F Paul Wilson - Novel 05

by Mirage (v2. 1)

  "And toward others?"

  Julie laughed bitterly. "Oh, I'm sure she's hurt a lot of people."

  Dr. Siegal was looking at her and Julie realized that she was revealing more than she intended. She spotted a hot-dog stand at the corner of University Place and Waverly.

  "You hungry? There's the Sabrett's man."

  Dr. S. shook his head, catching her attempt to shift the discussion.

  "No. So tell me, how does one as bright and focused as you have an identical twin who's a flake? How could Samantha be so different?"

  "I wish I knew. You know all this right-brained and left-brained stuff? Sam is definitely right-brained. She's even left-handed. Enormously talented but can't focus on anything practical long enough to become good at it. First she was going to be a dancer, then a singer, then a writer, then an actress, then a painter, then back to a singer again. God, it was a merry-go-round. She started with the boys early on—word got around the village pretty quick that"—Julie heard her voice slip easily into a thick Yorkshire accent—"the American bird, Sammi Gordon, was a right sure thing for a bit o' die ol' in an' out."

  "Certainly not the first teenage girl to be generous with her favors."

  "Damn lucky she didn't wind up pregnant, although she might have had a dozen abortions for all I know. After a while Uncle Eathan kept her secrets, and he was always saving her butt one way or another. And then it was anorexia, then bulimia. And mixed in with everything was booze and drugs. She's had overdoses, she's had disastrous affairs...."

  Julie leaned back and took a breath. She was getting worked up just talking about it. Even thinking about Sam put her on edge. Why? It was long gone, done, over, finis. So why the hell was her adrenaline flowing?

  "You were never close?" Dr. Siegal said.

  "Never."

  "Do you hate her?"

  Julie hesitated. It was a question she'd often asked herself. She answered truthfully. "No. Of course not."

  "Do you love her?"

  Julie opened her mouth, then closed it again. Sam was her sister. You're supposed to love your sister. You don't have to tike her, but somewhere, somehow, it's generally assumed that you love her.

  Did she love Sam? How could she love someone she'd never understood, never had anything in common with beyond DNA and disaster?

  "I sense indecision here," Dr. Siegal said. "Tell me, Julie: Do you love anyone?"

  "Yes. Of course. I—I love my uncle Eathan."

  "I won't contest that, and he certainly sounds like a wonderful man, but gratitude is often mistaken for love."

  "I love my work."

  "Yes! I'm so glad you said that. No question about it. You do love your work. And that, I fear, is the rub. You see, your work is incapable of loving you back. And it appears to these old eyes that you love your work to the exclusion of everything else in life."

  That wasn't fair. "Not true. I swim or jog every day, I sail in the summer—"

  "All solitary pursuits. Good pragmatic exercise. Do you have any friends?"

  "Of course."

  "Close friends?"

  "Well..."

  "How about a fellow? A young man? Are you seriously involved with anyone?'

  Julie began to feel more uncomfortable. She didn't like these questions. Where was all this leading? What was he getting at? Julie had rummaged through the intimate corners of other people's minds, but just talking about her own memories, her feelings, made her want to jump out of her skin.

  On cue, for comic relief, an old man/woman—hard to tell which—came rolling by pushing a supermarket cart filled with soda and beer cans, singing a garbled version of "I'm Too Sexy."

  She loved this city.

  "No," she said. "No 'fellows' at the moment. I'm fresh out of young swains. But there's been—"

  Dr. Siegal waved his hand between them. "I'm not asking for names, but what happened between you and the young men that you're no longer together now, hrnm? Do you break it off or do they? What makes it go wrong?'

  Now she was really uncomfortable. She glanced at the entwined couple sucking face on the other half of the bench and thought of Todd, of how, against her better judgment, she'd let him move into her one-bedroom co-op in the East Seventies, how they'd lived together for three months... and how one day she'd come home from the lab—late as usual—to find he'd moved out, leaving a note that accused her of, among other things, being a cold fish.

  Truthfully, she'd been glad to see him go.

  I've got my apartment back, she'd thought at the time.

  And there'd been others before Todd, none of whom lasted very long.

  "It's usually just a... combination of things. I don't think I want to get into it much deeper than that." She grinned. "This is the nineties. Relationships are tough."

  "Fine, fine. I'm not looking for details. I'm just trying to establish a pattern."

  "A pattern? Of what?"

  "Of..." He grasped her right hand and held it between both of his. "Julie, dear, I've been watching you since you came to work for me, and you are the most brilliant theoretician I've ever seen. You've got a mind like a steel trap. You're heading for world fame, maybe even a Nobel Prize. The work you'll eventually do will change lives. Someday people will go to sleep blessing your name."

  She never blushed, but if she did, she'd be blushing now.

  "I bet you say that to all the girls."

  "I'm quite serious," he said. "But amid all that approbation, I fear you won't be happy. I fear you'll never be happy. Because you don't connect with people, Julie. You won't have anyone to share the honors with, to tell of your latest victory, to share the wonderful glow of success well earned. No, you'll sit there alone in your hotel room after the ceremony and wonder, Is this it? Is this all there is? Where's the rest of it?"

  Being alone never bothered her. Was that something she should worry about?

  "You're a wonderful scientist, Julie, but you're only living half a life. You get results because you're not only brilliant, you're a workaholic. There's a piece missing, my dear. You need to balance your professional life with your personal life. It's a lesson I've learned over the years and it's stood me in good stead. And a big part of that personal life is family."

  "I told you—"

  He squeezed her hand. "Yes, I know. You say you don't have a family. But you do. You have a sister who needs you right now, and a loving uncle who could probably use someone to lean on a little. He was there for you. Now you could be there for him. This is part of life, Julie—go to them."

  "I can't. I've got to stay with the project. You know as well as I do what a crucial juncture we're at."

  "We'll survive—at least for a while. You won't be gone that long. We'll get the paperwork started without you, and you'll be back to finish it up. Besides, I'm not giving you a choice: I insist that you go. Visit your sister. Even if you can't do anything definitive to help her, be there for her. Let her hear your voice. Find a way to renew an old bond or forge a new one. Make contact with someone, Julie."

  Reach out and touch someone? she thought, then instantly regretted it... because the sarcasm only confirmed what Dr. Siegal was saying. She did live in an emotional vacuum. Relationships took a backseat to... everything.

  But dammit, it's not like I'm just punching a clock to collect a paycheck. This isn't just a job. This is a career. More than a career, it's a vision, a quest.

  She'd have plenty of time for relationships later, when things slowed down, plenty of time.

  But she didn't believe that either.

  "You're going to Paris, my dear," Dr. Siegal was saying. "You're going to burn some of that accumulated vacation time you never use and you're going to unwind and try to be someone who's not working on a research project, try to find that other part of you. At least for a while."

  Paris, she thought. She hadn't been there since the year she'd spent at the Institut de Science, in the Physics Department. Paris was beautiful in the fall. Maybe she should go. She hadn'
t seen Uncle Eathan for a while. He sounded lost, scared, so unlike Eathan. And Sam... well, they'd never had much to say to each other even when they both were conscious.

  What was wrong with Sam anyway? If it wasn't drugs, what could it be?

  The more she thought about it, the more the question intrigued her.

  But Dr. SiegaFs suggestion struck a sour note deep inside: ... unwind and try to be someone who's not working on a research project, try to find that other part of you.

  What if there is no other part of me? she thought. What if, when I stop being Dr. Julia Gordon, stop being Ms. High-Powered Researcher, there's no one there?

  What if I simply vanish into thin air?

  Four

  People have started picturing the brain as a computer, and memory as its hard drive. Bad analogy. A hard drive merely copies the lumps of data sent to it. The memory mechanism of the brain divides input into its component parts and stores the components separately.

  —Random notes: Julia Gordon

  1

  Julie watched the taxis swarming in the early morning rain outside the international terminal at Orly Airport. She stood just outside the doors, protected by an overhang. She could have taken a cab to the nursing home, but Uncle Eathan had insisted on picking her up.

  Her eyes felt like hot coals and her limbs like lead. It was early morning here, and everyone around her seemed wide awake and ready to start a new day. Not her. Thinking it would help her doze off, she'd drunk some extra wine on the plane. But sleep hadn't come, and now it was somewhere around 3:00 A.M. according to her internal clock. She was still fuzzy from the wine, and she wished all these perky people jabbering in French would go away.

  All this preceded by two solid days of nonstop hustle on the Bruchmeyer protocol and still things hadn't been settled enough for her to feel comfortable leaving it. Dr. Siegal had wanted her to leave directly from their park bench in Washington Square, but she simply had not been able to do that.

  Not as if this was an emergency; Sam had been out of it for two weeks already. What was the rush?

  She saw a big black Saab pull up and a tall, trim, dark-haired man in his midfifties step out onto the pavement. Two passing women looked back over their shoulders and whispered to each other.

  No, ladies, Julie wanted to say. That's not Gregory Peck hiding behind that beard. It's only Uncle Eathan.

  A little grayer since she'd last seen him, especially in the beard, but still trim. At six two, with an almost military bearing, he cut an imposing figure. Eathan was more than a handsome man; he radiated a strength, a solidity that Julie found instantly comforting. It was hard not to lean against such a tall tree in times of crisis, even if that tree now might need support.

  Wheeling her suitcase behind her, she stepped toward him and waved. Eathan smiled and hurried forward to give her a brief hug and a quick peck on the cheek. He'd always had trouble showing affection.

  Like me . . .

  "Julie." His voice was rich and dark, like coffee. He held her at arms' length and grinned through his beard. Close up he looked tired and strained. "God, it's so good to see you again."

  "Good to see you too, Eathan. Been a long time."

  Another smile. "Too long." Eathan took her arm. "I'm just sorry that it takes something like this to bring us together."

  Minutes later her suitcase and carry-on were in the trunk and they were on their way toward the airport exit.

  "Any change in Sam?" Julie asked.

  Eathan shook his head. "Not a bit. Dr. Elliot gave her a thorough examination, reviewed all the lab work and test results, and said he can't find any evidence of an organic etiology. There's nothing there—no structural damage, no evidence of a metabolic cause, no signs of a toxin. He thinks it's psychological."

  "Psychological? What's that supposed to mean? Post-traumatic shock? Schizophrenic catatonia? What?"

  Eathan shrugged. "He couldn't say. Or wouldn't say. He's a neurologist, not a psychiatrist. There's no physical evidence of trauma. No sign that she was attacked, brutalized." Eathan took a breath. "Or raped. It's so strange, Julie. She was found on the floor of her studio, unconscious."

  Psychological. Julie leaned back and mulled that. Maybe that was the problem all along. Maybe there was a reason behind Sam's erratic behavior all these years. Perhaps Sam had spent most of her life on the verge of schizophrenia. And finally the dam broke.

  That would explain so much.

  "Poor Sam." She noticed Eathan looking at her strangely. "What?"

  "You don't know what it means to hear you say that. For years I've been hoping for some sort of rapprochement between you two."

  "Well, I've been angry at her for all these years for acting like a jerk ... but if it's all been due to some form of incipient schizophrenia, well, how can you be angry at someone whose neurochemicals are screwed up?"

  "Dr. Elliot had that idea too. But she's not responding to the antipsychotics—they've tried Thorazine, thiothixene, loxapine, even clozapine, all to no avail."

  "But a psychogenic catatonia ..."

  "Not a catatonia," Eathan said. "She's not conscious. She doesn't respond to anything but painful stimuli, and even then the avoidance response is sluggish." He looked out the window, into the wet, gray morning. Julie could see how much this upset him. Maybe he did have a favorite. Sam might as well be his own daughter. "Sometimes . . . I'm afraid than said."She's not conscious.

  "This doesn't add up," Julie said.

  Eathan turned back to her. "Exactly what Dr. Elliot said."

  She touched his arm. "And what about you? How are you holding up?"

  "Pretty well, I guess. They moved me up to assistant professor at Edinburgh."

  "Congratulations. You're becoming quite the academician."

  "But I've taken a leave until Sam is better."

  She'd been glad to see that he'd found something to fill his days after she and Sam had moved out. She hadn't liked the thought of him wandering like a ghost through the empty halls of his Yorkshire manor. After so many years away from practice, he'd claimed his medical skills and knowledge were too rusty to pass a licensing procedure in Britain. And besides, he didn't want to be another cog in the wheels of Britain's National Health Service. Fortunately a position had opened in the Science Department at Edinburgh University and they'd been delighted to have an M.D. teaching basic science to their pre-med classes.

  "I like working with young minds, shaping them. It keeps me young."

  Julie watched the brown fields and golden trees and swirling green cypresses of the French countryside slide past outside the window. The sky had lightened, the rain stopped. Then as they turned east the morning sun broke through and filled her with a strange urgency.

  "I want to see her."

  "Of course. That's why you came."

  "I mean now."

  Julie was puzzled by this sudden, almost overwhelming desire to see her sister. She'd waited days before flying over. Why couldn't she wait a few more hours?

  "I have a room for you at an inn where I'm staying. I thought you'd—"

  "I need to see her now. Is it far?"

  "No. That's why I advised you to fly into Orly. De Gaulle is on the wrong side of Paris. The nursing home is just outside the town of Palaiseau."

  "Good. Let's go."

  2

  Julie found the Sainte Gabrielle Home a pleasant surprise: a modern, compact, single-story, skilled nursing facility only a half hour outside of Paris but surrounded by century-old oaks. With the sun pouring in, it looked to be the Les Irwalides of extended care.

  The interior was brightly lit, clean, and fresh smelling. The receptionist waved them through with a warm smile for Eathan. He obviously had worked his spell on the staff.

  They were halfway down the hall of the east wing when—

  "MonDieu!"

  Breakfast plates, cups, and saucers slid off the aide's tray as she stopped short and stared bug-eyed at Julie.

  "No-no," Eathan s
aid, stepping forward and steadying the woman's tray. "This is not Mam'selle Samantha. This is her sister. Sa soeur, vous comfrrenez?"

  The girl's eyes danced between Eathan and Julie. Finally she smiled and nodded. "Ah. Sa soeur. CM."

  "What's her problem?" Julie said as they walked on.

  "Think about it. She probably left Sam flat on her back and unresponsive a few minutes ago. Now she comes out of a room and who does she see walking down the hall?"

  "Me?"

  "No!" He laughed. "Samantha!"

  "Oh, come on. We don't look that much alike."

  "Not to each other. Not even to me. But to people who haven't spent years with you, you're mirror images—even with your shorter hair."

  Julie had trouble buying that She wasn't anything like Sam; she found the idea irksome, but let it go.

  Eathan led her to the last door on the left at the end of the hallway.

  "This is it," he said, and stepped aside to let her precede him.

  Julie stopped on the threshold, momentarily afraid to step across. For as little as they'd had in common, for all the cold silences and screaming fits they'd suffered, for all the resentment she'd built up against the sister who'd put their well-meaning uncle through hell, Julie didn't want to see Samantha like this. It was close to seeing Sam dead.

  "Julia?" Eathan's voice behind her.

  She nodded and stepped into the room. As she approached the bed she kept her eyes averted, looked everywhere except at the form between the sheets. She saw die IV drip, the dull, dead screen of a TV hanging on die wall, the curtains open to show the great woods outside.

  A nice room, private, carpeted, morning sun pouring through sheers behind floor-length drapes, upholstered chairs, a recliner ...

  ... a hospital bed.

  And in that bed, Sam.

  Julie felt her breath catch at the sight of her.

  Pale, so pale that if the sheets weren't pink she'd be invisible. She lay flat on her back. One of the aides had braided her long blond hair so that a girlish pigtail hung over each shoulder. It made Sam look even more vulnerable.