'I know.'
'So, this Zachary that you're not going to see again outside the hospital, tell me about him.'
'Helene, I thought we-'
'Tall? Kind of a Clint Eastwood face? Great eyes? Dark brown 'How did you-' At that instant, the door behind Suzanne opened. She whirled, and tensed visibly. 'Hi, ' Zack said. 'I thought so, ' Helene muttered.
'Glory be…'*** 'I'm sorry to have popped in on you like this,'
Zack said, sipping the cappuccino Suzanne had made him. 'I know you said Wednesday.'
'That's okay. I needed a break.'
They were perched on cherrywood stools on either side of a glass case that doubled as a sales counter and jewelry display. Following introductions, small talk, and a nudge that Suzanne had tried unsuccessfully to find annoying, Helene had gone off on 'errands.'
Across the gallery, a dowager tourist and her diminutive husband were eyeing a Gerard Morris, entitled typically, The Forest Is a Symphony.
Life in Itself. 'How's the incision? ' Zack asked. 'No problem…'
The atmosphere between them was subdued, but not strained. And despite her efforts to pull away, Suzanne sensed that her connection to him, forged on the hillside behind her house and later in her hospital room, had not softened. Silently, she cautioned herself against giving off any encouraging signals. Helene meant well, but she simply didn't understand. 'I'm sorry about Guy, ' she said. 'He was a nice man.'
'Yeah.'
Zack debated telling her about the envelope, but decided against it — especially since it still lay unopened on the seat of the camper.
'Are you off for the afternoon? ' she asked. 'Nope. I'm due at the office in a couple of minutes. I… um… actually, I came by for a consultation.'
She eyed him suspiciously. 'Seriously, ' he said. She started to protest, but held back. Helene was right. He did have great eyes. Damn you, Paul, she thought. 'Annie? ' she asked. 'No, thank goodness. Norman seems to be hanging in there all right with her. She doesn't care much for him, though. She says she doesn't trust him. No, I don't need advice from Suzanne Cole, cardiologist. I need it from Suzanne Cole, mother.'
'Interesting, ' she said. 'In that case, let me just change my expression from knowledgeable and unflappable to disheveled, bewildered, and exhausted. Okay, you may proceed.'
Across the gallery, the dowager and her husband had shifted their attention to Morris's Three Deer, a Stream, and the Cosmos, a garish rendering with luminescent stars and tiny sparkles in the water. 'It's a consult I've got to do for Phil Brookings, ' Zack said. 'An eight-year-old boy.'
'Name?'
Reflexively, Suzanne picked up a pen and doodled 8 years on the corner of a pad. 'Nelms. Toby Nelms. The kid hasn't spoken more than a word or two to anyone in five months. Brookings is ready to enter therapy with him, but he wanted me to evaluate him first. I think he's terrified at the prospect of spending hour after hour locked in his office with a kid who won't talk.'
'That does sound awful-especially for a shrink. But the child doesn't exactly sound neurosurgical.'
'Probably not, but he might be neurological. Apparently he's been having some sort of psychomotor seizures.'
'Psychomotor?'
'Sort of a grab-bag diagnosis, meaning, I don't have a handle on what's going on. Some variant of temporal- lobe epilepsy is as close as I can come, based on what Brookings told me. During the first seizure, just before he stopped speaking, he destroyed his room. There have been a number of others since then.'
'So why isn't it temporal-lobe epilepsy?'
'Well, for one thing, although there is this rage component like we see in temporal-! obe patients, there's also an enormous fear component. The kid acts as if he's absolutely terrified of something. And for another-and this is what's really disturbing-the recovery time is getting longer and longer with each episode. It sounds as if these seizures, or whatever they are, are associated with some actual increased pressure in the boy's brain.'
'Cerebral edema?'
'Quite possibly.'
'That's frightening.'
'Until now, the swelling's been reversible, but as you know, at some point a vicious cycle sets in, edema causing high fever, causing more edema, and so on.'
'Are there any triggers?'
'Triggers?'
'You know, something that sets off an attack.'
'Oh, no. Not that anyone has picked up on. Brookings wants to put him on Dilantin or one of the temporal- lobe epilepsy drugs, but he wanted me to check the boy out first. I thought maybe you could give me some hints about dealing with kids around his age.'
'Has he had an EEG?'
'I want to get both that and a CT scan, but according to Brookings, the little guy gets so agitated when he gets anywhere near the hospital that it's been next to impossible to get any kind of technically satisfactory study.'
'The hospital?'
'Brookings swears that the kid looked through his office window at the hospital and bolted. He had to chase him across the parking lot and actually tackle him.'
Absently, Suzanne had scribbled the words and hospital on her pad. 'I assume Brookings has looked for the obvious-a bad experience in the hospital, something like that? ' she asked. 'Uh-huh. Repair of an incarcerated hernia a year or so ago is all.
Your pal Mainwaring did the work. I reviewed the record. The boy was in overnight, but there were absolutely no problems.'
Suzanne added hernia and no problems to her list. 'Was it done under local?'
'Something like Pentothal and gas, I think it was. Why?'
'No reason. Just throwing out thoughts. I had the same anesthesia, and I'm still talking up a storm, so I don't think that's it.'
Across the room, the tourists were embroiled in a heated debate, the dowager gesturing toward Cosmos, and her husband toward Symphony. 'Any suggestions? ' Zack asked. Suzanne scratched lines under several of the words on her pad. 'Just one off the top, ' she said. 'Don't see him in your office.'
'What?'
'And do your best not to look like a doctor, either, or to call yourself doctor. He'll probably know you are one, but there's no sense in making a big deal of it. Unlike most grown-ups, kids don't get impressed with our title. They just get scared.'
'You mean, see him at my place?'
'Or even his place. Or better still, somewhere neutral. What about that plane you were telling Jen about? She's very excited about that. Is there any way you could put on a show for this child?'
'Excellent idea, ' Zack said. 'Of course I could. That's perfect.
I have just the place. The Meadows up at the top of Gaston Street. You know where that is?'
'Uh-huh. We've been there. That sounds just right. When are you seeing him?'
'Wednesday. Wednesday at one-thirty. Say, listen, that being Wednesday and all, why don't we meet up there at, say, eleven-thirty. We can have some lunch-a picnic. You can bring Jen and-'
'I can't, ' she said too quickly. 'What I mean is, we already have plans.'
'Zack, I'm sorry.'
'Yeah, sure. Another time… Well, thanks for the coffee.' He cleared his throat and pushed off the stool. 'I… um… I guess I'd better get back to the hospital.'
'Zack…' she said as he headed off. He turned back. 'Zack, I… I really am sorry about Guy.'
'Yeah, ' he said, the hurt in his eyes unmistakable. 'Me, too.' He turned again and was gone. Stonily, Suzanne tore the sheet from her pad and balled it in her fist. Perhaps it was time she herself made an appointment with Phil Brookings. Sterling had been every bit the refuge she had hoped it would be. Peace and beauty, a good job, and
