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.