Tunnel Vision

38

“It’s going well. I sleep and they pay down my Discover card, thanks to you.”

“Glad it’s working out,” Damian said.

“So the good news is this dinner is on me.”

Damian looked down at his chicken burrito. “Hell, we could have been at Davio’s.”

“Next time.”

Zack had met Damian at Qdoba, a Mexican eatery that bordered the Northeastern campus and sat at the same Huntington Avenue intersection where five months ago he had hit a pothole on his bike and landed in a coma.

“So what are they testing for?” Damian asked.

“They wire my head and measure the activity while I’m dreaming.” He didn’t like being vague, especially since Damian had gotten him the gig. But he had signed the nondisclosure forms, and Dr. Luria was insistent that what they did in the lab had to remain in the lab.

“Any interesting dreams?”

Yeah, gasping for air and chewing sand.

“Just fantasies of a hot neurobiologist on the project.”

“That gives you something to look forward to.”

“Yeah,” Zack said, thinking about the eddy of emotions that had swirled in him since the helmet episode. No doubt aftereffects of the stimulation, deep sweet memories of his father would poke through the resentment that had stratified over the years. Like this morning while at the library. He was working on his thesis when his mind clicked back to a silly game they’d played when he was maybe four years old. He would slip under his little-boy blanket with the goofy cats, and when he called, “Ready,” his father would come into the room. “Where’s Zack? Where, oh, where can little Zack be?” And he’d hear his father look in the closet, under the bed, in bureau drawers, all the while saying, “Where’s my Zack? He’s got to be here somewhere.” And this would go on until Zack couldn’t hold in the giggles anymore and threw back the blanket and announced, “Here’s your Zack!” And his father would slap his chest in mock surprise and say, “There’s my Zack!” And he’d jump on the bed and smother him with kisses that turned into a tickle attack that left Zack giddy with laughter. The memory was as fresh as yesterday, and it had left him hollow with yearning.

When they were finished eating, Damian offered to give Zack a ride home. “Thanks anyway. I’m being picked up just down the street.”

“More sleep?”

“Something like that. By the way, can I borrow your car this weekend?”

“A date with the hot neurobiologist?”

“If there’s a God.”

“There is,” Damian said, and flashed his saintly smile. “Unfortunately, I’m going on a retreat in Vermont. But any other time. Going to be great weather, so go for a walk with her.” Then he added, “Live in light, go in faith.”

It was one of his little salutations, born more of habit than stubborn efforts to convert him. “Thanks, I’ll try.”

* * *

At six o’clock, Bruce showed up and drove him to the lab to Beethoven’s Third. By seven thirty, he was changed, on the gurney, and hooked up to the IV and monitors. Then they rolled him into the fMRI machine. When Sarah asked if he was ready, he nodded. And the last thing he remembered was her depressing the anesthesia into his IV.

“Zack, can you hear me?” A female voice.

He woke up with a mouthful of sand.

“He’s coming to.”

He couldn’t catch his breath. Throat was clogged. Lungs were sacs of concrete.

“Come on, Zack, wake up.”

He pushed against the weight, trying to free his hands. With every ounce of strength, he loosened them and clawed his way out. The cold night snapped against his skin. He rolled onto his knees, his diaphragm racking for air, his mouth drooling grit.

“That’s it, open your eyes.”

His eyes. They were swollen slits and lined with sand. His mouth, nostrils, and ears were clogged. His hair. Gritted. And mites were eating him all over.

“Push, Zack. You can do it.”

Through the gloom, he could make out the water’s edge—black curls lapping the shore. Like a crab, he scuttled toward the surf and lunged in. The salt water stung his eyes and skin, but he forced himself to stay under until the bugs and sand washed away.

Then he was lying on his back, filling his lungs with sweet, cool air.

“That’s it. Push a little harder. Open your eyes.”

Light. The moon had broken through the cloud cover and set the sky in motion.

“How you doing?” A woman was peering down at him.

Then others.

He had no idea who they were. His body jolted. He had no idea who he was.

“Welcome back.”

His lips and tongue were numb. His eyes were burning. Their faces hung in watery blurs.

“Zack? Are you all right?”

“What are you doing?” Fear jerked his body. He tried to get up, but his limbs were wooden blocks. And his arms and chest were tangled in something.

“Don’t be afraid,” the younger woman said. “You’re doing fine.”

“Who are you?”

“Zack, it’s me, Sarah Wyman.” The woman pushed her face forward. “You remember me. And Dr. Luria and Dr. Cates.”

He tried to sit up but was heavy with wet sand and vegetation. And his head was thick with sludge. He flopped back down on the sand and looked up at the people. This woman and two men, one older, the other a younger black man. He had no idea who they were. He had no idea why they were calling him Zack.

With help from the younger woman, he sat up and blood drained from his head.

“Don’t you remember?” the older woman asked.

He shook his head. He remembered nothing.

“Tell me your name,” she said, her face looking tight and pale but for dried blood on her cheek. She looked vaguely familiar.

For a long moment, he stared into her eyes. Your name. Your name. “I don’t know.” He looked around but couldn’t see the beach or water. And the sky had been replaced with a ceiling, and the moon was panels of fluorescent lights.

Your name. He knew he had one. A history. A presence. Yet it was just beyond his grasp.

“You’d been asleep for an hour, don’t you remember? This is Elizabeth Luria and Morris Stern and Byron Cates. And me, Sarah. We were doing tests on you.”

The night beach had faded into a large white room with electronic equipment attached by wires to his head and arms, where the seaweed had been. Behind him was a large machine with a round opening. And three people. Then, like a Polaroid image developing, it all came back to him. “Zack … Kashian.”

“Good,” Sarah said, looking relieved. “Do you know why you’re here?”

“Yes.” And they asked him the usual questions to test the state of his memory.

Then Dr. Luria began a battery of other questions. “Do you remember anything—images or experiences, locales, other people—from when you were in suspension?”

Suspension? He wasn’t in suspension. He wasn’t asleep. “I think I was on a beach.”

“A beach?” Luria said.

His mind was foggy, and his recall faded rapidly. “Got sand in my face.”

“You were kind of spitting when you came through,” Sarah said.

“Recall what you were doing at the beach?” Luria asked, her face stiff with concern.

“No.”

“Any movements of any kind—walking, jumping, swimming, interacting with people?”

“I don’t recall anything.”

“What about the presence of other people?”

Zack shook his head. “I was alone.”

Byron Cates came over from the computer. “Zack, can you characterize your emotional state while at that beach?”

“My emotional state?” He thought for a moment, trying to summon the experience. Then he shook his head. “Not really. Just a blank.”

Cates glanced at Luria for a moment. “No sense of anxiety or fear?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure. Why you asking?”

“Because your blood chemistry registered a high level of cortisol, which is a stress hormone secreted by the adrenal gland.”

Dr. Stern cut in. He had been studying feedback from the computer monitor he was at. “Zack, we’ve been doing these kinds of tests for a while, matching blood and neuroelectrical activities with subjective reports. There’s every indication your unconscious experience was borderline violent.”

“But I don’t remember any of it.”

“Just as well,” Stern said. “Because it appears you were fighting for your life.”