Brain Child (13 page)

“I’d rather you went first,” Torres replied. “You’re a doctor, and you’ll be less likely to have any kind of reaction to whatever might happen.”

The Lonsdales exchanged a glance, and Ellen managed to conceal her disappointment. “Go on,” she said. “I’ll be fine.”

Torres opened the door, and the two men stepped inside. Ellen watched as Marsh approached the bed, stopping when he was next to Alex.

Alex’s eyes opened again, and he recognized Dr. Torres. On the other side of him was someone else.

“Who … are … you?”

There was a slight pause, and then the stranger spoke. “I’m your father, Alex.”

“Father?” Alex echoed. His eyes fixed on the man, and he searched his memory. Suddenly the face that had been strange was familiar. “Dad,” he said. Then, again: “Dad.”

He saw his father’s eyes fill with tears, then heard him say, “How are you, son?”

Alex searched his mind for the right word. “H-hurt,” he whispered: “I hurt, but not … not too bad.” A phrase leapt into his mind. “Looks like we’re going to live after all.”

He watched as his father and Dr. Torres glanced at each other, then back down at him. His father was smiling now. “Of course you are, son,” he heard his father say in an oddly choked voice. “Of course you are.”

Alex closed his eyes and listened to the sound of footsteps moving away from the bed. The room was silent; then there were more footsteps, and he knew people were once again standing by the bed. Dr. Torres, and someone else. He opened his eyes and peered upward. A face seemed to hang in the air, framed by dark wavy hair.

“Hello … Mom,” he whispered.

“Alex,” she whispered back. “Oh, Alex, you’re going to be fine. You’re going to be just fine.”

“Fine,” he echoed. “Just fine.” Then, exhausted, he let himself drift back into sleep.

“You can spend the day here if you want to,” Torres told them when they were back in his office. “But you won’t be allowed to see Alex again until tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” Marsh asked. “But why? What if he wakes up? What if he asks for us?”

“He won’t wake up again,” Torres replied. “I’m going to look at him once more, and then give him a sedative.”

Marsh’s eyes suddenly clouded. “A sedative? He just came out of a coma. You don’t give that kind of patient a sedative—you try to keep them awake.”

Torres’s face seemed cut from stone. “I don’t believe I asked for your advice or your opinions, Dr. Lonsdale,” he said.

“But—”

“Nor am I interested in hearing them,” Torres went on, ignoring the interruption. “Frankly, I don’t have time to listen to what you have to say, and I’d just as soon you kept whatever thoughts you might have to yourself. Alex is my patient, and I have my own methods. I made that clear day before yesterday. Now, if you’ll excuse me.” He opened the door in his habitual gesture of dismissal.

“But he’s our son,” Marsh protested. “Surely we can—”

“No, Marsh,” Ellen interrupted. “We’ll do whatever Raymond wants us to do.”

Marsh gazed at his wife in silence for a moment, his jaw tightening with anger. But her obvious anguish washed his rage away, and when he turned back to Torres, he had regained his composure. “I’m sorry—I was out of line.” He offered Raymond Torres a crooked smile. “From now on I’ll try to remember that I’m not the doctor here. I’ve dealt with enough worried parents to know how difficult they can be.”

Torres’s demeanor thawed only slightly. “Thank you,” he replied. “I’m afraid I have few patients, and no patience, but I do know what I’m doing. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I want to get back to Alex.”

But as Ellen led him toward the lounge, Marsh’s anger surged back. “I’ve never heard of such a thing—he as much as told us he doesn’t want us around!”

“Apparently he doesn’t,” Ellen agreed.

“But I’m Alex’s father, dammit!”

Exhaustion threatening to overwhelm her, Ellen regarded her husband with oddly detached curiosity. Wasn’t he even pleased with what Raymond Torres had accomplished? “He’s Alex’s doctor,” she said. “And without him, we wouldn’t even have Alex anymore. We owe
Raymond Alex’s life, Marsh, and I don’t intend to forget that.”

“Raymond,” Marsh repeated. “Since when are you on a first-name basis with him?”

Ellen gazed at him in puzzlement. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I’m not,” Marsh countered.

Her confusion deepened. What on earth was the matter with him? And suddenly the answer came to her. “Marsh, are you jealous of him?”

“Of course not,” Marsh replied, too quickly. “I just don’t like the man, that’s all.”

“Well, I’m sorry,” Ellen said, a distinct chill in her voice. “But he did save our son’s life, and even if you don’t like him, you should be grateful to him.”

Her words struck home, and once again Marsh’s anger evaporated. “I am,” he said quietly. “And you were right back there. He
did
perform a miracle, and it’s one I couldn’t have performed myself. Maybe I
am
a little jealous.” He slipped his arms around her. “Promise me you won’t fall in love with him?”

For just a moment, Ellen wasn’t sure if he was joking or not, but then she smiled and gave him a quick kiss. “I promise. Now, let’s tell everyone the good news.”

They stepped into the lounge to find Carol and Lisa Cochran pacing anxiously. “Is it true?” Lisa asked eagerly. “Is he really awake?”

Ellen gathered Lisa into her arms and hugged her. “It’s true,” she said. “He woke up, and he can talk, and he recognized me.”

“Thank God,” Carol breathed. “The girl at the desk told us, but we could hardly believe it.”

“And,” Marsh told her, “we’ve just been thrown out. Don’t ask me why, but Torres wants to put him to sleep again, and says we can’t see him until tomorrow.”

Carol stared at him with incredulous eyes. “You’re kidding, of course.”

“I wish I were,” Marsh replied. “I think it’s crazy, but around here, I’m not the doctor. Let’s get out of
here and go home. I don’t know about you, but I didn’t get much sleep last night, and I don’t think Ellen got any.”

As they stepped out into the bright sunlight of the May morning, Ellen paused and looked around as if seeing her surroundings for the first time. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” she asked. “The grounds, and the building—it’s just lovely!”

Carol Cochran grinned at her. “This morning, anything would look lovely to you!”

For the first time since Alex’s accident, a truly happy smile covered Ellen’s face. “And why shouldn’t it?” she asked. “Everything’s going to be fine. I just know it!” Impulsively she hugged Lisa close. “We’ve got him back!” she cried. “We’ve got him back, and he’s going to be all right.”

“Alex?” Raymond Torres waited for a moment, then spoke again. “Alex, can you hear me?”

Alex’s eyes fluttered for a second, then opened, but he said nothing.

“Alex, do you think you can answer a couple of questions?”

Alex struggled for the right words, then spoke carefully: “I don’t know. I’ll try.”

“Good. That’s all I want you to do. Now, try to think, Alex. Do you know why you didn’t recognize your father?”

There was a long silence; then: “After he told me he was my father, I knew who he was.”

“But when you first saw him, Alex, did he look familiar?”

“No.”

“Not at all?”

“I … I don’t know.”

“But you recognized your mother, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“So she
did
look familiar?”

“No.”

Torres frowned. “Then how did you recognize her?”

Alex fell silent for a moment, then spoke again, his words strained, as if he weren’t sure he was using the right ones.

“I … I thought she had to be my mother if he was my father. I thought about it, and decided that if my father was here, then my mother was here too. After I decided she was my mother, she started to look familiar.”

“So you didn’t recognize either of them until you knew who they were?”

“No.”

“All right. Now, I’m going to give you something that’s going to put you to sleep, and when you wake up again, I’ll come to see you.” He slid a hypodermic needle under the skin of Alex’s right arm and pressed the plunger. As he swabbed the puncture with a wad of cotton soaked with alcohol, he asked Alex if the needle had hurt.

“No.”

“Did you feel it at all?”

“Yes.”

“What did it feel like?”

“I … I don’t know,” Alex said.

“All right,” Torres told him. “Go to sleep now, Alex, and I’ll see you later.”

Alex closed his eyes, and Torres watched him for a moment, then stepped to the monitors at the head of the bed and made some adjustments. Before leaving the room, he checked Alex once more.

Alex’s eyelids were twitching rapidly. Torres wished there were a way to know exactly what was happening inside the boy’s mind.

But there were still some mysteries that even he hadn’t yet unraveled.

Alex glanced at the clock on Raymond Torres’s desk, and, as he always did, Torres took careful note of the action.

“Two more hours,” he said. “Getting excited?”

Alex shrugged. “Curious, I guess.”

Torres placed his pen on the desk and leaned back in his chair. “If I were you, I think I’d be excited. You’re finally going home after three months—it seems to me that should be exciting.”

“Except I’m not really going home, am I?” Alex asked, his voice as expressionless as his eyes. “I mean, Mom and Dad have moved, so I’ll be going to a house I’ve never lived in before.”

“Do you wish you were going back to the house you grew up in?”

Alex hesitated, then shook his head. “I guess it doesn’t matter where I go, since I don’t remember the old house anyway.”

“You don’t have any feelings about it at all?”

“No.” Alex uttered the single word with no expression whatsoever.

And that, Torres silently reminded himself, was the crux of the matter. Alex had no feelings, no emotions. That was not to say that Alex’s recovery had not been remarkable; indeed, it was very little short of miraculous. The boy could walk and talk, see, hear, and touch. But he seemed not to be able to feel at all.

Even the news that he was being released from the Institute had elicited no emotional response from him. Rather, he’d accepted the news with the same detachment with which he now accepted everything. And that, Torres knew, was the one factor that kept the medical world from viewing the operation as a complete success.

“What about going back to La Paloma?” Torres pressed.

Alex shifted in his chair and started to cross his legs. On the second try, his left ankle came to rest on his right knee.

“I … I guess I wonder what it will be like,” he finally said. “I keep wondering if I’ll recognize anything, or if it’s all going to be like it was when I first woke up.”

“You’ve remembered a lot since then,” Torres replied.

Alex shrugged indifferently. “But I keep wondering if I really remember anything, or if I’m just learning things all over again.”

“Not possible,” Torres stated flatly. “It has to be recovery—nobody could learn things as fast as you have. And don’t forget that when you first woke up, you spoke. You hadn’t forgotten language.”

“There were a lot of words I didn’t understand,” Alex reminded him. “And sometimes there still are.” He stood up and took a shaky step, paused, then took another.

“Take it easy, Alex,” Torres told him. “Don’t demand too much of yourself. It’s all going to take time. And speaking of time, I think we’d better get started.” He
waited while Alex swiveled his chair around so both of them were facing the screen that had been set up in a corner of the large office. When Alex was ready, Torres switched off the lights. A picture flashed on the screen.

“What is it?” Torres asked.

Alex didn’t hesitate so much as a second. “An amoeba.”

“Right. When did you take biology?”

“Last year. It was Mr. Landry’s class.”

“Can you tell me what Mr. Landry looked like?”

Alex thought a minute, but nothing came. “No.”

“All right. What about your grade?”

“An A. But that was easy—I always got A’s in science.”

Torres said nothing, and changed the slide.

“That’s the
Mona Lisa,”
Alex said promptly. “Leonardo da Vinci.”

“Good enough. Is there another name for it?”

“
La Gioconda.”

The pictures changed again and again, and each time Alex correctly identified the image on the screen. Finally the slide show ended, and Torres turned the lights back on. “Well? What do you think?”

Alex shrugged. “I could have learned most of that stuff since I’ve been here,” he said. “All I’ve been doing is reading.”

“What about your grades? Did you read them here, too?”

“No. But Mom told me. I don’t really remember much of anything about any of my classes. Just names of teachers and that kind of thing. But I don’t
see
anything. Know what I mean?”

Torres nodded, and rifled through some of his notes. “Having problems visualizing things? No mental images?”

Alex nodded.

“But you don’t have problems visualizing things you’ve seen since the accident?”

“No. That’s easy. And sometimes, when I see something, it seems familiar, but I can’t quite put it together. Then, when someone tells me what it is, it’s
almost like I remember it, but not quite. It’s hard to describe.”

“Sort of like
déjà vu?”

Alex knit his brows, then shook his head. “Isn’t that where you think what’s happening now has happened before?”

“Exactly.”

“It’s not like that at all.” Alex searched his mind, trying to find the right words to describe the strange sensations he had sometimes. “They’re like half-memories,” he finally said. “It’s like sometimes I see something, and I think I remember it, but I really don’t.”

“But that’s just it,” Torres told him. “I think you
do
remember, but your brain isn’t healed yet. You’ve had a lot of damage to your brain, Alex. I was able to put it back together again, but I couldn’t do it perfectly. So there are a lot of connections that aren’t there yet. It’s as though part of your brain knows where the data it’s looking for are stored, but can’t get there. But it doesn’t stop trying, and sometimes—and I think this will happen more and more—it finds a new route, and gets what it’s after. But it’s a little different. Not the data itself—just the way you remember it. I think you’ll have more and more of those half-memories over the next few months. In time, as your brain finds and establishes new paths through itself, it’ll happen less and less. And eventually, everything left in your mind after the accident will become accessible again.” A buzzer sounded. Torres picked up the phone and spoke for a moment, then hung up. “Your parents are here,” he told Alex. “Why don’t you go over to the lab, and I’ll have a talk with them? And when you’re done, that’s it. We check you out, and you only have to come back for a couple of hours a day.”