Sensing Light (20 page)

XIV

O
N
S
ATURDAY MORNING
, H
ERB
went for an early morning jog. When he returned, Martin was in the kitchen eating cereal.

“I've got a surprise,” Herb said.

“Yeah,” Martin said indifferently.

“Come upstairs when you're done.”

Herb settled into the spare bedroom, which housed his new home computer. He turned on the Macintosh, opened a package that had come in yesterday's mail, removed a floppy disc, and inserted it.

“What's that?” Martin asked from the doorway.

“Tetris.”

Clusters of squares in various shapes drifted down from the top of the screen. Using the cursor keys, Herb rotated the falling tetronimoes and moved them sideways.

“It's a game,” Herb explained as he let Martin have the chair. “If you can arrange these things to form an unbroken line, you get points. Try it.”

Martin caught on quickly, manipulating the falling tetronimoes one, then two, then three seconds before they reached the bottom. He gave shouts of triumph each time he completed a line.

Herb enjoyed seeing his son at play. Since starting high school, Martin had become guarded and inaccessible, like his older sister. Herb hoped he had finally found something fun they do together, a pathway to wider-ranging and more personal conversations. Impulsively, he tested the possibility.

“How are you getting along with kids at school?”

Distracted, Martin misplaced three consecutive tetronimoes.

“Fine,” he said and stood up. “Thanks, Dad.”

After Martin left the den, Herb watched the screen. Blocks were piling on top of each other. What was he doing wrong? He feared history was
repeating itself. His father hadn't put a fraction of the effort he had put into connecting with his son. Was alienation an inherited Wu defect, irreparable?

Herb and Cecilia had a date that afternoon. They drove downtown to a matinee at the new concert hall, which had perfect acoustics, she told him. Still disturbed by the Tetris fiasco, he grumbled about Martin while she sat next to him knitting.

“He's not confiding in me either.” she said. “I'm not worried about it. It's normal for a thirteen-year-old boy to be uncomfortable sharing anything private with his parents. His hormones and body are changing. You shouldn't take it personally.”

Herb knew it was unrealistic to assume a boy Martin's age would admire his father. But a little affection was a fair expectation, wasn't it?

“Thanks,” he replied curtly.

Cecilia stopped knitting.

“What's with that tone?”

“What tone?”

“You know what tone.”

“You're assuming innuendo that isn't there.”

“Right,” she said dryly and returned to her knitting.

Inside the concert hall, he asked her, “Who's performing?”

“The Berlin Philharmonic.”

“That's supposed to be the world's best orchestra, isn't it?”

“I think so.”

Herb was suddenly aware the word “Berlin” had caused him no distress whatsoever. Now he recalled Cecilia telling him weeks ago it would be the Berlin Philharmonic. He hadn't reacted then either. It had been twenty-five years since he had heard the word “Berlin” without flinching.

They had dinner at a nouvelle cuisine restaurant Herb had heard was terrific. He had two glasses of a very smooth cabernet and let go of his annoyance with Cecilia's earlier lack of sympathy. He thought of her calmness during two pregnancies, her resilience when they were robbed the week after
moving into their first home, her unpredictable earthiness. He touched the curve of her ear and let his fingers trail down her neck.

“This is nice.”

“It is,” she murmured and held his hand.

“Another glass of wine?”

“Herb, are you trying to get into my pants?”

He looked away innocently.

“It's working,” she said and speared her fork into the bouillabaisse.

XV

H
ERB AWOKE WITH A
headache. He kept his eyes shut. The brightness was irritating. Did I have too much to drink last night, he wondered. Herb remembered the restaurant though not the wine they ordered, which was odd. He couldn't remember what time he went to bed either. Guess I did have too much to drink. Oh well, it's Sunday. He went back to sleep.

He woke again determined to brave the light. Squinting, he saw a white tile ceiling with bare fluorescent bulbs. He turned left and bumped his nose against the chrome side railing of a gurney. A medicine resident he recognized walked by. Her name eluded him. Dressed in scrubs, she was staring at him. Her eyebrows were furrowed. Oh no…this isn't a dream, is it.

Herb turned the other way and saw Cecilia, Martin, and Allison. He sat up, discovered he was clothed only in a hospital gown, open in the back, and immediately lay down.

“What's going on?” he cried out.

No one answered. Martin and Allison looked at each other and rolled their eyes.

“What's happening?” he implored them.

“It's your turn to tell him,” said Allison to Cecilia. “I did it last time and Martin the time before.”

“Please, Cecilia! What am I doing here?”

Cecilia wearily explained that after dinner, on their way to the car, a Muni bus had nearly hit them. Herb pushed her out of the way then jumped, but not soon enough. As the bus swerved, it delivered a glancing blow that knocked him off balance. He landed on his head and was transiently unconscious. Once he came to, Herb was confused, unable to remember anything that had occurred after dinner. Six hours later in the City Hospital ER, he was asking his family every five minutes where he was and how he got here.
After each explanation, he was again surprised to hear the news. Cecilia told him a CT scan of his brain had been done. The ER physician said it was normal.

“Then I can go home.”

His children and wife lunged toward him, yelling “No!” in unison.

Herb touched a cherry-size swelling on the side of his skull that throbbed painfully. He acquiesced.

Since all the ER rooms were filled with more gravely injured patients, Herb spent the night in the hallway. He didn't complain. He pretended to sleep so he wouldn't see the passing house staff's morbid curiosity. Yes, it can happen to us too, he wanted to scream.

In the morning, Jared Hart, sans his retinue of surgical residents and students, came by and carefully examined him.

“No motor deficits,” Hart concluded. “Are you thinking clearly now?”

“More or less,” Herb hedged. To admit otherwise would be beyond mortification. But how he could not be truthful? His mind, not just his reputation, was on the line.

“I still have amnesia for about six hours of last night. Otherwise, my memory seems intact.”

Hart rubbed his chin skeptically.

“I'm not quite playing with a full deck. Maybe it's stress from the trauma?”

“That'd be par for the course. But if you're not back to normal in a few days, you need to be seen by a neurologist. OK?”

“Sure,” said Herb, noncommittally.

“I'm serious about that, Herb. I'm not trying to cover my ass. I'm trying to cover yours.”

Cecilia picked him up at the ER entrance. On the ride home, he insisted he was fine.

“I think there's still time for me to round on the ICU patients.”

She stopped the car and stared at him.

“You've got to be kidding.”

He began to argue. Seeing her jaw clamped tight, he hesitated.

“Herb, what did the ER doctors say about going back to work?”

“We didn't talk about it.”

Cecilia and Herb had played chess when they were dating. They had been well-matched. She expected this response. She knew she had him in check and prepared her final move.

“If you had asked them if it was OK for you to go in to work today, what do you honestly think they would have said? ‘Sure, no problem' or ‘Gee, that doesn't sound like good idea?'”

“Never mind.”

A compassionate victor, she said, “Isn't it possible, honey, that your judgment is a bit off right now? Let's take it one step at a time, OK?”

Cecilia set a hand on his knee and started the car. He looked out the passenger window and worried.

Once home, he called the ICU and was told another pulmonologist had already come in to round with the residents. Herb wanted an update because he indisputably would be at the hospital tomorrow. In addition, he wanted to test his ability to remember details about old patients and search his fund of knowledge for relevant facts when told about the new ones. After hanging up, he couldn't point to any glaring cognitive deficits. He was also aware he hadn't second-guessed a single decision made by the back-up attending.

Herb tried to nap that afternoon but couldn't stop fretting over his mental acuity. He kept multiplying and dividing numbers and recalling names of interns who had rotated through the ICU.

He got up and found Allison studying for a history test. He quizzed her, repeating each question after four minutes to check his own short term memory until she demanded he leave her alone.

Just before dinner, Martin shouted from upstairs, “The bathroom sink's stopped up.”

Herb found Martin inspecting his face in the mirror, clearly unhappy with what he saw. His adolescent growth spurt was underway and had started with his nose. Herb had heard Cecilia assure him the rest of his face would catch up soon. It appeared he was losing faith in her infallibility, too.

“What are you going to do, Dad?”

It was more an accusation than an inquiry. Herb looked at the sink full of soapy water. His mind went blank. To buy time, he asked Martin what he thought.

“Gee, Dad,” Martin exploded. “Can't you even fix a clogged sink?”

Afraid the answer was no, he stalled.

“I'm curious about how your mind works, how you'd approach the problem.”

Martin turned away. Herb knew he had compounded his error. Martin most definitely did
not
want his father to have a clue as to how his mind worked. Herb had to answer the question or suffer a quantum drop in his son's esteem. He noticed a toilet plunger.

“Let's try this,” he said, picking it up.

Martin had thought of using the plunger but hadn't suggested it, fearful it would be a gross sanitary violation. Among other things, his father's unassailably superior grasp of this mysterious and embarrassing subject galled him.

Cecilia came in the bathroom, took one look, and said, “I'll phone a plumber in the morning.”

Of course, Herb chided himself. Why didn't I think of that?

Martin glanced at Herb. His eyebrows were furrowed. It was an expression Herb had seen recently. He couldn't place where or when.

XVI

H
ERB WAS AT WORK
Monday morning, supervising his fellow as she performed bronchoscopies. He hovered behind her, looking through the second eyepiece, ready to step in if needed. Mostly, he re-oriented her while she steered the instrument tip inside the patient's lung, reminding her to suction whenever fluid accumulated and clouded their view. At the same time, he was explaining disease mechanisms to the resident and medical student assigned to the pulmonary consult service that month and letting them peek at airway abnormalities.

The first two procedures went smoothly. Herb wasn't encouraged. He knew that before the accident he could have been doing both clinical and teaching tasks and simultaneously planning the outline of a manuscript.

A problem occurred during the third bronchoscopy. The fellow, attempting to direct the tip into a small airway, got stuck. She tried unsuccessfully to retract it, which made the patient cough violently. Herb couldn't think of any advice to give her. Meanwhile, she told the resident to administer more sedation and kept maneuvering the lever. One minute later—a very long minute for Herb—she freed up the tip, redirected it to another part of the lung, and adroitly completed the procedure.

“Thanks for letting me work it out, Herb,” she said afterwards. “That was a real confidence builder.”

“Well, part of training is learning how to get out of trouble, isn't it?”

As his team was exiting the suite, he overheard the resident whisper to the student, “See what I mean? That's why he's a legendary teacher.”

Ashamed by being complimented when he wasn't even capable of doing his job competently, Herb thought, I don't need a neurologist's help. He knew what he had—a cognitive dysfunction in problem solving, relatively mild in severity but incapacitating for this occupation. And he knew what a
neurologist could do about it—absolutely nothing. It would get better, or it wouldn't.

Herb had no difficulty seeing the irony here. He had applied his skills and insight to his own problem and identified the correct solution. He would have to go on sick leave. He decided to allow himself one more day before concluding he was too impaired to work.

His pager beeped and displayed the lung clinic phone number. He had forgotten Sister Anna was coming at eleven for her airflow to be measured.

Sister Anna was in a jovial mood.

“God is giving me a last laugh, Herb,” she said. “I told the bishop I have AIDS. He was utterly befuddled. So I said, ‘the gay plague.' Oh, Lord, was the expression on his face a treat! I could see the wheels turning. He must have been imagining me humping a bisexual man. Then I told him about the transfusion. My, my, did the color in his cheeks rise. Guilt, no doubt, for having those sinful thoughts of me
in flagrante delicto
.”

Herb smiled, though in his current distress he was reacting to Sister Anna's ability to speak in whole sentences without catching her breath rather than sharing her amusement.

“How's the breathing?”

“A tad better with the new inhalers. The cough and fatigue are the same, annoying but manageable. I suppose this is as good as it's going to be from here on out.”

He heard no trace of self-pity. She spoke of her misfortune as if it was another's, someone she didn't even know. The clarity with which she saw her future froze him. He couldn't formulate a reply.

“I know I don't have much time, Herb. It's all right. I'm at peace with it.”

“I believe you. You seem so serene. It's impressive.”

“There's no deep secret involved,” she said, coughing. “No religious mystery. I'm not anticipating an ecstatic afterlife. I've had a good run. That makes me content. But I can't claim to have achieved any higher spiritual state.”

Herb wanted to ask her more but checked himself. She was his patient. He wasn't hers.

She gazed soberly at him.

“What's bothering you, Herb?”

Her question unfettered him. He told her the story of his accident and subsequent troubles.

“It must be very frightening,” said Sister Anna, her tone contemplative.

“It is. Everything I do here is at stake.”

“You seem normal.”

“You're being deceived by appearances.”

She started to speak and stopped. He had a presentiment she was holding back something of great importance.

“What are you thinking?” he asked.

“Have you thought through the worse case scenario?”

“Not…in any detail.”

“Your intellect isn't the only way to be in the world, Herb. There's love. You've got that too, don't you, with your family and friends?”

He looked away.

“I see. Perhaps not as much as you could have if you applied yourself to it, like you do to making the right medical decisions.”

Herb felt naked, more than naked, as though a supernatural surgeon had painlessly opened his chest and exposed the vulnerable truth inside.

“Thank you, Sister,” he said in a rush. “I value your advice. I truly do. I'm sure it's the best I'll get.”

After Sister Anna left, Herb was relieved he had forgotten to bring up her talking to the press. The blood banks would change their policies soon whether her story made the news or not. She didn't need the satisfaction of embarrassing them. Neither did he.