“In the meantime,” René said, “we’re giving him antiseizure medication that will help keep him stable.”
“But that stuff makes him dopey,” Christine said.
“I don’t care dopey,” said Mrs. Martinetti. “I’ll take him dopey. It’s better than being back in the Red Tent.”
“Well, he certainly can go home on a furlough,” Nick said to Christine. “It’s unusual for patients with Alzheimer’s, as you can imagine. But maybe some weekend soon.”
“That would be great,” Christine said, her eyes brightening.
“Then we’ll put something on the calendar.”
“But only if he had his antiseizure pills,” Mrs. Martinetti insisted. “Otherwise, he can stay here. I can’t take his torture. He was better off with Alzheimer’s.”
60
“SORRY TO BOTHER YOU, JACK.” It was Marcy.
Jack opened his eyes. He was still lying on his bed in his jeans and sneakers. After his morning walk—the forty-yard dash up and down the hall in just seven minutes—he had stretched out on his bed with the television on mute and closed caption and a copy of U.S. News and World Report across his chest. He had dozed off.
“This is Theo Rogers.” With Marcy was a man in a T-shirt that said “We Fix It.” “Mr. Rogers is going to repair your Venetian blinds.”
“Call me Theo.” The man held out a large rough hand that felt as if it could crush Jack’s like twigs.
“How you doing?”
My legs ache, I’m built like a tuning fork, I wake up in the middle of the night with visions of gory mayhem, there’s a six-point-two Richter scale quake rumbling between my ears. “Just dandy.”
Theo nodded. He looked to be in his early thirties. He was maybe fiveeight and built like a gymnast. His hair was dark and held back with elastic bands in a short ponytail, and his face was smooth and open. Either he had non-Caucasian blood or spent time in the tropics or a tanning salon, because his skin was a coffee color. Around his waist hung a tool holster with a hammer, pliers, and other tools. He opened a small stepladder.
“This won’t take long.”
Outside the window deep-bellied rumbles rolled across the sky and lightning flickered, making Jack squint.
“A bit bright for you, huh?” Theo said. “We’ll take care of that,” and he began to work on the blinds, which hung at a crazy angle in the window frame.
“I’ll leave you two guys on your own,” Marcy said. Before she left, she checked Jack’s heart and pulse and took a temperature reading. While the workman inspected the blinds, Jack closed his eyes. Through the open window he could smell the ocean.
“I read about you in the papers.”
Jack opened his eyes to see the man looking down at him from the ladder.
“Waking up after almost seven months. That’s something.”
“I guess.” Jack closed his eyes again. He was tired and didn’t want to chat.
“I never heard of jellyfish attacking people before. Musta been one hell of an experience.”
“I don’t recommend it.”
“I bet. Remember it any?”
“Not much.” Jack thought about asking Theo to let him sleep but decided that the guy meant well. Besides, the sound of the tools and the shades rattling sabotaged any nap taking. Jack closed his eyes again.
“The papers said something about your memory coming back strong. That’s great. Sometimes coma patients come back with lots of blank spots, I hear.”
Jack cracked open an eye. On the monitor some doctors were talking about that Alzheimer’s drug René Ballard had mentioned. “Experimental drug for Alzheimer’s disease,” read the caption.
Theo removed the hammer from his holster and banged the end of the screwdriver to pry loose a fixture. And Jack felt a small sensation jog through him.
“So you remember stuff before the accident pretty good, huh?”
“A little.”
“Well, that’s all that matters, if you ask me. As somebody said, ‘You are what you remember.’ Right? Same thing if your house caught fire.”
“Pardon me?”
“If your house caught fire. They took this poll, asked if your house was burning down and there’s only one thing you could save, besides your family members or pet, of course—what would it be?”
On the screen some doctors in white were being interviewed. Mass General Hospital, read the caption.
A slumping feeling. Maybe because that’s where Jack was taken after the accident.
“The family photo album.” Theo gesticulated with his hammer hand. “What nine out of ten people said. And me, too. It’s the same with memory, know what I mean?”
Jack closed his eyes. “Guess I’m pretty lucky.”
A few moments passed, then Theo started up again. “Just out of curiosity, what were you doing out there on Homer’s Island? Kind of an out-of-the-way place, you ask me.”
Jack was growing tired of the interrogation. “Bird watching.”
“Bird watching,” the man repeated. There was a long silence. Then he said, “The papers said something about you swimming. And a storm.”
Why is this guy pressing me? And why the feeling that this was going beyond idle chitchat. “It came up fast, and I hadn’t checked the weather report.”
“Got your own boat?”
“Took the water taxi.”
“So you remember stuff before the accident pretty well, huh?”
What is it with this guy? Why won’t he shut up? Why’s he playing Twenty Questions with me? “A little.”
“That’s my point: You still got what’s most important.” And he tapped the side of his head. Another long pause. “How far back do you go?”
“Pardon me?”
“How far back can you remember—like when you were a kid?”
“Not really.”
“Uh-huh. Some people say they remember when they were babies. Sign of intelligence, they say.”
Jack did not respond.
“I can’t remember before I was ten,” Theo snorted. “Guess I must be pretty dumb. How about you?”
Jack eyed the man. “No. No. Nothing.”
Suddenly things turned strange. In a protracted moment, the man became a still life, freezing in place on the ladder with the hammer raised, his mouth moving in slow motion, pulsing out queer utterances, the syllables stretched to alien phonics. As the man’s eyes bore down on Jack for a response, Jack felt something like an eel slither through his gut.
Bad feeling.
“Don’t remember stuff from when you were small? Me, neither, but I wish I did.”
Jack couldn’t speak—as if what had slithered through him shot into his brain and bored a hole in the language centers, leaving him gasping for words and quaking with an irrational sense of dread.
“Hey, you all right?”
“Mmmm.” Which was all Jack could squeeze out.
“You looked a little …”
God, what the hell is this? What’s passing through me?
His lungs caught some air and he sucked it up to his voice box. “I’m okay,” he rasped. “Little dizzy.”
“Uh-huh.” And the guy turned back to the shade.
Jack’s head was soupy and he closed his eyes as the man tapped away. Outside, the thunder was growling out to sea, the lightning flickering through Jack’s eyelids. The man hammered away, and with each smack a small seismic crack shot through Jack.
Jack opened his eyes. Something about the image of that guy on the ladder clawed at Jack’s consciousness. Something not right. But he couldn’t grasp it. Whatever, it flitted across his mind like a bird coming in to roost, then just at the last second shot away.
Jack was positive he had never seen this Theo before because the man’s face didn’t fit any memory template. Then again, Jack had not laid eyes on a lot of faces of late. Maybe all the toxins had turned sections of his brain into Swiss cheese. A reasonable explanation, except the guy would surely have said something.