Nerve Damage

by Peter Abrahams

  Delia Stern.

  Roy turned off the light and started shoveling. He went through the top fluffy foot or so, tossing the snow to the side, into the trees. Then came firmer snowpack that slowed him down a little. He took off his jacket, rewound the Ace bandage more tightly, kept shoveling. His mind took over. His body, what he had left, obeyed.

  The Hobbes Institute fountain made lovely sounds, splashing and gurgling.

  “Let’s have one of these.”

  “One of what, Roy?”

  “A fountain—at the barn. Smaller than this but more fun. Maybe with big copper fish.”

  “That thing in your brain never stops, does it?”

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s a compliment.” Delia tilted back her head, drained her champagne. Roy noticed a man watching her.

  “Hey,” he said. “Is that the vice president?”

  “What’s that toad doing here?” she said.

  “An amphibian is VP?” Roy said. A stupid joke, but the kind that usually made Delia laugh. This time she didn’t.

  The vice president spoke to someone, looked over at Delia again.

  “Do you know him?” Roy said.

  “Why would I know him?”

  “No idea, but I think he’s coming over.”

  The vice president strolled toward them across the marble floor, a few men in dark suits trailing behind.

  Roy lowered his voice. “What do I call him?”

  “I think he likes ‘Your Grace,’” Delia said, not lowering her voice at all, the opposite if anything.

  “Delia Stern?” said the vice president, with a big smile. “I hear you’re doing wonderful work. Congratulations.” He shook her hand, using the two-handed technique Roy associated with southern pastors but had never seen in real life.

  “Thank you,” said Delia. “This is my husband, Roy Valois.”

  The vice president shook Roy’s hand in the regular way. “You’re a lucky young man,” he said.

  Roy, momentarily distracted by light reflecting off the vice president’s glasses and obscuring his eyes, said something like, “Um, that’s very, ah—” And then a knot of important-looking people appeared and swept the vice president away.

  “Hey!” said Roy. He was impressed.

  “Check your hand for warts,” said Delia.

  The snow shovel struck bare ground, hard enough to send a jolt of pain up Roy’s bad arm. He straightened, stretched his arms back, stuck out his chest, this new position for taking proper breaths. He breathed for a minute or two. Then he traded the shovel for the spade and started digging.

  Now the real work began: shoveling light snow was one thing, digging frozen earth another. But, funny thing, it wasn’t. The spade sliced through the ground with hardly any resistance at all; the soil didn’t seem frozen, didn’t even seem tightly packed. Roy worked pretty fast, sweat coming now despite the cold, loosening up his body. Did all this motion get the microscopic warriors flowing? He thought so. Dr. Chu was a brilliant man. Still a long way to go, but Roy felt good, even tried to pick up the pace, stabbing the blade deep into the—

  Thunk.

  Thunk? As though he’d struck something solid, something made of wood. But he wasn’t even two feet down. Surely the hole had been much deeper that that. Roy tried to call up some visual memory, some actual measurement from Delia’s funeral, could not. And of course the earth never really stayed still, was always shifting things around. Roy got down on his knees, brushed away loose dirt with his hand, switched on the flashlight. He saw scrollwork on the corner of a white wooden box, the faint gleam of gold leaf.

  Roy dug, but slow now, cautious, like an archaeologist, the flashlight propped on newly piled earth at the side of the hole. First he cleared the top of the coffin. Then he dug a little side cut, a place to stand. He tossed the spade onto the ground, and looking up, saw pearly light in the eastern sky, realized he hadn’t needed the flashlight for some time.

  Roy stepped into the side cut, bent forward, got his hands under the lid of the coffin. Then, straightening his back, pulling with his arms, he slowly raised the lid and laid it aside.

  He looked down into Delia’s coffin. She wasn’t there. But that didn’t mean the coffin was empty; letters beyond Z, oh, yes. Someone else lay inside, facedown, someone with long shaggy hair, wearing a thin jacket, much too light for winter. Roy stopped breathing, or more accurately, his breathing came to a stop, as though his lungs had suddenly been filled with cement. He barely had enough air left to step down into the coffin and turn the body over. It was Skippy.

  Letters beyond Z? Yes.

  Twenty-five

  Whap-whap-whap.

  Oh, no. The helicopter sound. Just what he didn’t need. Helicopters would be the death of him. Snow flashed by in streaks.

  Hey, Bobby—you look like a snowman.

  Speak for yourself, Roy.

  They went crazy with the chain saws, attacking all those bags stacked away in the old cement building in the far corner of Mr. King’s yard, laughing their heads off, making good money, having a blast.

  Whap-whap-whap.

  That’s going in my nose? Down my throat? No way, my friend, no fucking way.

  But there was nothing he could do about it.

  Air. Ah.

  Whap-whap-whap.

  Everything went still. The igloo built itself around him, block by block. A little fire came to life, centered in his heart. For a while, he got anxious again about the impossibility of fire and igloo coexisting. How could that last? But the warmth felt good. He gave himself up to it. The world shrank down to air in, air out. Time stopped. It was very nice. He had the feeling he’d arrived at last.

  “Roy? Are you awake?”

  Roy shook his head.

  Laughter, soft but pleased. Roy opened his eyes. Dr. Chu was gazing down at him. The lower part of his face was grinning; the upper part was still and watchful.

  “Your mind is intact,” he said. “I can tell already.”

  Roy tried to say Why wouldn’t it be? but found he couldn’t speak.

  “Don’t try to talk for now,” Dr. Chu said. “You’re on a ventilator, but not too much longer, I’m sure. There’s been the slightest setback, no cause for alarm, everything will stabilize soon.” He glanced up at a wall monitor. “Right now the best thing would be to rest.”

  Roy shook his head.

  “Are you in pain?” said Dr. Chu.

  Roy shook his head again.

  “You don’t want to rest?”

  Roy made a noise, deep in his throat. That hurt.

  “Try to stay calm,” said Dr. Chu. “You’re on medication—for pain, to help you sleep, to take care of all your current needs.”

  Roy shook his head again, harder this time. Pain spread.

  Something—a hypodermic?—flashed at the periphery of Roy’s vision. “Sleep is now the priority,” said Dr. Chu.

  And it was coming, fast. Roy raised his hand, so heavy, made writing motions.

  “You want to write?”

  Roy nodded, just a little nod, in case it hurt; which it did anyway. Dr. Chu gave him a pen and a prescription pad. Roy, reaching for them, found that his bad arm was back in a cast, this one plain white, thicker and heavier than the first. He held the pad and wrote in big letters: Delia is alive.

  Dr. Chu bent closer. “Who is Delia?” he said.

  Roy wrote: My Wife.

  Dr. Chu’s eyebrows rose. “You have a wife?”

  Roy made a grunt of confirmation. Dr. Chu gave him a close look, then laid a hand—very gentle—on Roy’s forehead.

  “I don’t recall that from your chart,” he said.

  Roy made an angry noise, tried to shake Dr. Chu’s hand off his forehead. Just from the touch alone he could tell that Dr. Chu was going to live a long, long time.

  “In fact, I believe the only contact in your file is an attorney—a Mr. McKenny, was it?” Dr. Chu removed his hand and reached across Roy’s body, adjusting a valve on so
me tube.

  Roy started writing on the pad: the reason I He crossed that out, wrote: what I didn’t know So complicated. Dr. Chu’s eyes—unrelenting, but so was the disease—probed down at him. All Roy could think to do was underline those words, My Wife. He hadn’t finished when the pad slipped from his hands, and the pencil, too: it landed with a soft click and rolled for a second or two on the floor.

  Roy’s own eyes closed. He felt Dr. Chu’s gaze for a moment or two, piercing right through his eyelids. Was Dr. Chu worried about something? At that moment, a horrible memory poked up through the fog in Roy’s mind: Skippy. But too late. The igloo was already going up, block by block.

  No hunger, no thirst, no pain, some drug in his system making him feel just a bit high, and air, lots and lots of it, flowing through his lungs, all the way to the bottom: What more could anyone want? Maybe not heaven, but much closer to heaven than to hell. Or: Was he dead already? Roy’s eyes snapped open. Freddy Boudreau was looking down at him.

  Freddy had a strange expression in his eyes, almost like he was seeing something scary, but that wasn’t the important part. The important part was that just the sight of Freddy, and all those details of his rough face—like the thin high-sticking scar that divided one of his eyebrows—proved Roy was alive.

  “Hey, Roy,” Freddy said.

  Roy tried to say hi, found he could not. Something was down his throat, up his nose, inside him. You’re on a ventilator. Alive, but his position on the sliding scale changed, moving closer to hell.

  “Doc says I can talk to you for a couple minutes,” Freddy said. “If you’re feelin’ up to it.”

  Roy gave Freddy a thumbs-up.

  “I guess he’s been treating you for something or other,” Freddy said. “Don’t reveal much. But half an hour after Dr. Bronstein saw you at Valley Regional, they had you on a chopper headed down here, so I’m figuring—” He stopped, licked his lips. “You know where you are, right, Roy?”

  Roy watched Freddy’s face.

  “Baltimore,” Freddy said.

  Another thumbs-up. Roy hadn’t been sure until that moment.

  “Been here a few days.”

  A few days? That couldn’t be. They were gone without a trace.

  Freddy came closer. “Doc says you’re on some heavy-duty meds,” he said. “The kind that maybe mess with your mind. I’m wondering if that’s what happened.”

  Roy watched.

  “What’s been happening, I should say,” said Freddy, “the last little while. Back home. This whole situation with Skippy Bedard, for example.”

  Roy kept watching. Freddy’s face lost its shape, went blurry, as though viewed through a watery screen. But it was Roy’s face that was getting wet. He tasted salt.

  “Still waiting for the autopsy results,” Freddy said, “but looks like he died from exposure. What we’re having a little trouble figuring out are your actions. Such as why you had a gun on you, and why you were burying him in the same—why you were burying him there. And what you did with the other, uh, remains.”

  “No,” Roy shouted, or tried to. A horrible, rending sound came out, not no or any other word, but very loud.

  “What’s going on here?” A woman in white appeared: Netty. Since Roy had last seen her, she’d developed deep furrows in her forehead and an angry voice. “Didn’t Dr. Chu specifically say Mr. Valois wasn’t to be upset for any reason?”

  “But I—” Freddy began, and then he was out of view, and so was Netty.

  Roy’s eyes closed. His eyelashes, wet and gummy, started sticking together almost at once in a way that reminded him of entombment, even mummification; but there was nothing he could do.

  A fountain gurgled and splashed. For a moment, Roy thought he was in the lobby of the Hobbes Institute, would finally get some answers. But there was something too quiet about these particular fountain sounds, too gentle. He opened his eyes and saw little streamlets of water flowing over honey-colored stones. The light was soft and soothing, like in a planetarium just before the show begins: he was back in the feng shui room, lying on the suede couch. The rolling IV rack stood nearby, the tube extending into his arm.

  “Roy?” Netty came forward. Her face was back to normal, soft, heavy, pretty, and just the smallest bit detached. “How are you feeling?”

  He watched her.

  “It’s okay to talk now,” she said. “You’re breathing on your own.”

  Roy took a breath. It felt good. “I need—” His voice sounded strange, thin and reedy, like an old man’s. He cleared his throat. That hurt. Netty handed him a paper cup. He drank, lovely, cool water, and tried again. “I need to talk to Freddy,” he said. That knocked a few years off his voice, but didn’t bring it back down to normal, not close.

  “Sergeant Boudreau? He’s gone back to Vermont.”

  “But I’ve got—”

  “Now, Roy. Your only job is to relax, stay comfortable, let the treatment do its work.”

  “But it’s not twenty-one days,” Roy said.

  “More, in fact,” said Netty. “But Dr. Chu had to make sure you were stabilized first.”

  “What day is it?”

  “Wednesday,” said Netty. “The twenty-sixth.”

  Roy glanced out the window, hoping for some clue. All he saw was a cloudy sky. “Of February?” he said.

  She nodded. “Not to worry, Roy. We’re only one day late—Dr. Chu doesn’t believe it will make any difference at all.”

  Roy thought about that. “Any developments?” he said.

  “What sort of developments?”

  “In the study. Like how the other”—Roy almost said guys, as though they were a team—“…subjects are doing.”

  “Nothing for you to be fretting about,” Netty said.

  “Are there still the four of us left?” Roy said.

  “Oh, we have way more than four now,” Netty said. “New referrals are coming practically every day. Just lie back, Roy. It’ll be over soon.” She jiggled the plastic bag on the IV rack.

  Roy sank back down on the suede couch. After a moment or two, he said, “But how many are left from the original four?”

  No answer. He looked around the feng shui room. Netty was gone. Roy noticed he was wearing flannel hospital pajamas instead of normal clothes. The pattern—floral, pastel—disturbed him.

  But the fountain kept making its calming sounds. Roy tried to picture Dr. Chu’s microscopic warriors in their millions, starving the cancer cells and turning them against each other, the way he’d done before. This time he couldn’t; his mind was a visual blank.

  Dr. Chu came in, rubbing his hands briskly together as though trying to ignite a spark. “Ah,” he said. “This is more like it.”

  “What is?” Roy said.

  “Seeing you up and about,” said Dr. Chu.

  “This is up and about?”

  “Relative to how you were,” Dr. Chu said. “When they brought you in.”

  “I want to talk to you about that,” Roy said. “And I want my regular clothes. And my phone.”

  “Plenty of time,” said Dr. Chu. He glanced up at the IV bag, almost empty.

  “Is there?” Roy said.

  “Certainly,” said Dr. Chu. “This is only day one of round two.”

  He moved closer, slid the IV needle out of Roy’s arm. There were drops still left in the bag, lots of them. That bothered Roy. What if the few hundred warriors in those drops made all the difference? His eyes met Dr. Chu’s.

  “How am I doing? I need to know.”

  Dr. Chu pulled up a chair. “Tell me how you feel,” he said. “Start there.”

  “All right. A little short of breath sometimes.”

  “More out of breath than at your last visit? Less? The same?”

  “Maybe less,” Roy said. “But I meant how am I doing in terms of the study.”

  “Oh, superbly,” said Dr. Chu. “Top of the class.”

  “That’s a first,” Roy said.

  Dr. Chu laughed, an
d there were disconcerting traces of it lingering in his expression when he said, “And what about pain?”

  “Not bad.”

  “More? Less? Same?”

  “None right now.” Not too far from the truth.

  “Excellent,” said Dr. Chu. “Shortness of breath. Some pain, but none at present. Anything else?”

  “No.”

  “What about mental changes?”

  “Mental changes?”

  “The study has turned up several instances of hallucinatory episodes,” Dr. Chu said.

  “Nope,” Roy said. “Nothing like that happened to me.”

  “Not merely imagining things that aren’t there,” said Dr. Chu, “although we’ve had some of that. But also an odd confusion—reimagining past events, even reliving revised versions to an extent.”

  “I don’t understand,” Roy said.

  “These are almost surely side effects from the therapy, although the etiology is still unclear,” Dr. Chu said. “For example, we had one patient who was fired many years ago from a construction crew. His next job was at a shipyard, where the asbestos exposure occurred, no doubt an essential detail. After the third round of treatment here, he went home, put on his hard hat and reported for work at the old construction site, now a long-established subdivision.” Dr. Chu tilted his head slightly, as if getting a better angle on Roy. “As though to do better this time, to not get fired, to turn back the clock.”

  “Nothing like that’s happened to me,” Roy said.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Of course.”

  “There would be no shame if it had,” said Dr. Chu.

  “What the hell—” He sounded loud in the feng shui room, like an old man again, of the angry type. Roy cleared his throat, got a grip. “I know there’s no shame,” he said. “But I haven’t been hallucinating.”