Coma

“Yup, a competitive nerve blocker. A great drug. Oh, in case you haven’t guessed-, we’re dining here tonight. I got some steaks, and the hibachi is all set on the fire escape outside the kitchen window.”

“Couldn’t be better, Mark. I’m exhausted. But I’m also hungry.”

“I’ll put the steaks on.” Mark walked into the kitchen with his wineglass.

“Does curare depress respiration?” asked Susan.

“Nope. It just paralyzes all the muscles. The person wants to breathe but can’t. They suffocate.”

Susan stared into the fireplace, resting the edge of her glass against her lower lip. The dancing flames hypnotized her and she thought about curare, about Greenly, about Berman. The fire crackled suddenly and angrily spat a red-hot coal against the screen. A piece of the coal ricocheted off the screen, landing in the rug to the side of the fireplace.

Susan jumped up, flicked it off the rug and pushed it harmlessly onto the slate hearth. She then walked over to the kitchen door, watching Mark season the steaks.

“Stark actually was interested in what I had found out and has already tried to help. I had asked him to help me get the charts of the patients on my list. When I called back later this afternoon, he said he had tried to get them for me but had been told that they were all signed out to one of the professors of neurology, a Dr. Donald McLeary. Do you know him?”

“No, but that doesn’t mean anything. I don’t know very many of the nonsurgical types.”

“To my way of thinking, it makes McLeary look rather suspicious.”

“Oh oh, here we go again, imagination plus! Dr. Donald McLeary mysteriously destroys the cerebrum of six patients ...”

“Twelve ...”

“OK, twelve, and then he signs all their charts out to eliminate any chance of suspicion. I can just picture all this in the headlines of the Boston Globe.”

Mark laughed as he put the steaks on the hibachi through the open window, then drew it down against the cold.

“Go ahead and laugh, but at the same time come up with an explanation for McLeary. Everyone else so far has expressed surprise at the idea of relating all these cases together. Everyone except this Dr. McLeary. He has all the charts. I just think it’s worth looking into. Maybe he’s been investigating this thing for some time and he’s far ahead of me. That would be nice to believe and if so, maybe I could help him.”

Mark didn’t answer. He was wondering exactly how he was going to try to talk Susan out of the whole business. He was also concentrating on the salad dressing, his culinary specialty. When he reopened the kitchen window, the cold wind brought in the sizzling aroma of the cooking steaks. Susan leaned against the door frame, watching him. She thought about how marvelous it would be to have a wife, to be able to come home and have a wife keeping the house in order, the meals on the table. At the same time it seemed ridiculously unfair that she could never have a wife. It was a mental game that Susan played with herself, always to the same impasse, as which time she would simply deny the whole problem or at least postpone it until some indeterminate future date.

“I called the Jefferson Institute today.”

“What’d they have to say?” Mark handed Susan some plates, silver and napkins, and pointed toward the onyx table.

“You were right about it being difficult to visit,” said Susan, carrying the material to the table. “I asked if I could come out: and visit the facility because I wanted to see one of the patients. They laughed. They told me that only the very immediate family can visit and only on prearranged, brief visits. They said that the mass methods of taking care of the patients is generally unacceptable, emotionally, to the families, so they have to make special arrangements for them to visit.

They did tell me about the monthly tour you mentioned. My being a medical student counted about the same as a wooden nickel, so far as making them alter their routine. Actually the place sounds interesting, especially since, as you say, the concept has been successful in keeping chronic cases from taking up acute-care beds in the local hospitals.”

Susan finished setting the table, then returned to staring into the fire.

“I’d really like to visit, though, mostly to see Berman once more. I have a feeling that if I saw him again that I’d probably be able to ease up on this ... crusade, as you call it. Even I realize I’ve got to get back to a semblance of normality.”

Mark straightened up from his activities in the kitchen at this last sentence, entertaining a ray of hope. He turned the steaks over again and closed the window.

“Why don’t you just show up there? I mean, it must be like any other hospital when it comes right down to it. It’s probably as chaotic as the Memorial. If you acted like you belong, probably nobody would even question you. You could even wear a nurse’s uniform. If anybody came into the Memorial dressed like a doctor or & nurse, they could go anywhere they chose.”

Susan looked back at Mark, who was standing in the kitchen door.