“How’s your preparation of material for the OEP conference in England?” Dr. Forrest asked.
“Slowly but surely,” I said. People’s careers, the department’s future––no pressure, no pressure at all.
“Good.”
My boss waved cheerfully and hurried off and I headed straight to the small lab where Fred Anders was hunched over his workbench.
“Ah, Yoko. Interested in breakfast?” he asked, his British accent as precise as if he’d arrived from Cambridge this week, not thirty years ago.
“I’d love to another day,” I said.
Fred Anders was notorious for pulling all-nighters and from the wild look of his thick gray hair this was the morning after one. Brilliant and unassuming, he was widely admired in the field of behavioral optometry. Once I asked him why he left Cambridge.
“Absolutely had to work in New York,” he’d said. “American optometrists were making all the significant advances in the field of physiological optics. I read some amazing papers, like Elliott Forrest’s on the concept of lenses in vision therapy and one by Gus Forkiotis on the use of prisms and I was hooked.”
Fred had come to the U.S. and taken the postdoctoral training in behavioral optometry at SUNY to add to his Ph.D. in physics and had been at the college ever since. My class, like a lot of graduating classes, voted him Most Excellent Professor. Privately, we dubbed him a cool dude but the toughest professor. His doctoral classes in biochemistry, endocrinology and microbiology had waiting lists, even though he drilled students without mercy.
Today, he gave me a sharp glance then returned to his work.
“You look like death warmed over, what’s up?”
“Thanks for the confidence boost,” I said, before launching into a truncated version of the catastrophes of the past few days. I wound up with the sad story of what had happened to Gus. When I reached the end of the tale of woes, Fred put down the scalar microscope he was retooling and swiveled to face me.
“How bloody awful. I agree with your detective chappie that there’s a possible connection between the shooting death and the attacks. As for the brute or brutes who careened into Gus, that could be unrelated. What does the detective say about that?”
“I haven’t talked to him since Pat called this morning. The police officer from Connecticut was going to call him.”
“So what did he say before the hit-and-run?” Fred wiggled his eyebrows.
“He did say not to trust in coincidences,” I mumbled.
“Even more important in life after September eleventh,” Fred said.
He pushed his chair away from the lab bench and stood, stretching and yawning.
“If I don’t eat soon, I’ll be gnawing fingers, mine or those of anyone who’s close by,” and he waggled his fingers under my nose. “Here are my latest notes. I managed to do a fair bit last night. I apologize, there are some changes. Hope you can make sense of my scribble. You’re doing a splendid job so far.”
I flipped through the pages he gave me. It helped I knew the existing equipment but it was a struggle to keep up with the way Fred expanded the capabilities of the various pieces. Once he’d finished his current revisions, I hoped to have enough information to make sense of everything. Right now, even though I’d spent week after week on this work, it was an intricate jigsaw puzzle. Even with many pieces in place, the big picture was tantalizingly elusive. Now changes! I’d need to fill the flash drive and take it home with me to look over the work. Not the best security but the conference was coming up fast. I’d heard through the grapevine that a three-letter branch of the government was waiting in the wings for Fred to finish. I didn’t want to know if it was the CIA or the FBI. I knew Fred’s sole focus was vision therapy to help people. Mine, too. Trust the government to think of other uses––what they might be I didn’t want to consider. Tucking the latest pages of notes under my arm, I looked more carefully at what Fred Anders was tinkering with right then.
“Is that the macro lens attachment you used on the digital camera? The one that can see through cloudy corneas?” I asked.
“Yes. Infra-red reflectography when used with conventional IR film.”
“And videography if electronic?”
“Correct.”
A few days ago, I’d written up his report on this macro lens attachment. I couldn’t believe he was revising it.
“You’re making more adaptations?”
Fred Anders looked thoughtfully at his littered workbench. “I believe I can expand the range considerably,” he explained.
“That’s incredible,” I said.
“The potential for treating vision problems is wonderful,” Fred said.
A wide smile lit up his tired face and he left in search of breakfast. Hurrying up the stairs, I headed for my office and was surprised to see Allan coming out of it.
“Hey,” he said breezily, “I thought I’d see if you were ready for a coffee break.”
“Way too early,” I said, irritated when he casually wandered in after me and stood watching as I dumped my armful of papers on the desk and settled down to work.
“Don’t you have something to do?” I said and bent my head over my notes. It was a relief when Allan sauntered to the door, the picture of a man of leisure. At least he hadn’t hit on me or suggest we have a drink after work.
“Huh,” I muttered as I shuffled through the latest batch of Dr. Anders’ notes. “That’s puzzling.”
Allan, just at the door, caught the words. “Want to run something by me?” he said eagerly.
The offer was hard to resist. I vented and Allan listened and even made a helpful comment about a technicality that had bothered me. Was Allan growing up or was I? Something he said gave me pause.
“What you’re working on with Dr. Anders is really important,” and he gave one of those nods that goes with a meaningful stare to indicate something crucial has been said.
“Back up, Allan. You can’t say I’m working with Dr. Anders, he’s the genius.”
“Don’t play modest, everyone knows you’re the only one who can translate his notes. That means you understand what he’s doing. Besides, you researched and co-authored the journal articles about most of the equipment he’s adapting.“
Allan left and I considered the implications of his remark. How was it that people managed to ferret out details of work supposedly under wraps? Who, I wondered, would be talking to Allan about confidential work? Other than me, of course, and I’d been careful to keep to general terms. Perhaps no one had leaked information, perhaps Allan had seen e-files when he was unscrambling problems on our computers. Technically, that would be either my computer or the two Fred Anders used, one in his office, another in his lab; like me, Fred used a flash drive to back-up everything, though the final interpretation was on my computer and the flash drive I used. Of course, other people, like the dean and my boss, Dr. Forrest, exchanged e-mails about the work as it progressed, but their e-mails were more overviews and comments on the schedule. It was puzzling and deserved serious consideration.
I promised myself that when I had time I’d go over the notes again. What, for instance, were the non-vision therapy uses for the equipment?
The phone rang. “The Infants’ Clinic started ten minutes ago, Yoko,” it was Dr. Forrest. “You’re on this morning, right?”
“Oops, be right with you,” and I hurried off, shelving thoughts of sleuthing.
The clinic was hectic, nothing unusual about that. Lunch was a virtuous salad from the corner cafe, rounded out by a Larabar with the intriguing name of Cashew Cookie. It consisted of cashews and dates. Mouth-watering, totally satisfying, even healthy.
In the afternoon, I settled into more work deciphering Fred Anders’ scrawl. The afternoon ground on until the sun went down and I was still not done. It was late enough, I needed some real food. On the way out, I stopped by Fred’s lab.
“I’m still working on that last batch of changes but I’ll finish it up tonight at home or
tomorrow morning when I come in,” I said.
Fred, engrossed in maneuvering the delicate wires of what looked like a pair of goggles, nodded, not looking up.
“Swing by early tomorrow. I’ll have some more ready, all right?” he murmured, intent on the work in his hands.
“Right,” I said and left.
I decided to stop at the Elephant and Castle for a meal. The restaurant was deserted and I sat at a window table. A waiter took my order and while I waited, I pulled out my notebook. Before I left for work that morning, I’d scribbled down a timeline of events from Mary Sakamoto’s shooting and the attack on Lanny to the mugging-arson attempt on me and the hit-and-run on Gus. It was demoralizing to see it written down and possible reasons or connections didn’t jump out at me.
My food arrived, a welcome interruption, I was starving. Even a Larabar doesn’t last through an afternoon of hard work. I slathered ketchup on my turkey burger and fries and chewed thoughtfully, looking over the timeline again. The guy who’d attacked me in the hallway of my apartment building had taken a serious risk, someone could have come in at any moment. What motivated him? Was this the danger Mary Sakamoto had warned about or was the mugger just a psycho who couldn’t put a lid on his temper?
Optometrists take psychology courses, so I knew it might have been classic, post-offense behavior or sustained aggression. The city has a lot of people on the streets with that mindset. I could rationalize the attack on Lanny and myself as the work of psychos except for one disturbing fact, Mary Sakamoto’s warning about danger. Always I circled back to that.
Lars had assured me Lanny wasn’t involved in any of the various fractious factions at the National Arts Club but did he really know? Had Lanny been attacked over one of the problems at the National Arts Club? Where to start? Who poisoned the pigeons with Avitrol? Apparently that’s an illegal pesticide and its use raises all sorts of questions. Then there was the furor over trees in the park being axed.
I racked my brains for connections. A possible link between Lanny and Dr. Forkiotis might be the conference Lanny was trying to plan, that certainly did connect her to Dr. Forkiotis right now. But why would that have caused all the trouble? Perhaps psychotic anger had motivated the man who attacked Lanny and the hit-and-run could have been just that, a hit-and-run.
The media carried stories about tax evasion and grand larceny at the National Arts Club, although the ongoing litigation by members who say they were forced to vacate their apartments hadn’t been aired in public. Any one of these situations could have fueled the rage I’d seen on the face of Lanny’s attacker. But how were any of the troubles at the club connected to me? By the time I finished my meal and put the timeline in my pocket, I wondered if anything would ever become clear.
Much later, when I was brushing my teeth, I started to consider in all seriousness the fact that Fred Anders’ work might hold clues to the bizarre events of the past days. I was too tired to try to write anything down or even think more about it but for sure I needed to search for answers. I wouldn’t get in the way of any official investigation, if there was one, which I doubted. If a government agency really was interested in the prototypes, and the underground news was certain about that, then other groups––and not legitimate ones––might be also, and not for therapeutic purposes.
Six
The next week was wonderfully boring––nothing remotely terrible happened. It was a string of days when life cooled to placid routine despite my anxiety about Lanny, which wasn’t eased despite regular visits to the hospital. Then, one evening, yet another of my late sessions, the tedious work of sorting through the giant stack of files on my desk was eased by a tuna salad sandwich. The mayo dressing had a serious zing, more like wasabi than Grey Poupon. The phone rang and I swallowed a mouthful hastily, eager to answer. Most likely a personal call, evening classes were almost over by now.
“Yoko, Lanny’s come round. She’s out of her coma.”
“Lars!” I managed to say.
The news was stunning. The nerve-shredding wait was over.
“The doctors say Lanny will need therapy but to see her awake––she recognized me….” His voice broke, faltered to a stop. I waited for him to catch his breath.
“She’s taking liquids with a straw, not a tube.”
The news of Lanny’s return to consciousness was a beautiful end to the day. I listened eagerly to Lars, cramming the tag end of the sandwich into my mouth in my excitement so that I had to cover the speaker end of the phone to muffle the sounds of chewing.
“Dag called from the hospital to say Lanny was conscious. I broke a few traffic laws getting there. Lanny was groggy but she recognized me right away. When the neurologist is satisfied with the results of the tests he’s ordered, she can leave the hospital. Yoko, it’s over, Lanny’s going home soon.”
The joyful news silenced us both for a moment.
“The doctor said Lanny will need––how did he put it?––cognitive rehabilitation with a speech pathologist,” Lars said. “Why? I didn’t have a problem understanding what she said. It wasn’t that clear but for God’s sake, she just came out of a coma.”
“The clue is the word ‘cognitive.’ What the therapist does goes way beyond speech,” I explained. “Therapy will help Lanny.”
No need to say other problems might have been caused by the brutal attack and the fall. Lars didn’t let it go.
“What problems?”
It was time to be blunt.
“It depends on what part of the brain was damaged. Her recovery will take time, Lars.”
“You sound like your mother, you forgot to say, ‘Little steps.’”
“Infuriating but true,” I agreed. When had I started to turn into my mother? “I’m coming to the hospital right away.”
I was too elated to stay at my desk any longer, I had to see Lanny. I gathered the files I’d been working on and dumped them in the file cabinet, locked it and set off for the hospital. As I walked, I considered what Lars had told me. A coma is serious but already, on the meager information Lars had given me, Lanny’s situation sounded more positive than I’d dared to hope. My level of worry had held constant at high but now it went down a notch or two. Obviously, Lanny’s long-term memory was reasonably intact if she’d recognized Lars. The days ahead would reveal the state of her short-term memory.
I recalled classes when Dr. Forrest had outlined how our brains work.
“The left half of your brain is the analytical, dominant side, where we do our logical thinking and reasoning. It’s where our speech areas are and where we process and understand and store words. The brain’s right side is the creative side, the visual-pictorial side that stores visual memories. As for interpreting language, that’s the domain of our temporal lobes, the lower lateral cerebral hemispheres.”
We’d turned to the pages in our textbooks with the gruesome account of the first documented case of brain injury. A railway spike had gone into the eye of an engineer working on the railroads out West, hundreds of miles from a doctor. Pictures showed the spike protruding above the victim’s eyebrow. Astonishingly, the man survived. However, damage to the injured part of the brain had shocking results––it literally altered the victim’s personality. The good-mannered, dependable, well-liked engineer was transformed into someone who drank heavily, cursed constantly and was totally unreliable.
In the short time since Lanny had been conscious, Lars said she’d sounded like and behaved like her usual self. Time would tell just how her brain had been affected. I reached the hospital in record time and found Lars at Lanny’s bedside. My godmother moved her head slowly to look at me and smiled, it was a small smile but my heart soared, Lanny recognized me. I hugged her gently and felt the light pressure of her arms as she hugged me back. I wanted to ask her about the attack, but decided to talk to Lars first. Had he asked Lanny already? What about the police? They’d want to interview Lanny. When would that interview take place? A nurse came in to monitor Lanny’s b
lood pressure and vital signs, so Lars and I moved away from the bed and quietly I asked if he’d spoken to Lanny yet about the attack.
“Yes, but she doesn’t have any memory of it.”
And that was what Lanny told me when the nurse left and I sat beside my dear godmother, holding her hand, talking in a matter-of-fact way.
“Do you remember what happened to you at the club?”
“Dear heart, I remember nothing about the past few days. Nothing.”
I patted her hand lightly, not too surprised. I’d hoped Lanny could shed some light on a reason for the attack but I knew she probably had amnesia.
“Don’t worry. I’m just so glad to see you looking much better.”
Dag cleared his throat, the signal that it was time to leave. Lars and I smiled at each other. In his unobtrusive way, Dag was a mighty presence.
Outside the hospital, Lars and I chatted for a few minutes then I set off for home. Once I got over my excitement at Lanny coming out of the coma, I discovered I was hungry, I needed a little something after the sandwich I’d been eating when Lars had called with the good news. I decided I had every right to skip a healthy choice, which would be salad––who ever heard of salad for a celebration? I bought Purely Decadent’s Cherry Nirvana. I won’t tell you how much was left in the container by the time I finished celebrating. Let’s say it was enough to top a brownie. Right, we’re talking a spoonful. OK, a teaspoon.
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