much attention to you lately, old boy. Thanks for being so understanding."

  Feeling sluggish, and less enthused about a day at work than he had in some time, he pulled on a pair of surgical scrub pants emblazoned PROPERTY OF MUNICIPAL HOSPITAL OF BOSTON-NOT TO BE REMOVED FOR ANY REASON, let Cheap dog out into the backyard, did fifteen minutes of lackluster calisthenics, and finally started water for coffee. Suzanne's striking change of attitude toward him was, he knew, one reason for his unpleasant humor. And as wonderful as making love with her had been, he wished now that they had played things differently. But weighing perhaps even more heavily at that moment was Guy Beaulieu's legacy. For most of the prior evening, Guy's envelope had remained unopened in the camper.

  In fact, at various times throughout the day Zack had actually considered returning it in that state. In the end, though, he realized that his decision to do what he could for the man had been made well before meeting with his widow and daughter, and in fact, even before the terrible events in the quiet room. As he dripped hot water through his Chemex filter and scrambled two eggs with some chopped peppers, onions, and bits of leftover bacon, Zack mulled over his initial impressions of the surgeon's strange and bitter legacy. It was after midnight when he had finally returned home from a long walk with Cheap dog and brought in the envelope. Too tired to read with much comprehension, he had spent two hours sifting through the material and sorting it into piles on the dining room table. From what he could tell, the Ultramed Hospitals Corporation, whether responsible for Guy's difficulties or not, had had a tiger by the tail. There were dozens of newspaper clippings and official documents, plus computer printouts, a number of typed and amended lists of corporate officers and boards of directors, and several smaller envelopes filled with hastily scrawled, handwritten notes.