unless we arrest him.'
'I'm concerned. The edema could easily increase. Infection is possible. If a cranial vein leaks or breaks, the resulting hematoma would be fatal. And besides this organic damage he's sustained, well, I'm not sure if he's capable of taking care of himself. Whether he can remember to take care of himself.'
'I'm not either,' said Merci.
'Have you seen him?'
'Three hours ago. He seemed a little slower, mentally. Said he was tired, not thinking straight. He said he'd check himself back in this afternoon.'
'He hasn't.'
'What's going on inside that mind of his, Doctor?'
Stebbins shook his head and sighed. He leaned back from a desk cluttered with papers. The fan oscillated his way and the corners lifted like spectators watching a home run.
'It's easiest to show you.'
He rolled back on his chair and stood. Behind his desk was a wall mounted x-ray screen that he flicked on with a toggle. Archie Wildcraft's x rays were already in. Dr. Stebbins darted a red laser pointer across the image, stopping it suddenly on the outside of the skull.
Merci was startled by the dark chaos that the bullet had brought to Archie's brain. A shadow the shape of a tornado issued from high on the right side, with the narrow funnel touching ground near the bottom of the skull. Around the tornado was a border of pale gray.
'This is Archie's right hemisphere. The bullet entered here, resulting in the darker hematoma you see. You can see the bone fissure, and the way the blood vessels of the pia mater have hemorrhaged. It's hard to say whether the bullet's path was altered by the skull, or if it was fired from the corresponding angle, but you can see that it traveled downward and lodged here, beside the foramen magnum-that's the opening in the skull where the spinal cord exits. It missed the vein of Galen, which lie in this large triangular fold in the pia mater known as the velum interpositum. It missed the major cranial nerves-the vagas, optic, trigeminal, etcetera. It missed the internal capsule of the brain itself, which controls motor function.'
Dr. Stebbins frowned at the x ray. Then he looked at Merci and Zamorra. 'Unfortunately, it did not miss the right amygdala. You can see the largest part of the bullet right here, about two inches in from the ear.'
'What's it do?' asked Merci.
'In a male, the right amygdala processes the emotion of memory. Not the memory itself, but the feeling surrounding the memory. In women, it's the left.'
'He has no emotions attached to his memories?'
'His recent memories. And to memories that he's now attempting to construct-every waking moment-with the fragment lodged in his amygdala. His long-term memories will begin to lose their emotional content, also. They're stored elsewhere in the brain, but when the links connecting present and past emotion are destroyed, recognition fails along with reproduction and retrieval.'
'Meaning what?' asked Merci.
'His recent memories will be fragmented and incomplete, and he'll have little emotion attached. His long-term memory will weaken, in terms of clarity and emotional content.'
Stebbins circled his red dot, then it vanished.
'So, if he can't form emotions as he experiences things, he'll be detached from what those things mean to him,' said Zamorra.
'Yes.'
'Like a zombie?' asked Merci.
Stebbins smiled.
Rayborn smiled back, lifting her eyebrows. 'Look, I'm a cop, not a brain surgeon.'
'No, your idea was workable. Just the language was amusing. But to answer your question, he's going to be detached from the emotional components of his recent past. Confused, too, because the emotional weight of memory is what we use to form our ideas of right and wrong, good and bad. Of what is threatening or loving. Dangerous or benign.'
'He's got no emotional rudder,' said Zamorra.
'No recent emotional rudder,' said Stebbins, circling the x ray of Archie's amygdala once again. 'He's only got his past to go on.'
'But that's going away, too,' said Rayborn. 'Because there's nothing new for it to connect with, to keep it… living.'
Stebbins nodded. 'Of course, a certain amount of healing is possible. If the edema subsides and the pressure is lowered, we can expect some of his short-term memory to return. Whether or not the damaged amygdala will still be able to supply him with appropriate emotions again, I can't say.'
'Will some parts of his brain be ruined forever?' asked Merci.
'Changed forever,' said Stebbins. 'He's lucky to be alive.'
Merci wondered at the angle, the way the bullet went down through Wildcraft's brain, rather than across it. She wondered how tall Size Sixteen was, and thought about the light that Archie had remember just that morning, and how he said it came from above him.
'That's just the amygdala,' said Merci. 'What other physical damage does he have?'
'Impossible to say without more tests and observation. Certain the swelling here, near the optic nerve, might give him focus and depth-perception problems. Maybe his colors are dulled or transposed or exaggerated. Seizures are possible-mostly the smaller, focal seizures, but also some general convulsions. Seizures are caused by pressure and pressure is caused by swelling. The skull has very little give in it. There's also a chance that he won't feel crude pain or light touch as quickly and specifically as before, because of a small fragment against his thalamus.'
'He seems to have forgotten a lot of what happened that night said Zamorra. 'Not just emotions, but whole… scenes, segments.'
'That's traumatic amnesia and it's common. Even a mild concussion can leave someone with no memory of the injury. Full retrograde amnesia, where he loses large portions of older memory, is certain possible here. It would take a great deal of observation to even diagnose him. Personally, I'd very much like to have that time to spend with him.'
He looked at them with disappointment and an air of blame,
'There's also the difficult area of psychogenesis memory disorders.'
'Psychogenic memory disorders,' said Merci.
'Yes. That means disorders of the memory that are not tied organic damage or disease.'
'Psychological.'
'Basically, yes. See, Mr. Wildcraft knows what happened. He remembers some of it. And the more time goes by, if the edema and bleeding subside, he will remember more. But the more he remembered the better chance he has of developing various forms of hysterical amnesia. Hysterical amnesia is brought about by psychological stress and trauma, as opposed to strictly organic damage. Its range is wide and unpredictable.'
Merci thought about this. 'So, the part of his brain that forgot will start to remember. And the part that remembered will start to forget.'
He smiled. 'That's roughly true.'
'Sounds tiring,' she said.
'My patients undergoing that kind of retention-loss pattern tell me it's exhausting.'
Stebbins sat back down and swiveled his chair around to face them. Merci watched the fan lift the paper corners, heard the quiet hiss of moving air, saw the collar of Dr. Stebbins's lab coat flutter briefly.
She tried to imagine what it would be like to be remembering and forgetting at the same time. Remembering and forgetting the same event at the same time. What, she wondered: you remembered the coat collar fluttering but you forgot there was a fan in the room? How did you explain things?
'Dr. Stebbins,' she asked, 'will he make things up?'
Stebbins started to answer, then caught himself. He looked at Merci, then Zamorra, then back to Merci again. 'I'd hate to find myself on a witness stand against a patient. I'm not sure I would do that.'
'You would if the court ordered you to.'
'Is that how it works?'
