“Dr. Martin,” Eleanor said, composing herself, “I need to speak with you—privately.” She knew it would drive Jerry nuts. But she needed to tell Lyle about the sound from inside the cabin, something alive in there.
Lyle, so engrossed, didn’t respond.
“Tyler,” he said, “is this where you were sleeping? Next to your dad?”
“Yes.”
“And you woke up and he was like this?”
The kid nodded in the affirmative.
“You tried to wake him up?”
A sob of affirmation.
“What happened when you tried to wake him up?”
“He didn’t. He wouldn’t. I…” Grief paused the boy.
“Did you hear a noise?”
“What?”
“Did a noise wake you up? Did you see anybody or hear anybody?”
“I don’t know. Is he okay? Why won’t he wake up?”
“I’m a doctor, Tyler,” Lyle said, diplomatically. He kept using the boy’s name when addressing him, as Lyle encouraged students to do; use the names of patients and their families because it makes them feel like individuals. “I want to get him someplace warm. What’s back there?” Lyle asked, referring to the other end of the hangar.
“An office. There’s a space heater. It doesn’t always work.”
“Thank you, Tyler. So you didn’t hear a noise when you woke up? You don’t remember smelling anything?”
“No.”
Lyle regretted his phrasing; too many questions, not open-ended enough. He was rusty.
“May I examine you to make sure you’re okay?”
No answer from the nearly catatonic child. Lyle left the man’s side and approached the boy. Then he paused, a glint on the couch catching his eye. Lyle looked down and saw a cell phone. It sat on the couch next to the man called Rex, frozen on an image. Lyle picked up the phone in his rubber-gloved hand and looked closely. A grainy image of a man sitting behind a desk that Lyle strained to recognize. It was Marlon Brando.
“Does your dad like The Godfather?”
“It’s his favorite movie. He told me that he’s seen it a hundred and four times and when I’m twelve I get to watch it with him,” the boy said. He was relaxing. Lyle thought, Okay, a step in the right direction. He clenched his teeth; Melanie is out there somewhere with a boy just like this. Footsteps close from behind as Lyle closed in on Tyler.
“Dr. Martin, please, a word,” Eleanor said.
“In a moment.” He didn’t want to lose the clinician’s rapport. He knelt on the cement, relieving the young man of the weapon, setting it on the ground, and took him in. Levis and a striped sweater, hands balled at his sides that looked like they’d be big mitts one day, with big, booted feet to go with them. Lyle felt a pulse on the boy’s wrist, a purely symbolic act of establishing intimacy, asked how Tyler felt (hot or cold; sick to his stomach). No, no, he felt fine, looked fine. Lyle palpated the belly; not swollen or tender.
Tyler’s lip quivered. Alex walked forward, pulling her less agile right leg a touch behind the left. Jerry seemed poised to stop her when she knelt in front of the boy.
“I bet you could run around this building ten times you’re so healthy,” she said.
He looked at Dr. Martin. “Do I have to?”
“No,” Lyle said, smiling. “I think she’s saying that you’re in good shape.” He looked at Alex appreciatively. He sensed she must know something about being scared as a child, what with her early-life illness. She liked children, knew how to care for them, maybe had kids of her own, then, Lyle thought, no, a younger sibling. Lyle dismissed his wandering thoughts and said to the boy, “Would it be okay if I speak for a second to the pilot? She’s the head of the rescue mission.”
A moment later, Lyle stood with Eleanor and felt a pang of relief. She was okay. When their eyes met, the instant held understanding, a mutual wavelength. In a low voice, just a few steps from everyone, she told Lyle what was going on in the plane.
“I assumed they were dead,” she said.
“Not quite,” Lyle said. He explained what he’d seen on the bodies, the baggage handler bolting upright.
“What is this?” Eleanor asked.
Lyle shook his head. He kept his voice low so the boy wouldn’t hear. “I have no idea, Captain Hall. It’s something I’ve never seen.” He paused. “Never read about.” He paused again, closed his eyes in thought.
“What are you thinking?”
“I’m just puzzled,” he finally said. “Obviously.”
Eleanor studied his face and wondered if he was telling her everything he was thinking. She could see he was lost somewhere. “Lyle?”
He was thinking back to his neurology rotation during med school. One morning at the start of early morning rounds, the attending physician promised the handful of residents they were going to see a rarity, and an unfortunate one. The patient was an old Japanese man. He’d been delivered the night before to the hospital by his wife, who declined to explain his condition: sitting in the front seat, unable to move or speak, respiration very low, but fully conscious. Essentially catatonic but physically uninjured. The attending physician opened the door to the man’s room and there sat the shriveled patient, eyes open, breathing from a respirator, wife by his side, her face buried in a handkerchief in grief. The attending saw Lyle’s face, studying, assessing, calculating, and nudged him. “Lyle, please don’t say anything,” she said. It had become a running joke, wherein Lyle would mutter some theory during rounds, often right, about a patient’s condition. It wasn’t that Lyle was trying to show off, he just got lost putting the pieces together and would think aloud. Lyle stared at the old man, the liver spots on his temple, next to his frayed hair, the jaundiced skin, bone-thin shoulders beneath his gown, eyes blinking.
“She didn’t mean to do it,” Lyle had muttered.
The attending shot him a look. Pipe down, Lyle.
“I’m sorry,” Lyle had said, genuinely sorry. “I didn’t say he’d been poisoned.”
The attending, a young-looking Indian woman with jet black hair, all but smiled. Lyle couldn’t help himself, and he was right again. So she asked him what type of poison. This stumped Lyle. Another resident picked up the ball and suggested tetrodotoxin. Now the attending allowed herself an appreciative nod at this group, whip smart the lot of them. She led them through a quick physical exam and then left the woman to her husband and grief and took the group back outside and explained what they all now knew. The man had eaten puffer fish, a delicacy, but, if not prepared precisely in the correct way, leads to skeletal paralysis, eventually, likely, death.
Now it was clear what Lyle had meant by she didn’t mean to do it. The wife, he thought, hadn’t meant to poison the husband. Lyle had been right. The husband was suffering from stage four bladder cancer, spread to the lymph nodes, and, as it turned out, he’d dreamed of having puffer fish as a last delicacy. The old man darned well had known it was a win-win; if he survived dinner, it would be a great meal; if he died, a great last meal.
As Lyle stood in the hangar, he pictured the old man, locked in his predeath catatonia and tried in vain to remember how that toxin worked, what its physiological mechanism was. What did puffer fish do to the brain? The answer evaded him. He looked back at the mechanic on the couch and considered the eerie similarity. But there was nothing contagious or widespread about puffer fish, nothing virulent.
“Are you okay, Dr. Martin?” Eleanor said. For an instant, she wondered if the syndrome had hit him, too.