by John Farris
Blip.
In Barry's dream he appeared first like an apparition, then as a man made of snow with a lump of coal for a heart, and was struck by the skidding station wagon. Her feet, when she went to his rescue, were torturously mired in snow that mounted alarmingly, to her ankles, her knees; she struggled to get through it. She heard his loud heartbeat. The snow was speckled with blood. She somersaulted downhill, but slowly, and was about to plunge by him into an abyss. In panic she seized an outthrust naked foot and twisted it to stop herself. The foot turned clockwise, winding like the propeller on a toy airplane. She thought she heard him scream, but when she looked at his face it was frozen—all the handsome features lay an inch below a slick coating of ice. The sun came out, blazing hot, and he was melting, pockmarks in the ice, water running everywhere. She licked frantically at the melting face. His tongue, surprisingly human, warmly receptive, protruded stiffly from his mouth. She touched it with the tip of her own tongue and, shockingly, had an orgasm.
Barry came awake in a tangle of blankets, sweating, a hand clenched between her thighs. She rolled to her right and fell off the couch, hurting her knee. The TV screen flickered to her right. Then it was blocked from view as something stepped noiselessly in the way of it; moments later she heard a labored breath.
She looked up with a jolt of terror vivid as lightning ripping through her and saw him huge, looming over her, trailing red dripping tubes from the adhesive strips across one forearm, a catheter from the apple-like glans of his semi-erect penis, the thin wires of those electrodes that were still sticking to his forehead and chest. He was only a few feet away from the sofa, trembling violently, his eyes wide open. They stared blackly at her. He had a look of stark incomprehension.
Barry tried to get up, but her body felt as if it had been clumsily reordered in sleep by a drunken maniac. When she moved, he raised a hand slowly toward her. Later they told her she'd screamed loud enough to bring the roof down, but she wasn't aware then of making a sound.
Her scream did something to him. His head came up as if she'd jolted him with a punch. His lips trembled momentarily, and then his lights went out. He swayed and came down hard, but the couch cushions absorbed most of the shock of his fall. Then he just keeled over slowly sideways, into her arms. And that was how Nurse Mayo found them both, huddled mock-amorously on the floor of the nurses' lounge, when she came running in a few seconds later.
Chapter 11
The telephone got Dr. Edwards out of bed at ten past two and he made it to the hospital from his home on Wendover Street in just under eight minutes. The patient, again unconscious, had been lugged back to bed by the two ICU nurses and an overexcited Barry. The Jamaican nurse was mopping up the mess from a shattered IV bottle and a spilled urine pouch. When Edwards walked in with snow droplets sparkling in his hair Mayo had already made note of the young man's vital signs, including a heartening pulse that had climbed to seventy-two beats a minute. He was breathing more quickly, the shallow breaths of an uneasy sleep, and he had tremors. Edwards gave Barry a puzzled, disgruntled look, took the clipboard from Mayo and glanced at it, then looked at the disconnected EEG and EKG machines. He bent over the patient and checked his pupils. The young man was in a light sweat, spread-eagled on top of the bed, one IV tube half filled with backed-up blood like a vivid lash mark across his flat stomach. Edwards listened to his heart. He straightened up, looking distantly exasperated.
"What happened?" he asked the head nurse.
"He got up and walked," Barry answered.
"Who the hell are you?" the doctor snarled. Barry retreated to a corner of the small room. Edwards raised an eyebrow at Mayo, who despite a stiff upper lip was unhappy. She'd never anticipated this turn of events.
"She's Barry Brennan."
"Oh." Edwards didn't waste another look at Barry. "He walked? When I left the hospital tonight this patient was close to death. I tried everything I could think of to revive him. Doesn't make sense."
"Well, doctor."
"He came to me," Barry said in a small but insistent voice.
Edwards turned around, winding the rubber tubing of his stethoscope around one fist. "And where were you?"
"In the nurses' lounge. Sleeping."
Mrs. Mayo winced. Edwards addressed her but kept his eyes on Barry. "Mayo, what were you doing when he snapped out of it and decided to take a stroll around the second floor, dragging an IV stand along with him?"
"Something went wrong with the respirator in Mrs. Schaefer's room, two thirteen, down the hall. Tillie and me had our hands full."
"You didn't hear anything?"
"Not until the girl screamed. I ran to the nurses' lounge. When I got there he was passed out on the floor, much as you see him now."
"Get rid of those electrodes and IVs and clean him up."
Edwards walked from the room, beckoning to Barry. She followed him, at a safe distance, to the nurses' lounge. There was a trail of dime-sized drops of blood and urine that hadn't been cleaned up yet. The lounge was in another hallway of the oblong building, out of sight of the intensive care units across from the nurses' station. The doctor opened the door and looked at the crumpled blanket on the couch, the pillows, the television screen. He looked back at Barry.
"Door was closed?"
"If you're just going to give me a hard time, I don't want to answer any more questions. I'd like to call my father."
Edwards softened his tone. "I'm the one who's having a hard time, Barry. Let's start over. I'm not even going to ask you why you thought you had any business being here this time of night. Were you watching television?"
"No, I was . . . asleep. I had sort of a funny dream." Her cheeks flushed; she rubbed her forehead with the palm of one hand as if she feared the last rhapsodic image of her dream was pornographically tattooed there. "When I woke up he was in the room with me."
"How did he know you were in here? Why did he get up out of bed and—with several ways to go—walk straight to this door?"
"I don't know. That's weird, isn't it?"
"It is if you're telling—"
"Doctor!"
Edwards whirled and ran past Barry, back to the IC unit. This time Barry was right on his heels.
The young man's eyes were open. He was awake and trying to sit up in bed, making sounds of effort. Mayo and Tillie tried to restrain him. He was too strong for them. Edwards rushed in and took hold of the patient, a viselike grip at the right elbow, before he could lunge off the bed and possibly hurt himself. Cords stood out in the young man's neck. He made incoherent noises. His head came around and he stared at Barry with black eyes that might have seemed tragic if there had been a corresponding cast of emotion, of human trial and suffering, in his face.
The sight of her seemed to calm him. He breathed with his lips parted, eyes steady on Barry.
Edwards ordered a tranquilizer from the Jamaican nurse. To his patient he said, "Okay, okay, nobody's going to hurt you. Try to relax. You're in a hospital. You had an accident this afternoon, but you're not seriously hurt. Want to tell me your name?"
There wasn't a flicker of reaction. The young man went on staring at Barry, who moved a couple of steps closer to the foot of the bed. She tried a smile.
"What's your name?"
He didn't seem to understand English, or else he was stone deaf. Edwards snapped his fingers next to the young man's ear; the black eyes swung to him and then jumped back to Barry.
"His hearing is at least adequate. That isn't what's wrong."
"Do you know any other languages?"
Edwards, picking the only foreign language he knew, tried German. The young man watched him closely while he was speaking but didn't reply. Barry had studied Spanish in high school. She put together a couple of sentences. It got them nowhere.
"What'll we do now?"
"One thing is for sure. He likes having you around. I can feel his heart thumping through his rib cage. See if you can get him to lie down."
Tillie reapp
eared with the syringe and an ampoule of Thorazine. Barry moved around to the other side of the bed. The young man shifted his full attention to her again. She touched him gently. She could feel his tension flickering in waves beneath his skin. He was warm now, perspiring, blood racing. He didn't seem to mind being touched.
Sometimes she was able to receive impressions from those she touched, odd bits of revelation, secrets; but she was too keyed up now; she had to be in a tranquil, almost thoughtless, mood to be receptive. Nothing came to her. His history was a blank.
"You'd better lie down," Barry advised him. He didn't move. He seemed content to sit there looking at her. She felt very strange: heartsore and light-headed, prickling all over. She hoped it was just a language problem with him; otherwise he might be some kind of retardate. But she'd worked with the weak-minded, the brain-damaged, performed shadow shows at their schools. He wasn't like them at all. His eyes were clear and attentive. Intelligent. He was trying to understand her. The rest of his face had a sort of frozen immobility. But when she smiled there was a definite softening around his mouth, a muscular twitch, as if he yearned to smile back but couldn't. Paralysis? She raised her hand and placed her fingers to his lips. Absorbed, she traced the outlines of his mouth, his chin. He sighed, almost inaudibly. His eyes closed partway, then opened wide again.
While Barry had his attention, Tillie swabbed a spot and Mayo deftly pricked him in the hip with the needle of the syringe. Either he was too tense to feel the injection, or it didn't matter to him.
Edwards picked up the EEG tracings to see what had happened to the young man's brain waves before he awakened.
"Good God Almighty," he said, amazed and distressed.
"What?"
He glanced at Barry without focusing on her. "He was flatline EEG just an hour before he got up from that bed and walked."
"What does that mean?"
"It means brain death: he was necrotic. No electrical discharges to record. Then all of a sudden they started up again. His brain came alive." Edwards winced.
"Is that impossible?"
"It should be. I've heard of a couple of cases where there was no EEG, then later they woke up."
Barry shuddered; it sounded like something from Edgar Allan Poe. The two nurses had tied the patient into a hospital johnny. The tranquilizer was taking effect. His head nodded, his eyelids drooped. Barry helped him lie back. Soon he was dozing again, fitfully.
Edwards gave instructions to the nurses. They were to take his pulse and respiration every fifteen minutes, his temperature on the half hour. He wanted the fluids resumed. Someone was to be in the room with the patient at all times.
"I'll stay," Barry said.
The doctor hesitated, instinct in conflict with his professional judgment.
"I think he trusts me," Barry pointed out. "I don't know why. When he wakes up again, I'll just talk to him, try to keep him calm."
"He'll be calm enough from the Thorazine, but . . . I guess it won't hurt. He may not understand what happened to him or know where he is, but he knows a good-looking girl when he sees one." He smiled at Barry, then stifled a yawn.
"Do you think anything's seriously wrong with him?" she asked.
"Barry, I have no idea. I've never seen a case like this one. Tomorrow he might be sitting up in that bed eating a good breakfast or he might be comatose again."
After Edwards had gone home, Barry helped Mrs. Mayo carry in the most comfortable chair they could find, and she padded it with pillows. She borrowed a radio from Tillie, dialed it low to an easy-listening FM station. She settled down near the bed for her vigil, fully awake, watching him breathe, observing the movements of his eyes beneath the lids. Dreaming at last, she thought. Occasionally he moved, always a jump or a sharp twitch, and moaned. She got up whenever he made a sound, leaned over him, hoping he would say something in his sleep.
Once during the night he turned his head on the pillow and looked at her for a few moments. Barry smiled and murmured to him. She wasn't sure he was actually awake, but she thought he recognized her. Either her presence or the music gradually soothed him. His body relaxed visibly. Despite the restricting IV tubes, taped with his arm to a splint so he couldn't rip them loose again, he was able to turn on his right side and draw his knees up beneath the sheet and thin blanket. His left hand groped for something, closed, relaxed, curled against his body.
Toward dawn Barry dozed for an hour, satisfied in her own mind that he was going to be just fine.
Chapter 12
The press conference was scheduled for eleven o'clock on the morning of December 22, eighteen days after the accident. The Anatolia hospital administrator, whose name was Jacobs, realized too late that there was much more interest in their John Doe patient than anyone had anticipated. A half hour before the scheduled conference the boardroom was overflowing with representatives of the media, including a dozen or more from the foreign press services and TV networks. Journalists with no place to sit and camera crews without space to set up their equipment were in an uproar. The cafeteria was then closed, despite the inconvenience, and they moved everyone there. The noise and confusion disrupted the choir, composed of hospital volunteers, who had gathered in Dickensian costume in the lobby to sing carols for patients and their families. The lead soprano, wife of a prominent patron of Anatolia Community Hospital, flew into a tizzy and went home. Dr. Edwards was unavoidably detained and the journalists gathered in the cafeteria became vocal again, particularly when a rumor went around that they weren't going to see John Doe in person.
ABC complained to CBS. "What a hell of a way to run a press conference."
"Amateurs," the Daily News groused.
There was a further delay when no one could seem to find the folder of photographs of the young man that were to be handed out. Finally, at eleven forty-two, Edwards walked in with Jacobs and sat down in front of eleven microphones, sitting back a little too far so that he had to lean toward them when his first words were hard to hear. The television lights emphasized his leanness, the deep sockets of his eyes.
"Good morning. I'm Dr. James Edwards, chief of neurological services at the hospital. I'd like to read a brief statement on which Mr. Jacobs and I have collaborated, and then I'll be glad to answer as many of your questions as I can."
"Where's the mystery man? Don't we get to see him?"
Edwards ignored the demands from various parts of the cafeteria, staring at the sheet of paper in his hands.
"On Friday, December four, an accident victim was brought to Anatolia Community Hospital by police. He had been struck by a vehicle in the vicinity of the covered bridge in Tremont Park. His condition upon being admitted was stable. He did not appear to have serious injuries; but he was unconscious and remained so for nearly eleven hours. We were not able to establish his identity when he was admitted, and as of this morning we still do not know who he is."
Barry had slipped into the cafeteria while the attention of the journalists was focused on the doctor and on the photos of John Doe that were being distributed as he spoke. When Edwards paused, he was asked three questions at once.
"Let's proceed one at a time, otherwise there's bound to be confusion." He paused to hear a question from the reporter for the Gannett chain. "John Doe is five feet eleven and a half inches tall and now weighs one hundred and seventy-seven pounds. His hair is black, his eyes black. He is approximately twenty-one years of age. Yes?"
The young woman from the National Enquirer was on her feet. She was a red-haired aggressive snip who had been hanging around the hospital for several days. She'd easily established the connection between Barry and the young man and had been pestering Barry for an interview.
"Won't his dental charts help in establishing his identity?"
"He's never had any dental work done. His teeth are in perfect condition. His fingerprints are not on file with any law enforcement agency. He also lacks scars or marks that might aid in identification. Including, I might add, a vaccination
scar."
This statement caused a lot of comment; Edwards waited for the assembly to quiet down, then chose another questioner.
"I'm told there's no such medical condition as total amnesia."
"Global amnesia may be a more appropriate term, but whatever we choose to call it, the condition is extremely rare; and I've never heard of a case like this one. We have good reasons to doubt that he should be categorized as amnesiac."
"Is it true he has to be toilet-trained?" a seedy-looking man in a tartan vest loudly inquired.
Edwards ignored him and continued, "At this point, after tests, observation, and consultations with experts in the field, we have determined that John Doe's condition is not due to structural or metabolic changes in the brain."
"You mean he's not brain-damaged?" the Times asked.
"He is not."
"But he's suffering from aphasia," the Times persisted.
"In John Doe's case the proper term is mutism. The effect is the same. He has a nearly total inability to understand spoken and written language. But we have noticed some modification in this condition during the last two or three days."
"Is it possible that he understands only an obscure language?" Metromedia asked.
"We did consider that," Edwards replied. "One of my daughter's projects for her high school course in international relations was to assemble a tape with as many different examples of modern language as she could come up with. My understanding is that in New York City it's possible to hear more than sixty-five root languages or dialects spoken on any given day. I borrowed the tape that she and her classmates made at the UN and played it for John Doe on three occasions. He was not responsive."