Nerve Damage (7 page)

“I'm Netty,” said the nurse. “No sense asking
which arm—what happened?”

“Hockey,” Roy said.

“My, my.”

He rolled up his right sleeve.

“What a nice vein,” Netty said.

“Thanks.”

“Might feel a little sting.” She stuck in the IV needle. Roy felt nothing. Vitamins flowed into him. She watched the IV bag. “Where you from, Roy?”

“Vermont.”

“Supposed to be beautiful.”

“Yeah.”

Their eyes met. The nurse was middle-aged, heavy, with a soft, tired face. “Dr. Chu's a brilliant man,” she said.

It took ten minutes. Roy went back to the waiting room, feeling pretty good. Was it possible that the vitamins were doing their work already? He breathed, deep breaths, the first real breaths he'd taken in a while.

Roy put on his coat, moved toward the chair where he'd left Section D of the
Times
. But at that moment the door to the hall opened and a
man in a wheelchair came through, pushed by another nurse. The man had an oxygen tube in his nose. Judging from his hair, slightly gray at the temples, he might have been Roy's age, but the rest of him was skeletal. Skin the color of cold ashes, except for raw unhealed sores here and there; eyes dull; neck scrawny: and shivering, although he was covered with a blanket.

Was he in the study? Roy didn't want to be anywhere near the man in the wheelchair. He left Section D of the
Times
where it was and hurried out of Dr. Chu's office.

 

Roy checked
into a hotel, went down to the bar and ordered dinner: chowder, T-bone steak, roast potatoes, Caesar salad, a glass of heavy ale, and then another, plus pecan pie with ice cream for dessert. A big dinner: but Roy had always had a big appetite, had often polished off meals like this, after a day on snowshoes, for example. This time the chowder would have been enough. Roy forced the rest down.

“I like to see a man eat,” the bartender said. “Here on business?”

Roy nodded.

“What do you do, don't mind my asking?” she said.

Roy gave his usual answer for situations like this. “I'm in metals,” he said.

“Like gold?” said the bartender.

He got that a lot. “Scrap,” he said.

“Oh.” She moved away; the usual reaction, except for the odd man who asked if there was any money in it. Roy kept eating. After a while, she said, “Mind the TV?”

Roy didn't mind. The bartender turned on the TV.

Local news. A reporter stood in front of a small white house on a tree-lined street, Georgetown, maybe, or Chevy Chase.

“…still no suspects in the murder of D.C.-based
New York Times
reporter Richard Gold, who died of blunt force trauma to the head.”

A photo of Gold appeared: bald, fine features, thin lips. He was reaching for a phone.

“Robbery is the probable motive, according to investigators. Mr. Gold's wallet is missing, as well as a flat-screen TV and other valuables. Anyone with information is urged to call the number on your screen.”

The bartender watched, hand on hip. “They never learn,” she said. “Soon as they start using the credit cards they're toast. Happens every time.”

 

Roy had
a good sleep. In the morning he showered, shaved, checked himself in the mirror. He looked all right, except for the broken arm and those four stitches in his chest, maybe a little redder than they should have been by now. He went to the hospital for his first treatment with Dr. Chu.

Roy didn't actually see Dr. Chu. First Netty took his pulse and blood pressure.

“Numbers okay?” said Roy.

“Normal.”

Then she collected three test tubes of blood, putting different colored stickers on each. After that, she had Roy strip down to his boxers and stand on the scale.

“One seventy-two,” she said. “Is that your usual weight?”

“More or less,” Roy said, although less was the true answer: he hadn't been under one ninety since junior year in high school, and had topped two hundred several times since. He stepped off the footpad, felt sweat popping out suddenly on his upper lip. Netty was slipping the test tubes into envelopes, her back to him. Roy slid the two scale weights leftward to the neutral position, expecting the right end of the arm to bob up, meaning the calibration was too light, probably way off, and he weighed one eighty at least, or more likely a few pounds more, seven or eight, say. But the arm didn't move, just hovered there in perfect balance, a picture of harmony. At that moment, not a good one, came a foreshadowing of a new idea for
Silence
. What about that part of him—could it keep going all by itself?

“Roy? Roy?”

He heard her, turned from the scale.

“You can put your clothes back on. Just leave that sleeve rolled up.”

Fully dressed, sleeve rolled up, Roy followed the nurse out of the examining room, along a corridor and into another room in Dr. Chu's suite. An unmedical kind of room—soft lighting, a fountain playing on a descending series of honey-colored stones, a suede couch—the only medical touch being one of those rolling IV-bag racks.

“The treatment room,” said Netty. “Dr. Chu had it designed by a feng shui master. He came all the way from Beijing.”

“That doesn't sound very scientific,” Roy said.

Netty smiled a wise smile. “If you'll just lie down on the couch.”

He lay on the couch.

“Get comfortable.”

He shifted around like someone getting comfortable. Netty wheeled over the IV rack. “Might feel a little sting.”

This time he did, and not just a little. It hurt so much that Roy almost let out a sound. Had she done something wrong? He glanced down at his arm, saw the needle neatly in place, not a drop of blood anywhere. So: no clue. But his skin seemed so white, like someone else's. Colorless liquid flowed from the bag, down the tube, into his arm. It could have been water.

“All you have to do now is relax,” she said. “Think you can do that?”

“Sure.”

“I'll be back in twenty minutes.”

Roy lay on the couch like a relaxing man. He watched the surface level slowly falling in the IV bag. Invisible chemicals swam in that liquid. Were some of them already reaching the cancer cells, arrayed in some potent molecular formation, all set to unleash their sophisticated attack, cutting off blood supply, turning tumor against tumor, and whatever else Dr. Chu had in mind?

Fight like bastards
. Delia's voice.

“There's a war inside me,” he said.

After that, he was quiet. He listened to the fountain, water falling on
rocks. So many different sounds, actually, gurgling, trickling, bubbling, and others for which he had no words. He'd never even thought of working with water. To shape water: How would he begin?

 

A fountain stood
in the lobby of the Hobbes Institute. He saw it once, at a reception, not long before the Venezuela trip, a fountain with Neptune, cherubs and coins winking on the bottom. All the women wore black, except for Delia, in red. Delia was a great one for circulating at parties, but on this night she didn't leave Roy's side, her hand on his arm almost the whole time.

“This is my husband, Roy. Roy, I'd like you to meet Paul Habib.”

“Hi.”

“Hi, Roy,” said Habib. “Heard so much about you.”

“Likewise. Looking forward to Venezuela?”

“Venezuela?”

“My mistake,” Roy said. “I thought you were part of this pineapple caper.”

Paul Habib smacked himself on the head. He was a big guy with closely trimmed hair and a full beard, a consultant to the Hobbes Institute, on loan from somewhere Roy couldn't remember at the moment, or maybe hadn't been told in the first place. “The pineapple caper, of course, of course,” he said. “A little jet-lagged right now, but, yes, I'm on the trip. Looking forward to it, in fact. Delia's work on this has been brilliant.”

“Think they'll buy it?” Roy said.

“Who?”

“The Venezuelans,” Roy said. “Growing pineapples.”

“Right, the Venezuelans,” Habib said. “The numbers work, no doubt about that, thanks to your wife. So it's a matter of getting them comfortable with the idea. Never easy, though, is it, Delia?”

Delia's hand tightened a little on Roy's arm. “What isn't?” she said.

“Rewiring people's heads,” Habib said.

“I wouldn't know,” Delia said. “Isn't that your job?” She turned to Roy. “I'd love a glass of champagne.”

“And one for you, Paul?” Roy said.

“Thanks,” Habib said.

But when Roy returned with the drinks, Habib was gone.

“Some problem between you and Paul?” he said.

“No,” Delia said. “He gets on my nerves sometimes, that's all.”

“In what way?”

“The usual workplace way,” Delia said. “It's nothing. Let's have fun tonight.”

“I'm your man,” Roy said. “Here's to Venezuela.”

“No,” said Delia. “To us.”

They drank to themselves, Delia downing her glass in one gulp. “Got a penny?” she said.

Roy fished one from his pocket, handed it to her. Delia made a wish, her lips moving silently—he saw how she'd looked as a little girl—and tossed it in the fountain. The penny spun in coppery slow motion to the bottom.

“Let's go home,” she said.

“Now?”

They went home. In bed, she said, “You can do anything you want to me tonight.”

 

“Time's up.”

Roy found he was staring at the water flowing over those honey-colored rocks in Dr. Chu's fountain. He turned his head, saw Netty standing beside him. It was almost like waking up.

“That wasn't so bad, now, was it?” she said.

“No,” Roy said. He glanced up at the IV bag, now empty except for a few last drops clinging to the plastic. Roy resisted the impulse to ask her to squeeze them into the tube, to coax every last microscopic warrior into his body. “It was good.”

She nodded as though she'd heard that before. “We'll need you back at the same time tomorrow,” she said. “Here's an after-hours number to call, just in case.”

“Just in case what?” Roy said.

“You have some sort of bad reaction,” she said. “But you won't—it's never happened.”

“Not with this cocktail, you mean?”

“No, not with this cocktail.”

Roy took the card she handed him, saw her name was really Annette. “Netty,” he said. “I've got a question.”

“Shoot.”

“The man in the waiting room yesterday, the one on oxygen—is he in the study?”

Netty took in a deep breath through her nose. “He was.”

It took Roy a few seconds to get that. “He died?”

“Late last night. Dr. Chu is with the family.”

“So the study's down to three.”

“Four, with you,” Netty said. “And there'll be more, many more. Dr. Chu is a brilliant man.” She patted Roy's knee. “Don't think of any of the others. Don't think about anybody. Concentrate on you.” She slid out the IV needle, swabbed the spot with alcohol.

Roy rose, dizzy for a moment, but he mastered it.

“And, Roy?” Netty said. “He was never a big strong man like you.”

She was looking up at him in a way that reminded him of an encouraging parent or coach. Roy gave his chest a thump. Netty laughed. He left the building, walked across the parking lot. Yes, there was a huge gap between the man in the wheelchair and him. Roy took a few running steps, just to show he could do it, and he could, hardly breathless at all. A big strong man.

Fight like bastards
.

 

When
had he last drunk a milk shake? Roy couldn't remember; probably in high school. He found an ice-cream place, ordered the biggest
milk shake they sold, mocha fudge swirl with marshmallow topping, and took it with him in the pickup. Kind of sickening, but he made himself keep sipping. He was almost done as he drove into D.C.

Roy hadn't been there in years, not since Delia's death, but it hadn't changed much and he still knew his way. The sun came out as he turned onto Constitution Avenue, shining on the Capitol dome to the east, turning it lemony. Roy went by some Senate office buildings and there it was, with those four fluted pilasters: the Hobbes Institute. He found a meter on a side street, stuck in a few quarters and walked back. Winter, but there was real warmth in the sunshine this far south. It felt good.

Roy climbed the broad stone steps of the Hobbes Institute—they looked lemony, too—and moved toward the double doors. Brass doors, although he remembered them as dark wood. And one other change—two security guards, standing on either side. No guards back then, but why should that be a surprise, with how the world had changed?

“Hi,” Roy said, reaching for the handle. The security guards stepped in front of him.

“Do you have an appointment, sir?” one said.

“No,” said Roy. “But my wife used to work here.”

“Her name?”

Roy told them. The other guard consulted a clipboard, shook his head.

“Her name wouldn't be there now,” Roy explained. “This was a long time ago. Tom Parish was her boss.”

They gazed at him.

“Is he still here?” Roy said. “Parish with one
r
. His title was director of research, something like that.”

The guard checked his clipboard, shook his head again.

“What about Paul Habib?” His title? Roy wasn't sure he'd ever known it.

Another head shake.

Roy tried to remember other Hobbes Institute names, couldn't at the moment. “Look,” he said, “I'd just like to talk to someone from the Institute. They'll understand right away. It'll only take a few minutes.”
All he needed was a two-sentence note over some official signature confirming Delia's employment.