“All right, Doctor',” the nurse said.
A low hum.
“All right, Johnny. Are you comfortable?”
“Feels like there are pennies on my eyelids.”
“Yes? You'll get used to that in no time. Now let me explain to you this procedure. I am going to ask you to visualize a number of things. You will have about ten seconds on each, and there are twenty things to visualize in all. You understand?”
“Yes.
“Very fine. We begin. Dr. Brown?”
“All ready.”
“Excellent. Johnny, I ask you to see a table. On this table there is an orange.”
Johnny thought about it. He saw a small card-table with folding steel legs. Resting on it, a little off-center, was a large orange with the word SUNKIST stamped on its pocky skin.
“Good,” Weizak said.
“Can that gadget see my orange?”
“Nuh… well, yes; in a symbolic way it can. The machine is tracing your brainwaves. We are searching for blocks, Johnny. Areas of impairment. Possible indications of continuing intercranial pressure. Now I ask you to shush with the questions.”
“All right.”
“Now I ask you to see a television. It is on, but not receiving a station.”
Johnny saw the TV that was in his apartment-had been in his apartment. The screen was bright gray with snow. The tips of the rabbit ears were wrapped with tinfoil for better reception.
“Good.”
The series went on. For the eleventh item Weizak said, “Now I ask you to see a picnic table on the left side of a green lawn.”
Johnny thought about it, and in his mind he saw a lawn chair. He frowned.
“Something wrong?” Weizak asked.
“No, not at all,” Johnny said. He thought harder. Picnics. Weiners, a charcoal brazier… associate, dammit, associate. How hard can it be to see a picnic table in your mind, you've only seen a thousand of them in your life; associate your way to it. Plastic spoons and forks, paper plates, his father in a chef's hat, holding a long fork in one hand and wearing an apron with a motto printed across it in tipsy letters, THE COOK NEEDS A DRINK. His father making burgers and then they would all go sit at the -Ah, here it came! Johnny smiled, and then the smile faded. This time the image in his mind was of a hammock. “Shit!”
“No picnic table?”
“It's the weirdest thing. I can't quite… seem to think of it. I mean, I know what it is, but I can't see it in my mind. Is that weird, or is that weird?”
“Never mind. Try this one: a globe of the world, sitting on the hood of a pickup truck.”
That one was easy.
On the nineteenth item, a rowboat lying at the foot of a street sign (who thinks these things up? Johnny wondered), it happened again. It was frustrating. He saw a beachball lying beside a gravestone. He concentrated harder and saw a turnpike overpass. Weizak soothed him, and a few moments later the wires were removed from his head and eyelids.
“Why couldn't I see those things?” he asked, his eyes moving from Weizak to Brown. “What's the problem?”
“Hard to say with any real certainty,” Brown said. “It may be a kind of spot amnesia. Or it may be that the accident destroyed a small portion of your brain-and I mean a really microscopic bit. We don't really know what the problem is, but it's pretty obvious that you've lost a number of trace memories. We happened to strike two. You'll probably come across more.”
Weizak said abruptly, “You sustained a head injury when you were a child, yes?”
Johnny looked at him doubtfully.
“There is an old scar,” Weizak said. “There is a theory, Johnny, backed by a good deal of statistical research…”
“Research that is nowhere near complete,” Brown said, almost primly.
“That is true. But this theory supposes that the people who tend to recover from long-term coma are people who have sustained some sort of brain injury at a previous time… it is as though the brain has made some adaptation as the result of the first injury that allows it to survive the second.”
“It's not proven,” Brown said. He seemed to disapprove of Weizak even bringing it up.
“The scar is there,” Weizak said. “Can you not remember what happened to you, Johnny? I would guess you must have blacked out. Did you fall down the stairs? A bicycle accident, perhaps? The Scar says this happened to a young boy.”
Johnny thought hard, then shook his head. “Have you asked my mom and dad?”
“Neither of them can remember any sort of head injury nothing occurs to you?”
For a moment, something did-a memory of smoke, black and greasy and smelling like rubber. Cold. Then it was gone. Johnny shook his head.
Weizak sighed, then shrugged. “You must be tired.”
“Yes. A little bit.”
Brown sat on the edge of the examination table. “It's quarter of eleven. You've worked hard this morning. Dr. Weizak and I will answer a few questions, if you like, then you go up to your room for a nap. Okay?”
“Okay,” Johnny said. “The pictures you took of my brain…
“The CAT-scan,” Weizak nodded. “Computerized Axial Tomography. “He took a box of Chidets and shook three of them into his mouth. “The CAT-scan is really a series of brain X-rays, Johnny. The computer highlights the pictures and…”
“What did it tell you? How long have I got?”
“What is this how long have I got stuff?” Brown asked. “It sounds like a line from an old movie.”
“I've heard that people who come out of long-term comas don't always last so long,” Johnny said. “They lapse back. It's like a light bulb going really bright before it burns out for good.”
Weizak laughed hard. It was a hearty, bellowing laugh, and it was something of a wonder that he didn't choke on his gum. “Oh, such melodrama. “He put a hand on Johnny's chest. “You think Jim and I are babies in this field? Nuh. We are neurologists. What you Americans call high-priced talent. Which means we are only stupid about the functions of the human brain instead of out-and-out ignoramuses. So I tell you, yes, there have been lapse-backs. But you will not lapse. I think we can say that, Jim, yes, okay?”
“Yes,” Brown said. “We haven't been able to find very much in the way of significant impairment. Johnny, there's a guy in Texas who was in a coma for nine years. Now he's a bank loan officer, and he's been doing that job for six years. Before that he was a teller for two years. There's a woman in Arizona who was down for twelve years. Something went wrong with the anesthesia while she was in labor. Now she's in a wheelchair, but she's alive and aware. She came out of it in 1969 and met the baby she had delivered twelve years before. The baby was in the seventh grade and an honors student.”
“Am I going to be in a wheelchair?” Johnny asked. “I can't straighten my legs out. My arms are a little better, but my legs… “He trailed off, shaking his head.
“The ligaments shorten,” Weizak said. “Yes? That's why comatose patients begin to pull into what we call the prefetal position. But we know more about the physical degeneration that occurs in coma than we used to, we are better at holding it off. You have been exercised regularly by the hospital physical therapist, even in your sleep. And different patients react to coma in different ways. Your deterioration has been quite slow, Johnny. As you say, your arms are remarkably responsive and able. But there has been deterioration. Your therapy will be long and… should I lie to you? Nuh, I don't think so. It will be long and painful. You will shed your tears. You may come to hate your therapist. You may come to fall in love with your bed. And there will be operations-only one if you are very, very lucky, but perhaps as many as four-to lengthen those ligaments. These operations are still new. They may succeed completely, partially, or not at all. And yet as God wills it, I believe you will walk again. I don't believe you will ever ski or leap hurdles, but you may run and you will certainly swim.”