At that moment, precisely, Matt Zaleski became aware of a sudden breathlessness and a fluttering in his chest, as if a bird were inside, beating its wings and trying to get out. The sensation frightened him.
He sweated with the same kind of fear he had known years before in B-17F bombers over Europe when the German flak was barreling up, and now, as then, he knew it was the fear of death.
Matt knew, too, he was having some kind of attack and needed help. He began thinking in a detached way: He would telephone, and whoever came and whatever was done, he would ask them to send for Barbara because there was something he wanted to tell her. He was not sure exactly what, but if she came the words would find themselves.
The trouble was, when he made up his mind to reach for the telephone, he discovered he no longer had the power to move. Something strange was happening to his body. On the right side there was no feeling any more; he seemed to have no arm or leg, or any idea where either was. He tried to cry out but found, to his amazement and frustration, he could not. Nor, when he tried again, could he make any sound at all.
Now he knew what it was that he wanted to tell Barbara: That despite the differences they had had, she was still his daughter and he loved her, just as he had loved her mother, whom Barbara resembled in so many ways.
He wanted to say, too, that if they could somehow resolve their present quarrel he would try to understand her, and her friends, better from now on . . .
Matt discovered he did have some feeling and power of movement in his left side. He tried to get up, using his left arm as a lever, but the rest of his body failed him and he slid to the floor between the desk and chair.
It was in that position he was found soon after, conscious, his eyes mirroring an agony of frustration because the words he wanted to say could find no exit route.
Then, for the second time that night, an ambulance was summoned to the plant.
'You're aware,' the doctor at Ford Hospital said to Barbara next day, 'that your father had a stroke before.'
She told him, 'I know now. I didn't until today.'
This morning, a plant secretary, Mrs. Einfeld, had reported, conscience-stricken, Matt Zaleski's mild attack a few weeks earlier when she had driven him home and he persuaded her to say nothing. The company's Personnel department had passed the information on.
'Taken together,' the doctor said, 'the two incidents fit a classic pattern.' He was a specialist - a cardiologist - balding and sallow-faced, with a slight tic beneath one eye. Like so many in Detroit, Barbara thought, he looked as if he worked too hard.
'If my father hadn't concealed the first stroke, would it have changed anything?'
The specialist shrugged. 'Perhaps; perhaps not. He'd have received medication, but the end result could have been the same. Either way, the question's academic now.'
They were in an annex to an intensive care unit of the hospital. Through a glass window she could see her father in one of the four beds inside, a red rubber tube running from his mouth to a gray-green respirator on a stand close by. The respirator, wheezing evenly, was breathing for him.
Matt Zaleski's eyes were open and the doctor had told Barbara that although her father was presently under sedation, at other times he could undoubtedly see and hear. She wondered if he was aware of the young black woman, also in extremis in the bed nearest to him.
'It's probable,' the doctor said, 'that at some earlier period your father sustained valvular heart damage. Then, when he had the first mild stroke, a small clot broke off from the heart and went to the right side of his brain which, in a righthanded person, controls the body's left side.'
It was all so impersonal, Barbara thought, as if a routine piece of machinery were being described, and not the sudden breakdown of a human being.
The cardiologist went on: 'With the kind of stroke which your father had first, almost certainly the recovery was only apparent. It wasn't a real recovery. The body's fail-safe mechanism remained damaged and that was why the second stroke, to the left side of the brain, produced the devastating effect it did last night.'
Barbara had been with Brett last night when a message was telephoned that her father had had a sudden stroke and been rushed to the hospital. Brett had driven her there, though he waited outside. 'I'll come if you need me,' he had said, taking her hand reassuringly before she went in, 'but your old man doesn't like me, anyway, and being ill isn't going to change his mind. It might upset him more if he saw me with you.'
On the way to the hospital, Barbara had had a guilty feeling, wondering how much her own act of leaving home precipitated whatever had happened to her father. Brett's gentleness, of which she saw more each day and loved him increasingly for, underlined the tragedy that the two men she cared most about had failed to know each other better. On balance, she believed her father mainly to blame; just the same, Barbara wished now that she had telephoned him, as she had considered doing several times since their estrangement.
At the hospital last night they had let her speak to her father briefly, and a young resident told her, 'He can't communicate with you, but he knows you're there.' She had murmured the things she expected Matt would want to hear: that she was sorry about his illness, would not be far away, and would come to the hospital frequently. While speaking, Barbara had looked directly into his eyes and while there was no flicker of recognition she had an impression the eyes were straining to tell her something. Was it imagination? She wondered again now.
Barbara asked the cardiologist, 'What are my father's chances?'
'Of recovery?' He looked at her interrogatively.
'Yes. And please be completely candid. I want to know.'
'Sometimes people don't ...'
'I do.'
The cardiologist said quietly, 'Your father's chances of any substantial recovery are nil. My prognosis is that he will be a hemiplegic invalid as long as he lives, with complete loss of power on the right side, including speech.'
There was a silence, then Barbara said, 'If you don't mind, I'd like to sit down.'
'Of course.' He guided her to a chair. 'It's a big shock. If you like, I'll give you something.'
She shook her head. 'No.'
'You had to know sometime,' the doctor said, 'and you asked.'
They looked, together, through the window of the intensive care unit, at Matt Zaleski, still recumbent, motionless, the machine breathing for him.
The cardiologist said, 'Your father was with the auto industry, wasn't he?
In a manufacturing plant, I believe.' For the first time, the doctor seemed warmer, more human than before.
'Yes.'
'I get a good many patients from that source. Too many.' He motioned vaguely beyond the hospital walls toward Detroit. 'It's always seemed to me like a battleground out there, with casualties. Your father, I'm afraid, was one.'
Chapter 27
No aid was to be given Hank Kreisel in the manufacture or promotion of his thresher.
The decision, by the board of directors' executive policy committee, reached Adam Trenton in a memo routed through the Product Development chief, Elroy Braithwaite.
Braithwaite brought in the memo personally and tossed it on Adam's desk.
'Sorry,' the Silver Fox said, 'I know you were interested. You turned me on, too, and you might like to know we were in good company because the chairman felt the same way.'
The last news was not surprising. The chairman of the board was noted for his wide-ranging interests and liberal views, but only on rare occasions did he make autocratic rulings and obviously this had not been one.
