Virtually Undead

by Robert I. Katz

  If Michael Foreman had any shot at reaching greatness as a musician, it wasn’t going to be because his technique was better than the rest, it was because his feel for the music, his phrasing, his timing and his taste, was superior to theirs.

  Michael was ruefully aware that no neurosurgeon had ever reached greatness as a musician. He was also aware that he had long since given up any realistic chance of doing so. Not that many physicians didn’t try. The World Doctors Orchestra had been founded in 2008 and had 1500 members worldwide, all medical professionals. They gave three to four concerts a year, varying personnel according to their instruments and the requirements of the pieces they were playing. Not exactly a pressure filled schedule, and while they were all good, none of them, in Michael’s opinion, were great.

  Still, they were playing music, and enjoying it, and people enjoyed listening to them. Wasn’t that what counted?

  Michael Foreman had no desire to be a Jack of all trades, master of none. Neurosurgery is a profession that requires ridiculous numbers of hours and absolute dedication, and that was the problem. Michael was an excellent neurosurgeon, skilled, respected and admired by his colleagues, his residents and his patients…but he didn’t exactly love being a neurosurgeon.

  In his heart of hearts, Michael Foreman was still a pianist. He loved playing the piano.

  Michael toyed with the idea, now and then, of dropping out, of giving up the medical profession and following his passion, having seen the light and willing to live in poverty for the sake of his art. He only toyed with the idea, however. Bottom line: he wouldn’t enjoy living in poverty and nobody but himself cared or ever would care if Michael Foreman played the piano.

  In the movie Amadeus, Mozart’s nemesis, Salieri, wanted nothing more than to make beautiful music. He loved music, and he couldn’t stand the fact that Mozart, a man whose behavior was so often childish, ridiculous, even vulgar, was so much better at making music than himself. To Salieri, Mozart was simply not worthy of his talent. In the end, racked by guilt, Salieri came to realize that Mozart’s music would live on forever and nobody would care about the rest of it, and certainly, nobody would ever care about Salieri.

  In real life, Salieri had been Mozart’s friend and fervent admirer. So much for fiction, but didn’t fiction tell a higher truth?

  A more mundane truth was that a lot of so-called musical prodigies drifted off the rails, most commonly, once they hit puberty. The piano, as engrossing as it might be, could not compete with the lure of the opposite sex. High school was long behind him, but a man does have his priorities, and sometimes those priorities conflict.

  Sometimes, Michael reflected, the wrong woman is better than no woman, for…oh, about a half hour every other night or so.

  Michael, absorbed in the piano and his studies, and at least a little socially awkward, hadn’t dated nearly as much as he would have liked in high school. Even in college, he had only one semi-serious relationship, more serious on his part than on hers. Her name had been Janice Moore, a nice, pretty, highly sexed brunette from Cleveland, who had been kind enough to take the geeky, gawky Michael Foreman under her wing and teach him what’s what for a couple of months. He was fairly certain that he wasn’t the only one she was seeing (a nice euphemism, he thought, seeing…), but she had made it plain from the very beginning that she was not interested in an exclusive relationship.

  Michael still had fond memories of Janice Moore. She was married now, with three kids. He hadn’t talked to her in years but they were still friends on Facebook.

  Medical school had been a little better for his sex life. Half the class was female, and there were a lot of dental students, med tech students, nursing students and single young nurses around. By the time he graduated, Michael had been involved with three young women who, if things had worked out just a little differently, he might have married. Probably would have married, if he had half a clue what was going on.

  He thought of all three of them, now and then, all with just a touch of regret.

  By now, at thirty-five years of age, he was a rarity: a very well to do neurosurgeon, at least borderline rich, single, and never been married.

  And not as stupid as he used to be.

  “Mikey?”

  Michael sighed. “Hi, Mom. What’s new?”

  “We’re still in Egypt but things are wrapping up with the dig. We’ll be home in a week. I just wanted to let you know.” His mother’s voice sharpened. “How are you?”

  “I’m fine, Mom. How are you and Dad?”

  “Your father’s colitis is bothering him, again.”

  His father, Michael reflected, did not have colitis. He had irritable bowel, aggravated by the fact that his mother, while meaning well, was a pain in the ass. Sybil Foreman’s constant nagging was enough to give any man a case of diarrhea, as Michael well knew.

  “Have you and Melody set a date, yet?”

  “No, Mom. Melody and I have broken up.”

  There was a long silence, and Michael mentally braced himself. “For the life of me, I don’t understand you. You’re looking for some perfect woman that doesn’t exist. Melody was very nice.”

  Melody, Michael thought, was superficial, self-absorbed and mostly interested in a man for his money. Aside from that, yeah, she was very nice. “Not the right girl, Mom. Sorry.”

  “Your father and I are not getting any younger, you know. It’s time for you to do right by the family.”

  If only he had a sibling or two, there might some grandkids by now to appease his mother. No such luck, however.

  “Someday, Mom, when the right girl comes along.”

  “You’re not getting any younger, either. At this rate, by the time you do decide to settle down, you’ll be too old to have children. Did you ever think of that?”

  “The thought has crossed my mind,” Michael said. Actually, it hadn’t, not until now, at least. “I guess we’ll have to find a sperm donor, then.”

  “What?!” she screeched. “How could you even suggest such a thing?”

  “If I’m too old, I mean. If that’s the only way we can give you the grandchildren you’ve always wanted and absolutely deserve, then we’ll just have to brace ourselves and make the sacrifice.”

  “You’re trying to give me a heart attack, aren’t you? Me and your father, both.”

  “No, Mom. I’m trying to get you to lighten up.”

  His mother sniffed. “Anyway, we’ll see you in a week.”

  “You bet, Mom. Say hi to Dad. Love you, both.”

  Chapter 11

  A mutual friend asked me to contact you. You can give me a call at the following number…

  A cryptic text, and one that might have been garbage. In these days of spam calls and robo-voices, Michael, like most people of his generation, didn’t answer phone calls from people he didn’t know. A text, however, left it up to him.

  Well, in for a penny…he picked up the phone and dialed. A voice, clearly muffled, said, “Hello?”

  “This is Michael Foreman.”

  He waited. After a long moment, the voice said, “I understand you might have a job for me. What is it?”

  “Do you have a name?”

  “Everybody has a name. You can call me Bellerion the Great.”

  If this guy was older than twenty, Michael would be amazed. Doubtful that he would ever find out, however.

  “I understand you’re good with a computer.”

  “You could say that.” The voice sounded amused.

  “Okay, I want you to find out everything you can about these names…” Michael had only been given a brief glimpse of the list of people killed while playing Virtually Undead, but the names, by now, had been widely spread.

  “This is about Remington Simulations,” the voice said.

  “Yeah.”

  “The story has been all over the news.”

  “I would imagine.”

  “It’ll cost you.”

  What a surprise... “How much?”
r />   The price that Bellerion the Great named was far less than Michael expected. He would have paid three times the amount. “Fine.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Yes. I also want you to look into the company itself. Remington Simulations, I mean: their finances, their products, their corporate partners, their competitors, their design staff, their employees, their former employees, anything you can find. I’ve been told that they’ve had some lawsuits. That would be a good place to start.”

  “The price just doubled,” the voice said.

  Michael rolled his eyes. “No problem.”

  “Okay, now here’s a question for you: how deeply do you want me to dig?”

  That, actually, was a very good question. “There is a small possibility that I will be discussing your findings with both the NYPD and the FBI. I don’t want anything that could get me in trouble, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  Michael could almost hear the mind racing on the other end of the phone. “That will restrict things considerably.”

  “That’s not my problem. If you find anything worthwhile, I need to be able to use it.”

  “When do you need this by?”

  “As soon as you can get it.”

  “I’ll be in touch,” the voice said, and hung up.

  And so, the intrepid private detective takes another fateful step forward. The bad guys, Michael reflected, must be quaking in their boots.

  He had surgery the next day, first, a saccular aneurysm on the middle cerebral artery. The patient was young, only thirty-seven, and had been having severe headaches. He had no risk factors and no other symptoms but many don’t. It was what it was. The aneurysm was large, not quite twenty-two millimeters and suspended from a well-defined pedicle, perfect for coiling.

  Once the patient was asleep, Michael prepped the groin, inserted a trochar into the femoral artery and floated a catheter through the trocar up to the base of the brain. A soft platinum wire was then extruded from the catheter into the aneurysm, where it immediately coiled into a loose ball, filling the aneurysm space. Over the next day or so, blood would clot around the coil and then, over the following weeks, fibrose. The aneurysm would be filled with solid, fibrous material and effectively eliminated. There was a chance of a re-bleed over the next few years, but the chance was small.

  Michael pulled the catheter, then the trochar, and sewed up the wound. He liked cases like this one: no complications, and excellent odds of a cure.

  The next patient also had a cerebral aneurysm but coils, unfortunately, were not indicated. The base of this aneurysm was wide. Coils, if injected, were unlikely to stay where they were placed. A ball of coiled platinum is not supposed to be wandering around a brain. This aneurysm had to be clipped.

  The patient was male and fifty-eight years old, with a history of smoking, diabetes, vascular disease and a strong family history of cerebrovascular accidents, all common associated factors. As soon as the patient was asleep, three aides positioned him on his side and Michael placed a spinal drain in the lower back for removal of cerebrospinal fluid during the case. This decreases brain volume, allows for easier access to the surgical site, and has been shown to decrease cerebral vasospasm in the days following surgery.

  After placement of the drain, Michael screwed three steel pins, attached to a Mayfield clamp, into the patient’s skull and then connected the clamp to a frame, suspending the patient’s head over the edge of the table, thus affording easy access to the surgical site. Michael went outside to scrub.

  The drapes were placed and the operation began. Michael peeled back the scalp, removed a small portion of bone and incised the dural membrane. The brain, and the aneurysm, lay just beneath. The aneurysm was a large one, but the brain by now was flaccid and exposure was achieved without difficulty. Once the aneurysm was isolated, and at Michael’s direction, the anesthesiologist injected a bolus of nicardipine and then started an infusion, which decreased blood pressure and minimized the risks of bleeding. Gently, gingerly, Michael placed the clip around the aneurysm’s neck. A sigh of relief was breathed by all. Success. Michael closed the wound, first replacing the dura, then the bone, then stapling the scalp.

  The clamp was removed from the patient’s skull. The anesthesia was turned off and twenty minutes later, they rolled into the Recovery Room, the patient groggy but awake.

  Brain surgery is a series of technical steps, one after another, and Michael had performed these steps hundreds of times. Operating on the brain had long since come to seem like a normal, even routine part of his daily existence. The feeling that the OR was a refuge, a safe harbor from the cares and uncertainties of the wider world…that was new.

  Brain surgery was Michael’s job, a job he knew how to do and was good at. Murder was not.

  The next few days crawled along.

  On Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, he saw patients in his office. Most had been referred by their primary physicians, with vague complaints of headache or lower back pain. Very few had obvious neurologic findings. A few had localized pain and subtle deficits that indicated impingement on a nerve or the brain. These were the ones that surgery might help. He sent them all for CAT scan or MRI. If a mass or a lesion was present, he would soon know it.

  Three patients had symptoms of advanced Parkinson’s, with blank faces and constant tremors, one only forty-four years old. Sinemet, Eldepryl and amantadine had run their course and were no longer providing relief. It was time for a deep brain implant, one of the procedures that Michael was known for.

  On Monday and Wednesday, he operated.

  Each evening, he came home to his large, silent apartment. He found, to his own disgusted surprise, that he missed Melody. Another human voice, even when it had little to say, was sometimes better than being alone.

  He stared at the phone, willing it to ring. He booted up his computer and checked his email. Nothing.

  Michael did not enjoy feeling this way, as if something hugely important was lurking somewhere outside of his awareness. Objectively, he knew he was being foolish. The NYPD and the FBI were working the case, but this awareness did nothing to change his mood. He had an itch that needed to be scratched. He sat in his silent apartment, sipped from a glass of very expensive Scotch and watched the moon glowing down on the Hudson River, waiting.

  He had a date on Wednesday evening. Her name was Stephanie Seymour. He had never met her but her online profile looked good. Also, she herself looked good. Michael was by now painfully aware that profile pictures on dating sites often fall just a bit short of reality, but he was also aware that getting out of the apartment was better for his mental health than sitting on his rear end waiting for something to happen.

  Today, in the third decade of the Twenty-First Century, forty percent of all marriages in the United States begin as an online relationship, an amazing fact.

  As with all things in Michael’s life, he had gone about it methodically. The two main choices were Match.com and eHarmony. In the end, he had flipped a mental coin and chosen Match.

  One of the best things about a site like Match.com was that you could be extravagant in your choices. If you wanted a red-headed former trapeze artist with a forty-inch bust and a PhD in Aztec Studies, there was a chance you could find one. No guarantee that this mythical woman would consider you the man of her dreams in return, but you could at least look for everything you wanted in a woman.

  For Michael Foreman, neurosurgeon, musician and would-be man of the world, an appreciation for good food was a must.

  A lot of people didn’t like Indian food. Michael loved it. Michael wouldn’t go so far as to cross a woman off his list if she didn’t love Indian food, but it was a definite negative.

  It worked both ways, of course. Michael couldn’t stand sushi. As a physician, he knew too much about hepatitis, liver cysts, parasites and tapeworms to stomach the idea of eating raw fish. Maybe not quite as disgusting as eating raw brains, but nothing that Michael Foreman would willingly put in his
mouth. He knew, of course, that United States law required all sushi other than tuna to be frozen before serving, specifically to kill any parasites, but that did very little to stave off his revulsion.

  At least one young woman had dismissed Michael because of his aversion to sushi, and that was just fine with Michael. It’s a big, wide world out there and we all have our priorities. Seek and you shall find. Let the sushi lovers happily hook up with other parasite riddled sushi lovers.

  Stephanie Seymour, apparently, had done this before. She preferred to meet at a restaurant rather than her apartment. The reason wasn’t specified but Michael assumed that she didn’t want some random guy who might turn out to be a stalker, a rapist or a murderer to know where she lived. No problem. Michael understood. The world of anonymous dating attracted at least a few total phonies and a bunch of outright weirdos.

  Pippali was currently, according to the Guide Michelin, among the highest rated Indian restaurants in New York, receiving the designation of “Bib Gourmand.” Since Trip Advisor, on the other hand, rated Pippali the 29th best Indian restaurant in the city, and some of the other rating services didn’t list the place at all, Michael had his doubts, but he’d been intending to try it. Tonight seemed like a good time.

  He had just arrived and been shown to his table when she walked in. She was a lawyer. Tall, he thought, with an oval face, big brown eyes and auburn hair. She looked around the dining room, spotted Michael and smiled. He liked her smile. She wore a navy business suit with a white blouse and a single gold necklace, no high heels, which made sense, since she wouldn’t want to loom over a judge and jury. Or over her date…