“Oh, yes. It’s her memory and affect that’s impaired, not her reasoning ability.”
“What are the chances of a total recovery?”
“There’s only a partial severing of the frontal lobe, and it’s only on one side, so there’s a good chance she’ll exhibit the full range of emotions eventually. No guarantees, however. There’s no direct damage to areas of the brain that control memory, so I expect she’s just in a traumatic fog, which should pass. I’ll be recommending therapy with a neuropsychologist for that. Now, what exactly do you need from me, Detective, other than the bullet?”
“Is there any chance she’ll remember anything while you’re operating?”
“We’ll be nudging along the hippocampus. It’s certainly possible she’ll get random flashes. Whether they’ll be dreams or memories, I can’t say. But you’ve seen the state she’s in. There won’t be any context for them.”
“If you could just keep in mind that it might be useful for us, and it could save her life. We don’t know who’s trying to kill her.”
“That it?”
“I need to actually see you take the bullet out.”
“All right. Let’s get you gloved and gowned. We’ll be working with something called a Stealth Station. It’s a 3-D cat scan hooked up to the microscope I’ll be using. Should give you a ringside seat.”
Like most cops, Cardinal had witnessed his share of gore—the torn wreckage of accidents and the blood-spattered kitchens, bedrooms, basements and living rooms where men commit violence on each other or, more often, on women. A policeman’s heart gets calloused, like a carpenter’s thumb. What Cardinal had never got used to, however, was the operating room. For some reason he could not fathom—he hoped it was not cowardice—the gleam of surgical blades made his stomach turn in a way that burns, dismemberments and impalings did not.
Two physicians assisted Dr. Schaff, and two nurses. “Red,” as Cardinal had begun to think of her, was drowsy from sedatives and anti-seizure medication, but conscious. A bigger patch had been shaved around the entrance wound, and she had been given injections of local anaesthetic from a huge hypodermic. General anaesthetic was not required, the brain being insensitive to pain.
Masked and gowned, Cardinal stood to one side near Red’s feet, where he could see an overhead monitor and observe the surgeon at the same time.
“Okay, Red,” Dr. Schaff said. “How you feeling?”
“My goodness, you all have such beautiful eyes.”
Cardinal glanced around the O.R. What the girl said was true: Between the masks and the surgical caps, the eyes were emphasized; everyone appeared gentle and wise.
“Flattery will get you everywhere,” Dr. Schaff said. She strapped on a pair of goggles that made her look like a benign alien. “Are you ready for us? It won’t hurt, I promise.”
“I’m ready.”
Cardinal had thought he was ready too, until Dr. Schaff took a scalpel and cut a flap in Red’s scalp. For a moment it formed a fine scarlet geometry, but then the red lines thickened and flowed, and Cardinal wished he were somewhere else.
Dr. Schaff asked for the bone saw. Cardinal spent a lot of his off-hours doing woodwork, and it amazed him that the instrument in her gloved hand might have been a tool in his basement. It gave off a high-pitched whine, like a dentist’s drill, but once it touched bone the sound was not all that different from ripping plywood. Red didn’t even blink as Dr. Schaff extracted the piece of skull and set it aside. It would be preserved and put back in place in a day or two, when any brain swelling had gone down.
First, do no damage. Of all medical endeavours, brain surgery is probably the one where physicians are most cognizant of Hippocrates’ proscription. Dr. Schaff began to probe through layer after layer of tissue with unbearable gentleness. Except for the beep of the monitors and the occasional clank of metal on metal, there was utter silence. Every so often, Dr. Schaff would call for a different instrument, now a “McGill,” now a “Foster,” now a “Bircher.”
Seeing a length of stainless steel moving millimetre by millimetre deeper into the girl’s brain, Cardinal felt a distinct softness in his knees. Looking up didn’t help. The monitor showed the same thing in lateral close-up. He felt as if he were slowly tumbling down an elevator shaft. Sweat gathered under his surgical cap.
Two hours went by. Three. The doctors made occasional remarks back and forth, commenting on pulse, blood pressure. There were calls for hemostats and spreaders and cautery. Dr. Schaff spoke now and again to Red as she inched further into the girl’s brain.
“Are you all right, Red? You doing okay?”
“I’m fine, Doctor. I’m just fine.”
To calm his stomach, Cardinal concentrated on the background sounds, the beeping monitors, the whirring ventilation, the buzzing lights. On the monitor, the instrument was a bar of bright metal several inches inside the girl’s skull.
“Coming up on the hippocampus …”
Red began singing. “A-hunting we will go, a-hunting we will go …”
“Yes, we’re on a hunt here, Red. And I think it’s just about over.”
“Heigh-ho, the dairy-o …”
“Okay, looks like we’re there,” Dr. Schaff said. “I’m going to try and grab it.”
On the screen, the dark blot of the bullet was now within the angle of flat jaws. The instrument began pulling back. Cardinal had a daughter about the same age as Red, perhaps a little older. He had a strong paternal urge to reach out and protect the young woman in some way—absurd, really, since she wasn’t in the slightest pain.
Red spoke up as if in mid-conversation. “The clouds were amazing.”
“Really?” Dr. Schaff said. “Clouds, huh?”
The bullet was steadily rising through the tunnel on the screen. Cardinal looked from the screen to Dr. Schaff. Her gloves were slick with blood.
Then Red spoke in a different tone. “The flies,” she said, hushed, even awed. “My God, the flies.”
Dr. Schaff leaned over her patient. “Are you talking to us, Red?”
“Her eyes are closed,” someone else said. “It’s a memory. Or maybe a dream.”
Cardinal tensed, waiting for the girl to say more, but her eyes opened again and she stared blandly into space.
A moment later, Dr. Schaff extracted the bullet. A nurse held out a Baggie to receive it, then handed it to Cardinal. He went out to the prep room, took off his scrubs and slipped the Baggie into his breast pocket. A moment later, he felt a tiny spot of heat there, the bullet still warm from the girl’s brain.
3
CARDINAL SLEPT FOR THREE HOURS in the crisply starched sheets of the Best Western hotel. After a scalding shower that nearly removed a layer of skin, he went down to the coffee shop, where he ate a chewy omelette and read The Globe and Mail. Outside, the morning sunlight slanted over the banks and insurance buildings. The air was crisp, and Cardinal noticed with pleasure the absence of blackflies. He walked over to Ontario’s Centre of Forensic Sciences on Grosvenor Street, where he handed in the bullet and filled out several forms. They told him to come back in an hour.
Cardinal returned to the hotel and checked out.
He was back at Forensics in forty-five minutes. The young man who had been assigned to the case in Firearms was named Cornelius Venn. He wore a white short-sleeved shirt with a blue tie and had the clean-cut, slightly dorky good looks of a senior boy scout. Cardinal suspected a sizable collection of model airplanes.
Venn took the Polaroids Cardinal had given him and tacked them up on a bulletin board. “Nice round hole. No burn, no soot, just slight tattooing.”
“Which tells you what?” Cardinal said.