Ultimately, he has no regrets about the direction his life has taken. He is a businessman who enjoys reading science magazines in the evening. His is a comfortable living, with three substantial cars, a number of well-tended acres on the water.
On vacation in Kauai, the Christensens buy coconut halves from the barefoot men on the beach, and the almost-grown daughters learn to make leis. Near the end of the trip, Harold’s wife lies flat on a towel under the sun.
“I’m thinking about Spain again.”
“Again? The paella?”
“It’s so strange, it’s like I can taste it again. It actually feels like I’m eating paella right now.”
Hearing this, Harold feels his body tense. The lulling seaside heat turns hostile.
“Maybe it’s the sun,” he says. “You should go under the umbrella.”
“Hmm,” she says, her eyes closed. Then her eyes open and she sits up on the towel. She stares intently at the ocean, as if seeing something approach, some strange ship. Harold follows her gaze, but finds nothing but water and empty horizon. He looks back at Carol, whose right arm lifts and stretches in front of her. Harold can see the beginning of sunburn on the skin.
“Honey, are you all right? What are you doing?”
She doesn’t answer, but continues to stare straight ahead, her arm stretched. Her lips move soundlessly.
“I think you should go under the umbrella.”
Her arm stretch lasts another moment, and then another. She appears to be reaching for something. Then her arm slackens and relaxes at her side. She lies back down on the towel.
“What just happened?” Harold asks her.
“I don’t know.” Carol says. “What happened?”
“Honey, come under the umbrella. The sun is doing something to you.”
That evening, her arm stretches out during dinner. She topples a water glass, and her fork falls from her hand.
The Hawaiian hospital admits her overnight. Their test results are inconclusive. The doctors recommend she follow up at home. The Christensens are lucky to live in a place with some of the best neurological facilities in the country.
Harold’s family spends a tame New Year’s Eve at the hotel bar. Carol maintains her muted good spirits, sipping sparkling cider. Their daughters are determinedly upbeat, and no one mentions the episode.
The day of their return, Harold makes a few strategic phone calls and secures an appointment with the best doctor in the field. According to his chief operating officer, who’s survived an aneurysm, there is no one but Michael Warren, head of neurosurgery at St. Joseph’s.
Harold takes the afternoon off work to accompany his wife to the hospital. Dr. Warren is young, at least a decade younger than Harold, with a full head of dark wavy hair. They sit in his office, a cold shell of a room with few embellishments, and Harold describes the nature of Carol’s episodes.
Dr. Warren listens closely. When Harold finishes, the doctor says, “I should tell you that I’m not usually involved in diagnosis.”
“Usually,” Harold repeats.
Dr. Warren looks silently at Harold for a moment. He has quick, intelligent eyes.
“How long have you been practicing?” Harold asks.
The doctor blinks, sits back in his chair. “Well, I finished medical school twenty-one years ago.”
“Oh, I’m not questioning your credentials. Just curious. I wanted to be a doctor myself when I was a kid.”
“A doctor is always practicing. That’s a bad joke in the medical field.” The doctor sits forward again, begins to stand.
“This seems like a very good hospital,” Harold says, standing first. His shoulders square instinctively and he feels the clean, masculine lines of his suit. “I shouldn’t speak so soon, I mean not until my wife has been diagnosed.” He tilts his head toward Carol, who is gathering herself up from her chair. “But this seems like the kind of institution that might be worthy of financial support.”
“Well.” The doctor pauses, smiles. “There’s always room for improvement—and for fighting malpractice lawsuits.”
There. They have an understanding.
Harold chuckles. “And there’s always room for grants for talented doctors, I bet.”
Dr. Warren sends Carol for an MRI the same day. Harold watches her frame disappear into the space-age tunnel, then asks the radiology technician for permission to come inside the booth where they study the scan of her brain. The technician hesitates, but looks steadily at Harold, a gray-haired man in a gray pin-striped suit, and cautiously assents.
“Just don’t touch anything,” he says.
The technician sits at what appears to be a desktop computer. Harold hovers at his side, watching the monitor. All at once, the brain shape appears, ruffled and white, like a cauliflower cut in half. Harold stares. His breath catches, and he has the irrational desire to touch the screen.
The radiology technician speaks into a headset. “You’ll hear some banging sounds. They’ll just last a few seconds.”
“Who are you talking to?” Harold whispers.
The technician glances coldly at him. “Your wife. There’s a speaker in the machine, so she can hear my voice. It’s comforting for patients to know that what’s happening in there is normal.” He looks back at the machine. “Now you’ll hear a buzzing noise and some high-pitched beeping. It will last about a minute. Just close your eyes and try to relax.”
“What’s happening now?”
The technician presses a button and writes something down. The image on the screen flips to a side view, showing the profile of Carol’s face, the bone of her nose. “We’re checking for abnormalities in the hippocampus.”
Harold stares at the brain. Viewed from the side, there is a breathtaking architecture of curved vaults and aqueducts, and a purposeful canal leading to the rest of the body. It seems far too complex a thing to be inside Carol. Harold feels an itch at the top inner part of his right thigh, near his groin. He resists the urge to scratch it, and considers the elaborate circuitry that makes him aware of the itch and that keeps his hand in place despite the overwhelming desire to move it. He wonders what that particular neural scenario would look like on the brain screen. Perhaps the arising itch might appear as a spontaneous bright dot in one of the brain lobes. Which lobe, he cannot hope to know. It would be improper to ask now, of course, and distract the technician from the medical attention he is supposed to be giving his wife.
Several moments of silence pass. Harold takes his eyes from the screen and looks through the lab window to the colossal machine that contains Carol. He can see the hem of her hospital gown, the soles of her socks, her bare legs tan from Hawaii. The top part of her body is hidden. She looks like a magician’s assistant about to be cut in half. What is she thinking in there? Is she thinking about drapes? Death? Handbags? She looks lonely in the tube. The brain on the screen looks lonely, too. It feels like a strange sort of perfidy, to examine her mind in this way, to ogle it with these other men. The most surprising part of it, so far, is that her brain is exactly the shape he expected. It is the shape of all brains in the world.
“What are you looking for, exactly?” Harold asks.
“Any lesions or abnormalities in the brain’s anatomy,” the technician mutters, “that might help us determine the cause of your wife’s seizures.”
“Any indication yet?”
“You’ll have to discuss the results with the doctor.”
Harold looks back through the glass and sees Carol’s foot jiggle. What if she has an itch inside the tube? How terrible, he thinks, not to be able to scratch it.
Harold watches the technician’s face in profile, lit up by the glow of the screen. The face contains godly knowledge. What, on the other hand, does Harold know? Cash-flow projections? Imaginary galaxies of real use to no one. He feels the same hunger that he felt as a boy
, a driving need to know, to be taught.
“Now twenty seconds of clicking,” the technician says.
Harold thinks he can hear the clicking sounds himself. Like the sound of a fork tapping a glass bowl around his head.
Carol emerges, whole, from the MRI tube. She emerges fully clothed from the hospital, and Harold escorts her back to the car. She is a civilian again, with makeup and high-heeled shoes. The only difference is the slightly shaken look on her face, the lips flexed in a strained half-smile.
“The doctor said we’ll hear in a few days. I’m sure everything’s fine,” says Harold.
“Yes, I know. I’m just glad it’s over.”
The MRI was nothing, thinks Harold. If there is bad news, she might have to undergo brain surgery. No one has told him this, but he’s sure it is true. Bad news always means surgery.
“It didn’t hurt, did it?”
“Not at all, but the noises were unpleasant.”
Harold tries not to grin.
“You mean the bangs and taps and whirs?”
“Yes, how did you know?”
“I talked to the doctor about it. I wanted to know what you were experiencing.”
“That was sweet of you, honey. But really, it wasn’t that bad. I’m just glad to be out of that tube.”
“It looked claustrophobic.”
“It was! I had a terrible itch on my nose and there was nothing I could do!”
“I can imagine, sweetheart. It sounds terrible.” But not as terrible as brain surgery, he thinks.
They are relieved when the doctor reports that Carol’s brain has no anatomical malformation they can find. The seizure could have been an anomaly, possibly even an allergic reaction to something. That sounds likely, the family agrees. They’d been in Hawaii, after all, eating unusual foods and breathing unusual air.
Back home, Harold watches his wife flip through fabric swatches. She’s returned to her work, reupholstering everything in the house. A diamond twinkles from the lobe of her ear, that weird, primitive organ. Harold thinks of what brain surgery might entail, whether a piece of skull would need to be removed like a door, whether the brain matter itself could stand to be touched by an instrument, or if it is done in some other way—maybe with lasers.
He spends an hour after dinner thumbing through Scientific American. As he sits, he tries to discern the workings of his own brain. The transmitters, he imagines, fire more slowly while he listens to the calming jungle tones, and faster when he looks at the magazine. His brain feels powerfully charged, marvelously elastic. He imagines how it might look on an MRI screen, color-coded.
But this is nothing, this armchair science. There are men who spend their whole lives studying the human brain. Others study outer space. How about that? There are men who do nothing but study the human brain—or the universe—each day, who are excited by pictures that are meaningless to the rest of the world. Harold feels a gnawing envy. The magazine pictures of the brain and of the cosmos are beautiful and not dissimilar—abstract smudges of color against the same fluid black background. Brains and galaxies, these places where everyone lives, where everyone floats in an enormous black egg. Every surgeon and astrophysicist and Wall Street banker alive.
His own house, deep within the egg, features leafy drapes, decorative wreaths, patterns around the rims of dishes, everything made to chase fear away.
Several weeks later, Carol has another episode. It happens while she is out walking on Pelican Point’s narrow finger of land, past its string of hermetic mansions. It is a stroke of luck that the driver of a passing car happens to find her on the side of the road, jolting in a patch of pachysandra.
Dr. Warren prescribes medication for her seizures—for her epilepsy—and Harold’s family gets used to the word. Over the following year the seizures seem to come at random intervals, often preceded by a vivid memory or sensory experience.
Harold leaves Scientific American behind. He buys neuroscience books and learns all he can about the brain’s structure and functions. He is beginning to see the connection, now, between the recurring paella taste and the rigid grasping motions that follow. And now he knows that the brain has no sensory nerves of its own. It is, in fact, dead to the touch.
The more he learns about the brain’s curled geography, its mystifying functions, the more he needs to know. He wants to see the organ up close. He even considers buying a brain in a jar—an authentic cross section for sale on the Internet—but knows his wife would not be happy about it. In any case, a preserved specimen is no substitute for the real, living thing.
There are so many questions. Harold tells himself that it is his responsibility to answer them, to gain uncommon insight into the nature of his wife’s trouble. But, he knows, this is not just about Carol. The truth is that he wants total access, total knowledge. So when Dr. Warren orders a PET-CT scan, Harold requests the doctor’s presence. They stand together in the technician’s booth. Harold watches his wife slide into the scanner’s mouth and waits for her brain to appear. It swims onto the screen, this time in vibrant colors like a flamboyant fish, and the doctor’s face glows aquamarine.
The technician picks up his headset.
Harold coughs. “Dr. Warren, before we start, may I speak to you privately?”
The technician puts the headset down, as if offended, and the doctor looks at Harold. They step into the corner of the room, and Harold whispers, “May I ask you an unusual question?” He straightens his posture, tries to picture an admiring board of directors sitting before him. “Would it be possible for a patient to touch his own brain?” He is dismayed to feel his face heat.
The doctor levels a blank gaze, then smiles slightly.
“Perhaps, yes. I mean, it’s hypothetically possible. There could be local anesthesia on the skull area and nowhere else. In fact, it’s sometimes preferable that a patient remains conscious during an open-brain test. So, yes, it’s technically feasible that a patient could touch the surface of his own brain.”
Harold nods. “I’m sure it would be a very strange feeling.”
The doctor pauses. “Yes, I’m sure,” he says, stepping back toward the monitors.
Harold is quiet, focusing on a yellow cloud in the back of Carol’s brain. The occipital lobe, he knows.
It isn’t difficult to convince Dr. Warren to speak to him privately. All men are vain, in one way or another, Harold knows, and this request would appeal directly to his ego and professional sense of duty.
“I’ve been thinking of making a donation toward your work,” Harold says. “A substantial one.”
“That’s terrific news.” The doctor smiles genuinely as the men walk together down the hall.
“Yes, well, it hasn’t happened yet,” says Harold as they enter the doctor’s office. He sits down without being asked. “The thing is, I think of philanthropy as an investment. And, as a businessman, I like to know what, exactly, I’m investing in.”
“Understandable,” the doctor replies after a moment’s hesitation, taking the seat behind the desk. “I’d be happy to put you in touch with our development office.”
“No.” Harold leans forward. “You see, I’m particularly interested in neurosurgery, as you might gather. I’d like to learn more of the specifics about what you do here, what sort of advances make your own work stand out.”
“I see.”
“I don’t want some dry, deadly report. I don’t want to read a bunch of medical lingo.” Harold looks the doctor in the eye. “I want you to give me the real juice, man-to-man.”
Dr. Warren shifts back in his chair. “I’d be happy to help you however I can,” he says tentatively.
“Well then, let’s schedule a time to talk.”
“Schedule a time? Oh. Well, I’m afraid that won’t be easy. I’m usually booked solid.”
Harold stands. “Let me know when you
have time to spare. I’ll buy you a drink and pick your brain, so to speak. Maybe give you a few tips of my own, if you like. Business insight.” Harold taps his forehead with a forefinger.
The doctor tilts his head and smiles up at Harold, looking for that moment like a teenager in a beam of praise.
The doctor chooses the bar, a generic Irish pub that Harold has never noticed, just off the main street near the hospital. There are television sets showing the same frantic basketball game. In the dim light, the doctor’s features are softer, more human. He is a handsome man with a pair of strong eyebrows and a turned-up curl at one corner of the lips, as if he is harboring illicit thoughts.
The first half hour is useless, a banter of commonplaces. Like a bad date. But Harold is patient. It is impolite to rush things.
Finally, after his second Scotch, they get into it. “What was your first surgery like?” Harold asks, and the next hour swarms with tales of the doctor’s first year in the operating room, its triumphs and missteps and ultimate mysteries. So many mysteries remain, the doctor says, shaking his head.
“That’s it,” says Harold quietly. “That’s exactly what this is about.”
They meet again two weeks later, at the same bar. The doctor’s love of his work is evident, as is his satisfaction in being so queried. Harold reciprocates with his own insights, where appropriate, into the market, amused by the doctor’s intent stare. It is a beautiful joining of minds, Harold thinks, a fruit-bearing tree.
They meet every other week for the rest of that year. Finally, on a bitter December evening, Harold tells Dr. Warren that he is ready to make his donation.
Two hundred grand is more than reasonable for the fulfillment of his purpose. The doctor’s only condition is that the payment be in cash. Harold nods in understanding, fired by such backroom collusion.
The Wonder Garden Page 6