“How are we today?” he said without looking at me. He glanced through the nurse’s notes and then turned to the data terminal beside my bed. He touched a few keys, and displays changed on the terminal’s screen. He made no sounds at all, neither the doctor’s concerned clucking nor the encouraged humming. He stared at the scrolling parade of numbers and twirled the ends of his mustache. At last he faced me and said, “How are you feeling?”
“Fine,” I said noncommittally. When I deal with doctors I always figure that they’re after certain specific information; but they won’t ever come out and ask you just what they need to know because they’re afraid you’ll distort the truth and give them what you think they want to hear, so they go about it in this circular way as if you’re not still trying to guess what they want to know and distorting the truth anyway.
“Any pain?”
“A little,” I said. It was a lie: I was drifted to the hairline — my former hairline, that is. You never tell a doctor that you’re not suffering, because that might encourage him to lower your dosage of anodynes.
“Sleeping?”
“Yes.”
“Had anything to eat?”
I thought for a moment. I was ravenously hungry, although the IV was dripping a glucose solution directly into the back of my hand. “No,” I said.
“We might start you on some clear liquids in the morning. Been out of bed?”
“No.”
“Good. Stay there for another couple of days. Dizzy? Numbness in your hands or feet? Nausea? Unusual sensations, bright lights, hearing voices, phantom limbs, anything like that? Phantom limbs?” “No.” I wouldn’t tell him that if it was true.
“You’re doing just fine, Mr. Audran. Coming along right on schedule.”
“Allah be thanked. How long have I been here?”
The doctor gave me a glance, then looked at my chart again. “A little over two weeks,” he said.
“When did I have the surgery?”
“Fifteen days ago. You were in the hospital for two days of preparation before that.”
“Uh huh.” There was less than a week of Ramadan remaining. I wondered what had happened in the city during my absence. I certainly hoped a few of my friends and associates were left alive. If anyone had been hurt — killed, that is — it would be Papa who would have to bear the responsibility. That was just about as effective as blaming it on God, and as practical, too. You couldn’t get a lawyer to sue either of them.
“Tell me, Mr. Audran, what is the last thing you remember?”
That was a tough one. I thought for a few moments; it was like diving into a dark, stormy cloudbank: there was nothing there but a grim feeling of foreboding down below. I had vague impressions of stern voices and the memory of hands rolling me over on the bed, and bolts of blazing pain. I remembered someone saying “Don’t pull on that,” but I didn’t know who had said it or what it meant. I searched further and realized that I couldn’t remember going into surgery or even leaving my apartment and coming to the hospital. The very last thing I could see clearly was …
Nikki. “My friend,” I said, my mouth suddenly dry and my throat tight.
“The one who was murdered,” said the doctor.
“Yes.”
“That happened almost three weeks ago. You don’t remember anything since?”
“No. Nothing.”
“Then you don’t recall meeting me before today? Our conversations?” The dark cloudwall was rushing up to blot me out, and I figured now was a good time for it, too. I hated these gaps in my consciousness. They’re a nuisance, even the the twelve-hour holes; a three-week slice missing from my mental pie was more trouble than I wanted to deal with. I just didn’t have the energy to work up a decent panic. “I’m sorry,” I said, “I just don’t remember.”
The doctor nodded. “My name is Dr. Yeniknani. I assisted your surgeon, Dr. Lisan. In the last several days you’ve gradually recovered some self-awareness. If, however, you’ve lost the content of our talks, it is very important that we discuss that information again.”
I just wanted to go back to sleep. I rubbed my eyes with a weary hand. “And if you do explain it all to me again, I’ll probably forget it and you’ll just have to do it all over tomorrow or the next day.”
Dr. Yeniknani shrugged. “That is possibly so, but you have nothing else to occupy your time, and I am paid well enough that I am more than willing to do what must be done.” He gave me a broad smile to let me know he was joking — these fierce types have to do that or you’d never guess; the doctor looked like he ought to be shouldering a rifle in some mountain ambush rather than wielding clipboards and tongue depressors, but that’s just my shallow mind making stereotypes. It keeps me amused. The doctor showed me his huge, crooked, yellow teeth again and said, “Besides, I have an overwhelming love for mankind. It is the will of Allah that I should begin to end all human suffering by having this same uninteresting interview with you each day until you at last remember it. It is for us to do these things; it is for Allah to understand them.” He shrugged again. He was very expressive, for a Turk.
I blessed the name of God and waited for Dr. Yeniknani to launch into his bedside manner.
“Have you looked at yourself?” he asked.
“No, not yet.” I’m never in a hurry to see my body after it’s been offended in any serious way. I do not find wounds particularly fascinating, especially when they are my own.
When I had my appendix taken out, I couldn’t look at myself below the navel for a month. Now, with my brain newly wired and my head shaved, I didn’t want to look in a mirror; that would make me think about what had been done, and why, and where all this might lead. If I were careful and clever, I might stay in that hospital bed, pleasantly sedated, for months or even years. It didn’t sound like so terrible a fate. Being a numb vegetable was preferable to being a numb corpse. I wondered how long I could malinger here before I was rudely dumped back on the Street. I was in no hurry, that’s for sure.
Dr. Yeniknani nodded absently. “Your … patron,” he said, choosing the word judiciously, “your patron specified that you were to be given the most comprehensive intracranial reticulation possible. That is why Dr. Lisan performed the surgery himself: Dr. Lisan is the finest neurosurgeon in the city, one of the most respected in the world. Quite a lot of what he has given you he invented or refined himself, and in your case Dr. Lisan has tried one or two new procedures that might be called … experimental.”
That didn’t soothe me, I didn’t care how great a surgeon Dr. Lisan might be. I am of the “better safe than sorry” school. I could be just as happy with a brain lacking one or two “experimental” talents, but one that didn’t run the risk of turning to tahini if I concentrated too long. But what the hell. I grinned a crooked, devil-may-care grin and realized that poking hot wires into unknown corners of my brain to see what happened was not much worse than gunning around the city in the back of Bill’s taxi. Maybe I did have some kind of death wish, after all. Or some kind of plain stupidity.
The doctor raised the lid of the tray-table beside my bed; there was a mirror under there, and he rolled the table so that I could see my reflection. I looked awful. I looked like I’d died and started off toward hell and then got lost, and now I was stuck nowhere at all, definitely not alive but not decently deceased, either. My beard was neatly trimmed, and I had shaved every day or someone had done it for me; but my skin was pale, an unhealthy color like smudged newsprint, and there were deep shadows under my eyes. I stared into the mirror for a long moment before I even noticed that my head was indeed bald, just a fine growth of fuzz covering my scalp like lichen clinging to a senseless stone. The implanted plug was invisible, hidden beneath protective layers of gelstrip bandages. I raised a tentative hand as if to touch the crown of my head, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I felt a strange, unpleasant tingling shoot up through my bowels, and I shuddered. My hand fell away and I looked at the doctor.