Flashback

Nick crossed the lobby, which was appointed in marble and brass, red oriental rugs, and gold leather sofas and chairs. As was characteristic, Gavin himself had worked with designers. Basically it was a Gavin Moy decor. So was the large aquarium in the middle of the floor, its brightly colored sea life looking like Christmas ornaments floating in the air.

Nick’s heels clicked on the marble as he walked to the structure that sat like a fairyland column of coral, anemones, sea fans, long diaphanous grasses, and a bewildering variety of polychrome tropical fish. It was GEM’s showpiece, which Gavin Moy had specially designed and which cost a small fortune. According to him, this was one of the few Kreisel nonpublic aquariums. And what distinguished the setup were its unique water inlets and outlets—essential so that its special residents were suspended in the middle of the tank and didn’t get sucked into the filters. To add to the complicated filtration and fluid dynamics, sophisticated monitors maintained the proper temperature as well as delicate chemical and biological levels. In addition to the special filter system and chilling unit, a separate breeder tank provided brine shrimp as a substitute for plankton, the creatures’ natural diet. This was not your average pet shop fish tank.

Nor were those pulsing bulbs with the meter-long tentacles your average fish tank denizen. These creatures were the real celebrities of this bottled reef and the secret source of the endless blue skies above, the iconic genus of GEM Neurobiological Technologies—the elusive Solakandji.

The fifty-billion-dollar jellyfish.

18

RENÉ FOUND JACK KORYAN IN THE intensive care unit of Mass General Hospital.

Sitting with him was his wife, Beth, a slender, attractive woman with thick dark shoulder-length hair that was streaked blond. Her complexion was pale, as if she were getting over the flu. Her brown eyes were bloodshot—probably from a lack of sleep—giving her a muddy glance.

René introduced herself and explained that she was the consulting pharmacist and an associate of Dr. Nicholas Mavros. “I just wanted to come by to see how he was doing.” And to put a face to the brain images.

The woman didn’t seem to care who she was or why she was there. “This is Jack.” Her voice was flat.

On the windowsill sat a double frame containing two color photographs of Jack—one of him standing with a male friend, the other a close-up solo that made René aware of how handsome he was—a man with black curly hair, a disarming smile, and lively exotic eyes. He was dressed in a black T-shirt that showed a well-built upper body. It was difficult to believe it was the same man in the bed. What struck her about the close-up photo were Jack Koryan’s eyes. They looked like shards of peridots and vaguely familiar.

“That’s his friend Vince Hammond,” Beth explained, watching René examining the photos. “They were business partners, or would have been.” Then Beth muttered “Shit!” under her breath and looked away.

Nearly two weeks had lapsed since the accident and, according to the nurse, the news was good. Jack Koryan was off the ventilator. But he was still a shocking sight. His body was slightly bloated, and the silver nitrate for his open sores had turned his skin black. The blisters across his torso and legs had eventually dried up and had to be surgically debrided—the dead skin being cut away, leaving red patches against the yellow. He looked as if he had been painted for camouflaging. His scalp and ears were scabbed, and his lips were gray. His feet and fingers had been freshly dressed against lesions. His arms were connected to IVs, and a percutaneous gastrostomy tube had been surgically inserted through the wall of his stomach so he could feed—standard for unconscious patients. Machines monitored his vital functions including his brain waves. It was hard to believe he had survived the attack.

“The nurse says that the brain swelling has subsided and he’s responsive to sensory stimulation—which is good news.”

Beth nodded glumly. “His EEG is only four Herz; six to eight is for normal sleep. He’s still unconscious. How’s that good news?”

René let the jab pass. “Well, every brain injury is unique; so is the rate of recovery. He could just pop awake.”

“I don’t believe that.” Then she placed her hand on his arm. “Jack, it’s Beth. Please wake up. You’ve got a visitor. What did you say your name is?”

René told her again and studied Jack while Beth spoke to him in a flat, neutral voice. But there was no sign of response—not a twitch of an eyelid or a finger, not a hitch in his breathing.

“The doctors call it a persistent vegetative state.” She made an audible humpf. “More like he’s dead.”

Mercifully, her father had never passed into a coma, at least not technically. Toward the end he was conscious and unconscious at the same time. He could sit up in bed or in a wheelchair, move his eyes and hands. But inside he was nearly blanked out. And that’s what René could not take: the loss of recognition that animated the face, the vacant stare, the sudden spike of fright, the reduction of his mind to brain-stem reflexes, his strong voice and articulate words reduced to grunts, his bright eyes to blown fuses. A gaga thing attached to a diaper.

Thank God he had made her promise to let him die. He knew what was coming. It was his final gift to her.

“His vital signs look good,” René said, nodding at the steady beat of the monitors.

“I don’t know,” Beth said. “He’s had some kind of seizures and bad dreams that make him agitated and get that thing jumping all over the place.”

“But that means there’s activity in the frontal and occipital lobes, so his memory and vision sectors are functioning. And there’s no indication from the MRIs that he’d suffered a stroke.”

As René watched the persistent pulse on the monitors, she wondered what if anything was going on inside Jack’s mind. Was he dreaming or aware of his condition, or just suspended in a profound void? His brain had been saturated with the chemistry of Memorine. God knows what he might remember were he to even wake up.

“He never should have been out there. It’s got an undertow and all those damn poisonous fish and things. But no! And now he’s locked inside himself.” Then she looked at René in exasperation. “He could go on forever like this, right? Jesus!” she said in exasperation.

René could hear anger and resentment coiling around Beth Koryan’s words as if Jack had done this to her. The more Beth talked, the more it became clear that their marriage had not been a healthy, solid one—a suspicion that explained Beth’s chilly manner and the fact that there were no happy photographs of the two together.

“Who found him?”

“The Coast Guard. He was supposed to catch the water taxi back by seven, and when he didn’t show up by nine and didn’t answer his cell phone, the rental guy called.”

“It’s lucky they got to him in time.” The woman was not easily consoled, and this was the best René could come up with.

“Is it?”

The question squirmed between them. “Of course.”

Beth shrugged. “The thing is, he loved the sea. Look at that, I’m talking in the past tense already, like he’s dead. But he did—It’s in his blood, like his mother, which is kind of ironic, his getting himself poisoned, kind of like the ocean betrayed him. Those goddamn things show up something like three times in the last fifty years. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

René noticed that the woman’s fingernails had been bitten to the quick.

“He could go on like this for years. Just lie there with these fucking tubes and wires and just shrivel up.”

“And he could still wake up any time.”

But it was as if Beth didn’t hear her, locked in some long-running narrative. “It’s all my fault. I shouldn’t have let him go alone. We had a fight, nothing new, and … now this is what we’ve got to live with.”

It seemed as if the woman had already consigned Jack to permanent unconsciousness and herself a life of bedside wife. And what René was hearing was blame and resentment.

Suddenly one of the machines made a double chirp. And on the screen the green little sawteeth made a series of ugly spikes.

“Shit! Another seizure,” Beth said, and got up. “Jack, calm down.”

He let out a high-pitched whine at the same time his eyes snapped open—so open that René half-expected his eyeballs to explode from their sockets.

“Amaaaaa!”

The sound cut through René like shrapnel. His voice must have carried, or somebody at the head desk was checking the monitors, because two nurses dashed into the room. Jack was thrashing and pulling against the lines connected to him. The nurses worked to restrain him since Jack was trying to rise from the bed to follow his cries, his eyes huge and staring at something that was terrifying him.

“Jesus, what’s happening to him?” Beth cried.

Jack continued babbling nonsense syllables.

“It doesn’t even sound like him. His voice. That isn’t his voice. It sounds like … a child.”

It did. And nobody said anything as the nurses tried to hold him down because Jack was pulling against his dressing and the tubes, his eyes bulging and focused on nothing across the room, but something awful swirling behind them.

“Ahamman maideek amaaa …,” Jack continued babbling.

“What’s he saying?” Beth asked.

“Maideek.”

“It sounds like ‘mighty’ something.”

Jack muttered more syllables. “Ammama …”

“I think he’s saying ‘Mama,’” René said.

“That’s not unusual,” one of the nurse replied. “Patients under stress even in comas call for their mothers.”

“That happens a lot,” the other nurse added. “We hear it all the time.”

“Except Jack didn’t have a mother.”

René looked at Beth. “What?”

“She died when he was a baby, and he was brought up by his aunt and uncle. He never called anyone mama.”

Jack started thrashing again, and to calm him down the smaller nurse produced a syringe of Valium and emptied it into Jack’s IV. In a minute or so, Jack gasped and deflated against his pillow, his eyes pulsing against closing lids until he slipped back to sleep with a solitary sigh rising from his lungs.

But before that happened, his eyes shot open again and he looked directly at René. And through his crusted mouth still glistening with analgesic ointment he formed the syllables: “Mama.”

“MAMA”

Jack Koryan was at the door again. He could hear the wind outside, but that was all. He was safe to go out and the knob wasn’t frozen again, so he turned until he heard the latch come free.

Instantly the door sucked open and in the flare he saw the large pointed creature standing over the big mouse, its feet twitching as the club came cracking down on it.

Then the door slammed shut and Jack was back in the cage.

And outside the night raged and flared.

Then all began to fade like distant thunder as black air mercifully closed around him.

19

Hartford, Connecticut

“SURE, I REMEMBER HOW TO GET there,” said William Zett, sitting in the passenger seat of his sister’s car.

Greg Lainas drove while his wife MaryAnn sat in the back seat. It was late Sunday morning, a beautiful early September day with a big blue sky filled with sudsy white puffs of clouds. One of those days that reminded you of childhood.

“Yeah, turn up here,” William said. Then it came to him. “South Street.”

“Son of a gun,” Greg said. “You’ve got the memory of an elephant.”

“Told you,” William said proudly. “Then you take a … let’s see … a left onto Campfield Ave.” The name then opened up in his head like a flower. “Goodwin Park.”

“Heck, maybe you can get Dr. Habib to get some of those magic pills for me, too.”

“Yeah, ask him for the both of us,” MaryAnn said with a chuckle. Then she turned toward Greg in a voice loud enough that William could hear. “Do you know the other day he started reciting one of his physics lectures. Come on, tell him, William. You know, the Heisenberger something-or-other principle, or whatever.”

“Heisenberg uncertainty principle.”

“Yeah, that’s it. Come on, let Greg hear it.”

William hemmed and hawed then after Greg and MaryAnn’s prodding he said, “I don’t know, something like … the simultaneous measurement of two variables like momentum and position …” He closed his eyes as it all came back to him the way it did the other day, as if receiving instructions beamed to him from afar. “Energy and time for a moving particle entails a limitation on the precision of each measurement. The more precise the measurement of position, the more imprecise the measurement of momentum, and vice versa.” Then he closed his eyes tight and thought. “Delta p times delta q is greater or equal to Planck’s constant over four pi. And delta E times delta t is greater or equal to Planck’s constant over four pi.”

And MaryAnn and Greg cheered, “Yeaaaaaa!”

“God, just a few months ago he couldn’t put a simple sentences together, now he’s doing quantum mechanics again.”

And William felt a warm glow of pride in his chest. He had taught physics at the University of Hartford for thirty-seven years before being forced to retire. He could have taught well into his seventies, but he had begun to fade.

“Speaking of pie, you’re going to love dessert. And nothing uncertain about that.”

They pulled into the parking lot beside the old watering hole, the playground off to the right through the trees. The original lot had been dirt, but it had been asphalted over and security lights now sat atop some poles. The area had not been expanded as had other town playgrounds—none of those fancy new wooden climbing complexes that looked like little fortresses with castellated towers, bridges, handlebars, and tubular slides, et cetera. The swings were the same, although they had been repainted a hundred times, and the monkey bars had been replaced, as had the sandy play area. The two slides, Big Shot and Little Shot, as the kids had called them, looked the same. And they sat maybe thirty feet apart.

“God, I don’t think I’ve been back here since the fifties,” said MaryAnn, who had packed a picnic lunch for the three of them. While William walked around the playground structures, she and her husband spread a tablecloth across one of the wooden tables and laid out the food and plates.

Meanwhile, William shuffled over to the swing, his feet kicking through the familiar fine yellow sand. He didn’t think it was the same old chain that held up the seats, but it was long and rusty as he remembered it. He could still feel the cold metal in his hands as he gripped it and sat in the seat. He could still smell the funny rusty iron odor that the chain left in a moist grip. He lowered himself onto one of the swings.

“Want a push?” MaryAnn hollered from the table. She laughed and waved.

William waved back. “I can handle it.”

He gripped the chain and it all came back to him in a rush—his feet pushing himself back against the seat until he was standing, then he raised his feet and felt himself swing forward, pushing his body forward and back until he established momentum and was swinging with the steady period of a clock pendulum.

Amazing, as if it were just a membrane away. He closed his eyes. It must have been sixty-five years since he had last done this. But it seemed like …

“Hey, Billy.”

Billy opened his eyes, and a hot flame flared in his chest. It was Bobby Tilden on the Big Slide near by. Bobby the Bully. And behind him were three other kids, including Annette, the girl up the street Billy was crazy about.

“Come on, or you gonna chicken out again?”

“Hey, William, you’re looking good, kiddo.”

“But watch your neck,” MaryAnn shouted. Then to her husband she said, “He’s got that slick jogging suit on, he could slide right off the seat.”

“He’s fine,” Greg said. “Hold on tight,” he shouted to his brother.

William nodded and looked toward the slide.

He was scared. Heart-banging, dry-spit scared, pants-wetting scared.

“Hey, Peepee Boy!” shouted Bobby Tilden, grinning with his broken-tooth smile and sly fox eyes and the baseball cap in a rebel slant. “Come on up. Or you ‘fraid of wetting your pants again?”

Other kids on the slide and at the bottom joined in the taunt to give it a try—the Big Slide, what the older kids did—kids ten and up. Billy had tried it before, but it was very high and fast, and he did chicken out and had to climb back down the ladder, which caused everybody to make fun of him, and Bobby called him Peepee Boy and knocked him down and gave him a knuckle haircut that made him cry while everybody hooted with glee.

Billy got off the swing and shuffled toward the Big Slide with the clutch of kids at the bottom—Philly, Michael Riccardi, Larry Ahearn, and Francine with the big yellow buck teeth and Snookie B. in the dirty sailor cap—waving him over and jeering, hoping he’d humiliate himself and chicken out again, wet his pants. At the top, Bobby Tilden snorted deeply and spit a clam that landed near Billy’s feet. Then he let out a whooping cry and slid down the slide with his hands and sneakers in the air. He landed on his feet, and the others let out a cheer.

Mikey Riccardi was next. He came flying down lying straight out. At the last minute he lifted his feet and came down on his backside flat. Two more kids came down, all pushing each other from the top of the ladder. Then Bobby raced back up, taunting Billy to join them. This time Bobby came down on his belly, letting out a yowl all the way. He smacked the yellow earth and got up spitting and covered with yellow sand on his front. And the other kids went wild.

“You’re next,” they said to Billy.

“William, lunch time.”

Billy’s heart pounded as he made his way to the ladder. The others formed a wall around him so he couldn’t run off at the last minute. Philly pushed him in the back to climb up. There was no backing off now, and he thought that if there was ever a time he wanted to die, this was it. One by one he climbed the rungs toward Bobby, who grinned down at him from the top, green-jelly snot bubbling in his nostrils, his chipped tooth flashing at him, his dirty face in a demon grin as he watched Billy climb.

“William, what are you doing up there? You’re going to break your neck.”

“Come on, Peepee Boy.” And Bobby slid down to give him room.

At the top, Billy looked down the long shiny metal slide that seemed to go on forever, the knot of kids below arms waving and shouting for him to do it, don’t be a chicken.

“Will-iam?”

“BIL-LY BIL-LY BIL-LY …”

Billy’s heart thudded painfully as he held his breath and said a silent prayer. Then eyes closed, he shot down the slide. At the last moment he caught himself and landed on his feet. And the kids cheered. For a protracted moment he could not believe how easy it was, and how great it felt.

“Way to go, bro,” somebody shouted. “Now, come on and have your lunch.”

To the hooting of the other kids he climbed back up and came down again. Easy as pie, as his mom always said.

“How about on your back if you’re so cool?” Bobby sneered at him.

Billy wanted to go home, but he had to take the challenge. So he climbed back up the slide. At the top, while the other kids watched, he took a deep breath and stretched himself out, and when Bobby cried “Go” he shot down and at the last minute he caught himself and landed on his feet, nearly losing his balance.

“William, that’s enough of that,” the woman said.

“Now headfirst,” Bobby said, his face in a slick grin like J. Worthington Foulfellow.

“William.” A man was approaching Billy from the picnic table under the trees. He looked distantly familiar.

“Come on, Peepee Boy, or you gonna go running home to your mommy?”

“Yeah, scaredy-pants,” Philly C. shouted. He was Bobby’s best friend and did everything Bobby said.

“I’m not scared,” Billy heard himself say. But he was. So scared he felt himself begin to wet his underpants. But he couldn’t cop out now or they’d jeer him to tears then give him noogies and a pink belly in front of everybody, including Annette. He was as certain of that as he was of his own name—because that’s what had happened way back and every time he kept going back there in his head. But this time he had to show them. He had to. He had to.

“So, do it, Peepee Boy. Eyes closed, headfirst on your back, if you’re so cool. Or your ass is grass.”

Your ass is grass. It was Bobby’s favorite threat, although Billy didn’t know exactly what it meant.

Billy saw the man approach, so he climbed back up the ladder.

“What the hell are you doing, brother?”

But Billy paid him no attention—as if he were invisible or a ghost of another time.

At the top Billy sat down, his sneakers on the top rung. Below, the kids made a noisy clutch of arms and hats and dungarees and T-shirts that said Naylor Elementary. In the distance, at the picnic tables, were his parents and other parents drinking coffee out of big red Thermos jugs and watching all the kids playing. Billy’s mother cried out, “Careful, Billy.”

And Billy inched himself backward onto the slanting metal slide, his hands gripping the sides, then he lowered his back onto the warm polished metal, his head straight down. He could feel the heat rising, the sun in his face, his short little legs curled over the top, holding him in place, as he watched a white seabird slice across the blue.

“William, no!” cried his mother.

“Billy, go!” cried the kids.

And William Zett raised his legs and slid down the sun-slick trough, his face fist-tight, the hard blue sky running him along, the white bird freezing in flight.

His head jammed into the earth and he heard something in his neck snap like a Popsicle stick. And everything—the sky, the trees, the white bird, the man looking down on him—

“Oh, God, no!” went black.

20

EVEN AN HOUR AFTER SHE’D LEFT the hospital and was on 1-93 north to one of her rest homes in Concord, N.H., René could still hear Jack’s voice—and the image of his eyes cue-balled in his face as he stared at her transfixed with terror. Terror.

That was the only word for it. She didn’t have a clue what he was seeing as he gaped at her. But what kept playing in her head was that voice—that weird baby-talk voice.

“Mama.”

“Except Jack didn’t have a mother.”

The jangle of her cell phone snapped her back to the moment. It was the secretary at Broadview saying that it was urgent: Carter Lutz wanted to meet with her as soon as possible. René had no idea what the problem was, but she had a prowling sense it wasn’t good.

Half an hour later she reached the home, and as soon as she entered she felt the tension. “He’s waiting for you in his office,” the receptionist said.

René walked down the hall and tapped his door.

Carter Lutz opened it. He did not smile. “I appreciate your coming by.” He closed the door and indicated a seat opposite his desk. He settled in his chair. “I’ll get right to the point. The family of Edward Zuchowsky is taking legal action against this home, and you’ve been named in the lawsuit along with CommCare.”

“What? On what grounds?”

“Gross negligence in his death at the hands of Clara Devine.”

She could barely catch her breath. “That’s ridiculous. I never laid eyes on Edward Zuchowsky or Clara Devine.”

“That’s irrelevant. Within the next few days, Zuchowsky family lawyers will call on you for a deposition. How you respond is critical to the outcome and determination of damages.”

René looked at him in blank disbelief.

“But there’s something that can be done to avoid a horror show for all of us.” Lutz’s face appeared to sharpen. “First, let me ask you a question. Your work in this home is dedicated to raising the quality of life for elderly people, am I correct?”

She nodded numbly. “Yes, of course.”

“Then you wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize the well-being of our patients, correct?”

Another obvious question. René nodded.

“Or of the home?”

Nod.

“Good, because the welfare of Broadview is commensurate with that of our residents. Our moral mission is to our residents. Is that not so?”

Nod. And a worm slithered across René’s chest.

“What happened with Clara Devine was a terrible thing, and nobody knows what caused her to do what she did. But everybody associated with this home is responsible for keeping track of our patients and not letting them wander away.

“You’re new, but you can imagine that liability is something we worry about here. I don’t need to paint a picture, but lawsuits are horrible and the results can be destructive. But if you’re a team player, we can all help each other. If not, you’ll be alone in the dark.”

Team player.

“For your deposition, it is of the utmost importance that you keep in mind our highest priorities and exercise prudence and consistency.”

Silence filled the room as if the place were holding its breath. Finally René spoke. “What exactly are you asking me to do, Dr. Lutz?”

“I’m asking that you restrict all you know about the incident to the fact that there was an unfortunate failure in the security system, namely, that the locking mechanism had somehow failed and the security camera malfunctioned.”

“You mean you’re telling me to pretend that I never saw the video of Clara Devine letting herself out.”

“In so many words.” Lutz’s eyes were intense with conviction.

“And that I make no mention of Clara’s being enrolled in the Memorine trials?”

“Only because that’s totally irrelevant.”

“Dr. Lutz, you’re asking me to lie and, frankly, I’m not comfortable with that.”

Lutz’s eyes shrank to ball bearings. “You’d be a lot less comfortable with a ten-million-dollar lawsuit with your name on it.”

“But I never even laid eyes on Clara Devine or Edward Zuchowsky.”

“That may be so, but you’re employed to oversee residents’ medications. And lawyers can make ugly mountains out of molehills. It’s for your protection that we’re having this conversation.” He narrowed his eyes to say that she should be grateful.

“Forgive me, but violating the law and ethical standards is hardly protection.”

“Ms. Ballard, we are not talking about ethical standards, but a higher morality—which you agreed was for the welfare of our patients.”

“Clara Devine let herself out by tapping the security code. We all saw the video and I’m told she did that because of Memorine. So, why are we denying that?”

“Because if it becomes known that she was a subject in the clinical trials of a drug which may have made possible her escape, massive lawsuits would fly, and everybody associated with this home and GEM Tech would find themselves tied up in a legal free-for-all for years to come—the results of which could be suspension, heavy fines, exorbitant legal fees, and acrimony. It would almost certainly mean the termination of the development of a cure for Alzheimer’s disease. And that simply cannot happen.”

“But what you’re asking me to do is wrong.”

“Some abstract notion of right or wrong is not the point. It’s to do what’s right by our residents.”

“What about the others—nurses, doctors, administrators?”

“They’re in concurrence with our higher mission here.”

So, this was getting the new girl in line. “What about Clara Devine’s medical records? Surely the Zuchowsky lawyers will want to see if anything there can explain her attack.”

“Her records won’t be a problem.”

She looked at him in disbelief. “Altering medical records could cost us our licenses to practice.”

Lutz took a deep breath. “Ms. Ballard, what is proper and improper are relative matters since the circumstances are unique. Greater issues are at stake, namely, the beneficial outcome of this drug research. Secondly, there is absolutely no evidence connecting the compound with Mr. Zuchowsky’s death. Something in her just snapped.”

“But once the drug’s approved, won’t the Zuchowsky family wonder if Clara had been enrolled and attempt to raise a connection?”

“Not unless you say something about it, because I can assure you that the rest of the staff here will not.”

Jesus! He was putting the whole thing on her. “Do your lawyers know about the clinical trials?”

His face filled with blood. “No. And let me remind you that Clara Devine was suffering dementia and was known to have delusions even before the trials. Any speculation to the contrary could compromise the trials and the marketing of the compound.”

He was telling her to lie and everybody else would swear to it. Because we’re team players.

“You are, of course, free to hire your own attorney,” Lutz continued. “But I’m sure CommCare will provide you with one.”

She nodded, feeling confused and resenting how she was being manipulated. She wished she had never seen the videos, had never noticed the irregularities.

“As you may know, the locking system has been replaced, as has the camera.”

“What about the security video of Clara Devine?”

“I really don’t think that’s something that concerns you.”

“But I thought we were all team players.”

Carter Lutz’s eye twitched reflexively. “Let’s just say it’s no longer a liability.”

Translated: Destroyed.

Lutz closed his hands over the papers and stared at her. “So, are you with us?”

“I need some time to think this over. You’re asking me to compromise some basic professional ethics. You’re also asking me to withhold information from my employer—that because of Memorine, Clare Devine was able to elope from this home and kill someone.”

“There is absolutely no evidence that she did what she did because of the drug. And if you even breathe a hint that there’s a connection, the promise of a cure may be destroyed.”

Then his manner softened. “Look, Ms. Ballard, I’m asking you to put aside your self-concern and think of the residents in this home and the Alzheimer’s patients throughout this country—and throughout the world. Think of your residents. Think of anyone you’ve been close to who may have suffered or died from Alzheimer’s disease.”

She nodded.

“And while you’re thinking about it, I suggest you visit some of the residents who have experienced a miraculous turnaround. And I suggest you do so soon because lawyers will be calling on you any day.” He got up and walked to the door.

René followed him. But before he opened the door for her, he said, “And, it goes without saying, what we discussed in here is to be held in the utmost confidence.”

“Of course.” She left, feeling as if there were a nugget of ice at the core of her body.

21

THEY MOVED JACK TO A STEP-DOWN unit in another wing of the hospital.

He was still being monitored by machines but not at the same intensity level as in the ICU. It was still impossible to predict the speed of recovery. Or that it would ever happen.

“Mrs. Koryan, I know how difficult it is,” Dr. Heller said, “but I think we have to prepare for all eventualities and discuss long-term care for Jack. He may wake up in the next hour or day, but given the lack of progress in his condition it’s also possible he may go on indefinitely. I’ve arranged a meeting with his other physicians, hospital caseworkers, and an administrator from the insurance company.”

Beth knew what was coming.

“There are some very fine institutions in the area.”

“You mean nursing homes?”

“Well, that’s an option, but it doesn’t make sense for a man thirty-two years old to be put in a facility for elderly patients. There are fine rehabilitation centers in the area. I’m sure we’ll find the appropriate place. Do you have any in mind?”

“Greendale Rehab Center in Cabot,” she said. It was what that pharmacist René Ballard had recommended the other day.

“Yes, Greendale has an excellent reputation. In the meantime, we’re going to move him to Spaulding Rehab right next door.”

They wanted him out of the hospital as soon as possible, Beth thought. They had stabilized him, and their job was done. The rest was rehabbing his muscles, monitoring his vital functions, and just waiting for him to surface. She glanced at Jack, stuck wherever he was, his breathing the only sign beyond the electronics that he was alive.

“I’ll look into Greendale,” Beth said, and Dr. Heller left the room.

A few minutes later one of the machines made a double chirp. And on the screen the green sawteeth made a series of ugly spikes.

Jack began to wince and thrash. This lasted for almost a minute, then subsided. Ordinarily Beth would have called the nurse, but the spells usually passed.

As she looked down at Jack, so wan and withered, it crossed her mind that this was no life for either of them. And even if he were to wake up, it could be months or years from now. And what would they have? What would they do while she hung around nursing him back to health? And even if he got better, regained his memory and physical health, they’d be back to where they had left off—estranged at best. Wishing they were living somebody else’s lives.

She hated herself, but she had to admit to a thought which had several times wormed its way up from the recesses of her mind: That it would have been better if Jack had drowned.

22

“THEY’RE COMING BACK. I MEAN, if you saw them a year ago you wouldn’t believe it.”

René followed Alice Gordon down the corridor toward the dayroom, knowing that she was hoping to sway René into agreeing to the cover-up.

“At first, I thought it was my imagination—subtle little changes we chalked up to ward acclimation and fine-tuning their meds. But then we ran some cognitive tests. Something’s happening, and it’s for real.”

It was Monday morning, and René had returned to Broadview for the records that Dr. Carr had promised her. Also, to follow up on Carter Lutz’s suggestion that she meet the trial patients.

Because CommCare was named in the Zuchowsky suit, her boss, Mike Carvalho, had given her the name of the pharmacy’s lawyer who would contact her soon. He said he was also confident that the Zuchowskys had no case against her or CommCare—that neither she nor the pharmacy was negligent in their duties to Broadview, the residents, or the Zuchowskys. Of course, he had no idea about Memorine or what she had seen in that video. Meanwhile, because the records contained six months’ worth of data on Clara Devine, plus the four other phantom test subjects, it would take René days to transfer everything to her laptop. But a cursory check showed that for these patients on the trial drug a simple “T-drug 10 mgs” was recorded each morning, the nurses not even knowing GEM’s big little secret. When asked for an explanation, Alice replied, “What can I say? They told us that it was Dr. Carr’s project and he was taking full responsibility. They gave us two cards of pills, one labeled Trial, the other Placebo. It’s irregular, but I think they just wanted to keep everything mum until the data started accumulating.”

“Were residents’ families informed they were in the trial?”

“At first the patients were wards of the state, so there was no need for family consent. The lawyers took care of that, and nobody came by to visit. But you can get just so many wards.”

“So nobody outside the home knew about the trials.”

“Uh-uh. Now we’re enrolling patients with family consent, of course.”

“And how did the families react to the changes?”

“You can ask for yourself. But first I’d like you to meet Ernestine. She’s eighty-two years old, and two years ago she was admitted here with moderate Alzheimer’s.” They entered the activities room. At a table sat a little white-haired woman pasting cutout pictures of flowers onto colored paper. As they approached, René could hear her singing to herself.

“Mammy’s little baby loves short’nin, short’nin’, Mammy’s little baby loves short’nin’ bread.”

“Hi, Ernestine,” Alice said. “How you doing today?”

“Put on the skillet, put on the lead, Mammy’s gonna to make a little short ‘nin’ bread.” The woman slowly glanced up at the nurse and René, then looked back down to the puzzle. “Fine, thank you.”

“That’s good.”

“Mammy’s little baby loves short’nin’, short’nin’, Mammy’s little baby loves …”

“Ernestine, this is René. She’s come to say hello.”

“Hi, Ernestine. Nice to meet you. Those are pretty flowers.”

“It’s for my book.”

“Isn’t that nice. It looks like it’s coming along very well.” A small pile of pasted pages sat neatly beside her.

“I’m going to call it My Flower Book.”

“What a great title,” René said, a little distracted by the woman’s manner. She had pronounced the book’s title with the deliberate carefulness of a child.

“Mammy’s little baby loves short’nin’ bread.”

“Ernestine, do you remember me?” Alice asked.

Ernestine stopped singing and looked up at her again. “Oh, sure.” For a moment there was no light of recognition in the woman’s face. Then she looked at the woman’s nametag and said. “Can’t you read? You’re Alice.” And very slowly and deliberately she recited, “A-L-I-C-E. Alice!” And she went back to her puzzle. “Mammy’s little baby loves short’nin’ bread.”

“That’s great, Ernestine. I’m so proud of you.”

The woman smiled. And they moved away. “Two months ago I could walk in the room, tell her my name,” Alice said, “and twenty seconds later she’d ask me who I was. I’d tell her again, and another twenty seconds later she’d ask me who I was again. She could recognize the face, but forget about putting a name on it.” She shook her head in dismay. “If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn’t believe it.”

“That’s incredible.”

“Yes, and that’s what it’s all about.” And she gave René a knowing look—a wordless plea not to raise a flag—not to report the irregularities to the authorities.

“I hear you,” René said, still a little dazed by how complicated life had become. One word from her and all this could explode. “You think it’s the drug that brought back her reading?” She hadn’t seen Ernestine’s cognitive evaluations, but some early dementia residents still retained rudimentary reading powers.

“When she was admitted to Broadview two years ago she couldn’t read her own name. But I suppose the proof of the pudding is how she’s doing six months or a year from now.”

“You mean if she’s sitting there reading War and Peace.”

Alice laughed in relief. “Given the way things are heading, that may not be a joke.”

As they walked down the corridor, René remembered how common nouns for her father had faded into “whatchamacallits” and that to avoid the humiliating frustration, she had put big labels on objects around the house—“telephone,” “dish,” “lamp,” “fridge.” As his ability to read faded, he began making excuses about needing a new prescription for his glasses. Eventually the synaptic wiring got so clotted that written words were meaningless blotches and books were things that filled shelves.

Alice led René into a room where a woman bedridden with a fractured hip was sitting with her visiting son and daughter-in-law. Alice explained that Lorraine Budd, age eighty-one, had been diagnosed with moderate dementia when she was admitted over a year ago.

Alice made the introductions. “Hi, Lorraine, this is René.”

The woman had a pink face flecked with brown spots, but despite the discoloration and the soft folds of loose skin, René could see that she had been a beauty in her youth: the bright sapphire eyes and fleshy mouth and high intelligent forehead. Thick white hair was brushed back neatly and held by combs.

“I knew a René from school.”

“You did?”

“René St. Onge.”

“And you still remember her?”

“Oh, yes, we were best friends.”

“I’m impressed,” René said. “And where did you go to school?”

Without a moment’s hesitation she said, “North Central High in Kalamazoo, Michigan.”

“That’s amazing.”

Lorraine smiled proudly.

“And do you remember what year you graduated?” her son asked.

Lorraine frowned a bit as she thought about the question. “It was 1946. And I had poison ivy all over me. My face was all blown up and pink with the medicine. And it was very hot and I had to wear gloves to shake hands so people wouldn’t catch it.” She chuckled to herself.

“And do you remember your guest’s name here?” Alice nodded toward René.

“Yes, René like my friend René St. Onge.”

Long-term memory and short, René thought with amazement.

Before she and Alice left, Lorraine’s son said, “I’m not particularly religious, but this is like a miracle.”

“It is a miracle, and you better believe God was listening,” his wife declared.

“Whatever, the people who developed this should get the Nobel Prize,” the son added. “I can’t tell you how much better she is. Right, Mom? You’re getting your memory back.”

The woman smiled. “That’s what they say.”

“Here you go, Mom. Remember what day it is today?”

The woman stared at the wall as if trying to read a teleprompter. “Sunday.”

“Close enough. It’s Monday.”

“But you usually come on Sundays.”

“Jeez. That’s right, and today’s a holiday. It’s Labor Day. I forgot.” Then he looked at René. “See what I mean? It’s unbelievable.” Then he squeezed his mother’s hand. “Mom, you’re a miracle.” And he kissed her hand.

Alice led René back out and into the dayroom, René’s head spinning. All her previous suspicions of exaggerated claims were diminishing. And according to Alice the cognitive test scores would bear out the evidence.

Just three years. The niggling voice was back as they made their way into the dayroom. He could have held on.

Christ, you’re going to let this eat you to death, she told herself.

Promise me … to die with dignity.

He would have continued to waste away, full-coded to be kept alive by machines and tubes and IV drips, antibiotics, CPR, emergency trips to the hospital.

You didn’t know. You didn’t know. And she latched onto Nick’s words like a life raft.

“And this is Louis Martinetti,” Linda said.

Louis was standing in front of them wearing jeans and a khaki shirt with pockets and epaulets. Hanging conspicuously around his neck was a chain with some kind of dull gray metal pendant.

“Louis and I met the other day. Good to see you again, Louis. How you doing?”

“How am I doing? I’ve got Alzheimer’s.” And he gave René a glacial stare to gauge her reaction. “I’m the sum of all I’ve forgotten.”

“Well, I hear you’re doing very well,” René said.

He looked at René and squinted. Then something shifted in his face. “Your name Rita Swenson?”

“No, I’m René Ballard. We met the other day.”

Unconsciously Louis’s fingers gripped the pendant around his neck. They were military dog tags.

“Maybe your glasses will help,” Alice said, and she pulled the case out of his shirt pocket, extracted his glasses, and handed them to him.

Cautiously, Louis slipped them on and began to study René’s face. After a moment, his expression shaded to embarrassment. “Sorry, I sometimes get a little confused. You’re the pharmacist.”

René was delighted at his recall. “That’s right. Very good, Louis. René Ballard.” And he squeezed her hand.

Louis shook his head as if dispelling a thought. “But you don’t know who she is, do you? Nah, you wouldn’t know.”

“Well, maybe you can tell me about her and who Fuzzy Swenson was.”

Louis thought that over. Suddenly, something passed through him and he became agitated, his eyes flitting and his expression darkening. He moved toward the nearby window and became fixed on something outside. “From the southeast corridor,” he mumbled. “Maybe hundred fifty, two hundred men tops …” He continued to mutter to himself as if having an interior conversation.

“What’s that, Louis?” Alice asked.

Louis did not turn but continued muttering to the window. “Light armaments the northwest … half dozen … reconnaissance … Seventeenth Infantry Regiment …” Then his face screwed up as if he had just seen something awful. “I’m telling the truth. That’s all I know.” Then his head cocked and his face smoothed out again. “Tell them he’s only a kid, only a boy. He knows nothing. I know nothing. Nobody knows nothing.”

“Louis, are you all right?”

Louis rotated his head toward René and Alice, and for a long moment he stared at René. “He was a good guy, a good stand-up guy is all. Told some good jokes.” His eyes appeared to fill with tears. “I loved him like a brother, you know?” His head cocked and he nodded as if he were taking in responses from some invisible companion. “I know, I know. But I swear we’ll get them back is all.”

Alice leaned toward her. “Sometimes he talks to himself. But it’s never a problem.” And she nodded a reassuring expression at René.

“I promised him that night and I promise you now,” he said to René. “We’ll be there—me, Captain Mike, and Jojo. I swear.”

René had no idea whom he was addressing in his head or what he was swearing, but the look in his eyes sent a small electric shock through her.

Louis then turned and headed back to his room, still muttering. But he wasn’t simply talking to himself. He was engaged in a full-fledged conversation with people in his head. “His charts say you’ve been treating him with antipsychotics.”

“Yes, well, only when … you know, the delusions become a problem.”

“Like what?”

Alice appeared to squirm. “Well, like when he gets paranoid or frightened.”

“He’s on a high dosage of Haldol.”

“Well, sometimes he gets pretty upset and doesn’t snap out of it.” Then her face brightened. “But the thing is, his short-term memory is coming back like gangbusters. I’ll show you his scores.”

They walked down the hallway. But what bothered René was how Alice wanted to put the best face on Louis’s delusions—and the weird sensation that Louis’s mind was toggling between the ward and some dark and faraway time. Yes, that happened with dementia patients. Her own father had had occasional delusions, sometimes thinking René was his wife as a younger woman or someone from television. But what struck her was how Louis had looked at her as he stood there fingering his dog tags. He looked lethal with conviction.

Alice continued her sunny monologue. “When his wife and daughter admitted him last year he had nearly forgotten the first half of his life. He could barely remember anything. Now he’s coming back like pieces of a puzzle. It’s unbelievable.” Alice stopped and took René’s arms. “This is what it’s all about—not all that team-player stuff,” she whispered. “Honey, we’re seeing miracles like he said. Real miracles.”

“I’m starting to believe it.”

From down the hall Carter Lutz stepped out of a conference room with Jordan Carr and two other people she did not recognize—men in suits. Lutz separated from the others and came over to René, his face preceded him like a huge happy-face mask. He extended his hand to her. “Nothing like seeing for yourself. Pretty remarkable, huh?”

The man was the personification of smarminess. “Yes, it is.”

“So you can appreciate what we’re all excited about.”

They both know what he referred to.

“Alice tells us that her meeting with the lawyers went swimmingly.”

Alice went into exaggerated nodding. “Uh-huh. Oh, yeah, a piece of cake.”

“They should be calling you any day now to prep you for the deposition. I’m sure you’ll be fine.”

“Dr. Lutz, I appreciate your concern,” René said. “But my understanding is that in depositions one is asked to swear to tell the truth. I’m having trouble with having to lie under oath.”

Lutz’s face looked as if it had just freeze-dried. “Ms. Ballard, we’ve been through all this.” Then he pressed his face very close to hers so that she could smell the sourness of his coffee breath. “If you tell them what you saw, you will bring this all down—everything! And you will hurt many people … including yourself. Do you understand? Do you?” His voice sounded like an electric saw hitting a nail. Down the corridor Jordan Carr and the other men were silently taking in the scene.

“Yes, I understand, but—”

“Don’t!” The syllable shot out of Lutz’s mouth like a bullet. Then he turned on his heel and stormed away.

“Well, that was pleasant.”

Alice put her hand on René’s arm. “Look, hon, I don’t mean to turn up the heat, but my brother-in-law was caught up in a lawsuit involving a traffic accident that left somebody crippled. It went on for years and he lost nearly everything. Carter’s right: It’s not worth it. Believe me. Tell them you know nothing and let the lawyers fight it out. Please. Otherwise, it’ll never go away.”

God! It wasn’t all that long ago she’d been thrilled at landing a job in a community dedicated to doing good by doing right—a profession that was noble and dedicated to the well-being of needy people. The wonderful world of health care, the Hippocratic oath, of good science, healing and all that. Now she was knee-deep in murder, conspiracy, and corporate cover-up. And in her dissent she had ended up on the wrong side of the battle line. She looked at Alice’s supplicating eyes and suddenly she felt trapped between trying to sort out the merits of moral rightness versus professional ethics—of good versus the strangulating red tape of law.

“Thank you,” she said, thinking that her decision could render a brutal new shape to the universe.

23

THE DIRECTOR OF THE GREENDALE REHABILITATION Center called Beth to say that there was a bed available for Jack. He could be moved from Spaulding within two weeks.

Meanwhile Jack slept.

And after their visit, Vince drove Beth to Carleton. She didn’t want to go right back to an empty house, so she suggested they get something to eat. And Vince took her to a restaurant near the hospital. “He’s never going to come out of it,” she said in a low voice.

“Don’t say that,” Vince said. “He’ll be back. I’d bet my life on it.”

“But I’m okay with it, really. I just wish I could have said I’m sorry.” She took Vince’s hand. “You were such good friends. I envy that. Really. Jack and I were talking of separating.”

Vince’s eyes dilated in shock. “Well, he never said anything.”

She shrugged. “Pride. But things weren’t what they seemed. We had problems. It’s just too bad we never worked them out.” She could see Vince becoming uncomfortable with the conversation.

“The MRIs are showing activity, which means his brain is still active. He could snap out of it anytime.”

“Maybe.”

Vince checked his watch. “I think we should go.”

By the time they reached Beth’s place it was dark. Vince parked around back and walked her to the door. She put her arms around him. “Thanks, Sweetie.”

“Nothing to thank me about. We’re practically family.”

They were standing at the back door. The night was cool and overcast with a hint of autumn in the wind. The house was dark and forbidding. “I hate the thought of going in there. It’s so damn empty.” She hugged him to her.

Vince didn’t say anything, but she could feel him brace.

“You could sleep on the couch,” she whispered, and she pressed herself against him ever so slightly.

She felt Vince pull away. “I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

She nodded because they both knew that it was not the couch where she wanted him to spend the night but in her bed—to be made love to without thought, to nestle against the curve of his hard body like spoons, the way she would with Jack. Just this once—a momentary lapse into creature needs absent of reflection or consequence. “Sorry,” she said. “It’s just that it gets so hard at times.”

“I understand.”

But she knew that he didn’t understand. She kissed him on the cheek and let herself in the house as Vince returned to his car and drove home.

For over an hour Beth rolled around in her bed unable to compose her mind to sleep, thinking that she had in a moment of weakness led Vince on. Thinking that maybe he really did understand and would not see her proposal as an overture of betrayal. Thinking of the emptiness in the bed next to her.

I cannot live this way, she told herself. I cannot go on. Yes, I’m weak, selfabsorbed, starving. But that’s me, and I can’t spend the next months or years waiting to resume a dying marriage to a man who even if he does emerge will probably be mentally and physically impaired. What’s in it for me?

I can’t.

I won’t.

24

SATURDAY COULD NOT COME SOON ENOUGH. All René wanted to do was sleep in and not think about lawyers, depositions, and clinical trials.

But that was impossible, since over the intervening five days she got e-mails from Alice, Bonnie, and even the director of nursing at Broadview saying how well the meetings went with the attorneys representing the home. Bonnie actually claimed it was “kind of fun.” She also said that she understood René’s position, but it was a bit of an overreaction, if you asked her.

Of course, the wording was purposefully vague so as not to leave record of anything incriminating. In spite of the sweet-smelling wording, all the messages read the same: Don’t rock the boat. Deny, deny.

According to René’s boss, CommCare had provided her a lawyer named Brenda Flowers who would accompany her next week at the deposition with a Zuchowsky lawyer. Over the telephone Ms. Flowers assured René that it would be “a piece of cake.”

A little after eight o’clock, Silky began nuzzling her face to be fed and let out. She thought about taking care of the cat then going back up to bed to sleep until noon, the way she did when she was younger. But that was impossible. Her mind was racing with thoughts of the deposition she was required to give in a few days and the words of Carter Lutz, Jordan Carr, Alice, and the others whipping through her mind like hysterical sound strips.

The stress of the last several days had left her mentally and physically fatigued. It crossed her mind to put Silky in the car and drive until she reached the Pacific Ocean, maybe someplace in northern California or Oregon where in some nice little town she’d get a job as the local pill counter in some little mom-and-pop apothecary where nobody had ever heard of GEM Tech and the McCormick, Hadlock, and Woodbury law firm.

But she couldn’t do that, of course. So she slipped on her robe and followed the cat downstairs, his huge fat black tail trailing him like a skunk’s.

She dumped a can of Figaro into his bowl, changed his water, and looked out into the front yard. It was a sunny day, and a brilliant blue sky made a dome over the house. At the bottom of the driveway near the mailbox sat rolled-up copies of the Manchester Union-Leader and Boston Globe that the paperboy had left.

That was when she noticed the red metal flag of the mailbox sticking up. That was odd, since Joe the mailman didn’t come around to deliver until after eleven, especially on Saturdays. Maybe somebody else had taken his weekend route.

She opened the back door, and Silky shot between her legs into the middle of the backyard, where immediately he squatted down to assess the bird situation.

The sun was warm, and the air moist, although a touch of autumn laced the air. It was one of those mornings that made her grateful for living in New England. But in a month, the sky would be bleak, the ground crusted with frost, and the air snapping with the scourge of a Puritan God.

She headed down the driveway and picked up the paper rolled in the plastic bag. The headlines were about the war. More dismal news. More dead soldiers and civilians. “Will the world ever saner be?” The Thomas Hardy line shot up from college English class. “Seems not,” she said aloud as she approached the mailbox. She waved to a neighbor across the street who was packing her young daughter into her car seat. René watched them pull away as she reached the box.

It was the odor that hit her first. She opened the door of the mailbox and let out a scream.

For one hideous moment that telescoped her horror, all she could think was Silky. But a voice inside reminded her that she had just let him out the back door—that he was in the backyard still stalking starlings.

God, please no.

In a microsecond reprieve her mind scrambled—no white patch, no white patch … wider nose …

Staring out at her from inside the mailbox was the severed head of a black cat.

25

“IT WAS GODDAMN SICK,” RENÉ SAID.

“Of course it was,” Nick said with a dismissive shrug. “But maybe it was just some random prank.”

“Nick, it was no random prank, and you know it. Someone’s trying to intimidate me into lying. And I’m ready to go to the police.”

“I can understand. But you have no proof who did it.”

“Well, it wasn’t my mailman.”

It was later that day. And Nick, who was at Mass General catching up on work as he often did on weekends, had convinced her to drive to town and jog with him down the Esplanade along the Charles. It was what they did whenever René visited one of her Boston-area nursing homes. This time it was to get out of her place.

But she couldn’t leave the cat head in the mailbox for the deliveryman. So, fighting the rise of her gorge, she used a stick to pull it into a paper bag. She hosed out the mailbox, buried the bag in her backyard, and then threw up the contents of her stomach.

“If you go storming into Carter Lutz’s office, he’s only going to deny it and make it difficult with your boss.”

“He already did. I called him at home and told him what happened. He said that he had no idea what I was talking about. Half an hour later I got a voice message from my district manager at CommCare saying that he had gotten a call from the VP of Health Net regarding my overreacting to policy issues. Overreacting! They put a fucking cat’s head in my mailbox and I’m supposed to look the other way.”

“Did you mention the video to anyone?”

“Not yet.”

“Or the cat’s head?”

“Just Carter Lutz.”

“Good.”

“Good what?”

“Good you didn’t take this any further.”

René wasn’t sure why, and Nick was turning something over in his head. So they jogged in silence for a few moments. Because Nick was more than twice René’s age and thirty pounds overweight, their pace was leisurely. It was also a warm September afternoon and many sailboats were on the river. In the late afternoon sun the trophy buildings of MIT squatted like ancient gilded temples rising above the trees of Memorial Drive.

“You want my advice?”

“Of course.”

“Drop it. You don’t know who did this. It could be anybody at Broadview as well as friends and associates of them. And it’s simply not worth running around accusing people. Yes, it was sick and crude, but the gesture reads more of desperation than menace.”

He was right that it could be anybody. Most of the people she worked with knew that René owned a black cat. A photo of Silky hung from a tag on her laptop case and she occasionally wore her cat pin. “But this was well planned. Somebody went to the trouble of finding another black cat at some animal shelter or they stole some kid’s pet and decapitated it, then sneaked out to my place in the middle of the night and put the thing in my mailbox. We’re talking health care professionals, and that scares the hell out of me. What else are they capable of?”

“I understand.”

“It was a warning to shut me up or scare me into quitting my job.”

“Well, it won’t happen again.”

While she wanted to take refuge in his assurance, she couldn’t. “Look, I have to continue working with these people, smiling and acting normal, all the while wondering which of them did it and when they’re going to strike again—and how.”

“I don’t think it was any of them.”

“But I don’t know that.”

He gave his head a shake to dismiss her concerns. “Back to the issue. Going to the police would guarantee blowing up everything, the upshot being the termination of the trials. And that’s what this is all about. You know how anal the FDA is about protocol. One hint of impropriety, and Memorine would be back-burnered for years. Meanwhile, somebody else would try to get their look-alike on the market, and GEM would be down the tube.”

“So it’s all about saving GEM’s ass.”

“We’re going around in circles again.”

“In other words, look the other way.”

“Only because there are more important issues at stake, like our patients.”

“Someone threatened me, Nick.”

He looked at her directly. “I know, and that will not happen again.”

The intensity of his look was almost startling. She didn’t have his certitude but let that pass. “What about setting myself up for a perjury charge?”

“First of all, nobody can prove you saw the tape. Second, my guess is that it will be settled before it ever gets to court.” Then, as if reading her mind, he added, “I know you don’t like lying, but sometimes we have to overlook minor violations for a higher good. You’ve seen the results, right?”

“Yes, they’re remarkable. I also feel guilty about the Zuchowsky family.”

“Unfortunately, they can’t get their son back. But I’m sure they’ll want to avoid trench warfare and would probably agree to a settlement. Besides, what good would it do if the Zuchowskys knew that Clara let herself out instead of slipping through a faulty security system? Tort lawyers would turn this into a juicy malpractice case that would bring a sympathetic jury to its knees and send everybody straight to litigation hell, including you. And three years later you’d probably be jobless and in debt for life.”

“But denying that Clara Devine was a subject in a clinical trial violates a whole slew of regulations designed to protect patients and prevent litigation. And now we’re agreeing to perjuring ourselves.”

“Maybe the lesser of two evils. So, go to the lawyers and tell them what everybody else is telling them, that you know nothing—just to get it behind you.”

“But the legal back-and-forthing could drag on for years.”

“Not if I have anything to say about it.”

She looked at him. “Nick, what are you telling me?”

His expression softened. “That I really didn’t want to retire.”

She stopped in her tracks. “You’re taking the offer?”

“What the hell, I’d get bored otherwise. Besides, look at the mess they got themselves into. Maybe I can put some pressure on them.”

She had been after him to accept Moy’s offer as chief principal investigator from the start. “That’s great. And maybe you can keep their act clean.”

“Whatever. I’m not signing any papers until this Clara Devine thing is behind us.”

They started jogging again. “Any idea who’s behind the cat head?”

“My guess is no one you know. But nothing like that will happen again.”

She glanced at him, thinking that dear old Professor Nick Mavros carried more guns than she had imagined.

26

JACK CONTINUED IN A PROFOUND SLEEP.

And after two weeks they moved him from Spaulding to Greendale Rehabilitation Home in Cabot—a private long-term-care facility just twenty miles north of Carleton. There was a special rehab unit devoted to coma patients. He occasionally muttered meaningless things, but his brain activity held steady and with diminished agitation.

A white two-story stone building that looked more like a restored elementary school, Greendale boasted “high-quality and compassionate” medical care and rehabilitation. It also offered a “coma stimulation program” for patients at low levels of cognitive functioning. Beth was impressed with the staff’s professionalism and good nature.

Jack’s primary care nurse, Marcy Falco, explained that she had brought several patients out of comas in her twenty-three years. In fact, she was so successful, she said, that others on the staff wondered if she was a witch. She said that she believed in talking to her patients, telling them about herself, narrating her regular tasks, summarizing the daily news and sports scores, playing their favorite music, making simple requests—blink, wiggle your toes, squeeze my finger. “His spirit is trapped inside of him,” she told Beth one day. “But it’s listening. He can hear you. Tell him stuff, tell him you love him. And above all, tell him the truth, because it may set him free. Honesty is the best therapy.”

Beth visited Jack every other day at first, helping out with the physical activities as did Vince when he visited—turning him over, exercising his limbs, changing his bedding. They also helped out in the stimulation program—rubbing his face, his arms and legs, brushing his hair, moving his limbs, using smell stimulation. Beth brought in a CD player to play his favorite music—John Lee Hooker, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Bessie Smith. Vintage blues. She also ordered a television set to be left on as sound stimulation when she wasn’t present.

Meanwhile, the jellyfish welts faded and the flesh around his eyes had lost its puffiness. His hair had begun to grow back, although his brow was still slick with antibiotic ointment.

Beth also saw René Ballard on occasion, as Greendale Rehab Center was one of the facilities where René worked as consultant pharmacist. She was very friendly and offered good moral support. She was also interested in Jack’s dreams since she said his MRI patterns coincidentally resembled those of some Alzheimer’s patients. That meant nothing to Beth.

As time passed, she visited Jack less frequently. She also began to go to bars with women friends. She met single men and talked, and she felt no guilt. She did not wear her wedding ring. When asked, she said she was a widow.

Beth cut her visits to once a week at best, and she sat with Jack for shorter periods. She continued to talk to him when she came by—mostly monologue spurts full of chitchat nothings. But she never told Jack that she loved him.

And Jack slept into his second month.

27

NICK LOOKED AT GAVIN MOY point-blank. “Here’s the deal. If you want me to head up these Memorine trials, there are a few conditions. First, be prepared to spend some money.”

Moy smiled. “Why should you be any different?”

“Not me, the Zuchowskys.” He held up his fingers. “Two, no more rough stuff.”

They met at Gavin Moy’s sixth-floor condo at Marina Bay in Quincy, a sprawling oceanside haven for local celebrities, athletes, and other upscale folks who wanted the accoutrements of privacy and proximity to Boston. Because the waterfront was lined with shops and restaurants, the place had the feel of Nantucket crossed with Florida’s South Beach, especially from May through September. This was Moy’s pied-à-terre, his primary residence being a waterfront mansion on a cliff in Manchester-by-the Sea on Boston’s north shore.

The interior six rooms were done in off-white-walls, carpet, draperies, even the large curved leather sectionals, perfectly matched with accompanying chairs. Except for the vases of flowers, porcelain lamps, and watercolors, the place was bled of color. Gavin’s designer had opted for understated monochrome elegance. But Gavin’s touch was evident. On the fireplace mantel and scattered about the rooms were photographs of Gavin with various VIPs including other captains of industry, state senators, and, sitting dead center above the fireplace, a shot of him shaking hands with the president of the United States. Nick also spotted photos of Moy’s son, Teddy, and Moy’s late wife.

At the moment, Nick and Moy were sitting on the deck overhanging a spectacular view of Boston Harbor. In anticipation of Nick’s acceptance, Moy had opened a bottle of Taittinger. Nick had played coy on the phone, but he said he wanted to discuss the terms of agreement in person. And Moy was ready to meet them, champagne in bucket.

“Why you hitting me with this Zuchowsky stuff?”

“Because this is a cover-up for your welfare. And because a lot of good people are getting poked by lawyers, going about their business in a fog of lies and anxiety over possible perjury suits. It’s wrong, and I don’t like it. And if we let them, the frigging lawyers will drag it out for years, wrecking lives and pulling the curtains on your miracle drug.”

Moy made no response except to sip his champagne and to study Nick’s face. It was his ploy to let a person lay out all his cards before he made his move.

So Nick pressed on. “Carter Lutz was given thirty days to fulfill a document production request from the Zuchowsky attorneys, which means he has to provide his own lawyers with paperwork on the security system, insurance records, Clara Devine’s medical charts, which have conveniently been doctored to protect the trials.”

Finally Gavin asked, “So, what do you propose?”

“That for everybody’s best interest, including your own, you muster your resources to getting this settled out of court ASAP.”

“Otherwise?”

“Otherwise get yourself another director.”

Moy’s eyebrows shot up. “Nick, you threatening to go to the FDA?”

“No, and I won’t have to do that because someone’s going to smell a rat if this drags on.”

“So we throw a lot of money at the Zuchowskys and make it go away.”

“Yeah. I’m sure the Zuchowskys aren’t looking to get rich, just some moral sense of justice. Maybe you can even set up a memorial fund in the name of their son.”

Gavin nodded. “Anything else?”

“Yes. Have the lawyers build into the settlement an agreement that no further legal action would be taken against the nursing homes, CommCare, its employees, or any parties associated with it.”

“Anything else, mein Führer?”

“Yes. I also expect the clinical reports to be legitimate and complete.”

Gavin Moy was not used to people dictating behavior. But Nick had the tactical advantage here. “Nor should it be any other way. I’ll make some calls.”

“I also want to bring aboard my own people.”

“I don’t care if you hire Daffy Duck.” Then Moy’s eyebrows shot up. “You mean the Ballard girl.”

“Yes. She’s smart and capable and has a heart. She’s also a fine person, and I respect her intelligence and her integrity.” Then he added, “She’s also good with these patients. Her own father died of Alzheimer’s a few years ago, so she’s motivated.”

“Fine.” Moy raised his glass to Nick.

But Nick did not clink him. He leaned forward so that his face filled Moy’s vision. “Somebody put a cat’s head in her mailbox.”

Moy winced as if trying to read fine print. “Beg pardon?”

“I said somebody put a severed cat’s head in her mailbox.”

There was a gaping moment. “And you think that was our people?”

“Let’s just say I know where you come from.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

Gavin Moy was brilliant, handsome, and surrounded with all the accoutrements of wealth and class. Yet under all the high gloss swaggered a kid from the streets of Everett, where scores were settled with baseball bats and fists. One night back in college, some soused frat rat had insulted Gavin to his face at a party. Because the kid was surrounded by pals, Gavin sucked in his pride and walked away. But later, when he and Nick crossed the parking lot, Gavin found the kid’s car—a new model that actually belonged to his parents—and with a pocketknife he laid into the paint job. Had Nick not stopped him, Gavin would have turned the hood into a Jackson Pollock. As small a scene as that appeared through a lens of four decades, it always came back to Nick when he picked up rumors of Moy’s dealings with adversaries. “It means that I know you can play hardball. So let me just say now that if anyone makes the slightest threat against her again, there’s going to be hell to pay.”

Moy held Nick’s eyes for a few seconds. “You really have a thing for this woman.”

Nick resented the implication. “She’s a colleague and a former student.”

“Oh, hell, man, I didn’t mean anything by it. Just that she’s a real looker.”

“Yes, she is. She’s also a good person.”

“I’m sure.”

In the water below, a large, sleek outboard chuffed into the marina for its slip with two men aboard. One looked up and waved when he spotted Gavin and Nick. Moy’s adopted son and only heir.

“So we on?”

“Under the conditions specified.”

“Fine.”

And Nick clinked glasses. “Great view.”

They sat in silence for several minutes. Then Moy broke the spell, the champagne warming his words. “Do you friggin’ believe where we’ve come from? You, a poor Greek kid from Lowell, and me a son of a shoemaker out of a three-decker in Everett. Like the old cigarette ad:’A long way, baby.’” He raised his glass. “To whatever leads to glory and makes a buck.”

Another of Moy’s favorites—one that had been with him since he was half his age.

A few minutes later, his son entered the apartment. “You remember Teddy,” Moy said, as the man emerged onto the deck. “Dr. Nick Mavros.”

It had been years since Nick last met Teddy. He was a quiet man in his thirties. Except for the implacable expression, he was good-looking. Months of exposure to the sun had bronzed his skin and lightened his hair, which was pushed back to expose the slick V of a high widow’s peak. He was not very tall, but he had clearly spent a good deal of time in a gym, because he was wadded with muscles—the tight brown T-shirt making his chest look like gladiatorial armor. He also had large thick hands—the kind that could twist the head off a cat, just like that.

Teddy made a tortured smile and shook Nick’s hand. “Good to see you again, Doctor.”

From what Nick knew, Teddy had failed to live up to his father’s dreams of heading the GEM enterprises after Gavin. He was not the scientist type. In fact, he had dropped out of college and had gotten involved with some real estate schemes that set him afoul of the law and that ended up costing Gavin Moy considerable money. Apparently Teddy did not have any steady employment—just some handyman jobs with different contractors. He lived in the condo and spent his days on his father’s boat. He also waited on his father like a valet, removing the empty champagne bottle and asking Moy if he’d like another, refilling the bowl of smoked almonds. As the two interacted, Nick could detect a curious pattern he had noticed years ago when Ted was a boy—behavior that balanced Teddy’s need for approval and Gavin’s scant servings of it.

While they sipped their champagne, Nick studied Moy’s face. The tan made his green eyes blaze all the more, reminding Nick of the handsome young scientist with the shocking red Afro who had charmed female grad students and instructors alike back at MIT, where he was known as Big Red. A ladies’ man, Gavin was never without a date, never wanting in his love life. And Nick had envied him because whenever they entered a bar or campus party, women’s heads turned as if a film star had walked into the room. And Gavin exploited that advantage, sometimes leaving Nick to whoop it up with other guys while he headed off with some queen. And although he had filled out and had lost his hair, Moy was still attractive, and all the more so because he was about to turn a multibillion-dollar profit.

Nick nodded toward the water. “There were reports of tropical fish around the Elizabeth Islands a few weeks ago.”

“Is that right?” Moy shoved a handful of almonds into his mouth.

“Your jellyfish sent a guy into our ICU. He’s in a coma.”

Moy’s eyebrows rose up. “Is that so?” And he crunched almonds in his molars. “What the hell was he doing out there?”

“Who knows? I thought you’d seen the story. I think he was a former summer resident.”

“What his name?”

“Jack Koryan.”

“Jack what?”

“Koryan.”

Moy washed down the nuts with champagne. “Means nothing to me.”

“Me, neither.”

And they sipped their drink as shadows stretched across the harbor.

28

JACK KORYAN LOOKED THROUGH THE BARS to see the door click open and the large dark pointy thing entered with a hiss.

The light was dim. Flashes dashed off the bright equipment in the room—the chrome IV stand, the tubes running from his arms and side. The stacked monitors with their green squiggles. The vase of flowers from that woman.

But the fading afternoon light slashed through the blinds to catch the creature approaching the bed.

Jack’s eyes were gummy with stuff they kept putting in them. So he couldn’t make out the figure. But it wasn’t any of the nurses or aides—God, no—because this thing was big and dark and not asking how he was doing or running on about how the weather was or that movie she saw last night or how the Sox were doing in the AL standings …

And Jack was scared. Pissing scared, whimpering scared …

And something in the creature’s hand caught the light.

Some kind of pipe.

Or club.

It made no difference because he could hear the hard cracks shoot through his soul.

Gonna smash down on you, Jacky Boy. Gonna put a trough in your brow so your brain will mush up out of your ears.

Time to call the cops. The cops.

Through jellied corneas he watched the thing stop at the foot of his bed. Something hard knocked against the bars.

Gonna get cracking.

Call the cops.

Call Mighty Mouse … to save the day.

The thing scraped along the side of the bed toward Jack’s head. It hunched over him, and he could smell fishiness … and a swimming pool.

Better call … before …

(Whack! Whack!)

Your head implodes.

The creature raised its arm as Jack braced for the blow, and for a telescoped moment Jack reached down to the bottom of his being through all the layers conspiring to hold back the one vital urge not to yield:

“Meds Gama.”

And the creature was gone.

“Jack, you call? It’s Marcy, your nurse. Jack, wake up.”

“Hi, Jack.” Another female voice. “Was that you?”

“Meds Gama.”

“Nothing.”

“False alarm.”

No, he screamed. It was here. The monster thing was here. Right by the bed. Look down at the tracks … the wet. He was here, I swear. I swear …

“G’night, Jack.”

And a hole opened up and sucked Jack in.

29

“IT’S A PIECE OF CAKE, I’M telling you.”

Nearly a week had passed since the cat head discovery, and there were no more intimidating incidents. Whatever Nick had done was working. Also, Brenda Flowers, attorney for CommCare, had called René to prep her on her disposition scheduled for the following Monday.

“Unlike a courtroom trial, a deposition isn’t cross-examination; it’s just a vacuum cleaner for information—lots of broad, open-ended questions and follow-ups. All they want are the facts, and the strategy is to answer the questions as straightforwardly and narrowly as possible.”

That’s when René felt her stomach leak acid. And she could hear her father’s voice: The softest pillow is a clear conscience.

Flowers also said that the Zuchowsky lawyer’s name was Cameron Beck, and don’t be fooled by his baby face. He could be a little pushy.

But Ms. Flowers had grossly understated Cameron Beck. He was a pit bull disguised as a cherub.

Flowers met René the following Monday at Beck’s office on the twenty-eighth floor above State Street. She was in her forties and a pleasant woman with a sincere blue business suit and reassuring manner. “Don’t be nervous,” she said. And instantly René’s heart rate kicked up. “You’re going to be fine.”

After a few moments, Cameron Beck came out to lead them to a conference room with a large shiny table, artwork on the walls, elegant designer furniture, and a million-dollar view of Boston Harbor—all of which conspired to remind René that there was a much larger world outside of wheelchairs, bedpans, and pills.

Also in the room was a stenographer with a dictation machine. She asked René to take an oath that everything she said was the truth. René nodded, thinking that she would throw up. But she didn’t and took the oath.

In his early thirties, but looking about fourteen, Beck was a soft and cheeky man with a thick head full of auburn ringlets. He had a sharp, thin nose and intense blue eyes that projected a predatory cunning. As Flowers had said, Beck began with some neutral questions about herself—René’s education, job history, her role as consultant to Broadview. René explained in minimal terms, as instructed.

Then Beck asked about the people she worked with at Broadview—their responsibilities to residents, what their jobs were, who their superiors were—boring stuff that helped Beck understand how the CommCare pharmacy operated and what its relationship was with the nursing home. This lasted for nearly an hour. All went well until Beck started to ask about Clara Devine. “Did you know her?”

“Not personally.”

“As I understand it, this was the first time that Broadview has ever had a patient escape. Is that your knowledge?”

“That’s what I’ve been told.”

“I see. Then maybe you can tell me how you think she got out of a locked Alzheimer’s ward.”

“I don’t know how she got out.”

There! It was out, and on record, and under oath. Officially she had crossed the line. Sorry, Dad. Just made myself a cement bag.

Apparently Beck sensed the psychic shift because his eyes locked onto René’s. He glared at her for several moments without blinking, probably hoping she’d crack under the strain and fill the dead air with confession. But René held firm and held his gaze.

“Well, Ms. Ballard, maybe you can speculate. Did she go out the door? Or perhaps the window? Or maybe she went up the chimney?”

Brenda Flowers cut in. “Counsel, I don’t think this line of questioning is fruitful. It’s clear that Ms. Ballard doesn’t know how Clara Devine escaped.”

“We’re trying to establish how a lockdown security system failed, apparently for the first time. So I’m sure that Ms. Ballard, an educated professional familiar with long-term-care facilities, has a theory she could share with me, don’t you, Ms. Ballard.” And his eyes snapped back to René and dilated in anticipation.

Didn’t I see you in The Silence of the Lambs? she thought. “I don’t have a theory.”

“Then guess.”

“Mr. Beck, please. This is a fact-finding exercise, not a courtroom.” Flowers tried to sound pleasant, but the lilt of her voice had a serrated edge.

René responded. “My guess is that the door lock system failed, and she just pushed her way out.”

“She just pushed her way out. I see, as opposed to somebody letting her out.”

“Nobody would let her out.”

“How do you know that?”

“I don’t.”

“How familiar are you with Broadview’s security system? To your knowledge, how does it work to keep patients in?”

“A security code pad.”

“I see. So you press a certain code and the door opens.”

“Yes.”

“And it closes behind you and locks automatically.”

“Yes.”

“And the only way out is to press the code on the keypad.”

“Yes.”

“So you’re saying that something in that system failed.”

“If I had to guess.”

“If you had to guess. Is it possible that Clara Devine knew the code and let herself out when nobody was looking?”

A prickly rash flashed across René’s scalp. And in her head she saw the video of her escape. “Clara Devine was suffering dementia, and such patients don’t have the cognitive powers to remember codes or operate a code pad.”

And now you’re falling behind slippery wording.

“But she did get out and go down the stairs or elevator and slip out the front door past the main desk where staffer members were supposedly on duty, is that not correct, Ms. Ballard?”

“Yes.”

“How do you explain that?”

“That the security door malfunctioned.”

“Have you heard of it failing any other times?”

“No.”

“Have you ever known the security system on the Alzheimer’s ward to ever fail?”

“No.”

“Then how do you explain it failing this one time?”

“I can’t.”

“What about the front desk? Did she suddenly turn invisible, or did she turn into a bird and fly out?”

“Mr. Beck, you’re bullying my client and I won’t stand for it.”

But he disregarded Flowers. “Well?” Again he bore down on René as if trying to stun her in his glare. But the more hostile Beck turned, the more resistant René became. It occurred to her how easy it was to lie, to maintain a kind of Orwellian doublethink—holding two contrary thoughts in your head at the same time. And with every question, she felt a separation from her more real essence—like a retreating doppelgänger. To justify the growing split, she kept reminding herself of the “higher good”—of Lorraine Budd recalling her high school friend from 1940-something and Ernestine spelling her nurse’s name and Louis Martinetti remembering his army days. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know. Is it possible the front desk attendant maybe left for a few moments to go to the restroom or get a coffee, and while she did Clara slipped by?”

“It’s possible. But I really don’t know.”

“And where exactly were you when she got out the door?”

“At home.”

“You say your job is to monitor patients’ medications, correct?”

“Yes.”

“And you have a pharmacy degree?”

“Yes.”

“So you understand the medications that are prescribed to patients?”

“Yes.”

“Good. So if a patient is taking anything that might be harmful to themselves or others, you would know?”

“Yes.”

He opened up a folder and pulled out a sheet.

“Was Clara Devine on any medications that would cause her to become violent?”

Maybe. “No.” She heard the syllable rise easily out of her throat but imagined that her eyes were blinking red polygraph alerts.

“Are there any she was taking that could have such violent side effects?”

“No.”

He opened a file folder and removed a sheet. “The medication sheets on file at the nursing home lists Atenolol. What’s that?”

“A beta-blocker. It reduces heart rate, blood pressure.”

“What about Aricept?”

“That’s for her dementia.”

“No possible side effects?”

“No.”

“What about Paxil?”

“That’s for her depression and general anxiety.”

“How does it work?”

Brenda Flowers tried to protest the line and manner of questioning, but he persisted as if he were on some slightly manic autopilot.

René could see that Beck was enjoying his schoolroom inquisition, but she would not crack as she shot back the answers as if she were taking her orals back in pharmacy school. “Paxil is the brand name of paroxetine, a class of drugs known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. It affects the activity of neurotransmitters in the brain, in particular serotonin and norepinephrine, which help regulate one’s mood.”

“You’ve done your homework, I see. So have I,” and he whipped out a file card from his folder. “Did you know that Paxil can cause delirium, irrational talk, and hallucinations, irritability and hostility, even manic reactions including ‘great excitement and psychotic rage, followed by depression’—all of which this drug is supposed to prevent? Is that not so, Ms. Ballard?”

“All drugs have side effects, and a small percentage may be adverse.”

“But are these not side effects that could have led to Mrs. Devine’s attack on Edward Zuchowsky?”

“That’s remotely possible.”

“Remotely possible? Well, did you know that England has recently banned the use of Paxil for children and teenagers under the age of eighteen because the drug has been linked to suicide, suicidal behavior, and violent outbursts? Did you know that?”

“I had heard that, yes.”

“And yet your home still prescribed the drug to her.”

“Clara Devine was seventy-six years old.”

He made wide-eyes. “Oh, so it only adversely affects people under eighteen? How is that possible? Brains are brains, no?”

“No. Childhood depression is different from adult depression, probably because children’s brains are still developing. So antidepressants may not have the same effects—beneficial or adverse—in children as in adults or geriatric patients. While it’s difficult to weigh the risk-versus-benefits of any medication, Clara Devine had been on the same doses of Paxil and her other medications for many months. So I’d say that it’s very unlikely that any of those meds caused such a dangerous impulse.”

“So you’re saying that nothing she was on could have accounted for her violent behavior.”

“Not to my knowledge.”

“But how would you know if you’ve been on the job for only eight weeks?”

“Because I saw her medical charts, and because there’s no report of psychotic rage, hostility, or combative behavior that would point to her killing of Mr. Zuchowsky.”

Beck rocked back in his seat and looked down at this list. “Once again, are you certain there were no drugs she was on that could have led Clara Devine to kill Mr. Zuchowsky—some kind of stimulant or antipsychotic drug that produced the opposite effect?”

In a flash she saw the nurses’ notes: “More alert.” “More verbal.” “Remembered his granddaughter’s name.” And Louis Martinetti’s swearing, “We’ll get them back is all.” And she heard her father’s exasperation: I can feel the holes.

Besides, she really didn’t know if Memorine had anything to do with the killing. That was the truth. And that’s what the purpose of this deposition was. Furthermore, this Cameron Beck was a royal prick. “Not to my knowledge.”

Beck snapped closed his file folder. “Thank you, Ms. Ballard. That will be all.” He stood up and shook her hand. “Good day.”

When they left the office, Ms. Flowers said, “Sorry about that. But he can get a little intense at times. You should see him in the courtroom. How do you feel?”

“Fine,” she said. Piece of cake? René felt as if she had just eaten a slab of suet.

30

FOR THE BETTER PART OF A WEEK, René pored through the various nurses’ reports of residents enrolled in the Memorine trials, hearing the nasal persistence of Cameron Beck’s voice—“any adverse side effects?” What she discovered was a marked increase in cognitive tests scores of nearly fifty percent of the subjects as well as improvement in their basic daily functions. In fact, Louis Martinetti had progressed twenty percent on his Mini-Mental State tests. That statistic particularly delighted René, as if the demon was being vanquished for both Louis and her father.

But in about a quarter of the reports, nurses had noted spells of “regressive behavior” and of “odd spells” when patients would become dissociated from the moment and lapse into past-time hallucinations—like Louis Martinetti thinking he was back in the army—or “childhood delusions.”

Flashbacks.

According to her time line, those residents were part of the first trial group.

“Her mood would suddenly change, like that,” Alice said when René asked about Clara Devine. “Suddenly she’d start talking in rhymes. Or she’d have conversations with people who weren’t there. That’s not unusual for dementia residents.” Then she added, “But the thing is these spells could last a long time, and they were pretty coherent. It was kind of weird.”

The notes also indicated that flashback spells had been observed in Mary Curley, who, like Clara Devine, was being treated with antipsychotic drugs and tranquilizers. So was Louis Martinetti.

“It’s what we did if they became too disruptive or when the families visited.”

The medication orders had been signed by Jordan Carr.

Of course, Clara Devine was at McLean’s Hospital for psychiatric evaluation and would not be back for weeks or months—if ever.

During his rounds one afternoon, René approached Jordan Carr about his medication orders when he became defensive. “That’s what’s used for treating psychotic delusions. Do you have a problem with that?” His face had taken on the rashlike mottling again.

He clearly did not like the implication of her question: that they were burying a potential adverse side effect of Memorine. His manner also reminded her of the professional divide that separated them. “No,” she said.

“Good.” Then to clear the air, his manner changed. “I hear your deposition went well.”

“It’s not something I’d like to go through again.”

“Well, you won’t, I’m sure.” Then out of his shirt pocket he removed two concert tickets. “By the way, I’ve got two tickets to the symphony next Friday night. Mnemosyne by the Hilliard Ensemble.”

She thanked him but said she was busy, which was a lie. It was also the second time she had turned down a date with him. Jordan Carr was handsome, charming, brilliant, rich, and accomplished—a real catch in most women’s books. His interest in her had not gone unnoticed by some nursing home staffers who wondered if her relationship with Jordan had transcended the professional. It hadn’t, and René did not want to encourage that. She was not comfortable dating a professional colleague. Nor was she ready for another boyfriend. All she wanted was to continue carving out her career without complications.

From the upstairs window she watched Jordan leave the building. A couple of weeks ago he had purchased a second Ferrari, a silver 1999 Maranello. Out of curiosity, the other night she went online and looked up the model. She came up with one hit from Atlanta with the same red with tan interior. The asking price was $240,000.

As he pulled out of the parking lot, her eye fell on her little blue Honda Civic with the dented front fender. She felt like the member of a different species.

“Did Dr. Carr leave?” Alice asked, as René returned to the nurse’s station.

“Yes.”

“Oh, well. A fax just came in for him.”

Just then one of the aides called her to help with a patient. “Here, hon, slip this in Dr. Carr’s mailbox for me like a good kid, okay?” And she handed René the sheets and scurried away to the aide. Even Alice was beginning to perceive René as Jordan’s girl.

René walked over to the mailboxes and happened to glance at the sheet. It was from Massachusetts General Hospital Emergency Department, Archives. It was a blood assay made back in August.

She glanced at all the chemical analyses, but what caught her eye was the name of the patient. It struck her as odd since he was not one of Jordan Carr’s patients. In fact, when she had mentioned her visit a few weeks earlier, Jordan had said that he was unfamiliar with the case of Jack Koryan. Never heard of him.

31

RENÉ FOUND MARY CURLEY IN ONE of the activity rooms. Three other women were at the main table doing cut-and-pastes with an aide. But Mary sat alone in a corner with puzzle pieces piled in front of her.

As she approached her, René became aware of Mary’s outfit—a ruffled white blouse under a pink and white jumper. Some residents needed help getting dressed. Others could dress themselves. According to the charts, Mary was in the latter category because of her improved functionality. But what startled René was that Mary looked like a geriatric Little Bo Peep. “Hi, Mary. Remember me? My name is René.”

Mary looked at her. “I remember you.”

René didn’t really believe her since several weeks had passed. “The last time we met, you were doing a puzzle of a kitten.”

“That was Daisy. She’s over there.” And she pointed to a shelf of puzzle boxes.

René was shocked at her recall. But Alice’s words shot through her head: This is what it’s all about.

“That’s right!” But as soon as the words were out, René’s eyes fell to the picture puzzle—a little girl with a dog. And the little girl was dressed in a pink and white jumper. “Mary, that’s a very pretty dress. Where did you get it?”

Without missing a beat, Mary said, “My daddy.” She clicked another piece into the puzzle. “He’s going to take me to the museum today.” And she checked her naked wrist as if reading a watch.

“He is? Isn’t that nice? Which museum?”

“The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston,” and she enunciated the words with slow deliberation.

But what sent a jag through René was the woman’s voice. As if somebody had flicked a switch, Mary sounded like a little girl. Even her deportment seemed to shift as she rocked her head with each syllable, the pink tip of her tongue wetting her lips.

“He’s going to take me to see the mummies. You like mummies?”

“Yes. I like mummies,” René said, feeling as if the room temperature had dropped ten degrees.

“No, you don’t. That’s not what you said yesterday. You said you didn’t like mummies. You said they were all dry and scary-looking, and you didn’t want to go the museum.”

“But I didn’t see you yesterday.”

“You did so.”

“Mary, what’s my name? Do you remember?”

Mary looked up at her with a slightly quizzical expression. “Barbara Chin, silly.”

“My name isn’t Barbara Chin. It’s René.”

Mary snapped another piece into the puzzle. “I’m not afraid of mummies. And you shouldn’t be either. They’re dead.”

As Mary continued her weird monologue, René noticed how she kept licking her upper lip like a child and how she fidgeted with the folds of her dress and twisted strands of her hair as she studied the scattered puzzle pieces, or put a twist of them in her mouth, sucking the ends as she searched for connections.

But what unnerved René was not just the full-faced innocent hazel eyes entreating her to explain her fear of mummies. It was that voice: It had none of the resonance and timbre of an elderly woman but the thin violin sharpness of a little girl’s.

“I remember you have a dog also,” René said, as Mary completed the spaniel’s head in the picture.

Mary licked her lips and her face lit up. “His name is Jello.”

“Yes, Jello. I like the name. What kind of dog is he?”

“He’s a golden retrieber.”

“Retriever.”

“That’s what I said, retrieber.”

René kept feeding her questions not just in fascination at Mary’s recall, but the weird sense of double exposure. Half the visual cues told her that René was having a conversation with a seventy-eight-year-old woman. But the dress and gestures and voice were those of a child. Every so often Mary would look up full-faced at René, her watery eyes staring at her full of little-girl innocence but through a face of crinkled, doughy flesh and liver spots. These were not the eyes of a dementia patient who looked out in fear and confusion at a meaningless kaleidoscope of colors and shapes. Nor were these the eyes of a woman who was being stripped away inside. These were the eyes of a child pressed into the face of an old woman.

“Mary, can I ask you a question?”

Mary looked up at her blankly, her eyes perfectly round orbs of milky blue innocence.

“Where are you?”

For a hushed moment, Mary just looked at her with that broad soft open face. “Henry C. Dwight Elementary.”

“And how old are you?”

“Seven.”

“No,” René began. But she was cut off as Mary grabbed her hand, and for a second René thought she wanted to be helped up. But she pulled it to her mouth and in the instant before she took a bite out of it, René snapped it away.

Mary hissed at her. “I don’t like you.” Then she pushed her chair back and stood up. She inspected her wrist again and started moving away.

“Mary, where you going?”

Then in that little-girl voice again, she said, “Jello needs to go out.” And she got up and shuffled out of the room.

32

“IT WAS CREEPY. SHE WAS IN a time zone of seventy years ago.”

“That’s not unusual with these patients,” Nick said.

“But this was different. She was coherent, not scattered or fragmented. Neither was her delusion. She was back in her childhood and apparently enjoying it, except when she tried to take a bite out of me.”

They were jogging along the river again. The day was cool and overcast, and because it was October only a few sailboats were on the water.

“Then that’s something we’ll be looking into,” Nick said. “Which brings me to why I called. Feel like moonlighting? I’m going to need help tabulating data for the trials. We’re getting lots of positive results, but I’m concerned over these flashback events.”

She was relieved to hear him say that. She was beginning to wonder if she was the only one who saw this as a potential problem.

“That’s something we have to deal with. And that’s going to mean cross-referencing these events with population demographics, genetic profiles, et cetera.”

“What exactly would my job be?”

“Your title would be behavioral data analyst.”

“Why do I have the feeling that you just made that up?”

“Because I did, but who’d be better than a consulting pharmacist?”

“I’m flattered, but won’t that be a conflict of interest?”

“Au contraire, and didn’t I see that coming? You’re an employee of CommnityCare pharmacy, which makes you an outsider to both the homes and GEM Tech. And since you’ll be in my employ, that puts you out of range of GEM.”

She thought that over for a moment, feeling a slight uneasiness.

“Unless, of course, you have problems with receiving compensation from me.”

“No, but my guess is that it will be coming from GEM Tech, right?”

“Yes, but you’re participating in clinical research for me, and God knows I can use the help. And you can use the money.”

Was this ever true. Nearly forty thousand dollars remained to be paid off in student loans. And on a salary of seventy thousand dollars, she’d be paying it back for years. Plus her car was beginning to break down, and her wardrobe was full of gaps, and her credit card debts were mounting up.

“Also, you’re the last person who’s going to look the other way if there’s a problem.”

“What exactly would I be doing?”

“Compiling data on meds and behavior from the clinical nurses, maybe even taking note yourself of any changes in the behavior of patients.”

“How long do I have to think it over?”

He nodded down the path. “Until we reach that tree. And the rate is fifty dollars an hour.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“So is GEM’s potential profit.”

“How many times can I sell my soul to them?”

Nick laughed. “Do I hear a yes?”

Screw it. “Yes.”

“Good.”

They jogged silently for a few yards. “By the way,” she said, “is Jordan Carr working with you on the Jack Koryan case?”

“No.”

“Oh.”

“Why do you ask?”

“He requisitioned a blood assay of Mr. Koryan.”

“He did?” Nick looked genuinely surprised.

“Then later he asked Alice to fax it to another number. I checked,” she said. “It’s the office of Gavin Moy.”

“Gavin Moy?” Nick nearly stopped, but he caught himself and continued his pace again.

For several moments they jogged along without further comment. But René sensed a festering behind Nick’s silence and the way he stared at the water as if half-expecting something to surface.

33

BY MID-OCTOBER, BETH HAD CUT HER visits with Jack at the rehab center to once a week. In spite of the aggressive efforts at sensory and motor stimulation, the staff at Greendale had failed to elicit any on-command response from Jack. He could breathe on his own, cough on his own, make occasional meaningless sounds. But for all practical purposes, Jack was dead.

Meanwhile, Yesterdays opened to rave reviews in both the Boston Phoenix and the Boston Globe. Because Beth had no interest in the restaurant she had sold Jack’s share to a cousin of Vince’s.

And Jack slept.

And one night at the Bristol Lounge in Boston’s Four Seasons Hotel Beth met George King, an investor from McAllen, Texas. He was in town for a week of meetings. He was a kind, handsome man, and they spent the evening together walking through the Boston Garden. His wife had died the year before of breast cancer. To Beth’s mind they shared a common loss. On the eve of his departure, they shared his hotel bed.

And Jack slept.

When she visited Jack again, Beth felt less conflicted with devotion and honor than she had been. She knew she was slightly neurotic, more concerned with herself, thinking that she could end up like one of those family members waiting seventeen years for their loved one to wake up. But she had to be honest with herself. That just wasn’t her. She was no bedside wife. Besides, she had considered leaving him before all this happened. If he were awake, he’d understand.

When the nurses left, Beth laid her hand on Jack’s and, her eyes pooling with tears, she kissed him softly on the forehead. “I’m sorry, Jack,” she whispered.

The next day she filed for divorce.

34

“WHO’S FUZZY SWENSON?” RENÉ ASKED Christine Martinetti.

Christine looked startled. “How do you know about Fuzzy Swenson?”

“Your father. He was a little confused the last couple times I was in and asked if I was Fuzzy Swenson’s sister.”

“I don’t know about her, but Fuzzy Swenson was a buddy of Dad’s in Korea. He’s got a picture of him in his room.”

“I saw it.”

“What did he say about him?”

“Nothing. Just that he thought I was his sister. Also became a little agitated.”

Christine nodded and sighed. “I think his real name was Samuel. He was in a POW camp with Dad in North Korea. He died over there and I guess it was pretty bad what happened to him because Dad never talks about it. Funny thing is that he’s beginning to talk more about his Korea days—the good stuff. Maybe it’s the Memorine.”

“Maybe. His cognitive test scores are beginning to improve.”

They were sitting in the conference room on the locked unit having coffee and waiting for Louis to finish his shower. Christine, who was about René’s age, lived in Connecticut and visited her father maybe once a week.

“He’s otherwise so healthy. He could live another fifteen years.”

“Absolutely.”

Christine was silent for a few moments. “From what I’ve read, nobody ever dies of Alzheimer’s. They die of heart attack or cancer, but not the disease itself, right?”

“Yeah, it’s usually some prior condition. But if they’re in advanced stages and are confined to wheelchairs or a bed, they’re susceptible to internal infections and pneumonia.”

“Because they forget how to walk and eat. So they starve to death.”

René nodded at the primal reality. “By then they’ve lapsed into a coma, and the family usually decides to discontinue feeding and not to take any extraordinary measures to resuscitate.”

“I don’t want him to go like that.”

“Of course not.”

“I don’t think I could take it.”

DNR. One of the countless antiseptic shorthands.

It’s what René had finally yielded to. Do not resuscitate. To spare her own father from pain and more humiliation. Because she did not want him to linger on until the basic circuitry of his brain had become so gummed up that he had lost memory of how to breathe. It was that raw eventuality that caught up to her—when she had come to accept the fact that he would never recover, that no matter what she did or what the doctors came up with he would never come back but continue to descend into the disease. So she signed the DNR order. And the day he died was a release for the both of them. Her only compulsion was to be with him at the moment of his death. And when that came, she held him in her arms and told him over and over again that she loved him, that he and Mom had given her a beautiful life, and that he was going to be with her soon. Of course, he heard none of René’s words. And even if he did, they meant nothing to him. They were for her.

His breathing came irregularly, in short gasps and long intervals. Then in a long thin sigh that seemed to rise out of a fundamentally held resignation of all living creatures, he died. In a blink his life and all that had gone into making him who he was ended. She held her face to his and sobbed until she thought her heart would break. When the nurses came, they sat with her. Then they left to give her one final moment with him.

For the last time she kissed him on the forehead and whispered, “Tell them I remember you.”

Against that memory flash René forced a bright face and matching voice. “Well, if he continues to improve the way he has, that may not happen.”

“You really think it’s working, that he may actually recover?”

“It’s really too early to say for certain, but from what I’ve seen around here the signs are very promising.”

“God, I pray it’s true.”

René felt the tug in her chest again. “Me, too.”

An aide stuck her head into the room. “He’s all ready.”

René followed the aide and Christine down the hall and into the dayroom, where Mrs. Martinetti was sitting with Louis at a table. Louis was looking at black-and-white photographs. Old photos of the Martinettis in younger days.

“Good morning, Dad,” Christine said with a big smile, and she gave Louis a kiss on the forehead. “You look so handsome in that shirt.”

His white hair was still damp from the shower and his face had a bright sheen. And although the bright red polo shirt gave a youthful glow to his face, it could not mask the confusion in his expression as he looked at Christine, then back at René.

Christine pulled up a chair beside him. “So, what’s new? What’s been going on?”

Louis continued to glare at her in bewilderment. Finally he said, “Where’s … my other daughter?”

“What other daughter? You only have one daughter—me. Christine.”

Louis looked at René for help. “I have another daughter. Not her.”

Christine’s body slumped. “No, Dad, you only have me. You just forgot.”

“She’s not my daughter,” he insisted, looking at René. Then he lowered his voice. “She’s somebody else.”

“Dad, how can you forget? It’s me, Christine. You remember.”

The photos were of Louis and Marie posing with Christine when she was a girl. Louis’s face turned angry and red. “You’re somebody else. You’re an … imposter.” He again turned his face away, clapping his eyes on René for safety.

“I’m not an imposter. You’re just a little confused.”

René could hear the fracturing in her voice. It had only been a few days since Christine was last here. Remarkably, his scores had increased twenty percent since he had first entered the home eleven months ago.

René knelt down and took his hand. “Louis, you remember me, right?”

He looked at her at first with a disconcerting scowl. But then his face smoothed over. “Yeah, you’re the pharmacist woman.”

“That’s right. We’re friends—you can believe me. And this is Christine. Look at her, Louis. She’s your daughter, Christine.”

Louis did not look at Christine. But he shook his head. She asked him again to look at Christine, but he refused.

René got up and nodded to Christine to follow her. “We’ll be right back,” she said, and led Christine out of the dayroom and into the hall where Louis couldn’t see them.

“How can he not recognize me? I was here three days ago, and he was fine. He’s supposed to be getting better.” Tears puddled in her eyes.

“It might be that he’s remembering you from years ago—the old photos. That happens often. In fact, it’s called Capgras syndrome—when they think that loved ones are doubles or fakes.”

“Can’t you give him something? I means with all those meds you got?”

“He’s been treated with antipsychotics.”

“Maybe you can recommend they up the dosage or something.”

The nursing staff would give him Ativan or Haldol when he got seriously agitated or threatened to disrupt the ward. But they could not medicate back the recall every time he forgot his daughter. Ironically, Memorine was supposed to do that.

Christine looked distraught. Rene took her hand. “Let’s try this,” she said, and led her back into the dayroom. “Hey, Louis. Look who’s here. It’s Christine.”

Louis looked at her for a prolonged moment. Then his face brightened into a smile. “Where you been?”

“The traffic was bad.” Christine walked over and gave her father a big hug. “So what’s going on? How you been?”

They talked for a while. Then Louis glanced at René as she was about to leave them. “I couldn’t stop them,” he whispered. “I tried, but I couldn’t. I’m sorry.”

“You couldn’t stop who, Louis?”

“Sorry.” His eyes filled with tears.

“Dad, what are you talking about?”

But he disregarded Christine. “Louis, you’re getting confused,” René said. “What’s upsetting you? Tell us, please.”

He looked at Christine, then back to René. “Sorry about your brother.”

“Louis, I don’t have a brother.”

He nodded. Then his face tightened. “But I’m going to get them back some day, the fuckers.”

“Get who back?”

He nodded to himself as if he had just settled something. “They’ll know.”

35

“WELL, YOU GOT YOUR OUT-OF-COURT SETTLEMENT, and it cost me a friggin’ bundle,” said Gavin Moy.

“Two years from now, it’ll look like petty cash.” GEM Tech stocks that morning were up by twenty percent since last week over the rumors about the new Alzheimer’s drug. In a year Nick’s holdings would double several times over. And Jordan Carr would probably own an entire fleet of Ferraris.

It was a warm late October day, and Nick and Gavin were riding at thirty knots southward on Gavin’s boat in celebration of the settlement and Nick’s agreement to head up the clinical trials. When Gavin asked where he wanted to go, Nick said he had never been through the Cape Cod Canal. It would be the last run before Moy put the boat in dry dock.

A thirty-eight-foot Sea Ray sport cruiser with twin 350 horsepower Mer-Cruiser engines, the boat was long, sharp, and very fast; and it was named the Pillman Express, Moy’s punning homage to George Pullman, whose railroad car industry grew into a dynasty. Teddy drove while Nick and Gavin settled back at the stern.

According to Moy, Broadview Nursing Home had assumed full responsibility for negligence in the death of Edward Zuchowsky, while, behind the scenes, GEM Tech paid the lawyer fees and damages. The Zuchowsky family agreed to accept a settlement of $1.5 million as well as an apology from Broadview and a promise to upgrade the security system of Broadview and other homes in the network.

“So, to use your phrase, ‘God’s in His heaven, all’s right with the world, right?’”

“It’s actually Robert Browning.”

“Whatever. So how’s your colleague and former student doing?”

Nick let pass the sarcasm in Moy’s voice. “She’ll be relieved it’s all behind her.”

“Some things are better left forgotten,” Moy said.

“I guess.”

“By the way, we’re going to make an official announcement in a couple weeks—press release, video, you name it—the whole nine yards.”

Moy beamed at Nick as if he were Moses glimpsing the Promised Land. Nick nodded, thinking he would not spoil the moment by reminding him of the flashback issues that lay before them—the delusional seizures that had probably led to the killing of Eddie Zuchowsky and the death of one of Peter Habib’s patients, William Zett, on a playground slide.

No free lunch in pharmaceuticals. No magic bullet—or very few that don’t leave scars.

They had left Marina Bay at nine that Saturday morning, when the sea was like polished marble, and headed down the coast. A little before noon they passed through the canal and out into Buzzards Bay. They lunched at Woods Hole, then by two they headed deeper into the bay at Nick’s request.

On the right they passed Naushon and Pasque Islands and some of the others in the Elizabeth chain. Short of Cuttyhunk, Moy asked Teddy to turn the boat around because he wanted to catch the tide and the headwinds.

As they swung around, Nick nodded toward a low blue hump on the western horizon. “Isn’t that Homer’s Island?”

“Yup,” Moy said without even looking.

“You been out there recently?”

“Nope.” Then Moy waved at Teddy to head back.

Teddy leaned on the throttle, and the boat roared back up the ferryboat lane toward the canal which would take them back home.

“You remember that guy I was telling you about—the one who got caught out there in the jellies?”

“Yes, Jordan Carr told me something about it. In fact, I saw the blood workup.”

“Quite a coincidence.”

“I guess. What’s the name again?”

“Koryan. Jack Koryan.”

Moy shrugged. “Sounds like a countertop. How’s he doing?”

“Still comatose. It doesn’t look good.”

Moy nodded and raised his face to the sun and took a huge breath as if he were trying to drain the atmosphere. “Man oh man, it doesn’t get much better than this.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Nick said, thinking that maybe that was that about that.

But it wasn’t.

36

THREE WEEKS LATER IT WAS THE lead story. And René clicked up the volume as the Channel 8 anchor made the announcement:

“More good news in the fight against Alzheimer’s disease. At its annual meeting of shareholders, GEM Neurobiological Technologies announced some early successes in its trial use of Memorine, the lab’s revolutionary experimental drug for the treatment of various forms of dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease.”

The screen then showed a female reporter outside of Mass General Hospital. “Patients enrolled in GEM’s phase three clinical trials of the Memorine compound were diagnosed with early or mild forms of Alzheimer’s. And early reports have shown very promising results.

“Heading up the team of clinical physicians and researchers is Dr. Nicholas Mavros, neurologist at MGH.”

They shifted to Nick at his desk. “It’s very exciting to participate in this historic effort to develop a cure for Alzheimer’s. Until now there’s been no way to stop the decline in mental functions. And certainly nothing to reverse the disease’s progress. It’s still relatively early in the trials, but we’re seeing cognitive improvement in nearly forty percent of our trial patients.”

René could feel Nick’s restraint. Successful trial results were not officially made until the study was complete and findings were published in a reputable journal. But, of course, this was Gavin Moy’s ploy to start a Memorine fever.

Their faces strategically blocked, trial patients were shown doing puzzles, writing on pads, talking to nurses and aides. Many smiled and looked focused. There was tearful testimony from Christine Martinetti who told how her father was regaining his memory and coming back to his old self. “When we put him in the nursing home, he was confused and frightened. He got people mixed up. He couldn’t recognize family members. He struggled to do simple tasks like tie his shoes. Now it’s all beginning to come back.”

The camera shifted to Louis sitting in a chair with one foot on a stool as he tied his shoes while chatting with an aide. He looked at the camera and waved with a big smile. And René felt a warm surge in her chest.

“He still has a way to go, but it’s a miracle what’s happening in him. A miracle.”

“And a miracle it seems to be,” the reporter continued. “We spoke to Mr. Martinetti briefly about the return of his memory.”

The camera closed in on Louis. He looked wonderful wearing a blue polo shirt and sitting at a table with his hands folded, his face squared in confidence. “Yes, I do feel things coming back to me, especially from way back.”

René’s eyes filled as she watched. She could not help but see her father.

“So, you’re remembering things that you had forgotten.”

“Yes, and I’m feeling more …”

There was a painful pause as he tried to come up with the word. Hating dead air, the interviewer began to talk, “Well, that’s wonderful—”

“Clearheaded. But sometimes the words take a while to come to me, but they do. Better than before.” Louis smiled at the camera and gave a two-finger salute just as they cut him off.

The scene shifted back to the reporter. “Located in Walden, Massachusetts, GEM Tech plans to develop Memorine as an orally available pill.”

On the screen were shots of the GEM complex, the camera panning the main building and surrounding complexes. “The president and CEO of GEM Tech is Dr. Gavin Moy.” Moy’s large, fleshy face filled the screen. “Dr. Moy, what do you see as your goals in these clinical trials?”

Moy adjusted his glasses. “Alzheimer’s disease is the most common and deadly form of dementia affecting people over age sixty-five. Some five million Americans are afflicted, and it’s the major reason why people are institutionalized in the United States. Left unchecked, there will be fifteen million cases in this country by 2025. And that’s what we’re trying to prevent here at GEM Tech. And every indication tells us that we’re heading that way.”

“So, when can we expect Memorine to become available?”

“Based on our great successes so far, we’re expecting to complete trials in nine months, maybe sooner if the FDA fast-tracks our application. We’re very hopeful.”

The camera switched to Nick’s video sequence of a blue brain heavily spotted with red blotches of plaque. As the video ran, the red began to recede and disappear. “What you’re seeing are time-lapsed MRI images showing the actual reversal of the damage in an Alzheimer’s patient’s brain …”

René watched, thinking that Gavin Moy was brilliant and slick as oil. What he had done was turn a news announcement into a priceless promo for Memorine. And corporate protocol be damned because, no matter how premature the announcement, every prestigious journal in the world would want to publish the results, just as every neurologist would kill to get his or her name attached to the trials. And to potential investors the publicity was catnip. By tomorrow night GEM stocks would probably double again.

The camera closed in on the original patent framed and hanging on the wall of his office. “By the way,” the reporter said, “how did you discover that Memorine was so beneficial to the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease?”

Moy smiled. “Trade secret.”

Nick appeared on-screen again. “What makes Memorine so revolutionary?” the reporter asked him.

“We think that Memorine prompts an immune-system response that destroys amyloid plaques, one of the hallmarks of Alzheimer’s that contribute to brain cell degeneration. It also stimulates the regeneration of new cells in damaged areas.”

Back to the reporter. “According to GEM researchers, patients tested with Memorine experienced significantly better results than participants in the placebo group in measures of thinking and reasoning, day-to-day functioning, and behavior.

“But the drug did not help every individual who took it. At least not as yet.”

Back to Nick: “Some patients may take longer, depending on the stage of their diseases. It may be a genetic factor or a demographic one. That’s part of what we’ll try to determine in the trials. Also for whom it works best, et cetera.”

“Any side effects?”

“That’s part of what the trials will determine. Every drug including aspirin has side effects, some more measurable and adverse than others. But at the present time, there are no conclusive side effects to speak of.”

The report concluded with a shot in front of GEM Tech’s offices. “If approved by the FDA, all indications point to Memorine becoming one of the all-time blockbuster drugs with first-year U.S. sales of five billion dollars. Back to you, Liz.”

The final shot was of Louis Martinetti snapping a salute at the camera.

This is what it’s all about. Yes, René thought. Yes.

AND FOR ANOTHER ONE HUNDRED AND twenty-seven days Jack Koryan remained in a profound sleep.

3

37

Four Months Later

“MEDS GAMA.”

Nurse Marcy Falco looked up from her chart to Constance Stone, who was tucking in the sheet at the bottom of the bed. “You say something?”

“N-no,” Nurse Stone gasped, here eyes bulging like hen’s eggs. “He did.”

“Omigod!”

Jack Koryan was staring at Marcy—eyes locked in purposeful focus, not floating around in their sockets or staring off in different directions. And his mouth was moving.

He repeated those syllables.

Over the six months, Jack Koryan had muttered a lot of nonsense, but this was the first time Marcy saw signs of a breakthrough. “Hi, Jack. My name is Marcy.” Then over her shoulder to Constance: “Get the others. They’ve gotta see this.”

But Constance was frozen in place, her eyes transfixed on a man who for the better half of a year had been a body connected to drips and Texas Catheters.

“Constance! Snap out of it. He’s trying to talk. Get the doctor.”

“Uh.” Constance said, but she was still unable to move.

“Meds Gama.”

“Jack! Jack. What did you say?”

“He’s waking up,” Constance gasped, as if just realizing it.

“Jack, say it again,” Marcy insisted.

And the same syllables scraped out.

“Something about his meds. ‘Meds karma’?” Constance asked.

“Would you please get me some help? Now.” And Constance bolted out the door. Marcy took Jack’s hand. “Jack? Jack, can you hear me?”

He looked at her, his eyes widening in fear.

“Good. Jack, my name is Marcy. I’m your nurse. I’m going to stay with you,” she continued. In a strange environment with no frame of reverence, he could panic, maybe even relapse into the coma or, worse, go into cardiac arrest. “I’m not going to leave you. I know this is confusing to you, but you’re going to be okay. But I want you to talk to me, Jack. Do you understand? I want you to talk to me.”

His eyes closed again. Nothing.

Damn! She squeezed his hand: “Jack, open your eyes again. Tell me what you said. Jack, answer me.”

Jack rolled his head and took a deep breath. But he did not open his eyes.

“Jack, squeeze my hand.” She raised her voice. “Jack, squeeze my hand.” And she felt his hand squeeze ever so slightly. “Good, Jack. Now open your eyes. I know you’re in there.”

Jack’s eyes slitted open.

“Hi. Can you see me?” she asked, hoping even after six months that he would be another of her “witchcraft” wake-up cases. Instantly she shifted into her clinical mode, carefully scrutinizing him for neurological responses. “Look at me, Jack.”

At that moment, several people burst into the room—two other nurses, another assistant, the nursing supervisor, and Dr. Clive Preston, director of the facility.

“His feet are moving,” one nurse said, and she pulled up the bedding to reveal the tennis shoes.

Greendale was aggressive with its physical therapy of coma patients—regularly exercising their limbs and digits, fixing their hands and feet in splints to prevent drop foot and hands freezing into claws. The shoes were intended to keep his toes pointing upward. Despite all that, two weeks in bed was like losing a year of muscular life. And six months of disuse had reduced Jack to scarecrow proportions.

Marcy removed his shoes. “Jack, can you wiggle your toes for me?”

Nothing. His eyes closed again.

“Then just move your feet a little.”

Still nothing.

“Jack. Jack! Listen: I want you to open your eyes for me. Please. Open your eyes.”

Jack’s eyelids fluttered slightly then opened partway. He rolled his head toward Marcy.

“Good. Can you hear me?” She lowered her face to his. His eyes were at half-mast, peering at her. But his tongue moved behind his teeth.

“Mmm.”

“What’s that?” She had to get him to track her with his eyes, to confirm that this wasn’t a false alarm.

Jack’s eyes widened and locked on to Marcy’s. And in a barely audible voice scraping through a larynx unused for months, Jack said, “You have big teeth.”

“I sure do.” Marcy’s white front teeth protruded slightly.

The paper skin around Jack’s eyes crinkled ever so slightly, and the muscles of his mouth expanded into a faint smile. Remarkably he was processing memory, even judging with humor. This was incredible. Also the fact that he had articulated his words so well. “Great. Now, Jack, please look at me.”

Jack’s eyes opened with gluey effort, his pupils large, parallel, and fixed on her face.

“Good. My name is Marcy. I want you to tell me your name. Understand?”

He looked down at his arm with the IV attached to the drip bags and catheter running to a bag hanging on the bed’s side and the wires connecting him to the monitors. In a breathy rasp, he said, “Where am I?”

“You’re at Greendale Rehabilitation Home in Cabot, Massachusetts.”

Jack rolled his head toward her, blinking against the lights at the circle of faces looking down at him. “Blurry.”

Marcy’s heart leapt up. Remarkably he was processing thought. “Yes, blurry. That’s from the ointment we put in your eyes. But can you see me okay?”

“Mmmm.”

“Can you tell me your name?”

“Jack Koryan.”

“Great. That’s great.” Because Jack was her patient, the others let Marcy maintain a running monologue to keep Jack awake and to assess any neurological dysfunction. Nearly glowing with pride, she had him wiggle his toes, his fingers, blink one eye, then the next, tell her his full name, to repeat words after her. But what she dreaded telling him was that he had missed the last half year of his life.

“Hi, Jack, my name is Clive Preston. I’m the director here at Greendale.”

Marcy nodded for Dr. Preston to continue. “You had a swimming accident and were unconscious for a while. You’re getting better, but you have to stay awake and keep talking to us. Okay?”

“How long?”

Marcy felt her insides clutch. The shock could be traumatic, maybe even bring on a relapse.

“How long?” Preston asked.

Before he could answer, Marcy cut in. “Jack, the important thing is for you to talk to us.” She took his hand. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. Patients never just snapped out of deep comas; they emerged gradually, over days—enough time to call in relatives and friends to be there when they woke up. Jack had emerged from a profound coma lasting over six months and was suddenly demanding answers.

His eyes scanned the faces. “How long?”

Marcy wished Beth or Vince were there. The shock could send him into a panic. “Jack, I want to run a few tests on you. I want you to count to ten, okay?”

He closed his eyes for a long moment. But instead of mouthing numbers, he said, “Honesty is the best therapy.”

The words sent a cold ripple through Marcy. Her slogan. What she had said to Beth—but Jesus! That was months ago! “Well, now, you’ve been listening.”

“What’s … date?”

Dr. Preston pushed forward. “Jack, I know how confusing this all is, but we’d like you to just answer a few simple questions, okay?”

Jack closed his eyes again and rocked his head slowly from side to side.

“Jack, don’t go back to sleep,” Marcy said. “Please open your eyes.”

“Dreaming,” he whispered.

“What’s that?”

“Dream.”

“No, you’re not dreaming, Jack.”

“Jack, tell me your name again.”

“Jack Koryan.” Then his eyes widened as something passed through him. “What’s date?”

Marcy glanced at the others who looked like wax images of themselves hanging over the bed.

A groan rose from Jack’s throat. “Whatsa date?” he repeated.

Dr. Preston shot a hard look to Marcy, then nodded. He was deferring to her and her baseline policy. To stall him until Beth and Vince arrived would not work. It could even cause him trauma. “Jack,” Marcy finally said, “you had an accident swimming and you’ve been in a coma. You’ve been asleep. Do you understand me?”

And in slow deliberate breath he asked, “How … long?”

“Jack, can you tell me where you live? What town you live in.”

“How long?”

To deflect the question would only make him more agitated. But to tell him the truth could be worse. God, let me do the right thing, Marcy prayed. “Six months.”

Jack looked at her blankly as he processed her words.

“You had a swimming accident off a beach on Homer’s Island—know where that is?”

Jack nodded.

“Good. Well, you blacked out in the water.” And she told him how he was brought from a hospital on Cape Cod to MGH to here. She narrated the details slowly and deliberately for him to absorb, repeating herself, asking him if he was following her, trying not to get him too upset or excited. She left out the jellyfish. There was no point adding to the shock. When she finished, he looked down at his left hand. For a moment Marcy thought he was trying to make sense of the IV connection. But he was inspecting his fingers.

“Beth?”

“Beth is on her way in. We just called her. Now, I want you to do me a favor. I want you to wiggle your toes.”

“Beth.” He repeated her name again as if testing his memory.

“Yes, we just talked to her, and she’s coming in to see you.”

“Still my wife?”

“Now, Jack, I want you to wiggle your toes for me, okay?”

“Still my wife?”

Marcy knew what he was asking. “I’m sorry, Jack,” she said, and shook her head. Gently she gently stroked his hand. Two months ago Beth moved to McAllen, Texas, to remarry.

Jack closed his eyes, and in a matter of moments his eyeballs began to flutter.

“Jack!” She had to keep him talking. “Jack.” Suddenly his face appeared to reshape itself. The skin across his forehead smoothed out, blanking the frown and scowl lines at the corners of his eyes; his lips began to move as if he were having a private conversation within. Then he made a sweet smile. And before they knew it his mouth opened.

“He’s saying something.”

Marcy lowered her ear to his mouth. “I think he’s singing.”

And in fluttery breaths she heard: “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine.”

But what sent a bolt of recognition through her was Jack’s voice: He was singing in the high, thin, honeyed pitch of a woman.

The next moment Jack let out a raspy sigh and sank into sleep, leaving the others wondering what the hell had just passed through their patient.

38

THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES took René’s hand. “Great job. We’re very proud of you, all of you,” he said. “You’re making medical history.”

“Thank you,” said René, still trying to process whose grip she had just been in.

The president made his way down the line of nurses and other staffers of Broadview Nursing Home, being led by Carter Lutz and an entourage of VIPs, including Gavin Moy and other GEM Tech execs, officers from the Alzheimer’s Association and other health care organizations. Also with them were Nick Mavros, Jordan Carr, and several other clinical physicians as well as security guards.

The president entered the dayroom and chatted with residents who sat in their chairs and had their photos taken. Some recognized him from television and were delighted. Other patients—those not receiving Memorine—were not sure who he was. One of the women announced that she saw Dwight Eisenhower once. The president complimented her on her memory.

As the president approached him, Louis Martinetti rose to attention with a crisp salute. He was dressed in his uniform, now two sizes too small for him. Several people chuckled, although René felt a pang of embarrassment for Louis. He did not seem to be playacting but stood there in stern pride with his Purple Heart, Combat Infantryman Badge, parachutist badge, and other medals and looked straight ahead as the president stopped before him, saluted back, then walked on by, smiling and nodding.

Carter Lutz called attention to the gathering and thanked the president for visiting them. He praised the president for his track record of advocating for the elderly and supporting legislation aimed at early detection of Alzheimer’s disease. Lutz also thanked him for keeping his campaign pledge and embracing “the Memorine Solution.”

The president thanked Dr. Lutz and everybody associated with the Memorine study. “One doesn’t have to look beyond this room to see miracles in action. I congratulate all of you and the good people at the other clinical sites and the researchers and scientists who have made this possible. Memorine represents a sea change in the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. I wish you continued success in bringing hope to AD victims and their caregivers everywhere.”

A joyous applause filled the room.

The president was right, of course. The AD unit at Broadview was a changed place. In the months since René first entered the ward, the decibel level of the chatter had multiplied. And not just the white noise mumbling and gibberish “word salads,” but talk—purposeful, coherent talk. Patients communicating with staffers, other patients, visitors, themselves. Likewise, the collective kinetic energy level had risen. A year ago, a time-lapse video of the ward would pass for a still life, with an occasional nurse or aide scurrying across the camera or a few patients shuffling by on foot or walker across the dayroom set. Today the ward could easily be mistaken for an active senior citizens center. Patients who months ago would sit and gape at nothing for hours on end were now mingling with others or following aides around asking if they could help.

The president concluded, “I need not remind you that a cure for Alzheimer’s disease would save over fifty billion dollars of American taxpayer money in health care.”

More applause.

Of course, the president’s endorsement was also a public relations bonanza for GEM Tech, whose stock value was soaring as the public anticipated the drug being brought to market soon. And everybody knew that, including Jordan Carr, who was beaming brightly at René from the other side of the room.

When the place settled down, Nick addressed the group, thanking the president for his support. “We are seeing extraordinary progress. And the evidence is in this room, as you have seen, Mr. President. But more work needs to be done, and that’s what we’re doing in collaboration with researchers at GEM Tech.”

Some of the nurses and aides nodded in agreement. Jordan Carr, who was standing with the GEM Tech VIPs, shot a glance to Gavin Moy and the other suits, then turned toward Nick, where all lines of attention converged.

In guarded language, Nick praised the progress of the trials, then added a subtle warning: “But I must caution that the road to success is long and winding and fraught with unexpected turns, although I am very confident that as we continue to make our way, one measure at a time, we will succeed.”

More applause.

The president and entourage left the room, and Louis snapped to attention with a salute.

BEHIND NICK’S CAUTIOUS WORDING WERE THINGS that the president did not see: the growing number of recovering patients lapsing into regressive flashbacks. The weird infantilizing of their personalities. The sudden morphing into some past self that talked to people who weren’t there while not recognizing those who were. The sometimes frightening lapses into traumatic flashbacks when the only recourse was to dope patients down until they had no more affect than when lost in the fog of dementia.

That’s what the president did not see. Or the cameras.

39

THEY ALSO DID NOT SEE THE Louis Martinetti beneath the chest of medals.

Every health care worker has patients she likes and patients she dislikes. Some are simply unpleasant to deal with—people ill-tempered, mean, or belligerent. At the other end are individuals in whose comfort and well-being one feels an extra emotional investment. For René, Louis Martinetti fell into that special category of favorites.

Yes, Louis reminded her of her own father. Each was a Korean War vet, each had lived an active mental life, and each had been a devoted family man and a great guy. It was those ordinary “great guy” characteristics that over the months were beginning to reemerge and endear Louis to René.

An hour after the president had left, René sat with Louis in the small parlor with a view of the woods. “So, what did you think of the president’s visit?”

“Pretty good.”

“I think he liked your saluting him like that.”

Louis smiled proudly. He was still wearing his army shirt with the decoration and his old dog tags around his neck. Even in his facial expression he resembled René’s father. And in these quiet moments she was brought back to tender intimacies as a girl. Perhaps that was why Louis’s progress was of special concern for her—as if, in Jordan Carr’s metaphor, she were witnessing the defeat of the demon that had left her father a ragged husk of himself.

Louis’s progress was remarkable on all fronts. Nick’s imaging sequence over the last several months showed a reduction of protein deposits and neurofibrillary tangles in the frontal temporal lobe—the seat of language and logic functions—as well as the hippocampus, a region of the brain essential to maintaining memory. Likewise, the gray-matter tissue had increased in density. As his functional abilities for his basic activities of daily living (dressing, personal hygiene, feeding himself) approached baseline normal, Louis had become more self-directed and more socially deft than he had been, now mingling with other residents. He had also become more concerned with his appearance, no longer emerging from his room in mismatched tops and pants. And, of course, René always complimented him on how nice he looked, and Louis loved that.

With some effort he could read news headlines. He knew the days of the week and the schedule for his favorite TV shows. He recognized the people and faces in the photos in his room without labels. He’d sometimes talk to the guys in the Korea snapshots by name, often snapping them a salute.

Louis’s Korean memories were important to him. As his daughter once said, in spite of the time spent in a POW camp—something he never talked about—the army had been the best time of Louis’s life. He was young, feeling immortal, bonding with other guys, and engaged in an effort he deeply believed in. Ironically, Korea was part of why he had been committed to Broadview two years earlier. Louis had thrown a violent fit when he thought that his wife had hidden his Purple Heart. When he calmed down, she showed him that the medal was stored in the special war memorabilia chest in the bedroom where it had always been. An hour later he accused her of taking it once more. When she again showed him the medal, he claimed she was trying to trick him. She denied it, and he pushed over the chest and smashed a mirror. A few days later he pushed Mrs. Martinetti to the floor. It was then he had been admitted to Broadview. Luckily, he remembered nothing of the incident.

The definitive evidence of Louis’s progress were the Mini-Mental State Exams, which consisted of different memory tests—lists of grocery or household items that the subject was asked to repeat in any order, word associations, et cetera. For healthy individuals from eighteen to twenty-four years of age with at least nine years of schooling, the median score is twenty-nine out of thirty. For healthy individuals seventy to seventy-nine years of age and older—Louis’s range—the median is twenty-eight. When first tested last year, Louis scored sixteen, indicating moderate cognitive impairment. That morning of the president’s visit he scored twenty-four. Also impressive was that Louis had developed learning strategies, clustering items according to semantic categories—food, tools, clothes, et cetera—a practice more sophisticated than simply remembering serial order. He also enjoyed taking the tests because he could measure how daily dosages of Memorine were bringing him back.

“You’re doing a great job, Louis, and we’re all proud of you.”

He smiled with pleasure. “Coming along.”

“I never told you this, but my father was in Korea.”

Louis’s eyes widened with interest. “What branch? I was in the 187th Airborne.”

“Yes. I saw the photograph from Korea in your room. My father was in the navy, and spent most of his time on a ship called the USS Maddox.”

“USS Maddox. That was the Seventh Fleet.”

René was astounded. It was one of the few things she knew about the Maddox. “Yes, it was. How did you remember?”

“I remember lots of stuff about the war.” He looked away for a moment as he began to gather some recollections. “The guy in that picture. He was my best friend, Fuzzy Swenson. You look like his sister.”

René began to feel uncomfortable and thought it best to change the subject. “Maybe you can tell me about where you grew up.”

But he disregarded her. “He was our platoon sergeant. His real name was Sam but all the guys called him Fuzzy. Blond hair, cut real short,” and he held up his forefinger and thumb, making a small gap. “Like peach fuzz. Why we called him Fuzzy. He was our gunner, real good kid from … Racine, Wisconsin. We used to josh him about being from the land of milk and beer.”

“It’s great that you can still remember him.”

“Yeah, I remember him.” Louis nodded then looked out the window.

He looked back at her for a puzzled moment and René felt herself brace against whatever was coming next. His eyes rounded as his glare intensified—and she could swear something passed through them. “Louis?”

His head snapped at the window again. “They said it would be a surgical drop.”

“What’s that?”

He looked back at her, and his eyes seemed slightly askew.

“Louis, are you okay?”

“Captain Vigna. He said we were going to fly a special mission one night when conditions were just right.”

“Louis, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He smiled furtively and cocked his head. “I don’t know when it’s gonna be, but it’s going to be a drop behind enemy lines. Gonna take out those bastards for what they did.”

“Louis, maybe we should change the subject.”

But he did not respond—just stared off someplace and began to get jiggly.

She took his hand. “Come on, let’s go to the dayroom.” She started to pull, but he snapped his hand away.

Suddenly Louis’s face began to spasm with emotions. He grimaced out the open window at the trees, looking as if he had spotted something terrible. He ducked down then shot up, and for a second he looked as if he were going to attack René. Instinctively she pushed back her chair and looked around for help. But in the next instant Louis gasped and pressed the heels of his hands against his brow, as if trying to force back some awful visions.

“They killed him, the bastards. They killed him in pieces.”

“Louis, let’s talk about something else. You’re getting upset.” She thought about calling an aide.

He glared at her through wild eyes. “They took care of him good. Oh, yeah. In the Red Tent, the dirty bastards. The Red Tent is where they did it all. Colonel Chop Chop and Blackhawk, the Russkie.” Louis began to lick his lips and swallow hard against whatever was afflicting his recall. Suddenly his face contorted. “He was sitting right across from me.” Then his voice changed. “Between my goddamn knees,” he cried in dismay. “They put it between my knees. In my goddamn helmet. God!” His voice thinned out into a plea. “Please don’t. Please don’t. I’ll tell you whatever you want.” The next moment his face spasmed into something else, and he sat up straight in his chair, his voice hard. He was wavering in and out of some awful recollection. “Yeah, I was there. Not six feet away, and they kept cutting him—the bastard with the baby face and knife.”

Louis’s eyes dilated as he seemed to stare beyond René as he addressed her. “I couldn’t make them stop, you got me? No matter what, I couldn’t make them. And those two bastards stood in the corner telling him to keep going, keep cutting, no matter what I told them. I begged them.” Louis’s face crumbled, and he looked down at his lap and the sleeve of his shirt. “I got his blood on me.”

René took his arm. “Louis, snap out of it. Everything’s okay.”

From the corridor a nurse and two male aides walking by saw the commotion and shot over to their table. René was on her feet trying to calm Louis, who was trying to get away, his face contorted with anguish. When Louis laid eyes on Malcolm, he started yelling and swinging his arms.

“Hey, Louis, what’s the problem?” He tried to catch Louis’s arms and keep him from breaking away.

“Louis, calm down. Everything’s okay,” the nurse said.

But it was clear Louis was beyond reasoning with, lost someplace far away. Malcolm managed to pin Louis’s arms from behind and settle him in a chair.

Louis kept looking behind him. “Over there,” he said to the aide.

“What’s over there?” the aide said, looking at the trees outside.

Louis shook his head. His face was taut, his eyes squinting as if trying to get a clear focus.

“Come on, Louis,” the nurse said. “You’re upsetting all these people.”

But Louis kept looking across the area, his eyes fixed on something else. “Louis, open up.” René could see the nurse hold a pill to his mouth.

“They cut one side, then the other,” he said to the aide. Then he looked down at his lap, seeing imaginary horror.

“Come on, open up.”

Louis looked at the pill and water bottle in the nurse’s hand and pushed her hand away. But she persisted. “You have to take this, Louis. It’ll make you feel better.”

He shot a look at René. “They’re trying to brainwash me,” he whispered. “It’s what they do, they brainwash you.”

“Don’t be silly, Louis,” the aide said. “Nobody’s brainwashing you. Open up.”

René could see the small yellow pill. Haldol. One of the antipsychotics the staff had been giving patients suffering flashbacks. But to Louis the pill represented something else. “Who, Louis?” René asked, disregarding the others. “Who’s trying to brainwash you?”

“The NKPA,” he whispered to her. “The fucking Commies. Take it and you’re gone, kaput.”

He struggled to get up again, still focused on his buddy dying and the blood on his hands and enemy gunners on the ridge. René took Louis’s hand. “Louis, it’s René. Look at me. Please look at me.” Louis turned his face toward her. Tears were in his eyes. “Nobody’s brainwashing you. Please believe me. Please take the pill.”

He glared at her for a moment, then he opened his mouth to say something, and the nurse pressed a pill inside and put the bottle to his lips and squirted some water. Reflexively Louis swallowed as if drinking from a buddy’s canteen. “He’s got a kid sister. What’re we going to tell her, huh? That they cut him up?”

Then something clicked inside of him, and his expression changed. “Gotta get them back,” he said to René in a conspiratorial whisper. “I promised.” The aides raised Louis to his feet and began to walk him to his room. “I gave him my word.” And he tugged against the grip of the aide.

René’s insides squeezed as she took one of Louis’s hands, feeling as if she had betrayed him. Because in a few minutes he’d be back in the ward—in the moment, and that was not where he wanted to be.

“It’s what they do. They brainwash you.”

He wanted to be back with his buddies of the 187th Airborne, going on his “special” drop, avenging whatever they did to Fuzzy Swenson in the Red Tent.

As they approached the door, Louis looked at René, then over his shoulder. “I saw him and his buddy. I saw the bastards.” His eyes were huge and blazing.

“Who, Louis? Who did you see?”

“The colonel.”

“What colonel?”

“Chop Chop.”

“Who’s Chop Chop, Louis? Tell me.”

“They were here.”

“Who, Louis?”

But Louis didn’t answer. He just nodded to himself as they hauled him to his room.

40

FOR A LONG TIME RENÉ SAT in the parlor looking out the window at the rustling leaves of the trees. All was calm again, and outside the slanting sun sent shafts of dancing light into the woods. She could not stop hearing Louis in distress and seeing his face contort and his eyes blaze like coals in the wind.

And suddenly she was at the sink in her parents’ kitchen doing the dinner dishes.

Her mother had passed away the year before, and he managed to function well without her. The visiting nurse was gone for the day, and her father was in the basement at his workshop, from which René had removed all the dangerous tools. In a matter of months, she would move him into a nursing home. Over the years, he had built model cars from kits and had become an expert. Nearly every night after dinner he’d go down, turn on his tape player, and while oldies filled the cellar, he’d sit on his stool and work away like some crazed Gepetto. As a girl she had helped him put together several models.

He would sometimes wear a jeweler’s loupe for the fine detailing—fitting chrome trim and micro decals in place. He had even built a spray-paint station with sheets of plastic and glove holes. His handiwork was wonderful, and he was at his happiest when engaged in it. After twenty-five years, he had amassed an impressive collection of classic models, from Matchbox-size to over a foot long. And they sat on shelves arranged by size and years—all enameled in brilliant gloss colors and looking like jeweled artifacts from some pharaoh’s tomb. René’s favorite was a 1938 Packard, which looked like something Clark Gable would have driven. Her father’s favorite was the 1952 Studebaker Commander, the car her parents drove after his return from Korea.

“Someday all these will be yours,” he once said. “Imagine the yard sale.”

It was a little after seven and the slanting rays of the sun lit up the western wall of the house. Suddenly René heard banging below. She shot to the cellar door. “Dad, you all right?” she yelled down.

No response.

“Dad, is everything okay?” She could see that the orange pools of sunlight coming from the window wells mixing with the fluorescent lamp of his bench. “Dad?”

Silence. Then a sharp metallic crashing sound.

René dashed down the cellar stairs, half-expecting to find him sprawled out under one of the tables or machines. Instead he was standing in the middle of the floor and hurling model cars at the wall, pieces ricocheting around the room. “Dad, what are you doing?”

But he paid her no attention. His eyes were wild and he muttered oaths as he pulled car after car off the shelves and flung them at the far wall.

“Dad, stop it. Stop it!”

But he didn’t stop. He glanced wildly at René, then took a model fire engine and smashed it to the floor. And when it didn’t break, he dropped to his knees and pummeled it with a hammer.

“Dad. Please. Don’t,” she pleaded.

But he disregarded her and tore another off the shelf and smashed it.

“Dad, I made those with you. We did those together. Please, stop. Please,” she wailed.

He froze, the hammer still raised. He glowered at René, and for a hideous moment she thought he would come at her.

“Dad, it’s me. René, your daughter.”

“You’re not my daughter. Where’s my daughter? You’re a … fake.”

She moved closer to him and the overhead light. “Dad, it’s me. René. I’m right here.”

Then for an agonizing moment she watched his eyes soften as recollection registered in his poor beleaguered brain. He then let out a low groan as he surveyed the bright wreckage. The hammer slipped from his hand, and he began to cry. “I hate this,” he said as she embraced him.

“I know, I know,” she whispered. “I love you …”

“I hate this. I can feel the damn holes. I can feel them filling my head.” His voice dissolved.

“Don’t,” she begged, as she felt her heart tear. “I love you, Dad. I love you.”

And for a long moment they stood there silently embracing amongst the scatter of dimming light.

René could not bring back her father, nor could she have saved him from the slow and inevitable disintegration—this conclusion she had at last come to accept. But she would do anything to see Louis go home and resume his life with his mind again intact and his memories whole and good and not fraught with throwback traumas of the Red Tent.

41

SIX MONTHS.

In the muddy light of his room Jack woke up again. The nurses had checked him at regular intervals, wiring his head to monitors to be certain he hadn’t slipped back into a coma. He hadn’t. He had made it to the other side with his mind and senses open to his surroundings. Green and orange beeps and blips and drips and broken blinds and gray predawn light seeping through like fog.

Six months.

Everybody was amazed and delighted that he was thinking so clearly, so logically, and communicating so well. Some kind of miracle, they had proclaimed.

But what difference did that make to him? Yesterday he was married and planning to retire from teaching to open a first-class restaurant with Vince Hammond—to give Carleton Center some gastronomic panache. And today it’s next year, and he’s divorced, bedridden, stripped of plans beyond his med schedule, and feeling like roadkill.

God! A coma had punched a hole in the fourth decade of his life.

Beth.

He missed Beth. He missed the way it was years ago. He missed their old life together. He wished they could heal the wounds and go back. While the monitors beeped like birds, he stared at the perforated ceiling.

Holes. So many holes.

And so many vague sensations—wicked ghostly images. Shadowy things doing bad, bad things. And holes …

Then he closed his eyes and pressed back into sleep.

42

NICK AND RENÉ WERE IN THE SMALL snack bar off the main lobby of Morningside when René heard the familiar high-compression growl out the window. It was Jordan Carr arriving for the eleven o’clock meeting that Nick had called. He had pulled in with a silver Ferrari Maranello he had just purchased.

When he came in, Nick smiled and said, “Did the other one get dirty?”

“Very funny,” Jordan said, and forced a smile.

But from the red blotching of his cheeks, he did not like the ribbing. Nor did he want to be reminded that his Italian sports car collection was growing, not from his practice, on which he had cut back, but from the trials. Gavin Moy had named him number-two point man.

Nick led them inside to the conference room. Although it was a regularly scheduled meeting for trial clinicians, Morningside administrators, and staffers, Nick had invited Peter Habib from Plymouth as well as two researchers from GEM Tech to review recent data—Kevin Maloney and a Hassan Vadali.

After some pleasantries, Nick got down to business. “The good news is that test results are improving markedly in test residents.” And he named several patients, including Louis Martinetti, who had shown higher scores on the Mini-Mentals as compared to scores of those patients receiving placebos. “Similar results have been recorded at other sites. Of course, we are very pleased, as the progress demonstrates the efficacy of Memorine.”

A summary of the report that René had helped put together had been sent to everybody in the room.

“But what concerns me are the mounting reports of flashbacks,” Nick continued. “We’re seeing regressive behavior in a number of patients here and at other sites.” Nick named several.

“I’ve had a few also,” Peter Habib added. “One particularly troublesome case you may recall was that of William Zett several weeks back. According to his brother and sister-in-law, he got completely lost in a deep-past flashback, talking to kids from his childhood. He went down a slide backward and broke his neck. Nobody knows what was going on in his head, but, according to his brother and sister-in-law, before the accident he appeared frightened, traumatized, as if reliving some disturbing experience. And these are the kinds of things that concern me.”

Nick nodded. “The problem is that almost none of these patients experienced flashback seizures before they were enrolled in the trials.”

“How many patients have you seen with these so-called flashbacks?” Vadali asked.

The question was disingenuous because René knew that the number was headlined in the report. “About thirty percent. And that could be a problem for a fast-track FDA approval.”

It was the first time Nick had raised this warning. Perhaps they had seen it coming, because the GEM Tech representatives looked unfazed.

“And how are these so-called flashbacks characterized?” Maloney asked. “You seem to view these as discrete neuropsychological phenomena.”

Nick deferred the question to René, who could feel the pressure from Maloney’s expression. “Well, in their reports nurses describe them as elaborate delusional episodes in which residents manifest regressive behavior.”

“Such as?”

“Such as talking like children, singing nursery rhymes and Christmas carols, spending hours playing with toys or flipping through children’s books. They appear to be locked in some past recollections.”

Maloney nodded. “And you think these delusions are the result of Memorine.”

Either he was playing dumb or he had not read the regular reports René had forwarded to GEM’s R&D people. Or they never took them seriously. “I’m saying that there are indications of a patterned correlation,” she said.

“I’m also seeing a frequency correlation between the flashbacks and increased neurological repair in MRIs,” Habib added. “It’s rudimentary, but there might be something to it, which means an added diagnostic tool for screening.”

“That sounds like yes,” Vadali said.

“Then yes—they’re the result of Memorine,” Habib said.

“And what do you think, Dr. Mavros?” Vidali asked.

“I’m being more open-minded, although the correlation is troublesome.”

“It’s more than troublesome,” Habib said. “I frankly think the drug is flawed, and we have to address that.”

Flawed. The word fluttered in the air like a bat.

“I don’t believe that for a moment,” Maloney said. “But even if that were true, these anomalies are more than compensated for by the patients’ extraordinary progress in cognition and daily functionality.”

Vadali and others in the room nodded in agreement.

René felt a battle line cut across the table like a seismic fault: GEM Tech reps and home administrators on one side; she, Peter Habib, one nurse, and Nick on the other. Jordan Carr had thus far not responded.

“The problem is that when patients get stuck in past experiences and become disruptive, they have to be medicated with antiseizures, antipsychotics, and sedatives that impede their mental recovery.” René looked toward the unit nurse, who concurred.

“How so?” Maloney asked.

“They’re doped down.”

“Our strategy here and at other sites,” Nick said, “is to try to come up with just the right dosages and combination of agents.”

Maloney kept his eyes on René, but she disregarded their heat. “My suggestion is that instead of simply addressing the events with antipsychotics and other meds, it might make sense to determine the nature of the connection, because I believe these flashback seizures are adverse reactions to the use of Memorine.”

Jordan cleared his voice. “If I may, and with all due respect, Peter, in patients with moderate-to-severe dementia, delusions that are related to post-traumatic stress disorders are not uncommon. And that’s what I believe we’re seeing here, since all these so-called flashback victims are patients within that population. Furthermore, according to nurses’ reports, since Mr. Martinetti was first treated with antipsychotic drugs he hasn’t had any sustained flashbacks.”

“That’s not exactly true,” René said. “He was lost in a closed loop, reexperiencing some horrible episode when he was a POW.”

An uneasy silence filled the room as she described the earlier episode.

René continued: “What bothers me is that according to his wife and daughter, Louis never suffered PTSD flashbacks before, and now he’s getting trapped in them.” She didn’t need to remind them that this flew in the face of the public perception of Memorine as a miracle cure and Louis as poster boy for GEM’s half-billion-dollar marketing campaign.

“I’m seeing the same thing,” Peter Habib said. “Patients getting caught in some dark past-time traumas. And nothing in their medical history shows they had suffered PTSD disorders.”

“But nothing in the reports in the earlier phases point to any such efficacy problem,” Maloney said. “So I think Dr. Carr is correct. But that’s not to say we shouldn’t continue monitoring patients’ behavior problems, et cetera.” And he offered a conciliatory smile.

“Well, that’s our intention.” And Nick outlined a plan to measure cognitive progress while trying to determine a medical, demographic, or even genetic cause to any flashback seizures.

As he and the others continued, René receded and took notes. She had already created for herself a reputation as some self-appointed Ralph Nader watchdog. Besides, Nick was in charge and laying out a sensible strategy.

As she sat there, she tried to remind herself that everybody in this room—GEM Tech reps, nurses, physicians—were decent, well-intentioned professionals dedicated to the relief of patients suffering from dementia. Yet she could not help thinking that corporate agendas were at least as important as medicine—that decisions made in this room had as much to do the stock portfolios of GEM Tech investors as with science.

WHEN THE MEETING WAS OVER, Jordan Carr pulled her aside. “I think we’ve mapped out a good strategy. And maybe to an extent you’re right.”

“I think it makes sense.”

“And if there’s something to these episodes, we’ll deal with them.” And he patted her on the shoulder.

She nodded.

He lowered his glasses. “So how come you don’t seem pleased?”

“Because what I felt in there was just more pressure to downplay problems.”

“What pressure? What are you talking about?”

She opened her briefcase and pulled out a set of pearl earrings, two complimentary tickets to a Celtics game, more tickets to Boston Symphony Orchestra and Boston Pops concerts, and a year’s membership to Kingsbury Club, an upscale fitness center on the South shore. “And I’m not alone. Nurses, aides, and other home staffers are being flooded with GEM gifts including trips to Bermuda and Jamaica.”

“Complimentary gestures for working on the trials.”

“You mean standard practice in the industry.”

“In any industry, and nothing’s wrong with that.” Then he picked up the BSO tickets. “Not exactly payola.”

“No, but this is,” and she held up a letter. “From a Tanner Walker, chief financial officer at GEM—an offer of stock options.” She did not cite the specifics, but the letter, which had just arrived, said that in recognition of her services to the company and to victims of Alzheimer’s disease she was being granted options to purchase five thousand shares in GEM Tech for five dollars each. And that she had three years to exercise her option.

“Well, congratulations.”

“Congratulations?”

“Yes, you could be a wealthy woman in a few years.”

He was right. If Memorine was approved by the FDA, her own Memorine-driven stocks would in a year wipe out all her loans and still leave her with more money than she had ever dreamed of having. But that bothered her. For as long as she could remember, René had viewed health care workers, especially physicians, as good and trustworthy by nature. But while working on these trials she was witnessing bold-faced avarice—like that growing collection of Ferraris out the window.

As if picking up her thoughts, Carr said, “Look, don’t get me wrong. I’m not like that Michael Douglas character from Wall Street—you know, ‘Greed is good.’ But anyone who says they’re not interested in money is a liar.” Then he added, “And nothing wrong with doing well by doing good.”

“Jordan, this isn’t an incentive, it’s bribery.”

“Bribery? That’s ridiculous.”

“Then tell me what I’m missing. First they intimidate us to silence about the Zuchowsky murder. Now they’re buying us off to underplay the flashbacks.”

“Nobody is buying anybody off. All that’s simply encouragement to do your best work—what you call employee incentives.”

“But I’m not an employee of GEM.” And she wanted to add that neither was he, or the fact that, under the guise of “incentives,” drug companies lined the pockets of doctors, showering them with fancy gifts to spouses and free trips to flossy ski slopes and tropical resorts in order to get them to write prescriptions for their products. And how nobody protested. Nobody raised the conflict-of-interest flag. And the reason was that drug companies had bottomless coffers to buy the best legal defense teams.

“This is about making sure we’re all insiders so we put the best possible light on the trials without appearing to cross the ethics line.”

“Nobody is asking anybody to cross the ethics line. And just keep in mind that if it weren’t for pharmaceutical companies, you wouldn’t have a job.” Then, as if an afterthought: “Or me, for that matter.”

“True, but it just doesn’t feel right.”

“Well, René, if you’re not comfortable with the stock options, then don’t exercise them.” And before he walked away, he added, “This is a fast-moving train coming down the tracks, and jumping in front won’t stop it.”

She watched him walk away, thinking that he seemed more interested in his silver bullet outside than Louis Martinetti’s private war with Colonel Chop Chop.

43

THREE DAYS AFTER HE WOKE UP, Jack was moved to a rehab floor referred to as the SNIF unit—shorthand for “skilled nursing facility.”

Here Marcy and a therapist wrapped his legs in Ace bandages to prevent his blood from pooling and laid him on a tilt table in preparation for sitting him up. Something about “orthostatic hypotension” and his “autonomic nervous system” adjusting to being upright again. He heard the words but didn’t bother to process the explanations.

They also monitored his blood pressure and heart rate, raising him to a slant of sixty-five degrees, moving him ten degrees at a time for five-minute increments. It took an hour to do this and he felt lightheaded. “If you don’t use it, you forget how to use it,” the therapist explained. “Being upright increases the vascular resistance on your autonomic nervous system. We don’t want your blood pressure to drop suddenly.”

Jack nodded. Whatever, he just knew that it felt good to be up, since some part of his mind sensed how long he had been on his back.

So much time had passed, yet he felt the heft of elusive memory just beneath the membrane of awareness—memory that manifested itself in incoherent flashes.

As they had since he woke up, the nurses and staff kept him chatting so that his voice grew stronger and the words came more easily. But it was like starting over, having to relearn how to do things that previously were all but involuntary activities.

In spite of the constant and aggressive physical therapy he had undergone while comatose, he had lost seventy-five percent of his muscle strength. But with the aggressive physical rehab program laid out for him, the therapist said that chances were good that he would be able to walk again in a month, probably with the assistance of a cane.

Since Jack had been fed through a gastric tube for so long, they were afraid that if he ate solids right away he might inhale some and end up in the hospital again. So he had been put on thickened liquids for two days, after which he graduated to mashed foods. It was like being a baby again, he said to Marcy.

In the afternoon of his third day awake, Marcy and the therapist sat Jack in a wheelchair and brought him to an office to meet the neurologist, a tall thin woman with a sharp bird face and reddish brown hair pulled back in a bun. She introduced herself as Dr. Vivian Heller. “Welcome back. How are you feeling?”

Jack’s left foot ached, his vision was still slightly blurry, and a beetle was crawling through his brain. “Fine.”

“I know how difficult this is, so confusing and all, but you’re going to go on the record books for coma recoveries.”

“Lucky me.”

“Well, you are lucky, since only a small percentage of long-term coma patients ever wake up, and so alert. It’s wonderful.”

He nodded.

Then she opened her folder. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to check your neurological recovery—memory and such. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Good. I’m going to ask you some questions and you answer them as best you can. Do you know what state we’re in?”

“Massachusetts.”

“What country?”

“United States.”

“Good. And who is the president of the United States?”

“George W. Bush.”

“Who was the previous president?”

“Bill Clinton.”

“Very good. And where were you born?”

“Worcester, Massachusetts.”

“What’s the capital of England?”

“Fish.”

“Fish?”

He closed his eyes. “I smell fish … . Fishy air.”

“You mean the sea.” The doctor tested the air. The window was open and a breeze could be felt. “I don’t smell it, although we’re only a few miles inland. So you think you smell the ocean.”

“More like in my head.” He closed his eyes again. “And something else … like a swimming pool … chlorine.”

The doctor made some notes. “The police report says you were on Homer’s Island. Do you recall what you were doing when you got caught in the jellyfish? Why you were out there?”

“Summer cottage my family used to rent.”

“When you were young.”

“Mmmm.” The beetle in his brain split in two and began to nibble twin paths into the gray matter.

“I see. But you were out there alone, I understand.”

“Anniversary of …”

The doctor waited. “Of?”

“My mother’s death. She got lost in the storm a long time ago.”

“I see. If you don’t mind me asking, how long ago? How old were you when she got lost?”

“Two.”

“Two? But didn’t you say your parents used to rent the place every summer when you were a kid?”

“My father died in a plane crash shortly after I was born. After my mother died, I was brought up by my aunt and uncle.” He wasn’t sure if the doctor was asking for real information or just trying to jump-start his memory.

“And what were their names?”

“Nancy and Kirk.”

“And what were your parents’ names?”

“Rose and Leo.”

“What kind of work did your father do?”

“He worked in a foundry.”

“Did your mother work?”

“Yes, she was a biochemist.”

Heller’s eyebrow shot up. “Really. How interesting, and for a woman back then.”

What she was really wondering, he thought, was how a scientist could end up with a foundry worker. “It was an arranged marriage—what immigrants did back then.”

“I must say that your long-term memory retrieval seems excellent. What I’d like to do next is test your visual memory. If you get tired or confused or want to stop, please say so.”

“Okay.” The beetles had doubled and redoubled again and were humming behind his eyes in packs.

She pulled out a small stack of eight-by-ten cards and laid them facedown on the tray table. “What we’ll do first is I’ll show you a series of cartoons one at a time. You’ll look at each one for five seconds, then I’ll cover it and ask you questions about what you saw. Got that?”

“Got it.”

“Good.” She turned over the first and held it up—a colorful drawing of a house with children out front, toys on the lawn, a cat under a bush, birds on the roof. After five seconds, she turned the card facedown. “How many children are playing in the yard?”

“Two.”

“How many birds are sitting on the house?”

“Five.”

“Oh which side of the house, left or right, is the chimney?”

“Right.”

“What color is the house?”

“Blue.”

“How many windows are on the front of the house?”

“Five.”

“What number is the house?”

“Three seventy-nine.”

“How many bushes are in front of the house?”

“Two.”

“True or false: There is a hydrant in front of the house.”

“False.”

The doctor continued reading all ten questions, and when she finished recording Jack’s answers she peered over her glasses at Jack. “Very good. You got them all right. Now let’s try the next one.”

The next drawing was more intricate with details—a pasture scene with cows, horses, and sheep in a field, with a farmhouse and barn in the background. The doctor held up the card and then laid it down and asked ten more questions. And Jack responded. When he was finished, Dr. Heller said, “You’re doing a great job, Jack.” She opened another folder. “Okay, this time I’m going to show you a series of letters for five seconds, then I want you to repeat them from memory.”

Jack nodded. The beetle-humming in his head intensified, as if someone had cranked up the volume. She held up the first card for five seconds then dropped it.

“GU.”

And in the time allotted, he did the same with each sequence that followed.

“RXW”

“XIURZ.”

“APXOZNT”

“QMENRBTJH.”

“EIDYTAWXIZBJM.”

When he finished the last sequence, something flitted across the Easter Island blankness of Dr. Heller’s face.

“How did we do?” Jack asked.

The doctor looked up at Jack with a queer expression and shook her head to say she would hold off on commentary. “Okay, this time I’m going to hold up cards with a series of words for five seconds and I’d like you to try to recall as many of the words from the list, and the order is not important. Only as many words as you can recall.”

The first card was short: CANDY, CHOCOLATE, CAKE, TASTE, SWEET.

After five seconds, Jack repeated the words.

The next sequence followed: NAP, SLUMBER, PILLOW, DROWSY, REST, WAKE, DOZE, BED.

And the next: DOG, FUR, BARK, FLUFFY, TAIL, LICK, JUMP, PAWS, LEASH.

And the next: BEACH, SAND, OCEAN, CRAB, WAVES, SHELLS, SUN, SALT, BOAT, FISH.

Jack answered, but the humming in his head was making his teeth ache.

KNIFE, CUT, POINT, HAMMER, STEEL.

The doctor stopped. “Jack, are you all right?”

He shook his head.

“Maybe we can finish later.”

Dissociated images were swimming in his head like litter in a muddy whirlpool. And the buzz had produced a material pressure. “Sorry,” he whispered.

“Nothing to be sorry about. Are you feeling faint or dizzy? Or disoriented?”

He rocked his head slightly. “Tired.”

“Fine. We can continue tomorrow, but you should know that you did amazingly well, Jack. The average adult letter span is seven, with a deviation of plus or minus two. You did a span recall of eleven. I don’t know what to say, but your short-term recall is off the charts.”

The beetles had bored their way out of the sac inside his forehead and were making their way toward the rear of his brainpan. He wanted the doctor to leave. He wanted to be left alone. He wanted to close his eyes and fall into a long, deep sleep.

“I’ll let you rest,” Dr. Heller said. She got up and began to pack her papers into her briefcase. “If you don’t mind, I have one more thing I’d like to ask you. No, it’s not a test.”

Jack looked up at her through pulsing slits. “Sure, but how about some Tylenol when I’m done?”

“We can do that right now,” she said, and produced a two-pack from her smock pocket and placed them in his mouth and held up a cup of water. “If you don’t mind me asking, what’s the ethnicity of Koryan?”

“Armenian.”

Another test question. He was certain that during the course of his convalescence the staff would be tossing him offhand little bio queries to be certain his hard drive hadn’t crashed.

“Do you speak it?”

“No.”

“Did you ever?”

His aunt and uncle had spoken only English with him, even though on occasion they conversed with each ether in Armenian. “No.”

“Well, would you recognize it if you heard it?”

“Yeah, I guess.” The only place he had heard it spoken was in grocery stores in Watertown, the Little Armenia of the East Coast.

She gave him a strange look, then she pulled out of her briefcase a small tape recorder. “I’d like you to hear this,” she said, and she moved it close to his head and flicked it on.

There was electronic hush like the open line of a telephone, some indistinct background noise, the muffle of people talking softly in the background, the distant sound of a jet plane. The sound of breathing. The soft beeps from the monitors. Then a voice that for a split instant registered in the warm core of his soul. “Ahmahn seerem anoosheeg.” A high, feathery, fluttery voice—a woman’s, as if speaking to him through a distant fan.

The next moment Jack felt a jolt of recognition. It was his own voice.

The tape continued as he looked helplessly at Dr. Heller, whose face seemed to dislodge itself from her white smock and dissolve in the soupy sensations in his brain. The margins of his vision became dark as everything began to fracture and sparkle—like viewing the room through a shattered windshield.

Suddenly the beetles hit a trip wire, setting off a wild gyroscope that set Jack into a spin as if his wheelchair had turned into the Tilt-a-Whirl at Canobie Lake Park, whipping him around into a centrifugal blur, sounds muffling and breaking up … his name … someone calling his name … a female voice, the doctor … Dr. Heller, but he couldn’t locate her.

“Room three nineteen … having a seizure … Diazepam and Dilantin … hurry …”

He felt his body shake as if he were being prodded with an electric rod, cold, wincing ripples shooting across his brainpan.

“Get him flat before he hurts himself.”

Lifted. He was being lifted.

And from someplace outside of his body, someplace above the ceiling, he watched them lay him on the slick sheets, the tendons of his legs stretching painfully flat on the bed like a long, bent child. He heard himself making gasping sounds. His eyes snapped open, and for a second he froze, his eyes huge and gaping at Marcy in nameless horror. Then his body spasmed and a scream rose out of his chest.

“Jack. Calm down. Everything’s okay. Just relax.”

He heard himself whimpering as awareness closed in on itself and warm hands cupped his little fist, rubbing open the tight ball of sad, small fingers.

Ah mahn seedem.

And the moment before the world pulled itself into a pinpoint and blew itself out, Jack felt a small flutter in his throat.

“Maideek.”

44

“HE HAD ANOTHER FLASHBACK.”

René had arrived at Broadview a little before noon when Nick met her in the lobby. As he led her to the locked unit, he explained how it had happened during a visit Louis had with his wife and daughter. “They were having a nice time when Louis began flipping out about the Red Tent and Fuzzy somebody. I guess it was pretty bad, especially for the wife.”

“What did the nurses do?”

“Gave him a shot of Diazepam.”

They almost never had to resort to needle sedatives in the homes.

“Except for the bad one,” Nick continued, “his daughter says she prefers the hallucinations to his fading away. A few flashback seizures she could live with.”

“What about Mrs. Martinetti?”

“I suppose she’ll have to adjust. It’s better than losing him completely.”