“I can hear singing. Can you hear singing?”
“Hmmm?” She listened. “Well, maybe. You know these old buildings. Full of drafts. This used to be a boy’s school. Catholic, I think. Wait, now I hear it.”
And just as she said it, the day nurse came into the ward pushing a vitals stand in front of her, still humming her strange hybrid tune. She must have gone to retrieve the stand from a supply closet somewhere. Maybe my mom was right, maybe there was a vent or—
“Good morning, sweetie! I’m Nurse Margie,” she said when she got to my bed. She wore a blue pair of scrubs with a pink, stretched-out cardigan tugged over them. It had yarn flowers attached randomly on the front. Her hair was dyed a red that made her pale skin attractive. Otherwise, she had done little to improve her rather ordinary looks.
“It’s time for your vital signs again.”
Again? I didn’t remember doing them before. I wondered how many times we’d done them since I got there. She stuck a plastic-covered thermometer into my mouth.
“It’s nice to see you’re finally awake.” She smiled at my mom. They’d already met at some point. Then she put the blood pressure cuff around my arm. As the cuff inflated, she took the thermometer out and released the plastic covering into a nearby waste paper basket.
“How low is my temperature?”
“Ninety-five point eight. Oh, fudge, I’m not supposed to—” She bit her lip and smiled at me, and then at my mom. “Raw data can be confusing to a patient. I mean, that’s what Dr. Harry said.”
“I’m sure it sounds much worse than it is,” my mother said.
Ninety-five degrees was warm if you were a pebble on a beach. If you’re a person, it’s the deep freeze. “I’m from Chicago so I’m kind of used to the cold,” I said. “But shouldn’t I be shivering my ass off.”
“I had to read up on that,” she admitted. “It’s called medical hypothermia. This solution I’m giving you is, I think, a bunch of different drugs. One of them shuts down the body’s defenses against the cold. Like shivering. See, that’s why you’re not shivering your, um, butt off. Dr. Harry said they’ve been using it for years in Europe. Oh double fudge, there I am giving you raw data again. Anyway, you’ve only got a few more hours of it.”
Nurse Margie took the cuff off. “Blood pressure low, heart rate low. Dr. Harry said to expect that with this medication. Nothing to worry about.” She looked at me and paled a bit. She shouldn’t have told me that either.
“Thank you,” my mother said.
Pushing the vitals stand in front of her, Nurse Margie scurried off.
“Well, it’s been a long time since we’ve heard that,” my mother said.
“Heard what?”
“‘Nothing to worry about.’”
And she was right. I couldn’t remember the last time a medical professional had used those words. Just the idea made me sleepy. “Nothing to worry about.” Could it be true? Could there really be nothing to worry about? And then before I could even finish the thought, I was sleeping.
TEN
“—remember to mark the calendar. Yesterday was a remarkable day. One of the most remarkable of my life. Any life. All lives. Someday, people will look at the date and know it was the day Dr. Ronald Harry changed the way we think about life. No, no, that’s wrong. This is not about self-aggrandizement. They’ll remember yesterday simply as the day things changed. Yes, that’s better. History can leave my name out of it. I haven’t worked all my life for fame. There are more important things.”
The office was cramped. A desk, a chair, and two filing cabinets crowded together on one side of the room, while a sofa stretched from one wall to the other opposite. On the desk was a computer. I knew Dr. Harry could have been recording himself on the computer, videoing himself if he wanted, but he was using his smartphone to record, holding it like a microphone in front of his chin.
“Let’s see, I should get the facts down. The subject was given Property Five at approximately eight thirty-eight on the evening of the fourteenth. Forty-five minutes later, the subject suffered a cardiac event. CPR was administered. Then defibrillation. Rhythm was restored. We continued to administer Property Five until the complete treatment was given.”
On the walls were his diplomas, five or six of them from different universities. Among them were photos of young men in their twenties, thirties. I had the fleeting thought that Dr. Harry might like younger guys, but then I realized the photos were from before I was born. They looked like the pictures my mom had from when she was a little girl. The guys were kind of hot. The photos were taken in apartments at Christmas, on beaches in the summer, in front of important looking buildings. One of the guys was obviously Dr. Harry. I was right. He’d been super good-looking like thirty years ago.
But wait. Was I right? I was dreaming, wasn’t I? I mean, I had to be dreaming. I was doing the ceiling thing again. Looking down at Dr. Harry. CCTV. That’s what they called it on British cop shows. They had CCTV everywhere. I had it in my dreams.
“During the night, subject was kept in a hypothermic state. Vital signs remain inhibited but steady just as expected. Secondary treatment, provided by Callabray Labs, has begun, and the subject is responding well. Very encouraging, very exciting. If the subject continues to respond… No, when the subject continues to respond well. There is no room for doubt. Doubt is the enemy of hope. As the subject continues to respond, secondary treatments will be reduced though it is expected that some form of treatment will be required on an ongoing basis, not unlike the type of medical support required by transplant patients. A small price to pay for—”
ELEVEN
I woke to find Dr. Harry standing over me glaring into my face. Behind the wrinkles and puffiness, I could see the young man in the photos, the man he’d once been. Except that had to be wrong. Backwards. I’d dreamed the photos. The dream was a side effect of treatment. It had to be.
‘Patient may experience vivid dreams, weightlessness, and a sense of being disembodied, which may be accompanied by detailed, probably incorrect information about individuals the patient barely knows.’ Wow, the lawyers were going to have to haggle about how to add that to the end of a TV commercial.
“Where’s my mom?” My voice was groggier than I’d ever heard it
“I believe she’s napping at her hotel.”
“B&B. She’s staying at a B&B.”
“Mmmmhmmm,” he said. I could tell he didn’t care where she was staying. She could be sleeping in her car for all it mattered to him.
“I had a dream about you,” I said. “You were talking into your phone. I dreamed I was in your office. You used to have friends.”
“The nurse was just here. You probably heard me talking to her.”
I shook my head. “It didn’t sound like that.”
It wasn’t real. Why did I think it was real? Dr. Harry didn’t seem the sort to be emotional, but he’d been excited in the dream, almost happy. I barely knew him, but it was hard to imagine him being those things. Though that’s what I’d done. I’d imagined him happy.
“You’re right. I used to have friends. I still have friends, though not as many.”
Using two fingers, he spread the lids on my right eye as wide as he could. He shined a penlight into it and looked the eyeball over thoroughly. It kind of hurt, and I couldn’t help but try to squint a little.
“Hold still.” Then he repeated the annoying process with my left eye.
“We have to stop meeting like this,” I said. It was a joke. A very old joke. The kind of thing someone would say in some ancient movie from like the eighties. He didn’t crack a smile. His face was tense. He was looking for something, but I had no idea what. He took his fingers out of my eye and seemed to relax.
“Your eyes look good.”
“There’s never been anything wrong with my eyes.”
“You have clear, healthy eyes.”
I glanced around the ward. We were alone. Well, except for the two old men lying i
nert and comatose across the room, we were alone. I was tempted to ask about them. What were they doing here? Where had they come from? Why weren’t they in a nursing home? But I bit my tongue and played the good patient.
Still, I couldn’t help asking, “So my prognosis is good?”
“It is. But I’m sure your mother told you that.”
“I thought it might be nice to hear it from you. You are the doctor.”
He nodded. “It’s going to be a long road. But you’ll make it.”
“What’s going to happen on that long road?”
“I don’t know. We’ll find out together.”
He was a doctor, but a strange one. Doctors didn’t say, “I don’t know.” I couldn’t remember another time I’d heard a doctor say that. I’d heard “I don’t know my schedule next week.” Or “I don’t know if we validate parking.” But I’d never heard “I don’t know what the course of your disease will be.” That just didn’t happen. And “We’ll find out together” that was just bizarre.
“Can you sit up?” Dr. Harry asked. Without answering, I did. Somewhere along the line I’d been put into a pair of pajamas. I wasn’t sure if I’d been wearing them when I fell asleep or if I’d been changed while I was sleeping. Details like that kept slipping away from me.
Next to the bed was a nightstand with a single drawer. Where were my clothes? My mom had been using my iPad, so she’d put them somewhere. And she was probably the one who’d picked out the pajamas I was wearing, something I could have figured out simply from the fact that they were an old pair of Simpsons PJs.
They would have been very cool when I was fourteen and trying to watch every single episode of the show, but I’d grown out of that and now it was faintly embarrassing when Dr. Harry unbuttoned the top, separating Homer and Marge to press a stethoscope against my too thin chest. Expecting to feel the icy cold metal of the scope, I was surprised when it wasn’t cold. Dr. Harry must have warmed it while I wasn’t looking. He moved it around my chest, listening, listening. But then his fingers grazed me, hot and burning.
“Are you okay? Your fin—”
“Don’t talk.” He moved the scope around a few more times and was satisfied. “Of course, I’m okay. I’m also not the patient, so even if I—”
“It’s just that your fingers are really hot. Like you have a fever or something.”
“Your temperature is still well below normal. It changes the way you perceive things.”
“Oh, that’s right…medical hypothermia.”
He shot me an unhappy look. Now he was a normal doctor. Doctors were threatened if you knew anything at all about your own disease. I didn’t know much about medicine, but I had picked up a few things about acute blah-blah-blah leukemia, and whenever they came out of my mouth, doctors looked annoyed. Just the way Dr. Harry had.
“Why is this place called The Godwin Institute?”
“I named it after someone who meant a great deal to me.”
“So, it’s yours?”
“Basically.”
“I died last night. Didn’t I?”
“Of course not.” His voice was clipped and stiff. He was lying, I could tell. But then that was probably normal. He’d lost me. I died. Even if it was just for a few minutes, there could be ramifications. I could maybe sue him. People sued over less.
Dr. Harry continued what he was doing. He checked the pulse in both of my wrists, moved up to my neck and checked it there, walked to the bottom of the bed, lifted the blanket, and checked the pulse in both ankles. Then he moved back to the middle of the bed to pull the blanket down to my knees. He slipped a hand between my thighs just below my crotch. He pressed a finger against one thigh and felt around. Then he did the other thigh.
I could feel blood in my cheeks. I wondered for a second if he was a pedo, but quickly rejected the idea. He had his hand in my crotch and looked kind of bored. He glanced up at me. “You’re blushing. That’s good.” I didn’t think so. I thought it was humiliating. I mean, yeah, he was a doctor but come on...
He removed his hand from my thigh and moved up to palpate my stomach—which is a kind of medical tickling.
“Your circulation is good.”
It couldn’t have been that good. If I were healthy, all his poking around would have produced something more embarrassing than a blush. I mean, he was an old guy and all, but I was nineteen and the places he’d been poking around...
During my occasional spurts of almost-health, certain parts of my anatomy had been super active whether the rest of me was interested or not. Seriously, giving a teenager a boner is no great accomplishment. So, the fact that I hadn’t risen to the occasion said more about my circulation than he had.
“There is some bloating in the abdomen.” He made a note in my file and said, more to himself, “The antibiotics should take care of that.”
I reached down and pulled the blanket over me. “How long do I have to be here?”
“I don’t know. As long as it takes.”
“As long as what takes?”
“As long as it takes to make you a hundred percent healthy.” Normally, when a doctor said something like that, he smiled. Dr. Harry didn’t. I wondered if he maybe used Botox. He kept his face that still. Then he added, “I’d like to begin aggressive testing tomorrow.”
“Aggressive? What does that mean?”
“Blood work. EEG. PET scan. The blood work will be daily. The imaging every other day. “
“So, where do I go for those?” I asked.
“We have all the necessary equipment here.”
“Oh.”
It seemed odd they’d have that kind of stuff. I mean, it was expensive. I began to worry about how much all of this was costing. It was obviously experimental. Was my mom’s insurance even paying for this? I didn’t want to bankrupt her. My dad would offer to help, but she was too proud. Of course, if I stayed long enough, I could bankrupt my dad, too.
Dr. Harry took a step as though to leave.
“Um, are they going to bring me something to eat soon?” If I was bankrupting my parents, I might as well get a good meal out of it.
“Are you hungry?”
I thought about it. I wasn’t. I wasn’t hungry at all. “No, I guess not.”
“I’d like you to hold off until you actually feel hunger.”
“But shouldn’t I try to eat? To keep up my strength.” God, I’d heard that one from my mother so many times I could barely believe I was saying it.
“There’s glucose in the IV fluids. Among other things. You’ll be fine.”
Mmmmm. Glucose. Yum.
TWELVE
My mom came back just after dinnertime. She looked rested, freshly showered and happy. She kissed me on the cheek and said, “Any sign of that mystery boy?”
I shrugged, wishing I’d never mentioned Goth. “I’ve been sleeping. I only just woke up.”
“Me too. I slept for almost four hours. The best sleep I’ve had in more than a year. Did they feed you dinner?”
“I guess not.”
“You guess not? That means no.” I thought she’d jump up and run out to the nurse to demand my dinner. But she didn’t. Instead, she reached into her purse and brought out a napkin-wrapped piece of cheesecake. My favorite dessert. “I went to this charming little place for dinner. All the places around here are charming. It’s really a very pretty area. Old Mrs. Trumbull, the woman who runs the B&B, told me there’s an ordinance against chain stores. The nearest Walmart is thirty miles away. Doesn’t that sound lovely?”
I wasn’t sure if it was lovely or not. My mom hated Walmart so much, I’d never actually been. When she talked about it, it sounded terrible. But I knew not everything my mom hated was all that bad. I took the cheesecake and looked at it. I sort of wanted it. It was cheesecake, after all. But the idea of breaking off a piece and eating it didn’t appeal to me. In fact, it kind of made my stomach turn.
“I probably won’t have it until later. I’m not all that hungry,�
�� I said, putting it on the nightstand.
“Did you see the doctor?” My mother asked, finally getting down to business.
“He came and examined me. He seemed concerned about my circulation.”
“As he should be. If your heart’s not beating, you’re not alive.”
She was right. So, I guess it wasn’t too weird. Then she asked, “Do you think he’s related to Debbie Harry?”
“Blondie?” Classic rock was her thing not mine. Which didn’t stop her from acting like I should know everything about it.
“Of course, Blondie. Wouldn’t it be funny if he was like her brother or something?”
“Yeah, I’m sure the doctor is related to a famous rock star.” Although it wouldn’t be the weirdest thing that had happened in the last few days.
“New wave, Jake. It’s different.”
I knew it was different. She’d told me a hundred times. “Whatever.”
“I called your father. He sounded dubious.”
“Well, he would. I wanted him to convince you to let me go, to let me die. Your calling him up and telling him I’m going to live the very next day, that would sound suspicious.”
“You mean he thinks I’m crazy?”
I bit my tongue. Of course he thought she was crazy. They were divorced. That’s what divorced people thought about each other.
“Well, that explains a lot,” she sighed. “He insisted I have you Skype with him. I tried to explain about the reception problems here, but that just made him more suspicious. I mean, really, it’s like he thinks I’ve kidnapped you, and he wants proof of life before sending the ransom. I’ll have to ask to see if they get reception anywhere in the building. I always knew you’d be okay, Jake. Always. But lately, I began to think maybe it was just wishful thinking, that I might have been fooling myself. I wasn’t, though. We found a way through.”
Tears streamed over her smiling cheeks. I really wanted to avoid the whole emotion thing. Especially since I wasn’t quite as convinced everything was going to be okay. I mean, I was still laying there with tubes running in and out of me, right? Couldn’t she see that? This might have been part of why I was kind of annoyed with her. She was so sure everything was suddenly okay. I mean, holy shit, if I up and died, she was going to be a mess.
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