Brain Child

“ ’Night, darling,” Ellen replied. She watched her son leave the family room, then turned her gaze to Marsh, and immediately knew that the discussion of what had happened that day was not yet over. “All right,” she said tiredly. “What is it?”

But Marsh shook his head. “No,” he said. “I’m not going to talk about it anymore.” Suddenly he grinned, though there was no humor in it. “I guess I’ve just suddenly fallen victim to a feeling, and I don’t like it.”

Ellen sat down on the couch next to him and slipped her hand into his. “Tell me,” she said. “You know I won’t laugh at you — I won’t even argue with you. I’ve had too many feelings myself.”

Marsh considered for a moment, then made up his mind. “All right,” he said. “I just feel that something’s wrong. I can’t quite put my finger on it, because I keep telling myself that what I’m feeling is a result of the accident, and the brain surgery, and the fact that I’m not too crazy about the eminent Dr. Torres. But no matter how much I tell myself that, I still have a feeling that there’s more. That Alex has changed somehow, and that it’s more than the brain damage.”

“But everything that’s happened is consistent with the damage and the surgery,” Ellen replied, keeping her voice as neutral as possible and choosing her words carefully. “Alex is different, but he’s still Alex.”

Marsh sighed. “That’s just it,” he said. “He’s different, all right, but I keep getting the feeling that he’s not Alex.”

No, Ellen thought to herself. That’s not it at all. You just can’t stand the idea that Raymond Torres did something you couldn’t have done yourself. Aloud, though, she was careful to give Marsh no clue as to what she’d been thinking. Instead, she smiled at him encouragingly.

“Just wait,” she said. “We’ve had several miracles already. Maybe we’re about to have another one.”

As she went to bed that night, she decided that when she took Alex down for the special meeting Raymond had asked for tomorrow morning, she’d have a private talk with the doctor.

A talk about Marsh, not Alex.

For Maria Torres, sleep would not come that night. For hours she tossed in her bed, then finally rose tiredly to her feet, put on her frayed bathrobe, and went into her tiny living room to light a candle under the image of the Blessed Mother. She prayed silently for a while — a silent prayer of thanksgiving that at last the saints were listening to her entreaties, and answering her.

She was sure the answers were coming now, for she had been in the Lonsdales’ house all afternoon. She had listened as they talked to their son and heard his story of what had happened at the mission in San Francisco, and like all the gringos, they had barely been aware of her presence.

To them, she was nobody, only someone who came in now and then to clean up after them.

But they would find out who she was, now that the saints were listening to her, and had sent Alejandro back at last.

And Alejandro knew her now, and he would listen to her when she spoke to him.

She let the little candle burn out, then crept back to her bed, knowing that sleep would finally come.

She hoped the gringos, too, would sleep well tonight. Soon there would be no sleep for them at all.

CHAPTER TWELVE

“How come Peter isn’t here?” Alex asked. He was lying on the examining table, his eyes closed, while Raymond Torres himself began the task of attaching the electrodes to his skull.

“Sunday,” Torres replied. “Even my staff insists on a day or two off each week.”

“But not you?”

“I try, but every now and then I have to make an exception. You qualify as an exception.”

Alex nodded, his eyes still closed. “Because of how I scored on the tests.”

There was a short silence, and Alex opened his eyes. Torres was at the control panel, adjusting a myriad of dials. Finally he turned back to Alex. “Partly,” he said. “But frankly, I’m more interested in what happened in San Francisco yesterday, and at school on Monday morning.”

“It seems like I’m getting some of my memory back, doesn’t it?”

Torres shrugged. “That’s what we’re going to try to find out. And we’re also going to try to find out if there’s any significance to the fact that even what little you have remembered seems to be faulty.”

“But the dean’s office used to be where the nurse’s office is now,” Alex protested. “Mom just told us so.”

“True. But apparently it was moved long before you ever went to La Paloma High. So why — and how — did you remember where it used to be, instead of where it is? Even more important, why did you remember Mission Dolores, when you apparently have never been there?”

“But I could have been there,” Alex suggested. “Maybe yesterday wasn’t the first day I sneaked off to San Francisco.”

“Fine,” Torres agreed. “Let’s assume that’s the case. Now tell me why you remembered a grave that’s over a hundred years old, and thought it was your uncle’s grave? You have no uncles, let alone one who’s been dead since 1850.”

“Well, why did I?”

Torres’s brows arched. “According to those exams you took last week, you’re smart enough to know better than to ask that question before these tests.”

“Maybe I’m not smart,” Alex suggested. “Maybe I’m just good at remembering things.”

“Which would make you some kind of idiot savant,” Torres replied. “And the fact that you just suggested it is pretty good proof that you’re more than that.” He slid a pair of diskettes into the twin drives of the master monitor, then began preparing a hypodermic. “Peter tells me you woke up early a couple of times,” he said, his voice studiedly casual. “How come you never mentioned it?”

“It didn’t seem important.”

“Can you tell me what it was like?”

Carefully Alex explained the sensations he’d had when coming up from the anesthesia that always accompanied the tests. “But it wasn’t unpleasant,” he finished. “In fact, it was interesting. None of it made any sense, but I always had the feeling that if I could only slow it down, it would make sense.” He hesitated, then spoke again. “Why do I have to be asleep when you test my brain?”

“Peter already explained that,” Torres replied. He swabbed Alex’s arm with alcohol, then plunged the needle into his arm.

Alex winced slightly, then relaxed. “But if it got bad — if I started hurting or something — you could stop the tests, couldn’t you?”

“I could, but I won’t,” Torres told him. “Besides, if you were awake, the very fact that you’d be thinking during the examination would have an effect on the results. In order for the tests to be valid, your brain has to be at rest when they’re administered.”

Thirty seconds later, Alex’s eyes closed and his breathing became deep and slow. Checking all the monitors one more time, Torres left the room.

In his office, Torres leaned back in his desk chair and began methodically packing his pipe with tobacco. As he carried out the ritual of lighting the pipe, his eyes kept flicking toward the monitor that showed what was happening in the examining room. All, as he had expected, was as it should be, and he would have a full hour alone with Ellen Lonsdale. “I presume you’re going to tell me why your husband isn’t here this morning?”

Ellen shifted in her chair and nervously crossed her legs, unconsciously tugging at her skirt as she did so. “He’s … well, I’m afraid we’re having a little trouble.”