Brain Child (7 page)

“Come on.” Barbara assumed her most authoritative tone, the one she always used with people she knew were close to breaking. Outside, the sound of the approaching ambulance disturbed the night. “We’re getting you out of here.” When Marsh failed to respond, she took him by the hand and drew him to his feet. “I’m taking you to your office.”

“No!” Marsh protested as the approaching siren grew louder. “Alex is my son—”

“Which is exactly why you won’t be here when they bring him in. We’ll have Frank Mallory here as soon as possible, and until he gets here, Benny Cohen knows what to do.”

Marsh looked dazed. “Benny’s only an intern—”

Barbara began steering him out of the emergency room as the siren fell silent and headlights glared momentarily through the glass doors of the emergency entrance. “Benny’s the best intern we’ve ever had. You told me so yourself.”

Then, as the emergency-room doors opened and the gurney bearing Alex Lonsdale’s nearly lifeless body was pushed inside, she forced Marsh Lonsdale into the corridor.

“Go to your office,” she told him. “Go to your office and mix yourself a drink from the bottle you and Frank nip at every time you deliver a baby. I can take care of everything else, but right now I can’t take care of you. Understand?”

Marsh swallowed, then nodded. “I’ll call Ellen—”

“You’ll do no such thing,” Barbara cut in. “You’ll fix a drink, drink it, and wait. I’ll be there in five minutes, and by then we’ll know something about how he is. Now, go!” She gave Marsh a gentle shove, then disappeared back into the emergency room.

Marsh paused a moment, trying to sort out his thoughts.

He knew that Barbara was right.

With a shambling gait, feeling suddenly helpless, he started down the hall toward his office.

In the little house behind the old mission, across the street from the graveyard, María Torres dropped the blind on the front window back into place, then shuffled slowly into the bedroom and eased her aged body into bed.

She was tired from the long walk home, and tonight it had been particularly exhausting.

Unwilling to be seen by anyone that night, María had been forced to make her way down the canyon by way of the path that wound through the underbrush a few feet below the level of the road. Each time she had heard the wailing of a siren and seen headlights flashing on the road above, she had huddled close to the ground, waiting until the car had passed before once more making her slow progress toward home.

But now it was all right.

She was home, and no one had seen her, and her job was safe.

Tonight she had no trouble. Tonight it was the
gringos
who had the trouble.

To María Torres, what had happened on the road near the hacienda tonight was nothing less than a blessing from the saints. All her life, she had spent many hours each week praying that destruction would come to the
gringos
. Tonight, she knew, was one of the nights the saints had chosen to answer those prayers.

Tomorrow, or the next day, she would find out who had been in the car that had plunged over the edge of the ravine, and remember to go to church and light a candle to whichever saint had, in answer to her prayers, abandoned one of his namesakes this evening. Her candles were not much, she knew, but they were something, and the souls of her ancestors would appreciate them.

Silence finally fell over La Paloma. For the rest of the night, María Torres slept in peace.

Benny Cohen carefully peeled away the towel that had been wrapped around Alex Lonsdale’s head, and stared at the gaping wound on the boy’s skull.

He’s dead, Benny thought. He may still be breathing, but he’s dead.

Ellen Lonsdale knew her premonition had come true as soon as she opened the front door and saw Carol Cochran standing on the porch, a handkerchief clutched in her left hand, her eyes rimmed with red.

“It happened, didn’t it?” she whispered.

Carol’s head moved in a barely perceptible nod. “It’s Alex,” she whispered. “He … he was alone in the car …”

“Alone?” Ellen echoed. Where had Lisa been? Hadn’t she been with Alex? But her questions went unspoken as she tried to concentrate on what Carol was saying.

“He’s at the Center,” Carol told her, stepping into the house and closing the door behind her. “I’ll take you.”

For a moment Ellen felt as if she might collapse. Then, with an oddly detached calmness, she picked her purse up from the table in the entry hall and automatically opened it to check its contents. Satisfied that everything was there, she walked past Carol and opened the front door. “Is he dead?” she asked.

“No,” Carol replied, her voice catching. “He’s not dead, Ellen.”

“But it’s bad, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think anyone does.”

Silently the two women got into the Cochrans’ car and Carol started the engine. As she was backing down the Lonsdales’ driveway, Ellen asked the question that was still lurking in her mind. “Why wasn’t Lisa with him?”

“I don’t know that. We got a call from the police. They said to meet them at the Center, that they were taking Lisa there. I thought … Oh, God, never mind what I thought. Anyway, Lisa’s all right, but Alex—his car went off the road up near the old hacienda. Carolyn was having a party.”

“He said he wouldn’t go to any parties,” Ellen said numbly, her body slumped against the car door. “He promised—” She broke off her own thought, and remained silent for several seconds as her mind suddenly began to shift gears.
I can’t fall apart. I can’t give in to what I’m feeling. I have to be strong. For Alex, I have to be strong
. She consciously straightened herself in the car seat. “Well, it doesn’t matter what he promised, does it?” she asked. “The only thing that matters is that he be all right.” She turned to gaze searchingly at Carol, and when she spoke, her voice was stronger. “If you knew how bad it was, you’d tell me, wouldn’t you?”

Carol moved her hand off the steering wheel to give Ellen’s arm a quick squeeze. “Of course I would. And I’m not going to tell you not to worry, either.”

As Carol drove, Ellen tried to make herself concentrate on anything but what might have happened to Alex. She gazed out the window, forcing her mind to focus only on what her eyes were taking in.

“It’s a pretty town,” she said suddenly.

“What?” Carol Cochran asked, taken aback by Ellen’s odd statement.

“I was just looking at it,” Ellen went on. “I haven’t really done that for a long time. I drive around it all the
time, but it’s been years since I really paid attention to what it looks like. And a lot of it hasn’t really changed since we were children.”

“No,” Carol said slowly, still not sure where Ellen’s thoughts were leading. “I don’t suppose it has.”

Ellen uttered a sound that was partly a hollow chuckle, partly a sob. “Do you think I’m crazy, talking about how pretty La Paloma is? Well, I’m not. Anyway, I don’t think I am. But I’m having a feeling, and if I let myself think about
that
, then I will go crazy.”

“Do you want to tell me what it is?”

There was another long silence, and when she spoke again, Ellen’s voice had gone strangely flat. “He’s dead,” she stated. “I have the most awful feeling that Alex is dead. But he isn’t dead. I … I won’t
let
him be dead!”

Ellen stared at the knot of people in the emergency waiting room. She recognized most of the faces, though for some reason her mind refused to put names to them. Except for a few.

Lisa Cochran.

She was sitting on a couch, huddled close to her father, and a policeman was talking to her. Lisa saw her and immediately stood up and started toward her.

“I’m sorry,” she blurted. “Oh, Mrs. Lonsdale, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

“What happened?” Ellen asked, her voice dull.

“I … I’m not sure,” Lisa stammered. “We had a fight—well, sort of a fight, and I decided to walk home. And Alex must have been coming after me. But he was driving too fast, and …” She went on, blurting out the story of what had happened, while Ellen listened, but only half-heard. Around them, the rest of the people in the waiting room fell silent.

“It was my fault,” Lisa finished. “It was all my fault.”

Ellen laid a gentle hand on Lisa’s cheek, then kissed her. “No,” she said quietly. “It wasn’t your fault. You weren’t in the car, and it wasn’t your fault.”

She turned away to find Barbara Fannon at her elbow. “Where is he?” she asked. “Where’s Alex?”

“He’s in the O.R. Frank and Benny are working on him. Marsh is in his office.” She took Ellen’s arm and began guiding her out of the waiting room.

When she came into his office, Marsh was sitting behind his desk, a glass in front of him, staring at nothing. His gaze shifted, and he stood up, came around the desk, and put his arms around her.

“You were right,” he whispered, his voice strangling on the words. “Oh, God, Ellen, you were right.”

“Is he dead?” Ellen asked.

Marsh drew back sharply, as if the words had been a physical blow. “Who told you that?”

Ellen’s face paled. “No one. I just … I just have a feeling, that’s all.”

“Well, that one isn’t true,” Marsh told her. “He’s alive.”

Ellen hesitated; then: “If he’s alive, why don’t I feel it?”

Marsh shook his head. “I don’t know. But he’s not dead. He’s seriously injured, but he’s not dead.”

Time seemed to stand still as Ellen gazed deep into her husband’s eyes. At last she quietly repeated Marsh’s words. “He’s not dead. He’s not dead. He won’t die.” Then, despite her determination to be strong, her tears began to flow.

In the operating room, Frank Mallory carefully withdrew the last visible fragment of shattered skull from the tissue of Alex’s brain. He glanced up at the monitors.

By rights, the boy should be dead.

And yet, there on the monitors was the evidence that he was not.

There was a pulse—weak and erratic, but there.

And he was breathing, albeit with the aid of a respirator.

His broken left arm was in a temporary splint, and
the worst of his facial lacerations had been stitched just enough to stop the bleeding.

That had been the easy part.

It was his head that was the problem.

From what Mallory could see, as the car tumbled down the ravine, Alex’s head must have smashed against a rock, crushing the left parietal plate and damaging the frontal plate. Pieces of both bones had broken away, embedding themselves in Alex’s brain, and it was these splinters that Mallory had been carefully removing. Then, with all the skill he could muster, he had worked the fractured pieces as nearly into their normal positions as possible. Now he was applying what could only be temporary bandages—bandages intended to bind Alex’s wounds only until the electroencephalogram went totally flat and the boy would be declared dead.

“What do you think?” Benny Cohen asked.

“Right now, I’m trying not to think,” Mallory replied. “All I’m doing is putting the pieces back together, and I’m sorry to say I’m not at all sure I can do it.”

“He’s not gonna make it?”

“I’m not saying that, either,” Mallory rasped, unable to admit his true thoughts. “He’s made it this far, hasn’t he?”

Benny nodded. “With a lot of help. But without the respirator, he’d be gone.”

“A lot of people need respirators. That’s why they were invented.”

“But most people only peed them temporarily. He’s going to need it the rest of his life.”

Frank Mallory glowered at the young intern, then softened. Cohen, after all, hadn’t known Alex Lonsdale since the day the boy was born, nor had Cohen yet lost a patient. When he did, maybe he’d realize how much it hurt to see someone die and know there’s nothing you can do about it. But Alex had survived the first emergency procedures, and there was still the possibility
that he might live. “Let’s get him into the ICU, then start setting up for X rays and a CAT scan.”

Ten minutes later, still drying his hands with a white towel, Mallory walked into Marshall Lonsdale’s office. Both Marsh and Ellen struggled wearily to their feet.

“He’s still alive, and in the ICU,” Mallory told them, gesturing for them both to sit down again. “But it’s bad, Marsh. Real bad.”

“Tell me,” Marsh replied, his voice toneless.

Mallory shrugged. “I can’t tell you all of it yet—you know that. But there’s brain damage, and it looks extensive.”

Ellen stiffened, but said nothing.

“We’re setting up right now for every test we can give him. But it’s going to be tough, because he’s on a respirator and a cardiostimulator.” Then, as Marsh and Ellen listened, he described Alex’s injuries, using the dispassionate, factual tone he had learned in medical school, in order to keep himself under control. When he was done, it was Ellen who spoke.

“What can we do?”

Mallory shook his head. “Nothing, for the moment. Try to stabilize him, and try to find out how bad the damage is. We should know sometime early in the morning. Maybe by six.”

“I see,” Ellen murmured. Then: “Can I see him?”

Frank Mallory’s eyes flicked toward Marsh, who nodded. “Of course you can,” Mallory said. “You can sit with him all night, if you want to. It can’t hurt, and it might help. You never know what people in his condition know or don’t know, but if somehow he knows you’re there … well, it can’t hurt, can it?”

Barbara Fannon glanced up at the clock on the wall and was surprised to see that it was nearly five in the morning. To her, it seemed as if it couldn’t have been more than an hour since the ambulance arrived with Alex.

There had been so much to do.

There had been all the tests that needed to be set up, and it had fallen to Barbara to coordinate the testing so that Alex was subjected to the least amount of movement possible. Not only had she coordinated the X rays and CAT scan, but everything else Frank Mallory had requested. And, as far as Barbara could determine, he hadn’t forgotten anything: he’d ordered ultrasound imaging and a cerebrospinal tap, as well as an arteriograph and an EEG. The only thing he’d left out was a pneumoencephalograph, and Barbara knew the only reason he’d skipped it was that Alex would have had to be put in a vertical position to carry it out. In his present condition, that simply wasn’t feasible. It had taken Barbara nearly an hour simply to contact all the technicians necessary and get them to the Center. And then, of course, there had been the people in the waiting room.