by LaGreca, Gen
The autumn chill of the next two weeks deepened the leaves to orange and red. They bristled stiffly in the wind and speckled the tree-lined walkways around Riverview Hospital with the vibrant October colors of sunflowers and wine. Beyond the crimson vines of ivy clinging to the redbrick hospital, color was returning to a surgeon’s life. In the manner of a starving man let loose in a supermarket, David gorged himself in the OR. He filled his cart with all manner of tumors, aneurysms, blood clots, tangled vessels, ruptured discs. He explained cases to patients, drew pictures of their insides, showed them their scans, answered their questions, cured their problems, accepted kisses from grateful relatives. He operated at a grueling pace, as if the heady world of the OR were the narcotic he needed to dull the wrenching pain he felt at the death of his father . . . and the living death of his brother.
He received notice from the Warren Lang Institute for Medical Research that his application was provisionally approved. It was sent for final acceptance to the federal authorities jointly funding the project. Dr. Harold Wabash assured David that permission would come in two weeks, after a routine check of his professional background.
A brain scan showed that Nicole’s optic nerves were mending, although her visual perceptions were diminishing because of the growing interference of the scar tissue. From his experience with animals, David judged that the best time to perform the second surgery was fast approaching. He would need to operate before she lost all perception of light. Waiting beyond that point would yield failure. However, operating too soon would also be risky because introducing the scar-inhibiting drug would halt the growth of the optic nerve. For the maximum nerve growth, he had to wait until the last possible moment, which was right before Nicole totally lost the perception of light. David concluded that the perfect time to operate would be when the final approval came in two weeks.
One mid-October day, long-legged Nicole, in wool slacks and turtleneck sweater, sat at the end of his examining table. He darkened the room and shone a strong light at her.
“I see light,” she said.
He waved his hand in front of the light from ten feet away, a distance from which she had detected motion a few weeks earlier.
“Do you see anything moving?” he asked.
“No.”
He moved to five feet from her, waving his hand. “Do you see anything moving now?”
“No.”
He moved to three feet. “Now?”
“I see light, that’s all.”
He stood directly in front of her, waving his hand before two lovely blue eyes that had alertly followed his motion a few weeks ago but now stared vacantly in one spot. “Do you see anything moving now, Nicole?”
“No.”
Although she knew what to expect, losing what little perception she had was disturbing. She lowered her head in concern.
He held her hands in comfort.
Chapter 26
The Unexpected
Outside the governor’s mansion, a few remaining autumn leaves clung precariously to the sugar maples, resisting their inevitable fall. Inside, Malcolm Burrow was trailing in the gubernatorial race, hanging on to the branches of power just as tentatively, on the day when Randall Lang phoned him.
“Need I remind you, Governor, that it’s Friday, October twenty-sixth, over a month since we made our gentleman’s agreement? My brother needs to operate now, but I know he hasn’t gotten approval yet.”
“I’ll get on that right away.”
With less than two weeks before the election, the governor wanted nothing to go awry. He called Dr. Henrietta Richards, the head of CareFree. She called Dr. Harold Wabash at the Warren Lang Institute. He called his counterpart at the National Institute of Medical Research, who called his administrator, who called her inspector assigned to review David’s application. Dr. Wabash assured Dr. Richards and the impatient Dr. David Lang, who called daily, that approval would come on Monday. Dr. Richards assured the governor, who assured the equally impatient Dr. Randall Lang.
* * * * *
On Saturday night, no moon shone to illuminate the cloudy autumn sky. The thicket of leafless shrubs lining the campus walkways of West Side University concealed a man dressed in black. The whooshing sound of his steps was amplified in the stillness as he trampled through piles of fallen leaves on his way to the William Mead Research Center. He zippered his leather bomber jacket against the biting chill of the season’s first cold spell. The parking lots were empty and the windows of the buildings dark. People belonging on the campus had left hours before to meet companions at restaurants, movies, parties, bars. But the man in black met no one save a stray cat that paused to appraise him with a translucent stare, then vanished in a flash, apparently sensing something unsavory.
As he slipped his key into the locked door of the research center, he tried not to think about the scientist who had been arrested and handcuffed in that building on charges of cruelty to animals. An undercover member of an animal rights organization had taken a job in the scientist’s lab, compiled evidence of alleged regulatory violations, and blown the whistle. After years of trials and appeals, the researcher had been cleared of all charges, but he was never again given a job by any scientific institution.
The youthful form in baseball cap, polo shirt, leather jacket, jeans, and sneakers—all in black—glided soundlessly through the hallways, looking more like a burglar than a neurosurgeon. But when he locked himself in his windowless lab, about to perform a historic experiment, there was no doubt that the roguish figure belonged there.
An unusual intensity marked the face of David Lang that night as he swiftly and methodically prepared for surgery. He removed one of the five blinded cats from its cage. He held before the creature its favorite toy, a play mouse dangling from a string. Before the cat was blinded, it had followed the mouse with its eyes and poked the toy with its paws. Now the cat lay still, unable to perceive the motion of the mouse before it, a condition that David hoped to remedy. He laid the feline on a cloth-covered patch of counter, placed a mask over its face, and administered an inhalational anesthetic to induce unconsciousness. He set up an IV drip to dispense a general anesthetic to the cat during surgery, inserted a breathing tube into the animal’s lungs, shaved its head, and began the operation.
He examined the optic nerves that he had severed twelve weeks earlier. They had grown back! His gasp of delight was muffled by his surgical mask. However, a mass of scar tissue was choking the newly connected nerves. For hours, he painstakingly removed the scar, piece by tiny piece, being meticulous to avoid nicking the glistening new nerves. Then he injected a syringe of scar inhibitor over the area. As lasting protection against the formation of more scar tissue, he implanted a timed-release capsule of the scar-inhibiting chemical on the side of each nerve. Months later, when the timed-release chemical was consumed, the danger of scarring would be past and the capsule would biodegrade. The procedures he performed on the cat matched those that he would perform on Nicole in a few days.
Once David had completed the first cat’s surgery, he performed the same operation on the second of the five blinded felines. He worked intently until dawn under a stream of bright light illuminating the cat’s palpating brain. Because the optic nerves swelled after the surgery, he would have to wait until later that day to learn the outcome. When the swelling subsided, he would know if he had restored function to transected nerves in the brain, making medical history.
After ensuring that the cats were stable and comfortable following the surgery, David left the research center, his jacket collar raised and his cap lowered to hide his face. Once clear of the campus, he noticed that dawn had given way to a spectacularly sunny Sunday morning. In that moment there was no CareFree, no trial, no funeral for a childhood hero, no rift with the brother he loved. There was only the cloudless sky and crisp wind of a bright autumn day, and the glorious knowledge that his experiments looked promising. He smiled at a newspaper vendor and a passerby, wishing the world w
ell. He walked in the sun, enjoying its nourishing warmth on his face. It seemed Pandora from Nicole’s show was sprinkling him with hope.
His serene contentment waned on the drive home to Oak Hills, when he passed his health club. He and Randy had played racquetball there every Sunday morning for years, but they were playing no longer. Randy had switched to a new game, with rules that David could not follow. Stopped for a red light by the club, David closed his eyes painfully, his head dropping to the steering wheel.
The sight of his house evoked dread. To see Marie meant to argue with her. He knew that he had to confront the question of his marriage. Still reeling from the tragic demise of his father and the startling transformation of his brother, he could not yet face another loss. He wanted to understand Marie and the change in her.
The lingering glow of hope, the aftermath of the surgery, vanished from his face on seeing her in the family room.
“Where were you all night?” she asked resentfully.
“At work.”
“Ha!”
Fashionably dressed in brown wool slacks and a beige silk blouse, she was standing near the couch, clipping on earrings and about to go out. A television tuned to a news broadcast droned in the background.
“I really was working, if that makes you feel better.”
“It doesn’t. I’d prefer you had five real girlfriends to that grand mistress you make of medicine. You tell me you’re working, and you expect me to feel good about that? Your work killed your father!”
His face tightened at the mention of his father’s death, a topic that still choked his voice.
“And your work is killing me, too, David. As you know, after your father died, Paul Eastman and the other owners of my group practice lost interest in making me a partner.”
“They were using you for favors they thought my father would do for them. Why would you want to be a partner on those terms?”
“Oh, stop it! You make me sick with your ideals. No, I don’t want to be a partner in my group practice. I want to throw my career down the drain, antagonize the entire profession, and lose all my friends. I’ll be disgraced and ruined, but I’ll have my lofty ideals to comfort me. Is that your perverted formula for a happy life?”
He observed that Marie’s attacks had gotten more virulent since his father’s death.
“My formula is to succeed, even if I have to struggle along the way. I’m no longer suspended, and I’m getting permission to continue my research. I can act legally now. Isn’t that good?”
Marie looked at him bitterly.
“I broke the law and that upset you. Now I can work within the law. Won’t you be happy if my experiment is successful and I can restore Nicole’s sight?”
“Why should you and that girl get your way?” she blurted out involuntarily.
“What?” he asked in amazement.
“You caused a lot of damage—”
“I think CareFree caused the damage.”
“—then you two get your way after all.”
“Why does it bother you for us to ‘get our way’? Would you rather I be punished more? And Nicole spend her life blind?”
“Don’t be ridiculous!”
Just then Randy appeared on the television screen, speaking at a convention, with Mack Burrow beside him. David grabbed the remote and turned off the set. Marie pulled the device from his hand and turned the set back on. She raised the volume so that Randy’s voice roared through the family room:
“I support Mack Burrow for governor. He’s what today’s medical profession deserves.”
David reached for the remote, but Marie would not surrender it. He checked his impulse to seize her. With a forced calm, he walked to the set and turned it off.
“Your brother wised up. When will you?”
“Why do you resent me, Marie? I thought it was because I was breaking the law and you were afraid I’d get in trouble. But now I’ll be doing my research legally, so why do you still resent me? Are you . . .”—he paused at a thought too inconceivable to utter—“. . . afraid I’ll . . . succeed?”
“That’s ridiculous! Stop accusing me!” She grabbed her handbag from the couch. The fear sweeping her face told David that he had hit a nerve.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
Marie’s life was a dizzying maze of meetings, associations, and committees. David wondered which function she was attending and what friends and favors she was seeking.
“I’m having brunch with Mel Brockman. Not that it’s any of your business what I do, after you stay out all night! I thought I’d explore a job with the group practice Mel runs, because I’m going nowhere with my own company, thanks to you.”
“Why keep reproaching me, when you can see I don’t accept blame for the deceitfulness of your employers?”
Marie slammed the kitchen door on her way to the garage. David, too exhausted from the night’s surgeries to reach the bedroom, fell onto the couch and slept.
* * * * *
When he awoke in the afternoon, his first thought was of the cats. He quickly showered, dressed, and drove back to the research center. The swelling of the optic nerves would have subsided by then, and he would know!
He cautioned himself to be careful. He had a pass to park in the campus lots, but he opted to keep his car outside and walk to the laboratory. He kept his face hidden under his baseball cap. When he arrived at the research center, there was one lone car in the lot outside. He sat on a distant bench and waited a half hour, until two people left the building and drove away in the vehicle.
He opened the door and took the stairs to the windowless lab on the second floor. Everything was as he had left it in the cramped but orderly room. He scanned the filing cabinets, sink, lab counters, chemicals, lights, monitor, respirator, and other equipment in the small space, assuring himself that the items remained undisturbed. The animal cages, also, were as he had left them, resting on a long, narrow counter. Inside them the cats were clean, well nourished, and comfortable.
The two cats just operated on were groggy from the anesthetic. David placed one of them on a floor mat. He bobbed before it the toy mouse on a string. At first the sleepy animal did not want to play. David nudged it and talked to it until the creature finally opened its glassy eyes. The surgeon swung the mouse before the cat. Then the amazing thing happened. Its eyes followed the toy back and forth, and its paw jabbed at it. “Yes!” David cried out exultantly. Success! He repeated the mouse-on-a-string test of visual acuity on the other cat, with the same result. Success again! David’s glowing face, beholding his little patients, held sheer delight.
A boyish exuberance that he had not felt in recent times seized him. He eagerly recorded notes on the cats’ medical charts and prepared chemicals, instruments, and equipment for the surgery that he would perform later that night on the third cat. All the while he played with the newly sighted cats, unable to leave them alone, concocting games to make their eyes follow objects. He moved fingers before them from the right, then made the fingers vanish to the left, watching their heads turn with his motion. He flashed a penlight at them and observed their eyes tracing the tiny beam. The cats became more awake, opening their liquid eyes wider, enjoying their newfound vision and their playmate. When David stopped his games, they meowed for more.
After leaving the lab, David walked to the Hudson River to watch a cloudless sunset shimmering across the waters. His eyes devoured the glistening river, the soaring gulls, and the darkening buildings, as if every perception were sacred in the glorious phenomenon called vision. Wanting to do something special on this, the most important day of his life, he drove to Nicole’s apartment.
As always, the dancer’s face brightened at his presence. Mrs. Trimbell took the occasion of his visit to make dinner arrangements with a friend.
“There’s a plate of marinated chicken breasts ready to cook for dinner,” she said, leaving David and Nicole sitting at the breakfast bar.
“I’m hungry. Are yo
u?” asked David.
“Yes.”
“Let’s go out.”
“No!” Fear colored Nicole’s voice. “Let’s stay here. I’ll cook the chicken,” she said nervously, rising from the stool.
“Let me help.”
“No, I can do it!”
A kindness in his voice responded to a tension in hers. “I’m happy to help.”
“I’m tired of being . . . helped. Surely I can place chicken in the oven and throw a salad together. Why don’t you listen to music in the living room and let me be, David, please?”
Reluctantly he obliged. Minutes later he heard a crash. He found Nicole sitting on the wooden floor by an open refrigerator, with chicken breasts, a broken dish, and a shattered bottle of wine splattered around her.
“When I reached for the chicken in the refrigerator, the dish caught on a wine bottle that I forgot was there,” she cried. “When I tried to catch the bottle, everything fell—including me.” She sighed heavily. “I should lay tall bottles down flat. I’ll bet I gouged the floor!”
“I know you’re feeling frustrated, but you mustn’t touch anything. There’s glass all over, so get up carefully.” He grabbed her arms to help her rise.
She pushed him away and covered her face with her hands. Clad in jeans and a sweater, she was a gaunt figure, all legs, lying like a newborn calf after an aborted attempt to stand. “All I wanted to do was cook dinner!” She cried roundly, releasing what seemed like a thousand pent-up frustrations.
“Did you cook before your injury?”
She stopped crying at what appeared to be a new thought. “Well, no. I never cooked.”
“Then why start now?”
She had no answer.
“Do you like cooking?”
“I hate it, actually.” A tiny smile threatened to break through her frown.
“Then why are you doing this?”
He locked two sympathetic arms around her and pulled the crestfallen bundle to her feet. She sat on the kitchen stool resignedly as he cleaned up.