Tunnel Vision

by Gary Braver

  “He was just here.”

  “There was nobody else here,” Heather said.

  “I think you were dreaming,” Dr. Andrew said.

  “No. He was here.” Zack closed his eyes again and turned his head away.

  “Zack!” Heather cried. “Open your eyes. Please open your eyes again.”

  Zack didn’t respond.

  “Zack,” said Dr. Andrew, “don’t be alarmed, but you’re in a hospital. You had an accident that left you unconscious for a while. But you’re a lot better, and the great news is that you woke up.”

  Zack slit open his eyes again. And Dr. Andrew was quick to catch them. “Zack, look at me, okay? Move your feet.”

  His feet, still in new sneakers, stuck out from the bottom of the bedding. Zack rocked them back and forth, knocking the shoes together.

  “Good job. That’s terrific. Now I want you to tell me where you live.”

  “Magog Woods.”

  “Where?”

  Emma knew from his chart that he lived in Boston near the Northeastern University campus.

  “Magog Woods.”

  “Where’s that?” Heather asked.

  Zack closed his eyes again.

  In a sharp voice, Heather said, “Zack, open your eyes. Come on, keep them open and talk to me. Tell me where you go to school.”

  No response.

  “Zack,” the doctor said, “you had an accident on your bike and were brought to the hospital. Remember that?”

  “Sand.”

  “Sand? What about sand? Did you skid on sand? Tell me about it. Zack, please open your eyes. You can’t go back to sleep again. Please. You’re doing great.”

  “Hit my head.” He opened his eyes.

  “You hit your head? Tell me what you remember, Zack. Tell me how you hit your head.”

  He closed his eyes again and rolled his head away.

  “Come on, Zack, open your eyes. You can’t fall asleep again. Tell me how you hit your head. Did you fall off your bike?”

  But Zack kept his eyes closed, and Heather and the doctor continued coaxing him to open them again, fearing that he would slip back.

  But after several seconds, his eyes opened again. He looked at his arms with the IV connections and the monitors attached to his chest and tubes running from his body to bags and feed tubes. “How long?”

  “Well, it’s been a few weeks.”

  Zack stared at her, his eyes blank but his mind working on what she had just said. He winced and closed his eyes again.

  Heather moved closer. “Zack, keep your eyes open.”

  “He’s here,” he whispered.

  “What’s that? Who’s here?”

  But Zack had slipped back into sleep.

  17

  At eight the next morning, Nurse Heather came into Zack’s room. “Hey, Zack, how you doing?”

  “Okay.”

  “You ready for company?” Heather was beaming. “Your mother’s here to see you.”

  Several hours had passed since Zack had woken up. He felt more centered and less fatigued. They had kept him awake by plying him with questions to assess his cognitive functions. It took a while to sink in that he had been in a coma for twelve weeks—that he had missed spring break and March madness, not to mention nearly three months’ work on his thesis, which had been due April 1. (He’d have to get an extension.) What amazed him was how in so short a time he had lost nearly twenty pounds. More startling was how weak he was. Lifting his arms took effort. But the nurses said that was expected, and because he was young he’d be back to normal after a few weeks of physical therapy.

  Nurse Heather rolled up the bed slightly and gave him a few sips of orange juice. In a day or so they would remove the G-tube so he could eat normally, beginning with soft foods and milkshakes.

  “We’ll keep it short so you won’t be too taxed. Ready?”

  He nodded. “Send her in,” he said, a little anxious at seeing his mother because she was an emotional woman.

  Heather left, and a few moments later she returned with Zack’s mother. As she entered, his first thought was that she had lost weight. She was dressed in pale green slacks and a white sweater and a necklace he had given her last Christmas. She rarely wore makeup, but today she did. “Hi,” he said through a raw windpipe.

  For a moment she stood at the doorway, frozen. Although she had probably kept steadfast vigil at his bedside, he imagined how she saw him—gaunt, ashen, hair roughly chopped, scabs, scars, his arms like broomsticks. He smiled as best he could and raised his hand toward her. She burst into tears and came to him, taking his hand. He was weak but did his best to give her fingers a squeeze.

  Sobbing and trying to smile, she said, “Thank goodness. I love you,” she whispered.

  “Love you, too.” His voice was hoarse.

  The nurse helped her settle into a chair by his side. She clutched his hand as she tried to compose herself, wiping her face with tissues.

  He knew that she felt some degree of guilt—and not just the residue of her Roman Catholic upbringing, something she carried like a low-grade fever. Or a maternal thing for not protecting him better. It was deeper layered. For some ineffable reason, she believed that Zack had blamed her for Nick’s abandonment. It was totally irrational. Jake’s death had caused that, not Maggie.

  She took Zack’s hand, now crying for joy.

  “Menino’s revenge.”

  “What?”

  “The mayor. They tell me I hit a pothole.”

  When she regained control, she said, “You shouldn’t have been riding your bike so late. And without a helmet.”

  “Mom, I live only a few blocks away. I just didn’t see the hole.”

  She kissed his forehead. “Thank goodness you’re okay.”

  “But I got a great sleep.”

  “Yeah, for eighty-six days.”

  “But who counts?” She leaned over and kissed his cheek and forehead. And he could feel the press of tears behind his own eyes.

  When she settled in the chair again, she said, “Good news. Your thesis adviser gave you a six-month extension. So the pressure is off. Isn’t that great?”

  “That means I get my degree in January. No June graduation.”

  “We can live with that.” She smiled and kissed him again.

  “I think I heard you talking to me while I was asleep.”

  “You did?”

  “You kept telling me to open my eyes. But every time I did, I got sand in them. I think you also asked me to clean up my room and take the trash out.”

  She laughed and squeezed his hand.

  He could feel the warmth of her grip. It felt good. It was a relief to see her laugh again. She must have been gnarled with fear and grief these past three months. As he lay there, he resolved that once he got out he’d spend more time with her, get closer, do more to make her life better. She had suffered too much in the last ten years.

  “I also had dreams of Dad.” As he’d feared, the mere mention of him caused her smile to sag.

  “Dreams? What kind of dreams?”

  “Mostly from Sagamore Beach, I think.”

  Maggie nodded, trying to appear interested.

  “It felt so real, even the heavy fog. I’m surprised the bed isn’t all wet.”

  She didn’t say anything but looked at the IV connection on the back of his hand.

  “I think Dad was in it, but I couldn’t see him, just sensed he was there. It was weird.”

  “Well, you were in a coma.”

  She said nothing else but glanced away, probably thinking how characteristic that was of Nick—barely there. She never forgave him for leaving them, then dying, and now Zack was having dreams of him. And he knew she resented that. He had abandoned her at her lowest. He had abandoned him at his neediest. Yet Zack remembered him as a quiet, private man who was also warm and loving. He never missed one of Zack’s soccer matches or Jake’s Little League games. And he’d cheer with wild enthusiasm and pride in his boy
s.

  But Jake’s death changed him profoundly, sucking the vitality from his soul, leaving him a husk of his former self, barely able to communicate. By the time he and Maggie got divorced, his depression had rendered him insubstantial. He had moved to an apartment in Waltham to be closer to the engineering firm where he worked. That was when Zack was in high school and caught up with a heavy college prep load. Then Nick announced he had quit his job to become a lay monk in the Berkshires, making his retreat permanent. And for all practical purposes, Zack’s father had died.

  On some basic level, Zack still loved him—or some former him. But he could hardly recall what he had looked like. He never told his mother, but during his school years, Zack had made up tales about him—cool things like his traveling all over the world as a professional photographer, scuba diving in Australia and Papua New Guinea. He’d even once claimed that his father had disappeared trying to land in a storm in Tonga. Those ended by the time Zack entered college. By then his father had died for real. And the only sign that he had once partaken in his life were a few photos and the urn on the fireplace mantel.

  “They’ll probably tell you, but when you woke up you called for him.”

  “I did?” Zack was surprised, though he could see she was flushed with resentment.

  “You also were reciting something the other day while you were under.”

  “Reciting something?”

  “A prayer in Aramaic.”

  “Aramaic? You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “Do you know any Aramaic?”

  “No, and how would I? Isn’t that a dead language?”

  She removed her BlackBerry from her handbag, hit a few keys, then turned the screen toward him. There he was lying in a bed, his eyes closed, but moving beneath the lids. His lips were glistening with some hydrating balm, and in a strange guttural voice he muttered something totally unintelligible but what sounded like actual language from the rhythm and pattern. The recording lasted for maybe a minute, then he ceased muttering and resumed his coma state as if nothing had happened. “I don’t know what that is. That’s not even my voice.”

  “I know. Which makes it even weirder. But a language expert confirmed you were speaking Aramaic. Actually, the Lord’s Prayer. Maybe you memorized it for a paper or something?”

  “I’d remember that. And what kind of course would that be?” Suddenly he felt overwhelmingly tired.

  “Maybe your father taught it to you as a child.”

  “Maybe.”

  She made a dismissive gesture with her hand. “Whatever. The nurse wants you to get some rest.” She kissed him on the forehead. “I love you.”

  “Love you, too.” He watched her leave the room, fatigue overtaking him. The last thing he wanted was to slip back into sleep and dream.

  But, thankfully, he fell into a deep blank for the next six hours.

  18

  Killing for God took all the pressure off. No issues of conscience or morality. No worry about a bad afterlife. Plus you did good by doing well, just as Father X had said.

  A week after dispatching Thomas Pomeroy, Roman Pace got another call on the secure phone. In the same feathery voice, Father X said he had another assignment. Another of Satan’s henchmen. Would he accept the mission? Yes. For the same fee? Yes.

  Life was good.

  The instruction was for Roman to drive to the parking lot at the Burlington Mall at eight fifteen that morning, where at the base of a particular light pole he would find a small bag containing another payment and another cell phone, which he was to answer when it rang at eight twenty. Like the other, this one was secure. Nonetheless, he was to remove the battery and to discard it and the phone separately to avoid tracing.

  At precisely eight fifteen, Roman drove to the parking lot, which was vast and empty at that hour. He spotted a security car moving in the opposite direction, so whoever had hired him knew he wouldn’t be noticed pulling up to the pole to snatch the brown bag.

  In it was the money, three banded packs of hundreds, and another cell phone. Minutes later it rang with Father X calling to confirm pickup. Roman then drove off, humming with curiosity as to why a man of the cloth had advanced him another fifteen grand to pop another scientist.

  This one was a Dr. LeAnn Cola from the Department of Neurology at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, New Hampshire. Her death was to look accidental and without similarities to Pomeroy’s. According to her biography, Cola was divorced and living with her fifteen-year-old daughter. They owned no pets because the daughter was asthmatic.

  Before he returned home, Roman violated protocol and called back. “I’ve not done women before, so I’m just wondering about her.”

  “I can’t go into details, but let it suffice to say that in the eyes of the Lord she has committed acts of abomination against heaven itself.”

  “Can you give me a hint like what?”

  “No, I’m sorry. But rest assured that you will please God in this service.”

  * * *

  Number 147 Forest Street in Cobbsville, New Hampshire, was a brick garrison that was nestled in shrubbery on a quiet street with deep lawns. The house next door was lightless. The house on the other side was hidden by hemlocks. Across the street was conservation land. Nearly perfect.

  Roman parked down the street and waited two hours until the lights went out, another hour to be certain that mother and daughter were asleep. It was an unusually warm spring night, making him wish he could turn on the AC, except that might draw attention. So he waited in the warm interior, reminding himself that a few months ago he had been saved from dying for this mission. That it wasn’t blind luck, but that God so loved him that He intervened, giving Roman another chance, as if God were saying, You can redeem yourself by doing something for Me. And this was that something. And even a woman could be an abomination against God.

  Roman slipped out of his car and cut to the rear of the house. There were four rooms on the second floor; two of them had air conditioners that were turned on. Perfect.

  But there was no AC in the downstairs family room, where a screened window was open a couple of inches. He wedged the blade of his pocketknife under the frame, slid that up, and raised the window. No wiring on the window and no motion detector in the room. It always amazed him how most people left themselves so vulnerable. A brain doctor living alone with her daughter. You’d think she would get an alarm system or at least lock the windows.

  He slipped inside a family room, where sectional sofas faced a flat-screen TV. All was quiet. He passed through a hallway to the kitchen. No motion detectors anywhere or alarm panel. But he did spot a shiny six-burner gas stove. He moved to the front of the house and the staircase leading to the second floor.

  At the top of the landing was a door with a sign, “Victoria’s Room.” The daughter. Across from it was the master bedroom. He inched open the door. In the orange light from a lava lamp he saw the hump of the girl asleep on her back. The AC hummed in the window, chilling the air. That was good, because the girl slept under several blankets, and the machine would drown out sounds.

  But first the mom.

  He closed the door and cut across the landing to the master bedroom. All he could hear from within was another air conditioner. He opened the door. The woman was asleep in a king-size bed to the right. The AC was blowing chilled air from a window on the left. He closed the door and in the ambient light moved to the woman’s side of the bed. She was making feathery snoring sounds.

  He clamped her mouth with a gloved hand and put the gun to her head. “Wake up.”

  The woman’s eyes opened, and for a frozen moment she glared at him. Then she jolted and screamed into his hand.

  “Your daughter’s in the next room. You scream, I’ll kill her. Do you understand? I will kill your daughter if you make a peep.”

  She nodded and moaned that she understood.

  He let go of her mouth.

  “What do you want?” Her voice was a tight
ly stretched wire.

  “I want you to tell me your connection to Thomas Pomeroy.”

  “Thomas … Tom Pomeroy?”

  Tom.

  “How did you know him? What’s your relationship to him? And keep your voice down.”

  “W-we worked together. Who are you?”

  “Doing what where?”

  “A project.”

  “What kind of project?”

  “We were working on MRI machines. Magnetic resonance imaging.”

  “For hospitals.”

  “Yes. He helped develop hardware.”

  “That tells me nothing.”

  “We were doing high resolution of the brain.”

  “Who was paying you?”

  “We had a private grant.”

  “Who was it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Roman lowered his face and pressed the barrel into her temple. “Tell me the truth.”

  “I’m telling you the truth, I swear. Please don’t hurt my daughter.”

  Roman said nothing for a moment. “The project. What were you trying to do?”

  “Trying to get better control over atoms for quantum computing.”

  “In fucking English.”

  “To get precise images of active brain cells.”

  “Someone murdered Tom Pomeroy and I want to know why.”

  “Murdered?”

  “What were you doing to get him knocked off? Tell me and I’ll spare you and your daughter. And no mumbo-jumbo bullshit.”

  The woman nodded, and Roman pulled back the gun. In spurts she told him things that he had difficulty processing, but not because of the scientific jargon. “And that’s the truth?”

  “I swear to God.” She whimpered not to hurt them.

  “You believe in God?”

  “What?”

  “Do you believe in God? You just swore to Him.”

  “I—I don’t know.”

  “How can you not know if you believe or not? It’s yes or no.”

  “I—I … no.”

  “Do you believe in Satan?”

  “Satan?” Her eyes filled with terror. She shook her head.

  “Doesn’t matter. I’m going to tie you up, and in half an hour I’ll call 911.”