The House of Thunder (16 page)
“Jellicoe and Parker.”
“Their names are really Bradley and O’Hara.”
“So Mrs. Baker told me.”
“Let me bring them in here. I’ll ask each of them to tell you a little something about himself: where he was born and raised, where he went to school, how he came to be working at this hospital. Then you can ask them any questions you want, anything at all. Maybe if you talk to them for a while, maybe if you get to know them a bit...”
“Maybe then I’ll decide they don’t look so much like Parker and Jellicoe after all,” she said, completing the thought for him.
He moved closer, putting a hand on her shoulder, leaving her no choice but to look up at him and see the pity again. “Isn’t it at least a possibility that, once you know them, you might see them differently?”
“Oh, yes,” she said. “It’s not only possible or probable. It’s almost a certainty.”
Clearly, her awareness and her objectivity surprised him.
She said, “I’m fully aware that my problem is most likely either psychological or the result of some organically rooted brain dysfunction related to the auto accident, or possibly not to the accident directly but to the effects of spending three weeks in a coma.”
McGee shook his head and smiled; it was his turn to look embarrassed. “I keep forgetting you’re a scientist.”
“You don’t have to coddle me, Dr. McGee.”
Virtually glowing with relief, he put his hands behind him, palms flat on the mattress, and boosted himself up; he sat on the edge of the bed, beside her. That casual and unaffected act, such a spontaneous physical expression of the pleasure he took from her no-nonsense response, made him seem ten years younger than he was—and even more appealing than he had been. “You know, I was going crazy trying to think of some nice, gentle way to tell you that this whole look-alike business was probably in your head, and here you knew it all the time. Which means we can probably rule out one of the two diagnoses that you just outlined; I mean, it’s probably
not
a psychological boogeyman that’s riding you. You’re too stable for that. You’re amazing!”
not
a psychological boogeyman that’s riding you. You’re too stable for that. You’re amazing!”
“So my best hope is brain dysfunction,” Susan said with heavy irony.
He sobered. “Well, listen, it can’t be anything really life-threatening. It’s certainly not a major hemorrhage or anything like that. If it was, you wouldn’t be as fit and aware as you are. Besides, it wasn’t serious enough to show up on the brain scan that we did while you were in the coma. It’s something small, Susan, something treatable.”
She nodded.
“But you’re still scared of Bradley and O’Hara and the other two,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Even though you know it’s most likely all in your head.”
“The operative words are‘most likely.’”
“I’d go so far as to say it’s definitely a perceptual problem resulting from brain dysfunction.”
“I imagine you’re right.”
“But you’re still scared of them.”
“Very.”
“Your recovery mustn’t be set back by stress or depression,” he said, frowning.
“I can cope, I guess. My middle name is Pollyanna.”
He smiled again. “Good. That’s the spirit.”
Except that, in my heart, Susan thought, I don’t for a minute believe that I’ve got either a psychological problem or any kind of brain dysfunction. Those answers just don’t
feel
right. Intellectually, I can accept them, but on a gut level they seem wrong. What
feels
right is the answer that is no answer, the answer that makes no sense: These men
are
dead ringers for Harch, Quince, Jellicoe, and Parker, not just in my eyes but in reality; and they want something from me—probably my life.
feel
right. Intellectually, I can accept them, but on a gut level they seem wrong. What
feels
right is the answer that is no answer, the answer that makes no sense: These men
are
dead ringers for Harch, Quince, Jellicoe, and Parker, not just in my eyes but in reality; and they want something from me—probably my life.
Wiping one hand across her face as if she could slough off her weariness and cast it aside, Susan said, “Well ... let’s get this over with. Bring in Jellicoe and Parker, and let’s see what happens.”
“Bradley and O’Hara.”
“Yeah, them.”
“Listen, if you
think
of them as Jellicoe and Parker, then you’re bound to see them as Jellicoe and Parker. You’re playing right into your perceptual problem. Think of them as Denny Bradley and Pat O’Hara, and that might help you keep your perceptions clear; it might help you see them as they
are.”
think
of them as Jellicoe and Parker, then you’re bound to see them as Jellicoe and Parker. You’re playing right into your perceptual problem. Think of them as Denny Bradley and Pat O’Hara, and that might help you keep your perceptions clear; it might help you see them as they
are.”
“Okay. I’ll think of them as Bradley and O’Hara. But if they still look like Jellicoe and Parker, I might want to see an exorcist instead of a neurologist.”
He laughed.
She didn’t.
McGee had briefly explained the situation to Bradley and O’Hara before he had brought them back to her room. They appeared to be concerned about Susan’s condition, and they seemed eager to help in any way they could.
She tried not to let them see how much their presence still disturbed her. Although her stomach was clenched and although her heart was racing, she forced a smile for their benefit and tried to appear relaxed. She wanted to give McGee a fair chance to prove that these two men, on closer inspection, would turn out to be nothing but a pair of ordinary, innocuous young fellows without an ounce of meanness between them.
McGee stood beside the bed, one hand on the rail, occasionally touching her shoulder, offering moral support.
The orderlies stood at the foot of the bed. Initially, they were stiff, like a couple of schoolboys reciting a lesson in front of a stern teacher. But gradually they loosened up.
Dennis Bradley spoke first. He was the one who had held her down on the bed while the nurse had prepared to give her an injection.
“First of all,” Bradley said, “I want to apologize if I was maybe a little too rough with you. I didn’t mean to be. It’s just that I was kind of scared, you know.” He shifted his weight awkwardly from one foot to the other. “I mean, considering what you said ... you know ... about what you’d do ... well, what you’d do to our
eyes...”
eyes...”
“It’s all right,” Susan said, though she could still feel his fierce grip, his fingers pressing cruelly into her thin arms. “I was scared, too. Actually, I guess I owe
you
an apology. Both of you.”
you
an apology. Both of you.”
At McGee’s urging, Bradley talked about himself. He had been born in Tucson, Arizona, twenty years ago last July. His parents had moved to Portland, Oregon, when he was nine. He had no brothers, one older sister. He had attended a two-year junior college and had taken special courses to prepare for a career as a paramedic. One year ago, he had accepted this job in Willawauk as a combination orderly and ambulance superintendent. He answered all of Susan’s questions. He was unfailingly candid, outgoing, and helpful.
So was Patrick O’Hara, the redhead. He had been born and raised, he said, in Boston. His family was Irish Catholic. No, he’d never known anyone named Herbert Parker. In fact he’d never known anybody in Boston named Parker, Herbert or otherwise. Yes, he had an older brother, but, no, his brother didn’t really look much like him. No, he’d never been to Briarstead College in Pennsylvania; never even heard of it before this minute. He had come West when he was eighteen, three years ago. He’d been in Willawauk for, let’s see, sixteen, no, more like seventeen months.
Susan had to admit that both Dennis Bradley and Pat O’Hara were friendly. Now that she had gotten to know a little about them, she could cite no logical reason why she should any longer regard them as a threat to herself.
Neither of them appeared to be lying.
Neither of them seemed to be hiding anything.
Yet to her eyes, confused perception or not, Bradley still looked exactly like Carl Jellicoe.
Exactly.
O’Hara was still a dead ringer for Herbert Parker.
And Susan had the feeling, unsupported by anything that the two young men had just said or done, that they were not what they presented themselves to be, that they were lying and were hiding something. Intuitively, in spite of all the solid evidence to the contrary, she sensed that this show-and-tell had been nothing more than a well-wrought performance, an act which they had brought off with consummate skill.
Of course maybe I’m just a raving paranoid, completely starkers, she thought grimly.
When the two orderlies had left the room, McGee said, “Well?”
“It didn’t work. I thought of them as Bradley and O’Hara, but they still looked like Jellicoe and Parker.”
“You realize that doesn’t prove or disprove the theory that you’ve got brain-injury-related perceptual problems.”
“I know.”
“We’ll begin another series of tests first thing tomorrow, starting with new X rays.”
She nodded.
He sighed. “Damn, I was hoping that a talk with Bradley and O’Hara would set your mind at ease, make you feel more comfortable and less anxious until we can pinpoint the cause of your condition and correct this perceptual confusion.”
“I’m about as comfortable as a cat on a hot stove.”
“I don’t want you to be overwhelmed with stress or anxiety. That’s going to slow your recuperation. I guess it wouldn’t help to reason with you?”
“No. As I said, intellectually, I accept your explanation. But emotionally, instinctually, on a gut level, I still feel that the four fraternity men are coming back ... ganging up on me.”
She was cold. She put her hands and arms under the covers.
“Look,” McGee said, deciding to attempt to reason with her even though she’d said it was no use. “Look, maybe you have good cause to be suspicious of Richmond and Johnson. It’s not probable, but it is possible, remotely possible, that they’re Harch and Quince living under new names.”
“Hey, you’re supposed to be making me feel more comfortable, less anxious. Remember?”
“My point is that you have absolutely no cause to be suspicious of Bradley and O’Hara. They can’t be Jellicoe and Parker because those men are dead.”
“I know. Dead.”
“So you should feel better about Bradley and O’Hara.”
“But I don’t.”
“Furthermore, Bradley and O’Hara can’t have been brought here as part of some complicated, nefarious plot to get even with you for your testimony in that trial. They were here long before you ever arrived, before you even planned to take your vacation in Oregon, before you’d ever even heard of the Viewtop Inn. Are you saying someone knew—in some fantastic, magical, clairvoyant fashion—that you would have an accident here one day and wind up in Willawauk Hospital? Are you saying someone foresaw this and that he then set out to plant O’Hara here seventeen months ago—and then Dennis Bradley, a year ago?”
Her face was hot, for he was making her feel ridiculous. “Of course I don’t believe that.”
“Good.”
“It’s silly.”
“Yes, it is. So you should feel perfectly safe with Bradley and O’Hara.”
She could only speak the truth: “But I don’t feel safe with them.”
“But you should.”
The building pressure in her passed the critical point. She exploded: “Dammit, do you think I like being a prisoner of my emotions, the helpless victim of fear? I hate it. It’s not like me. I’m not this way. I feel ... out of control. Never in my life, never have I made decisions or in any other way operated primarily on emotion. I’m a scientist, for Christ’s sake. I’ve been a woman of science, a woman of reason, all of my adult life. And I’ve been proud of that. In a world that sometimes seems like a madhouse, I’ve been proud of my rationality, my unfailing stability. Don’t you see? Don’t you see what this is doing to me? I had a scientific, mathematical mind even as a child. I wasn’t given to tantrums even back then, not even as a little girl. Sometimes, it seems as if I never really had a childhood.”
Suddenly, to her surprise, a torrent of regrets, frustrations, and private pains, long held, long hidden, came pouring out of her, a deluge greater than that which had been released by the storm outside.
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