The Touch

by F. Paul Wilson

  He intended to acquire that proof tonight, sometime after 9:00. But first he wanted a tête-à-tête with Bulmer.

  “So that’s the Hour of Power, ay?” Bulmer said, looking down at the sine waves flowing through the EEG laid out on his bed.

  “If you want to call it that.”

  Bulmer looked at him. “You never give in, do you?”

  “Not often.”

  “And you say my PET scan is better?”

  “Minimally, yes.”

  “Then I might as well get out of here.”

  “No!” Charles said, a bit more quickly and loudly than he would have liked. “Not yet. I just want to hook you up to the EEG tonight and have you use your so-called power on a patient while we’re recording.”

  Bulmer frowned, looking distracted.

  “Are you all right?” Charles said.

  Bulmer shrugged. “Something bad happened today. I felt it around midday. Don’t ask me what it is, I don’t know. But…” He shrugged again. “Maybe this place is getting on my nerves. I’m bored out of my mind.”

  “You’ve come this far. What difference is another twenty-four hours going to make?”

  Alan shook his head again. “Do you know how many times I’ve said those exact words to inpatients with hospitalitis? Thousands!” He sighed. “Okay. One more day and then I’m out of here.”

  “Right.” Charles turned at the door. He didn’t want to ask this question, but he needed the answer. “By the way, how do you make this bloody power work?”

  “What power?” Bulmer said with a smile. “The one that doesn’t exist?”

  “Yes. That one.”

  He scratched his head. “I don’t really know. When the hour’s on, I just put my hand on the person and sort of…will it.”

  “Just touching them in passing’s not enough?”

  “No. Many times I’ve done a physical on someone—ENT, heart, lungs, blood pressure, and so on—and nothing’s happened. Then I’ve found something, wished it gone and”—he shrugged—“it goes.”

  Charles saw the light in Bulmer’s eyes and realized for the first time that the man was a true healer, power or no power. Charles knew plenty of physicians who loved the practice of medicine—ferreting out the cause of a problem and then eliminating it. Bulmer was that sort, too, but Charles had come to see that he had another, almost mystical dimension. He wanted to heal. Not merely to stamp out the disease, but to make a person whole again, and he was bloody damned elated when he could. You could be taught to do the first; you had to be born to do the second.

  And damned if he wasn’t starting to like the man.

  “Do you have to know the diagnosis?”

  “I don’t know. I usually know because I talk to them and examine them.” He cocked an eyebrow toward Charles. “Just like a real doctor.”

  “Do you feel anything when it happens?”

  “Yeah.” His eyes got a faraway look. “I’ve never shot dope or snorted cocaine, but it must be something like that.”

  “That good?”

  “Great.”

  “And the patients? Do they all have seizures?”

  “No. Mr. K probably had his because all of a sudden his brain metastases were gone and that triggered something. A lot of them seem to feel a brief pain in the target organ, but he’s the only one ever to seizure on me. Why the interest all of a sudden?”

  Charles started for the door again and did not look back. “Just curious.”

  Since it was Sunday night and there were no technicians around, he had brought the EEG telemetry set to Bulmer’s room and hooked him up himself. Just as well. He didn’t want an audience tonight. The leads were now fastened to his scalp and the telemetry pack hooked to his belt. Charles flicked the switch and started transmission.

  He checked his watch: 9:05. High tide was scheduled for 9:32. The Hour of Power had begun and it was time for Charles to perform the most difficult task of his life.

  “I want you to meet someone.”

  He went to the door and motioned Julie in from where she had been waiting.

  “Dr. Bulmer,” he said as she stepped into the room, “I’d like to introduce my daughter, Julie.”

  A look of confusion passed over Bulmer’s face, then he stepped up to Julie, smiled, and shook her hand.

  “Hello, Ms. Axford!” he said with a bow. “Do come in.”

  Julie threw Charles an uncertain look but he smiled and motioned her forward. He had warned her that the man would have wires on his head, but had said nothing else beyond the fact that they were going to meet a man he knew. He couldn’t bring himself to say anything more than that, couldn’t risk allowing the slightest glimmer of hope to glow in her when he didn’t dare hope himself.

  Bulmer made a big fuss over Julie, seating her in his chair, finding her a Pepsi in his little refrigerator.

  “I can only have two ounces,” she told him.

  He paused and then nodded. “Then that’s all you shall have.”

  He turned on the telly for her, and as she turned her attention to a situation comedy, Alan turned to Charles.

  “When’s her next dialysis?”

  Charles was speechless for a few seconds. “Did Sylvie tell you?”

  He shook his head. “Didn’t even know you were a father. I saw how pale she was, the puffiness around her eyes, and then I spotted the fistula when her cuff slipped up. Care to tell me about it?”

  Charles made the long story short—chronic atrophic pyelonephritis due to congenital ureteral atresia, a contracted bladder, donor rejection, high cytotoxic antibody titers.

  “Poor kid,” Bulmer said, and there was genuine feeling in his eyes. But not all of it seemed to be for Julie.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?” Charles asked.

  Bulmer tapped his forehead. “I can imagine what it cost you up here to bring her to me.”

  He went over and talked to Julie, gradually drawing her away from the telly. She responded to him, and soon she was babbling on and on about her dialysis treatments and how she measured her daily fluids and took her dozens of pills. Charles found himself responding to Bulmer, almost wishing, despite his abhorrence of the very thought of being in private practice, that he had his knack with people.

  Suddenly Bulmer grasped both of Julie’s shoulders and closed his eyes for a second. He shuddered and Julie gave a little cry of pain.

  Charles leaped toward her. “What’s wrong?”

  “My back!”

  He could feel his teeth baring as he turned toward Bulmer. “What did you do to her?”

  “I think she’ll be all right now.”

  “I’m okay, Daddy,” Julie said. “He didn’t touch my back. It just started to hurt.”

  Not knowing what to think, Charles hugged Julie to him.

  “You’re pretty lucky with your timing, you know,” Bulmer said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Bringing her here during the Hour of Power.”

  “It wasn’t luck. I used the tide chart.”

  Bulmer looked at him as if he were crazy. “Tide chart? What’s that got to do with it?”

  “It’s high tide now. That’s what brings on your so-called Hour of Power.”

  “It does? When did you find that out? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Charles felt a cool lump of dread settle on the back of his neck. “You don’t remember me telling you?”

  “Of course not! You never did!”

  Charles had no intention of arguing with him. He called radiology and ordered a repeat PET scan in the morning, top priority. He had a dreadful suspicion as to the cause of Bulmer’s cognitive deficits and abnormal scans.

  But right now he wanted to get Julie home. It was time for her dialysis.

  They said good-bye to the slightly confused Alan Bulmer and headed for the elevator. He let Julie press all the buttons, and she seemed as happy as a clam until they were about halfway to the ground floor. Suddenly she leaned forward and be
nt her knees, jamming her thighs together.

  “Oh, Daddy, it hurts!”

  Alarmed, he crouched beside her. “Where?”

  “Down there!” she cried, pointing toward her pubic region. Then she was sobbing. “And it’s all wet!”

  He looked and saw the wet stain spreading down her thighs, turning her jeans a darker shade of blue. The air within the elevator car filled with the unmistakable ammonia odor of the urine that was pouring out of a child who hadn’t produced more than an ounce a week for years, pouring into a bladder that had forgotten how to hold it.

  Charles hugged his daughter against him as his chest threatened to explode. He closed his eyes in a futile attempt to muffle the sobs that racked his body from head to toe, and to hold back the tears that streamed down his cheeks.

  42

  Alan

  “When can we expect you?” Sylvia’s voice said from the phone.

  Alan longed to be with her on this sunny Monday morning. Now that his stay at the Foundation was nearly over, every extra minute here seemed like an eternity. He wished she were stretched out beside him on the bed right now.

  “In a few hours.”

  “In time for dinner?”

  “I sure hope so. The food here isn’t bad, but institutional food is institutional food. After dinner I’ll see what I can do for Jeffy.”

  There was a pause on the other end, then: “Are you sure he’ll be all right?”

  “Can he be any worse?”

  “Not much.” Her voice suddenly brightened. “Anyway, it’ll be nice to have a doctor around the house again.”

  “Not for long. I’ll move into a motel and start getting the insurance straightened out on the house and get construction going on a new place.”

  “Alan Bulmer! You are staying here with me, and that’s final!”

  Her words warmed him. This was what he had wanted her to say, but he still felt compelled to put up a show of resistance.

  “What will the neighbors say?”

  “Who cares? What can either of us do to make our reputations any worse?”

  “Good point, Mrs. Toad. I’ll see you later.” If I can remember how to get back to Monroe.

  As Alan hung up, he glanced down at the morning headlines screaming about some bizarre occurrence near the Central Park turtle pond yesterday. Was that what had so disturbed him?

  Then Axford walked in without knocking. He took three paces in from the doorway and stood there, staring at Alan. His face was pale and lined and haggard. He looked physically and emotionally exhausted.

  “Her BUN is down to twenty-six,” he said in a flat voice. “Her creatinine is down to two-point-seven. Both are still dropping. We spent most of the night running back and forth to the loo until about four a.m., when her sphincters started toning up and her bladder started stretching.” His voice quavered and Alan could see the muscles of his throat working. “Her renal sonogram shows both kidneys have enlarged since her previous study, and a renal-flow scan shows normal function.”

  Alan was completely baffled. “Charles, is something wrong?”

  He closed his eyes and took a deep, tremulous breath. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his eyes. Then he looked at Alan again.

  “What ever you want that I have or can get for you is yours. Just say the word. My right hand? I’ll cut it off. My balls? Say the word.”

  Alan laughed. “Just get me out of here! And tell me what the hell you’re talking about!”

  Axford’s eyes widened. “You really don’t know?”

  “Know what?”

  “Oh, Christ! I—” He glanced over at the chair. “Can I sit down?”

  Once he was seated, he faced Alan squarely and leaned forward. He seemed more in control of himself now and started to speak in low, measured tones.

  Charles told Alan how he had cured Julie, Charles’ daughter, of her chronic renal failure last night. And with each word Alan felt a terrible sick feeling grow within him, because he did not remember seeing Charles since yesterday afternoon, and didn’t remember ever knowing that he had a daughter.

  “All this leads to what I’m about to say, which is going to be tough for you to hear. But you’ve got to know and you’ve got to do something about it.”

  Charles paused, then said:

  “You’ve got to stop using the Touch.”

  “What?”

  “It could kill you.”

  Alan’s mind whirled. How could something that healed kill him?

  “I don’t understand.”

  “That repeat PET scan you had this morning—it shows a significant increase in the nonfunctional areas of your brain.”

  “And you think there’s a connection?”

  “I’m sure of it. Look: You say your memory has deteriorated during the past few months. The Touch started a few months ago. Your baseline PET scan was abnormal and consistent with Alzheimer’s. After a couple of days of not using the power, your PET scan improved and so did your mental function. Then you used the Touch last night and suddenly forgot that the Hour of Power coincides with high tide.”

  “It does?” It was news to Alan.

  Charles ran a hand over his eyes. “This is worse than I thought. We discussed it Saturday, and again last night. I even showed you an EEG of yours that demonstrated it.”

  “Jesus.” He felt sick.

  “Right. Bloody damn Jesus. So with your short-term memory all shot to bloody hell, and your PET scan this morning significantly worse than yesterday morning’s, there’s only one conclusion I can come to. How about you?”

  Alan sat in numb silence for a moment, then: “My brain’s shutting down.”

  “Not by itself it isn’t, mate. Bit by bit, a little piece of who you are and what you are gets eaten up by this power every time you use it.”

  “But you just said my second scan was better.”

  “Right. By not using the power, your brain function improved an infinitesimal degree. By using the power once—and remember it or not, you cured the most precious person in the world to me last night—you knocked out a grossly appreciable area of your brain.”

  Alan jumped to his feet and paced, his heart pounding, his stomach in a knot. He didn’t want to believe what he had heard.

  “You’re sure of this?”

  “It’s all there on the scans. It comes down to the ratio of a centimeter forward over a period of two days to a meter backward in an instant.”

  “But if I’m really careful, I can rest up, so to speak, and use the Touch judiciously.”

  He was grasping at straws, he knew, but he was desperate. He kept thinking of the people who needed that power to live. He thought of Jeffy. He couldn’t possibly say no after he had promised Sylvia.

  “You ever play Russian roulette?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Well, it’s the same thing. You’ve already damaged lots of nonvital parts of your brain. But what happens if you knock out the basal ganglia, or the motor cortex, or the limbic system, or the respiratory center? Where does that leave you?”

  Alan didn’t reply. They both knew the answer: Parkinsonism, paralysis, psychosis, or death. Some choice.

  “One more thing I should warn you about,” Axford said. “Senator McCready will be expecting to have a meeting with you tonight.”

  “Tonight? Why tonight? I expect to be gone by then.”

  “He has myasthenia gravis, if you get my drift.”

  Alan got the drift. “Oh.”

  “Right. It’s a decision you’ll have to make when the time comes. But I wanted to be sure you knew all the risks.”

  “Thanks. I appreciate that.” He smiled at a grim thought. “Maybe I should write all this down. I might not remember it an hour from now. But no matter what the risk, there’s one person who’s got to get a dose of the Touch.”

  “Who?”

  “Jeffy.”

  Charles nodded. “That would be wonderful, wouldn’t it?”

  H
e stood and thrust out his hand. “I’ll send you a copy of my report. But in case I don’t see you before you go, remember: You have a friend for life, Alan Bulmer.”

  When he was gone, Alan lay back on the bed and reviewed all Charles had told him. It still seemed clear to him. His retention seemed good at the moment. But knowing that there were pieces of his memory missing—maybe permanently—terrified him. For what was anyone but a sum of their memories? Where he had been, the things he had done, why he had done them: They all made him Alan Bulmer. Without them he was a cipher, a tabula rasa, a newborn.

  Alan shuddered. He had made his share of mistakes, but he liked who he was. He didn’t want to be erased. He wanted to remain Alan Bulmer.

  But what of the senator? If McCready could save his reputation and tell the world that Dr. Alan Bulmer was not a charlatan or a nut, then Alan would owe him. And he would pay that debt.

  But Jeffy came first. Nothing would stop him from putting the Touch to work on Jeffy. And if the senator wanted to give it a try after that, fine. But Jeffy came first.

  After all that was settled up, maybe it would be time for him to go away with Sylvia and Jeffy for a while to recharge the batteries. When he returned, he’d get his life in order, get everything into perspective, and try to get back into a regular practice. And maybe save the Dat-tay-vao for rare cases of dire need.

  One thing was certain: He would not allow himself to fall into the rut that had put such distance between Ginny and him.

  No, sir. Alan Bulmer was going to learn to say no once in a while.

  43

  Charles

  “Dr. Axford!” Marnie said, running up to him as he entered the corridor. “I’ve been looking all over for you!”

  She looked positively frazzled. “What’s up, Love?”

  “Those two new assistants of yours came down to your office and just about emptied your safe!”

  “What? Did you call security?”

  “They were wearing security uniforms!”