Bright's artide of sixth senses, precognitive powers, or wild talents.
“How did you turn him off the ESP angle?” Weizak asked him that evening.
Johnny shrugged. “He seemed like a nice guy. Maybe he didn't want to stick me with it.”
“Maybe not,” Weizak said. “But he won't forget it. Not if he's a good reporter, and I understand that he is.”
“You understand?”
“I asked around.”
“Looking out for my best interests?”
“We all do what we can, nuh? Are you nervous about tomorrow, Johnny?”
“Not nervous, no. Scared is a more accurate word.”
“Yes, of course you are. I would be.”
“Will you be there?”
“Yes, in the observation section of the operating theater. You won't be able to tell me from the others in my greens, but I will be there.”
“Wear something,” Johnny said. “Wear something so I'll know it's you.”
Weizak looked at him, and smiled. “All right. I'll pin my watch to my tunic.”
“Good,” Johnny said. “What about Dr. Brown? Will he be there?”
“Dr. Brown is in Washington. Tomorrow he will present you to the American Society of Neurologists. I have read his paper. It is quite good. Perhaps overstated.”
“You weren't invited?”
Weizak shrugged. “I don't like to fly. That is something that scares me-”
“And maybe you wanted to stay here?”
Weizak smiled crookedly, spread his hands, and said nothing.
“He doesn't like me much, does he?” Johnny asked. “Dr. Brown?”
“No, not much,” Weizak said. “He thinks you are having us on. Making things up for some reason of your own. Seeking attention, perhaps. Don't judge him solely on that, John. His cast of mind makes it impossible for him to think otherwise. if you feel anything for Jim, feel a little pity. He is a brilliant man, and he will go far. Already he has offers, and someday soon he will fly from these cold north woods and Bangor will see him no more. He will go to Houston or Hawaii or possibly even to Paris. But he is curiously limited. He is a mechanic of the brain. He has cut it to pieces with his scalpel and found no soul. Therefore there is none. Like the Russian astronauts who circled the earth and did not see God. It is the empiricism of the mechanic, and a mechanic is only a child with superior motor control. You must never tell him I said that.”
“No.”
“And now you must rest. Tomorrow you have a long day.
All Johnny saw of the worldfamous Dr. Ruopp during the operation was a pair of thick horn-rimmed glasses and a large wen at the extreme left side of the man's forehead. The rest of him was capped, gowned, and gloved.
Johnny had been given two preop injections, one of demerol and one of atropine, and when he was wheeled in he was as high as a kite. The anesthetist approached with the biggest novocaine needle Johnny had ever seen in his life. He expected that the injection would hurt, and he was not wrong. He was injected between L4 and L5, the fourth and fifth lumbar vertebrae, high enough up to avoid the cauda equina, that bundle of nerves at the base of the spine that vaguely resembles a horse's tail.
Johnny lay on his stomach and bit his arm to keep from screaming.
After an endless time, the pain began to fade to a dull sensation of pressure. Otherwise, the lower half of his body was totally gone.
Ruopp's face loomed over him. The green bandit, Johnny thought. Jesse James in horn-rims. Your money or your life.
“Are you comfortable, Mr. Smith?” Ruopp asked.
“Yes. But I'd just as soon not go through that again.”
“You may read magazines, if you like. Or you may watch in the mirror, if you feel it will not upset you.”
“All right.”
“Nurse, give me a blood pressure, please.”
“One-twenty over seventy-six, Doctor.”
“That's lovely. Well, group, shall we begin?”
“Save me a drumstick,” Johnny said weakly, and was surprised by the hearty laughter. Ruopp patted his sheet-covered shoulder with one thinly gloved hand.
He watched Ruopp select a scalpel and disappear behind the green drapes hung over the metal hoop that curved above Johnny. The mirror was convex, and Johnny had a fairly good if slightly distorted view of everything.
“Oh yes,” Ruopp said. “Oh yes, dee-de-dee… here's what we want… hum-de-hum… okay… damp, please, Nurse, come on, wake up for Christ's sake… yes sir… now I believe I'd like one of those… no, hold it… don't give me what I ask for, give me what I need… yes, okay. Strap, please.”
With forceps, the nurse handed Ruopp something that looked like a bundle of thin wires twisted together. Ruopp picked them delicately out of the air with tweezers.
Like an Italian dinner, Johnny thought, and look at all that spaghetti sauce. That was what made him feel ill, and he looked away. Above him, in the gallery, the rest of the bandit gang looked down at him. Their eyes looked pale and merciless and frightening. Then he spotted Weizak, third from the right, his watch pinned neatly to the front of his gown.
Johnny nodded.
Weizak nodded back.
That made it a little better.
Ruopp finished the connections between his knees and calves, and Johnny was turned over. Things continued. The anesthesiologist asked him if he felt all right. Johnny told her he thought he felt as well as possible under the circumstances. She asked him if he would like to listen to a tape and he said that would be very nice. A few moments later the dear, sweet voice of Joan Baez filled the operating room. Ruopp did his thing. Johnny grew sleepy and dozed off. When he woke up the operation was still going on. Weizak was still there. Johnny raised one hand, acknowledging his presence, and Weizak nodded again.
An hour later it was done. He was wheeled into a recovery room where a nurse kept asking him if he could tell her how many of his toes she was touching. After a while, Johnny could.
Ruopp came in, his bandit's mask hanging off to one side.
“All right?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“It went very well,” Ruopp said. “I'm optimistic.”
“Good.”
“You'll have some pain,” Ruopp said. “Quite a lot of it, perhaps. The therapy itself will give you a lot of pain at first. Stick with it.”
“Stick with it,” Johnny muttered.
“Good afternoon,” Ruopp said, and left. Probably, Johnny thought, to play a quick nine on the local golf course before it got too dark.
Quite a lot of pain.
By nine P. M. the last of the local had worn off, and Johnny was in agony. He was forbidden to move his legs without the help of two nurses. It felt as if nail-studded belts had been looped around his knees and then cinched cruelly tight. Time slowed to an inchworm's crawl. He would glance at his watch, sure that an hour had passed since the last time he had looked at it, and would see instead that it had only been four minutes. He became sure he couldn't stand the pain for another minute, then the minute would pass, and he would be sure he couldn't stand it for another minute.
He thought of all the minutes stacked up ahead, like coins in a slot five miles high, and the blackest depression he had ever known swept over him in a smooth solid wave and carried him down. They were going to torture him to death. Operations on his elbows, thighs, his neck. Therapy. Walkers, wheelchairs, canes.
You're going to have pain… stick with it.
No, you stick with it, Johnny thought. Just leave me alone. Don't come near me again with your butchers” knives. If this is your idea of helping, I want no part of it.
Steady throbbing pain, digging into the meat of him.
Warmth on his belly, trickling.
He had wet himself.
Johnny Smith turned his face toward the wall and cried.
Ten days after that first operation and two weeks before the next one was scheduled, Johnny looked up from the book he was reading-Woodward and Bernstein's All the President's Men-and saw Sarah standing in the doorway, looking at him hesitantly.
“Sarah,” he said. “It is you, isn't it?”
She let out her breath shakily. “Yes. It's me, Johnny.”
