The doctor took his temperature. “He doesn’t have a fever,” he said. “What time did he take his last pill?”
“He’s almost due,” Zee said.
The doctor asked him basic questions from the AMTS. What is your age? What is the year? Who is president? Finch answered the third question correctly but hesitated on the first and second. When he was asked what year World War II began, he answered without hesitation. He also scored well on the facial-recognition tests, knowing the doctor and others who worked in the office, though he was unable to say what their positions were. When asked to count backward from twenty, Finch looked at her helplessly. And when asked to remember an address he was given at the beginning of the questioning, he didn’t even remember hearing it.
There was a second test, this one meant for Zee to answer, which measured the rate and changes in Finch’s mental decline. They were all questions about memory, and Zee was asked to comment on each, stating whether things had stayed the same or changed. She found she could answer very few of them, having been there for only a short time and having come to realize just how much Melville and Finch had been hiding from her. “I’ll have to fax this back to you,” Zee said to the doctor. She had to talk to Melville.
The doctor spoke with Finch for a while, a very conversational chatter that didn’t fool Finch for a minute. He might not know the answers to some of the questions, but Zee could tell from Finch’s eyes that he knew very well what they were here to determine. He looked both frightened and angry.
When the doctor was finished with his final line of questioning, he spoke to both of them.
“I’d say we’re pretty deep into the Alzheimer’s crossover,” he said. “It’s almost inevitable in Parkinson’s patients. At some point in the progression of this disease, it begins to act more like Alzheimer’s. The same is true for advanced Alzheimer’s-those patients begin to develop the movements common to Parkinson’s.”
She’d heard it before, but it had always seemed to be some vague possibility that might occur a long time from now. She took Finch’s hand. She had wanted to talk with the doctor privately about this. She understood the ethics involved. The patient had a right to know. But she could see from the look on Finch’s face that he understood too well, and it scared him.
“How long has it been since he was diagnosed?”
She was appalled that the doctor didn’t know. “About ten years,” she said.
The doctor was quiet for a moment and then said in a serious but far too casual tone. “Ten years is a good long run for Parkinson’s.”
She looked at Finch to see if he had understood the doctor’s meaning. His masked face was difficult to read. Zee could feel the anger rising up in her. She wanted to tell the doctor what she thought of him. She wanted to call him a son of a bitch. How dare he talk to a patient like this? Disclosure was one thing. Zee believed in the right to know. But to dismiss a life so casually was beyond cruel.
However, anything she could have said on the spot would only make things worse. She hoped that Finch had missed the doctor’s meaning. She remembered the words Mattei often used to describe neurologists: The geeks of the doctor world. No bedside manner. Little princes. She wanted to kill him. To literally rip his smug face off.
Instead she helped Finch from the office, his steps agonizingly slow as he tried to maneuver the walker out of the office and down the hall.
The warm air in the parking lot calmed her slightly. Maybe Finch hadn’t heard what the doctor said, or hadn’t caught his meaning.
She unlocked the car door and helped Finch in. He was stiff, the pill overdue. She put the walker in the trunk. Then she got into the driver’s side of the car, reaching into her purse for the water and the box of pills labeled with the times of day. She pulled out his three-o’clock dose, undid the water bottle, and passed it to him. He swallowed the pill dutifully. Then she reached across and buckled his seat belt, which she had forgotten to do. As she pulled her hand back, she lingered on Finch’s arm. “I love you,” she said. He smiled weakly.
As she pulled the Volvo out of the parking lot, Finch finally spoke, his voice so weak from needing the meds that it was barely audible. “So what he was saying is that I’m going to die soon.”
She pulled the car over on Mass Avenue.
“That doctor is a son of a bitch,” she said. She was about to tell him they would never go back, that neurologists were a dime a dozen in Boston, and that she’d have a new one for him by morning. But Finch spoke before she could form the words.
“It’s all right,” he said. “I want to die.”
37
ZEE CALLED MELVILLE AND left a message. Then she called Mattei.
“I’m really worried,” she said. “He’s clearly depressed.”
“You want me to prescribe something?”
“I know he needs something, but I don’t want to interfere with the meds he’s already on,” Zee said.
“I can come out there if you like,” Mattei offered.
It wasn’t something Zee would have asked of Mattei, but she felt relief at the prospect of seeing her and getting her opinion. “I’d really appreciate it.”
“I can’t come tomorrow, but I can be there on Saturday,” Mattei said.
“Thanks,” Zee said.
She doled out Finch’s meds to Jessina, then took the pill bottles upstairs, locking the door when she came back down. She could tell that Jessina was curious, but she didn’t offer any explanation.
SHE FINALLY FOUND MELVILLE AT the Athenaeum. He seemed happily surprised to see her there, but the expression on her face told him this wasn’t a social visit.
“What’s going on?”
“Is there someplace we can talk for a minute?”
He led her into the stacks of the membership library and down a flight of metal stairs to the basement. It was close quarters, but it was quiet. The stacks extended three floors deep. Today there were no visiting scholars, no one asking to see the voyage and travel collections or the books that Hawthorne read in the days he had spent at the Athenaeum. For the moment they could be alone here to talk. Someone entering on any of the three skeletal floors would be clearly visible.
Melville led her to a small table where he’d been cataloging some old maps and travelogues.
Zee handed him the survey she’d gotten from the doctor. “I know what’s been going on in the last month,” Zee said. “But I couldn’t fill in the progression of his disease.”
Melville looked at the paper. There were sixteen questions, all having to do with Finch’s memory and how it had changed in the last ten years. The answers ranged from “much improved” to “much worse.” It was an easy questionnaire to fill in, though he knew that there would be nothing encouraging in his answers. He went through the questions carefully, aware that Zee was watching him. When he was finished, he slid the paper back across the table to her.
Zee read it over, looking at the answers Melville had circled. Most were labeled “much worse” or “a bit worse.” Nothing indicated any improvement.
“I don’t understand how you were keeping this from me,” Zee said.
“We’ve had this conversation before,” Melville said. “It’s what he wanted.”
“The doctor basically told Finch he was going to die,” she said, shaking her head.
Melville looked at her.
“And Finch said that’s what he wants.”
Melville reached across the table and took her hand. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“But not surprised,” she said.
He thought about lying, but there was no point now. “No.”
“God,” she said. “This is terrible.”
“Yes,” he said. “It is.”
“I’m afraid he might be suicidal,” she said.
