Woman on the Edge of Time

Now they were looking at photographs, like those of the moon taken by astronauts. That unknown precious country of her brain. They had a dummy second machine, like the one sitting on her skull squatting like a mosquito about to draw blood, and they were fiddling with the dummy. She would have loved to try it out on them. Suddenly she thought that these men believed feeling itself a disease, something to be cut out like a rotten appendix. Cold, calculating, ambitious, believing themselves rational and superior, they chased the crouching female animal through the brain with a scalpel. From an early age she had been told that what she felt was unreal and didn’t matter. Now they were about to place in her something that would rule her feelings like a thermostat.

Time … time. Yes, the surprise was the boredom. She could almost have slept, hunched there. The green masks of robbers covered their faces, but she could easily tell Dr. Redding from Dr. Morgan. Redding was brisk and in control and chipper. Morgan was prissy with worry, his every motion a bureaucratic procedure judged against inner or outer rules.

Now a new object was presented, crowed over. The nurses crowded close to see. The new toy. It was a metal disk embossed like a coin, no bigger than a quarter, with tubes and a miniature dialysis bag attached. She would be a walking monster with a little computer inside and a year’s supply of dope to keep her stupid. The whole thing would fit in the palm of her hand; it would fit under the roof of her skull, perched cozily on the brain.

Her head felt wrong as they put it in. Everything felt wrong. Maybe it would feel right again. They were closing with cement. A temporary measure. They said they wanted to monitor the reading for a month or two, they might want to change the chemical she was being fed from that dialysis bag. They kept their options open with a cement plug.

Afterward she had a massive headache. Even her teeth seemed all to ache. She did not want to move. She did not care about anything. She lay in her bed and through half‑closed eyes she ignored the patients and nurses passing on the neurology ward.

After they moved her back to her own ward, for a week she lay numb and uncaring. Acker came and talked to her. He tried to get her to perform tests and answer questions, he brought his charts and what she always thought of as his children’s games. Why should she answer? They were waiting for her to heal before they played with her, she felt.

Skip, who was being a good patient, brought her food on a tray. Politely, he did not look at her, more nude than if her clothes had been taken away.

Tina read her the newspaper, tried to start conversations. Sybil came in and sat patiently, let her alone and then returned, hoping. Tina’s voice, rising like an indignant wasp, buzzed at her. She could not want to talk. She could not care. She was a spoiled orange rotting green. The only person she cared to watch was Skip as he came and went, sweeping the ward and running errands for the attendants and the other patients. He was dressed in his street clothes and his hair had grown short and patchy. He looked younger and older than he had: younger in his angularity, his new awkwardness; older in the wary lack of expression on his face. She felt his will all the time like a knife he was carrying concealed, and she envied him for retaining his will. She wondered, when she could bring herself to think at all, how he preserved the power of his will hidden inside.

They had decided to operate next week on Alice. They felt they knew just what tissue in her brain to coagulate now, where to burn a hole in what was called Alice. Then she would have her electrodes removed, they promised, just like Skip. They were tired of playing with Alice, who had become sullen and passive. At times she giggled a lot, she seemed drunk and slaphappy, sitting on the edge of her bed. Then she slumped into a blank depression.

Skip now had grounds privileges. He went to the canteen and brought back doughnuts, danishes, candy bars, cigarettes for any of the patients who had the money. The doctors had their own coffeemaker near the meeting room, and even the patients were sometimes allowed to make coffee in the afternoon in the small kitchen the lower staff used. Dolly had come by to visit her right after her operation, but had not been allowed in. Dolly had deposited some more money for Connie. Connie pretended to order sweets from the canteen with the others. Remembering Luciente’s urging, she withdrew change for an order but then quietly told Skip not to bring her anything. Seventy‑five cents at a time, she was accumulating capital for escape. That much energy remained to her.