Nerve Damage

by Peter Abrahams

  “Pick that up,” Roy said.

  Tom didn’t appear to hear him. He kept reading, sighing once or twice. “I’m starting to get this,” he said. “Amazingly bad run of luck, all around, this sequence of events. Like serendipity in reverse.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “We didn’t know what the hell was going on,” Tom said. “There’s nothing more unsettling.”

  “Who is we?” Roy said.

  “I think you know the answer to that,” Tom said.

  “Let’s hear it from you.”

  Tom went back to the chart. His eyes moved back and forth. Roy checked the IV bag—still about one-third full. No one had actually said he was on the cocktail, but Roy knew, just from how his strength was coming back. Tom, still sitting with the chart, crossed his legs, got more comfortable. That maddened Roy.

  “Who stabbed Paul Habib?” he said.

  Not looking up, Tom said, “Now how would you know to ask a question like that?”

  Roy didn’t answer. A siren sounded in the distance. It grew louder and louder. His first thought: Dr. Chu. A brilliant man, much smarter than Tom Parish: Wasn’t it possible that Dr. Chu had reacted this quickly? Now the siren was blaring, right on top of them. Tom didn’t seem concerned, didn’t even look up from the chart. All that proved was his arrogance and stupidity. In a second or two, the ambulance would be pulled over. Roy readied his story: You can start by arresting him for kidnapping, but there’s much more. And it goes high up, all the way to—

  Then came what Roy wasn’t ready for—a Doppler effect—and the siren moved on. After a minute or two, he couldn’t hear it at all. There was just the rain on the roof, and maybe some faint music.

  “No need to answer,” Tom said. He stuck Roy’s chart under his arm and rose. “The only real question is how long it will take you to die of this thing.” He opened the door to the front of the ambulance. The music grew louder: Why block the road? It’s open country—Bob Marley, Rebel Music, one of Roy’s favorites. Tom climbed through, paused, turned his head: “When I say I understand how we got here, it doesn’t mean I’m happy with you,” he said. “Lenore won’t be easy to replace.” He closed the door. Bob Marley faded away.

  Roy lay on the gurney, watching the level slowly dip in the IV bag—an almost indiscernible flow. Probably a good sign, this slowness: he pictured his body so full of Dr. Chu’s microscopic warriors that reinforcements were all jammed up, couldn’t get through, like a crush of fans at the turnstiles for a big ball game. But he felt better with every fraction of every lowering millimeter. How could feeling better be faked? It either was or wasn’t. And feeling better, regaining strength, was his secret weapon: like Samson, with his hair growing back. He took a deep breath—yes, deep, to the bottom of his lungs—and realized that nothing was actually holding him down to the gurney.

  Roy sat up. That took longer than he would have thought, and he was a bit breathless for a moment or two, but wasn’t all that from being flat on his back for three days? He shifted around on the gurney, got his feet on the floor. Not just three days on his back, but three days utterly lost and gone. He couldn’t let that happen again.

  Roy placed his hands on the gurney, braced himself, pushed off, rose. Things went cloudy at once, and he felt much too tall. He swayed back and forth, reached out frantically for a handhold—the motion so violent and clumsy it ripped the IV out of his arm—and caught himself on the gurney. Roy clung to it. After a moment or two, his head cleared. He listened for sounds from the front of the ambulance, sounds of movement or alarm, heard nothing but the rain. Roy straightened up and stepped away from the gurney.

  Down a goal in hockey, there was always that tough question of when to pull your goalie for the extra attacker. Most coaches in Roy’s experience, hoping to avoid the risk of that empty net, waited until a minute or less remained, but way back in the PeeWees he’d had a coach—Mr. Blenny, of Blenny’s Hardware—who sometimes made the switch with even seven or eight minutes left on the clock. Mr. Blenny would tap his big red nose. I smell the way this is goin’, boys, and it stinks.

  Roy smelled the way it was going. He looked around for some sort of weapon, but the first thing his gaze fell on was the sheet of paper that had dropped from his chart. He stooped—his body stiff, like an old man’s, but whose body wouldn’t be after three days supine?—and picked it up. The page was mostly blank. His name was typed at the top, along with the date of one of those lost days. Other than that there was nothing but a short handwritten notation, signed C. G. Chu, MD. The notation: Re coma: if patient emerges, make aware of DNR protocol.

  DNR protocol? What was that? And: if patient emerges? If? Plus: coma? He’d been in an official coma? Roy glanced over at the IV bag, the line now dangling free, the needle just touching the floor. If he had been in an official coma—and Roy didn’t really believe it—the fact that he was now on his feet, strength returning by the minute, was due to Dr. Chu’s cocktail. It had the power to keep him alive, maybe not forever, but for long enough.

  Roy moved silently to the back of the ambulance, peered between the slats of the blinds that covered the window, hoping to see where he was, or at least gauge the speed. He saw nothing—not night and darkness, but nothing. It took him a moment or two to realize that the glass was painted black. Blinds over a blacked-out window: that summed things up pretty well.

  Two cabinets stood along one side of the ambulance. Storage cabinets, probably full of bandages, medicine, oxygen bottles: unreasonable to expect scalpels, say, but not scissors, and scissors would do. Roy turned the latch on the nearest storage cabinet, pulled it open.

  The cabinet was shallow, all the shelves empty except for the top one. Three little objects lay there, all familiar, Exhibits A, B, C: Paul Habib’s pay stub; the Operation Pineapple photo; and the photo of Habib with Calvin Truesdale. They’d broken into his truck: no surprise.

  Roy opened the second cabinet, found just a single object, up high. A pewter urn: the remains of Paul Habib. The implications froze him for a moment or two: Now how would you know to ask a question like that?

  “You’re up.”

  Roy wheeled around. Tom was back, the door to the front now open. “Must have misread the chart,” he said. “I didn’t think this was a possibility.”

  “Everything all right?” called another man, up front.

  “Yes,” said Tom. “Just drive the goddamn thing.” He closed the door. “You’re not supposed to be capable of getting up.”

  Roy said nothing.

  Tom glanced at the urn. “Know what she said when we came?”

  “No.”

  “‘I was starting to believe this would never happen.’” Tom shook his head, as though moved. “Not her fault,” he said. “I don’t feel particularly good about that. But Paul was that special kind of weakling who can’t keep his mouth shut. He failed to protect her. She ended up knowing too much, and, since she was smart, knowing that she knew too much, all these years.”

  “As opposed to me,” Roy said.

  “As opposed to you formerly,” Tom said. “You knew nothing.”

  “Because Delia protected me?”

  “Oh, yes,” Tom said. “She was very protective of you—haven’t you cottoned on to that yet? But now is different—chain of bad luck, as I mentioned.”

  “I don’t believe she worked with you,” Roy said. “Or anyone like you.”

  “That’s a testament to her value,” said Tom.

  Roy still didn’t believe. “I want to hear it from her.”

  Tom gave him a funny look. “I’m sure that would be nice,” he said. “But, among other things, you’re in no position to make demands of any kind.”

  The ambulance went around a bend. The urn bumped against the wall, then settled. “Tell me about the fiasco,” Roy said.

  “Fiasco?”

  “Operation Pineapple.”

  “What would be the point?”

  “Meaning you’re afraid to
tell me,” Roy said.

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” Tom said. A few tiny pink spots appeared on his face, as though a blush were trying to break through. “Call it a habit of caution.”

  “That’s the way you see yourself?” Roy said. “Cautious?”

  “Very much so—that’s the whole point of everything we do,” said Tom. “Why not climb back on the gurney?”

  Instead, Roy took the Operation Pineapple photo off the shelf. “Where is this place? North Africa?”

  Tom watched him.

  “Is it a fort?” Roy said. “Or maybe a prison.”

  Tom smiled, a faint smile, not happy and quickly gone. “You’re good, Roy. Maybe you missed your calling.”

  That annoyed Roy. He went to stick the photo in his pocket; at that moment, realizing he wore hospital pajamas. But there was a chest pocket. He slid the Operation Pineapple photo inside.

  “The gurney, Roy.”

  Roy didn’t move. “What happened at the prison?” he said.

  Without turning his back, Tom tapped on the door to the front of the ambulance.

  “Whatever it was involved a helicopter,” Roy said.

  “Oh?”

  “According to Westie,” Roy added. “Helicopters are big in this story.”

  Tom’s face darkened. The door opened. A hand reached out, passed Tom a gun; like the others—short barrel, wooden grip—as though they’d bought in bulk, qualified for a discount.

  “The preferred outcome,” Tom said, “would be death from this…mesothelioma—am I pronouncing that right?”

  “If it was a prison,” Roy said, “were you trying to get someone out? Someone else who worked at the Institute, maybe from an earlier fiasco?”

  “That’s the artistic imagination at work,” Tom said.

  “Or…” Roy thought of the Mad River Fair. “Or was it the other way around?”

  “The other way around?” Tom said.

  Roy didn’t want to voice it.

  “Go on,” Tom said. “You’ve got my attention.”

  And just from that, Roy knew he was on the right track: not a friend in the prison yard, but an enemy. “Was there someone down there you wanted killed?” he said.

  “What kind of someone would that have been?” said Tom.

  Roy didn’t know. Were the North African countries considered allies or not? And the prisoners of those countries, whose side were they on?

  “See how intricate this gets?” Tom said. “Let’s just say he’s a very bad guy.”

  “The helicopter flew in over the prison yard and Delia was the…” What was the word: shooter? assassin?

  “Exactly,” said Tom. “But the failure of the mission had nothing to do with her. She was, as they say, a consummate professional.”

  “You’re lying,” Roy said.

  “Lenore to the power of ten,” said Tom.

  That brought back the icy-cold anger. “She was an economist,” Roy said.

  “And a fine one,” Tom said. “But her role grew.”

  “I’ll need to hear that from her.”

  “You believe in the afterlife?” Tom said. He gestured with the gun. “Lie back down on the gurney, Roy. I’m asking nicely.”

  Mr. Blenny was right. If you were going to lose, then at least lose on the attack. Roy moved toward the gurney. It stood in the middle of the ambulance, one wheel set against a rubber block. Roy put his hands on the back end of the gurney, toed the rubber block out of the way with a tiny movement of his foot. Then he gathered himself, like a weak, sick person about to try something physically taxing. That took very little acting on his part.

  “Need some help?” said Tom.

  “No,” Roy said. He bent his knees as though to boost himself up, breathed in.

  “Sure?” said Tom.

  Roy nodded. He drew the gurney a few inches toward his chest. A quick glance at Tom: he had the gun down now, wrapped up in Roy’s struggle to get on the gurney, a spectator’s expression on his face. Roy didn’t like that. He shoved the gurney forward with all the strength he had.

  The gurney didn’t fly across the floor, but at least it moved. Plus Roy caught a bit of luck: the ambulance braked suddenly, knocking Tom off balance just as the gurney struck him. He fell. Roy, coming as hard as he could after the gurney, fell, too, but right on top of Tom.

  Tom still had the gun. Roy grabbed his wrist, tried to grab it with both hands, but his right arm was all tangled up in something—the IV tube. And his left was no good. The next thing he knew Tom had flipped him over, like he weighed nothing at all, had the strength of a child. Roy hit the floor. The impact knocked what breath he had right out of his body. Tom crouched over him, straddling Roy’s chest. He raised the gun.

  “It didn’t have to be like this,” he said. “We envisioned something more humane.”

  Fuck you. But Roy lacked the strength to say it, to go out the way he wanted.

  Tom pointed the gun at the center of Roy’s forehead. Roy felt a tiny prickle, right where the bullet was going to strike. At that moment, as the gun went off, or just before, the ambulance leaned around another bend and the urn tipped from the shelf and fell, bouncing off Tom’s shoulder. The gun fell and rattled across the floor. Tom rolled toward it. Roy rolled, too, the IV tube still wrapped around his right arm; and the end of it, with the needle, now in his hand. They were both on their knees, Tom reaching for the gun, when Roy jabbed the needle toward Tom’s eyes.

  “Don’t move,” he said. “It’s contagious.”

  “No,” said Tom. But he looked terrified. He threw a punch, wild and spasmodic, grazing the side of Roy’s head—only grazing, but with the way Roy was now, even that had the power to make him dizzy. Roy slumped forward. The IV needle sank into Tom’s neck, all of Roy’s dead-weight behind it.

  When Roy’s head cleared—maybe just a few seconds later—there was blood all over the place, and more spurting from Tom’s neck. Roy rose, picked up the gun.

  “Where is she?” he said.

  Tom watched him, said nothing. Or was it just that Tom’s eyes were locked in his direction? Roy realized the ambulance wasn’t moving. The door to the front swung open and the driver, a man Roy had never seen, looked in.

  “What the hell?” he said, saw the gun and ducked back into the front, slamming the door shut. Roy heard him say, “Bus one to base. Bus one to base. Code red. Code red.”

  Roy didn’t know what any of that meant. All he knew was that no one good would be answering the driver’s call. He found the IV bag, opened the back doors of the ambulance and climbed out.

  Nighttime, and the Washington Monument again in view. Roy, clutching the IV bag to his chest, found himself on a Georgetown street lined with bars and restaurants, all deserted at this hour. But around the corner, a long line of kids waited at the door of a late-night club. His pajamas attracted some attention, all favorable. Roy borrowed a phone and made a couple calls, Jerry first. He felt pretty good—he had Mr. Blenny on his side; Mr. Blenny and maybe hockey itself.

  Thirty-one

  ROY VALOIS, SCULPTOR, DIES AT 46

  by Richard Gold and Myra Burns

  ROY VALOIS, a sculptor whose large works are displayed in many public spaces around the United States and at several prominent museums, died yesterday at his home in Ethan Valley, Vermont. He was 46.

  The cause was mesothelioma, a cancer related to asbestos exposure, according to Dr. Chan Gao Chu of the Johns Hopkins University Hospital, where Mr. Valois had been undergoing treatment.

  The self-taught Mr. Valois worked almost exclusively with recovered materials, usually scrap metal, but he was “no primitive,” according to Kurt Palmateer, former head of the Mass MoCA Museum in North Adams, Mass., where the first sculpture in what became Mr. Valois’s Neanderthal series is part of the permanent collection. “There is a sense of refinement and a deep formal concern that, if anything, connects him to Henry Moore and even to neoclassicists of the nineteenth century,” said Mr. Palmateer.

>   Roy Valois was born in the western Maine town of North Grafton. He went to local schools, where he excelled at sports, eventually entering the University of Maine on a hockey scholarhip. But it was while working at a summer job that involved welding and other metalwork that Mr. Valois found his true calling. His first piece, now standing in front of the public library in North Grafton, was built in his off-hours during the summer of his junior year in college. Made from brass fixtures salvaged from a sunken freighter and titled Finback, the piece attracted the attention of Professor Anna Cohen of the University of Maine art department, and led eventually to a two-year fellowship at Georgetown University.

  It was there that Mr. Valois began to attract the attention of collectors. Prices for several works in the Neanderthal series—“a tragic epic in scrap steel,” in the words of the critic Hilton Kramer—have topped $100,000. It was also at Georgetown that Mr. Valois met his wife, Delia Stern, an economist later employed by the United Nations. She died in an airplane crash off Venezuela fifteen years ago. They had no children and Mr. Valois never remarried. He is survived by his mother, Edna Valois, of Sarasota, Florida.

  “Mom?” Roy said. “Sorry to call so late.”

  “That’s all right, Roy. I was up anyway. Something the matter? Sounds like you’re still fighting that cold.”

  “Everything’s all right, Mom.” He had a printout of the obituary in his hand, still hours before the morning edition of the paper hit the streets. “I just wanted to give you a heads-up.”

  “Don’t tell me you made another big score.”

  “In a different way,” Roy said.

  “Losing me, son.”

  “You’ll be hearing an”—how to put this?—“…odd story about me tomorrow. It’s a kind of experiment—an artistic experiment. Don’t believe it for a second. But I want you to play along.”

  “What kind of story?”

  Roy told her.

  She was silent for a moment or two. “How is this a big score?”

  “Shouldn’t have put it that way,” Roy said.

  “Is it what they call that performance art?”