Alan felt his spine stiffen. "I'm listening."
"It comes and goes with high tide."
It was like a punch in the gut. "High tide?"
Axford nodded.
Feeling shaky, Alan got up and took his turn at the window, looking down at Park Avenue below, barely hearing Axford talk about a periodic disturbance in his EEC.
High tide! God! Why hadn't he seen it? The clues were all there—the way the power traveled around the clock, coming an hour or so later every day. It was so obvious once it was pointed out. If he'd only known! It would have been so easy to work with it. All he needed was a tide chart. If he'd had one in his pocket at the Board of Trustees hearing, he wouldn't be in this mess.
But the tide controlling the waxing and waning of the Touch. It had such an elemental feel to it, hinting at something incredibly ancient at work.
He turned to Axford as a thought occurred to him.
"You realize, don't you, that you've just so much as admitted that the Touch exists."
Axford had dispensed with his cup and was now taking pulls straight from the bottle.
His voice was slurred. "I don't admit a bloody damned thing. Not yet. But I do want to do a repeat PET scan on you tomorrow. Confirm those dead areas."
Alan wanted to confirm those areas, too. "Fine. I'll be here." He watched as Axford walked unsteadily for the door. "You're not driving, are you?"
"Hell, no. Only a bloody idiot would keep a bloody car in this bloody city!"
He slammed the door behind him, leaving Alan alone with the prospect of trying to find sleep while thinking about dead areas in his brain.
___41.___
Charles
"I'll be damned!" he said aloud as he looked at the computer analysis of the repeat PET scan.
It was still grossly abnormal, but the computer said that the glucose uptake had increased over the past twenty-four hours as compared to Saturday's scan. The improvement wasn't visible to the naked eye, but the computer saw it, and that was good enough for Charles.
And good news for Bulmer, although it didn't bring Charles any closer to a diagnosis.
He now spread out the new two-hour EEG on his desk top. Despite the cotton mouth and pounding headache from too much bourbon last night, he'd managed to remember to pick up a tide chart for the East River on his way to the Foundation this morning. When he had seen that high tide was due at 9:17 a.m., he had ordered a stat EEG on Bulmer at 8:30.
And here before him on paper was the same sine-wave configuration that had appeared on the twenty-four-hour EEG two days ago, rising approximately thirty minutes before high tide at 8:46 and ending at 9:46.
He took a certain perverse satisfaction in his newfound ability to predict the occurrence of something he had been absolutely sure did not exist.
His private line buzzed. He picked it up, wondering who would be calling him here on a Sunday morning.
He recognized the senator's hoarse voice immediately.
"Why haven't I seen a report yet?"
"And a very good morning to you, too, Senator. I'll be finishing up testing today."
"You've done enough tests! The Knopf case is proof enough for me."
"Maybe so, but it explains nothing."
"I don't care about explanations. Can you deny that he has a healing power? Can you?"
"No." It killed him to admit that.
"Then that does it! I want you to—"
"Senator," Charles said sharply. He had to put McCready off for a little while longer. He couldn't let Bulmer go just yet. "This power, or whatever it is that he has, works sporadically. By tonight I'll have the exact pattern of its occurrence confirmed. With that nailed down we can predict to the minute when it's operating. Until we do that, we'll just be fumbling around in the dark. One more day. That's all. I promise."
"Very well," McCready said with obvious reluctance. "But I've waited a long time."
"I know. Tomorrow morning for sure."
Charles hung up and stared at Buhner's EEG without seeing it. The report McCready was looking for had already been dictated, and tomorrow Marnie would type it into the main computer's word processor. But Charles hadn't mentioned that, because he knew the senator was not really after a report.
He was after a cure.
McCready wanted Alan Bulmer to touch him and make his myasthenia gravis go away. So he was becoming more anxious, more impatient, and more demanding than usual. And why shouldn't he? If he was going to restore Bulmer's reputation and credibility as a physician, he had a right to a touch.
But in order to give Bulmer back his credibility, he needed Charles Axford's signature on the report stating that Dr. Alan Bulmer could indeed, at the right time of day, cure the incurable with a simple touch of his hand. Charles, however, needed one last bit of proof, one final shred of irrefutable evidence before he would sign.
He intended to acquire that proof tonight, sometime after 9:00. But first he wanted a tete-a-tete with Bulmer.
"So that's the Hour of Power, ay?" Bulmer said, looking down at the sine waves flowing through the EEG laid out on his bed.
"If you want to call it that."
Bulmer looked at him. "You never give in, do you?"
"Not often."
"And you say my PET scan is better?"
"Minimally, yes."
"Then I might as well get out of here."
"No!" Charles said, a bit more quickly and loudly than he would have liked. "Not yet. I just want to hook you up to the EEG tonight and have you use your so-called power on a patient while we're recording."
Bulmer frowned, obviously not happy with the idea. "This place is getting on my nerves. I'm bored out of my mind."
"You've come this far. What difference is another twenty-four hours going to make?"
Alan laughed. "Do you know how many times I've said those exact words to inpatients with hospitalitis? Thousands!" He shook his head. "Okay. One more day and then I'm out of here."
"Right." Charles turned at the door. He didn't want to ask this question, but he needed the answer. "By the way, how do you make this bloody power work?"
"What power?" Bulmer said with a smile. "The one that doesn't exist?"
"Yes. That one."
He scratched his head. "I don't really know. When the hour's on, I just put my hand on the person and sort of… will it."
"Just touching them in passing's not enough?"
"No. Many times I've done a physical on someone—ENT, heart, lungs, blood pressure, and so on—and nothing's happened. Then I've found something, wished it gone and"—he shrugged—"it went."
Charles saw the light in Bulmer's eyes and realized for the first time that the man was a true healer, power or no power. Charles knew plenty of physicians who loved the practice of medicine—ferreting out the cause of a problem and then eliminating it. Bulmer was that sort, too, but Charles had come to see that he had another, almost mystical dimension. He wanted to heal. Not merely to stamp out the disease, but to make a person whole again, and he was bloody damned elated when he could. You could be taught to do the first; you had to be born to do the second.
And damned if he wasn't starting to like the man.
"Do you have to know the diagnosis?"
"I don't know. I usually know because I talk to them and examine them." He cocked an eyebrow toward Charles. "Just like a real doctor."
"Do you feel anything when it happens?"
"Yeah." His eyes got a faraway look. "I've never shot dope or snorted cocaine, but it must be something like that."
"That good?"
"Great."
"And the patients? Do they all have seizures?"