In all the years she had known Nick, René had never seen him so worked up. His face was flushed and his eyes filled his glasses. He looked like another person pressed to the surface under internal heat. In the classroom he had held forth on the need for strong ethical safeguards, especially in the cloudy interface between drug companies and physicians. But the lectures were always cool and reasoned. And never had she heard him criticize colleagues or staff behind their backs. If he had a problem, he was always diplomatic and respectful, stating his differences in objective and conciliatory terms. And if someone was wrong, he always gave second chances. “We’re all allowed one mistake to learn from,” he once said. “It makes us better and stronger people.”
“So what do you think will happen in Utah?”
“I’ll lodge my protest, but I don’t expect to turn a lot of minds. As somebody said, it’s like trying to stop a train in its tracks.”
Then from the floor he lifted a large cardboard box full of Memorine marketing products—gym bags, umbrellas, hats, decals, letterhead stationery, rain ponchos, a jewelry box with a pearl necklace. He slapped down a CD. “They even have their own soundtrack—Back to Life.” As on the other items, the diamond GEM logo was prominent. Also in the box were brochures on Bermuda, Gstaad, and Italy—junkets for the principal investigators. “Hard to fight all this,” she said.
“A flawed medical miracle whose benefits exceed any risks, they claim.”
64
JACK HAD NOT BEEN IN MASS General since the days of his coma, so he remembered nothing. He made his way across the lobby to the elevators in the Lane Building and up to the eighth floor, where he found Dr. Heller’s office. He was let in to see her almost immediately.
“Every time I go down into the cellar, I get hit with bad visions. Maybe I’m cracking up.”
“You’re not cracking up, Mr. Koryan. You’re having some kind of seizures.”
“What about my muttering Armenian phrases in a woman’s voice? I don’t even know the language.”
“Did you recognize the words?”
“Not the exact translation, but they’re words of endearment you’d say to children.”
“Maybe your relatives spoke to you in Armenian and you just forgot.”
“From thirty years ago?”
“It’s possible. Your deep recall is remarkable. Perhaps you were just pronouncing them from rote memory—maybe from your aunt or other relatives.”
“Then how do you explain the image of some misshapen creature with a witch hat and a large animal with the bashed-in head? Those were as real to me as you are now.”
“I’m not a psychologist, but I think you’re making some kind of association. Tell me about the visions.”
Relaxing a bit into the gentleness of her manner, Jack described them. Their occurrences weren’t predictable or even restricted to bedtime: Daymares that would strike while he’d be taking a shower or out for a walk or sitting on the porch having a beer. But the bad flashes were always violent and thematically consistent—a darkened figure with a pointed head coming for him, then suddenly attacking another figure with some sort of bludgeon to the brutal sound of skull bone cracking. And always the flashes were perceived from the same point of view—by a window, about chest high, and through some obstruction, as if from the inside of a cage of some sort. And the banging sounds and flickering lights. What baffled Jack was that the location was deeply familiar. And although it lacked none of the non-Euclidean geometry characteristic of ordinary dreams, recognition eluded him.
“Simple nightmares.”
She had a cleanly rational explanation for things that didn’t feel clean and rational but alien and clammy. “But it felt like real time, like I was reliving it.”
She nodded and jotted something on her pad. “But this isn’t the first time you’ve had vivid recollections.”
“No, but these are different.”
“How are they different?”
He explained that these were not pleasant periodic flashes from his youth—warm vignettes of childhood play in the schoolyard or in the neighborhood park with friends, or interludes with girls he liked. What had distinguished them from daydreams or ordinary recollections was that they were violent and exquisitely vivid.
“Dreams often feel very vivid.”
“What about the possibility that it was the toxin?”
“It’s possible.” She flipped open a folder of his medical charts. “According to your most recent blood test, there are negligible traces of the toxin in your system from the original attack.” She looked back at him. “But a more likely possibility is that the massive amount that entered your system has permanently enchanced the physiology of the memory centers of your brain and, as a result, you may be experiencing memory-related nightmares. But that will require running tests on you, which you’ve refused.”
He was still not interested, but her words sent an uneasy ripple through him. “What I don’t understand is why the same violent scene.”
Dr. Heller studied Jack for a moment as she absorbed his words. “Do you recognize the figure?”
“No. But I can see its form.”
“Do you recognize the victim?”
“No.”
“And how long have you been having these spells?”
“The bad ones, since I’ve been out of Greenwood—since I moved into the house.”
“Do you recognize where the violence takes place?”
“I have a sense of being near the ocean, but I also recall a swimming pool smell.”
“A swimming pool smell?”
“Yeah, chemicals—chlorine, I guess.”
Dr. Heller folded her hands. “Mr. Koryan, I’m a neurologist, not a psychologist, but I know some very good people I’d like to refer you to.” She pulled out her pad and scribbled down a name and held it out to him. “He’s very good.”
Jack took the paper and laid it on her desk. “I’m sure. But I really don’t like the idea of some specialist shrinking me back to my toilet training then giving me a prescription to the same stuff you could write.”
Dr. Heller stared at him for a long moment parsing his comments and her own possible responses. “It might be wiser to try to get to the source.”
Maybe I don’t want to. The thought just popped up. He said nothing.
“Have you ever been physically attacked or assaulted?”
He’d had a few tussles in high school and college but nothing to produce recollections like this. “Not that I remember.”
“Have you ever been in a severe accident?”
“No.”
“Were you in the military or in any disaster—fire, earthquake, anything like that?”
“No.”
“What about traumatic childhood experiences? Any frightening events?”
Jack heard a slight hum in the back of his mind but shook it away. His uncle Kirk had died of cancer when Jack was twelve, his aunt Nancy when he was a sophomore in college. Their deaths were sad, of course, but not traumatizing. “No.”
“Well, it sounds to me as if you’re having intrusive recollections or some kind of dissociative episodes that leave you with a sense of having relived some disturbing experience, yet you say you can’t recall any such event.”
Jack wanted to leave.
“Let me just ask if any of these episodes are associated with your drinking alcohol.”
“No.”
“Are you drinking much?”
“A beer once in a while.” He checked his watch. The hum had begun to buzz through his limbs. He wanted to be out of there.
“Do you find yourself avoiding particular thoughts or feelings, people, or places?”
“Uh-uh.” God, he wished she’d end the session.
“What about feelings of detachment or estrangement from other people?”