The Resurrectionist

12

The Honda made terrible noises all the way back to the Clinic. The girl from the drive-away agency had done something to the car. Sweeney parked in the back lot and killed the ignition and the engine went through a melodramatic death scene, bucking and coughing up clouds of gray smoke. After the last spasm, he noticed the cigarette burns in the dash and the cupcake wrappers peeking out from under the passenger seat. Sweeney reached under the driver’s seat and pulled out two empty tequila nips and a half-empty can of Jolt. He put them in the handbasket — Myer hadn’t offered to bag his purchases — and got out of the car.

He dropped everything but the pajamas in the apartment, went up to the cafeteria and was surprised to find it crowded. He got a coffee and was looking for an empty table when Nora Blake whistled to him from the back of the room.

He slid into the seat opposite her. Nora was finishing a turnover and a paperback novel that featured a blond pirate on its cover.

“I didn’t know administrators worked Saturdays,” Sweeney said, and Nora held up a finger and brought her head just a bit closer to the words on the page.

Sweeney waited, sipped his coffee, and watched the woman concentrate. The book was beaten up, the spine cracked and peeled and the cover sporting dozens of creases that did nothing to lessen the pirate’s virility. Nora started to shake her head, a slow sway, side to side, and Sweeney couldn’t tell whether she was enthralled or disappointed. Finally, she looked up at him and gave a sigh that was almost as dramatic as the Honda’s.

“You like pirate books?” Sweeney asked. He noticed that Nora was wearing pearls.

She shoved the paperback into a purse that was slung on the back of her chair.

“I was a virtual widow for twenty years,” she said. “And I’m in love with historical romance.”

“How much is history,” Sweeney asked, “and how much is romance?”

“This one,” Nora said, pulling her Virginia Slims from a pocket, “was about seventy-five, twenty-five romance to history. And I think I’m being generous. So how was your first night in the Peck? And what’ve you got there in your lap?”

He answered the second question first.

“They’re pajamas for Danny,” he said. But he didn’t bother to hold them up.

Nora grimaced. “They might not go for that,” she said, “depending on the G-tube and all.”

“Danny would want these,” Sweeney said. “I’ll talk to Alice.”

“Oh,” said Nora, still feeling the effects of the high seas, “it’s Alice already?”

He ignored her and said, “As for my first night, you know anything about a card game called Limbo?”

She smiled, almost laughed, and sucked the life out of her cigarette, then pointed at him with it.

“Limbo is new,” she said. “Ernie’s game was Blue Migraine. We made close to two thousand dollars one season. I bought myself a portable Jacuzzi for Christmas.”

“So you know about the game and it’s all right with you?”

She put on a concerned grandmother face but Sweeney thought something mocking was in it as well.

“Does it bother you?” she said. “Because I was outraged at first. It’s amazing I didn’t go to Dr. Peck that night.”

“Why didn’t you?” Sweeney asked. “I’m thinking about telling Alice today.”

“You think she doesn’t know?”

Sweeney hadn’t even considered the possibility.

“Does she?” he said, a little too loud.

Nora shrugged and said, “Drink your coffee. It’s getting cold,” and Sweeney did as told.

“Look, Sweeney, I didn’t go to Dr. Peck because it isn’t in my nature to be a fink. Even though I was mad as hell and for a while it made me think about pulling Ernie out of here.”

“But you left him in.”

“I wish you smoked,” Nora said, stubbing out her cigarette even though half of it was left. “It was better when people smoked together.” She shook her head and started again. “The more I thought about the game, the more I started to believe Griswold was right—”

“Who’s Griswold?”

“He’s the one who started the game. He’s been gone a while now. But he insisted they were playing for the patients. And Griswold walked the walk, you know. He’d play as if he were just Ernie’s hands. One time, they were playing Lost Weekend, and it was western rules, and so the pot was growing pretty quickly. And before the end of shift they ended up with six, seven hundred dollars on the table. And it’s Griswold’s turn to either call or fold. And I’ll never forget this. The sun is coming up and everyone’s overtired and getting nervous. You can hear stomachs groaning and all. And Griswold just takes his time and he gets up and climbs onto the bed with Ernie. And he holds the cards in front of my husband’s face. And he starts whispering. This isn’t some nut, okay? This guy was top of his class at Stanford Medical. So the whispering and conferring goes on for a while. And then Griswold gets up off the bed, shaking his head, saying, ‘All right, Ernie, if that’s what you want to do.’ And he calls and it was one of those long moments, you know. Just like in a movie. Everyone waiting to see what happens. The tension just hanging there.”

She paused, trying to recreate a little of the original suspense.

“And Griswold took the pot?” Sweeney said.

Nora gave up a big, self-satisfied smile. “No,” she said, “Ernie took the pot. You’re missing my whole point, aren’t you? We gave Griswold seventy bucks and I bought Ernie and me the Jacuzzi down at the Mart.”

Sweeney put his coffee down and he and Nora stared at each other for a second. Then he said, “Look, I don’t want to upset you. But you don’t find that story a little. .” he fumbled, then tried, “macabre?”

“Macabre?” she said.

“How about disrespectful?”

“Disrespectful to who?”

“To your husband and you,” he said. “To the patient and his family.” She didn’t get upset. She patted his hand.

“You know what I find disrespectful?” she said and didn’t wait for an answer. “When they treated my husband like a vegetable in a warehouse. When they talked about him as if he wasn’t there. When some prissy little doctor would study my husband’s file as if Ernie was some math problem.”

She took out another cigarette but didn’t light it.

“Dr. Griswold said to me once, he said, ‘They’re still inside.’ He was convinced of it and he convinced me of it. He said the best way we could help them was to show them some faith. To show them we accept their new consciousness—”

The word was a button that brought Sweeney to life.

“Oh for Christ sake,” he said. “Their new consciousness? Jesus, Nora, this guy was a fucking nut.”

He was aware of people around them turning their heads in his direction, and he lowered his voice.

“They have no consciousness. That’s what this condition is. That’s the goddamn definition. They’ve lost consciousness.”

“If Danny has no consciousness,” Nora said, calm and serene, “then why did his father buy him special pajamas?”

Sweeney opened his mouth and closed it just as quickly. The question was a slap and it had the effect of flipping his anger into fear.

“I guess,” he said, “I bought them for myself.”

Nora was good with a cigarette in the way lifelong smokers often are. She pointed it at Sweeney’s chest and said, “There aren’t that many ways to get through this. You know I speak from experience. I’ve lived through some nights that most people can’t even imagine. Now you’re telling yourself you’re a stoic. And that’s keeping you from following your wife’s example. You’ve gotten rid of everything that existed before the accident. You’ve erased Cleveland. Everyone and everything you used to know. You’ve moved into this nightmare and you’ve started your vigil. Fine. But how long do you think it’ll be before you either take a swing at something other than a wall? Or get so scared that you want to trade places with your son?”

Sweeney’s throat was fully constricted. He said, “I’d give anything to trade places with Danny.”

“That,” Nora said, “we don’t get to choose. But we do get to choose how to think about this. You really want to believe that your son is a turnip who can still suck air?”

He lifted his coffee cup to throw it but Nora didn’t flinch.

“Or do you want to believe that Danny can’t wait to get in those new pajamas? That he knows when you’re next to him and that you still love him even though he’s not what he used to be?”

“It’s not a choice,” he said.

“It’s absolutely a choice,” she said. “It’s about the only option you’ve got left. Let me clue you in on something, honey. These doctors, they know a lot of impressive words and they’ve got enough attitude to choke a czar. But they have no idea what consciousness is. And don’t you let them tell you they do.”

All he could get out was her name and he said it like a request. He was exhausted and nauseated and he knew that no amount of breathing exercises would help.

Nora leaned over the table.

“If you don’t want Danny to be part of the game, then don’t let him. The game is nothing. But don’t start accepting someone else’s opinion about who your son is. They know their science. Maybe. But you know your boy. Right?”

He put down his cup and said, “I’ve got to go see him now.”

Nora put her free hand to her throat and touched her pearls. “You worry me, Sweeney,” she said.

He got up and left the cafeteria without another word.

HE RAN TO Danny’s ward. People stepped out of his way. The floor outside 103 was newly mopped and he slid on the way in and fell on his ass. Alice Peck, who was hunched over Danny’s bed, turned and looked down at Sweeney.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

She started to offer a hand but he was already climbing to his feet.

“They should put up a sign,” he said.

Alice had a penlight in her hand. She was dressed in fitted black pants and a silk blouse. There was no sign of her lab coat.

“I was just checking in with the little guy,” she said. “But I can come back.”

This was a first. Sweeney had never heard a doctor offer to adjust her rounds to accommodate him.

“No, please,” he said, “I’ve got all day. I can come back later.”

Alice shook her head. “There’s no need. Unless it makes you uncomfortable to see him examined.”

“Were you examining him?” He looked at the bed and the night table for files or stethoscope, latex gloves or a new tube kit. There was nothing but the penlight she held in her hand.

“Nothing major,” she said. “Mostly I was just visiting.”

She bent over and used her fingers to pull Danny’s lids apart. She brought her head close to the boy’s, almost touching. She thumbed her penlight on, shined it into Danny’s right eye, and studied the eyeball for what seemed, to Sweeney, an unusually long time. She did the same thing with the left eye. Then, before raising her head, she did something that Sweeney had never seen any doctor do before. She kissed Danny on the forehead.

“Drives my father crazy,” she said as she came upright and saw the surprise on Sweeney’s face. “But it’s part of the therapy.” She smiled and added, “And I’m crazy for kids.”

When Sweeney didn’t respond, Alice said, “I’m sorry. Does it bother you?”

“Not at all,” he said. “It’s a nice change.”

She looked back to Danny, reached down, and ran a hand over the side of his skull.

“His hair’s like silk. I love it at this age.”

“He’s got his mother’s hair,” Sweeney said.

Alice nodded, took a last look at the boy, then motioned toward the hall with her head and said, “Be careful there. It still isn’t dry.”

Sweeney followed her outside. She looked up and down the corridor before she spoke.

“In the next week,” she said, “we’ll want to schedule a meeting with you.”

“Is everything all right?”

“Everything’s fine,” Alice said. “This is standard procedure at the Clinic. It’ll be my entire assessment team, Dr. Gögüs and Dr. Tannenbaum, maybe a therapist or an attending nurse. And possibly my father.”

“I’ve met Dr. Tannenbaum,” Sweeney said.

Alice bobbed her head and said, “He’s terrific, isn’t he? We’re thrilled to have him here.”

“What happens at the meeting?”

“It’s actually the first in a series of meetings. But in some ways it’s the most crucial. We’ll track through Danny’s condition from every possible angle. We look at full medical history. We study prior diagnosis and prognosis. We look at and evaluate all previous therapies. And we revisit the incident itself.”

“The accident,” Sweeney said.

“I tell you this,” Alice said, “to prepare you. For most families it’s a pretty grueling session. It’s tedious and it’s technical and some highly emotional material is presented in a pretty clinical fashion.”

“I might not like what I hear.”

“You might not like what you hear,” Alice said, “both in terms of the recounting and the final assessment.”

“You took Danny,” Sweeney said, “because you thought his case was promising. That’s what Dr. Lawton told me.”

“And that hasn’t changed,” Alice said. “But what we do here at the Peck is start from the beginning. And it can be painful going backwards. It’s been a year since Danny’s incident, right? You’d already found a routine at the St. Joseph. And you might find things changing here.”

“And that would be a bad thing?”

Alice smiled at him and regrouped.

“This is what I’d like to do,” she said. “At some point, before the meeting, I’d like to talk to you one-on-one. Outside a clinical setting.”

Sweeney stared at her again and went mute.

“Away from the Peck,” she said. “I want to sit down, in a relaxed atmosphere, and talk to you. About Danny. And about you and Danny.”

“Anytime you want to talk about Danny,” he said, “I’m available.”

“I’ll call you,” Alice said and walked away before Sweeney could tell her that he didn’t have a telephone yet. He watched her turn a corner and, in the same instant that she disappeared, the janitor, Romeo, turned onto the hall, pushing a wash bucket on casters with a long-handled mop. He swayed toward Sweeney with a relaxed, almost swaggering gait, water slopping over the lip of the bucket as he moved. He didn’t stop to talk, but brushed by and said, “How we doin’ today, friend?” The voice was low and it was still locked in street jive.

“You’re making a mess,” Sweeney said to his back and Romeo lifted a hand, waved it in the air, and kept moving.

Sweeney went back into 103, stood at the end of the first bed, and looked at his son. Then he walked across the room and looked at Irene Moore, Danny’s roommate. She was still in the same position she’d occupied yesterday. He moved to the side of the bed, leaned down, and kissed her forehead. Then he immediately walked back to Danny.

He climbed in next to his son. He brought his head level with Danny’s and got comfortable, rolled to his side and brought his lips to the boy’s left ear.

“Dad’s back, Danny,” he whispered.

He took a few breaths. He reached down, took his son’s wrist, and timed the pulse.

“Do you remember,” he asked, “where we left off?”

He stared for too long at his son’s face, waiting for anything that he could tell himself was a response. Then he opened the drawer of the nightstand, reached inside, and pulled out several issues of Limbo.