“We’re not beholden to anyone,” she said. “Outside of fulfilling our licensing and accreditation requirements, we can run the Clinic as we see fit.”
“So independence is important to you,” he said.
“In this area of research,” preaching now, “it’s crucial.”
He worked his tongue to free a piece of gristle from between two teeth, then said, “Why?”
She repeated the word and he nodded and said, “I don’t mean any disrespect, Alice. I really don’t. But for almost a year now I’ve been hearing about this place. People talk in a kind of reverent way about the Peck”—she smiled at that—“like it’s Lourdes, or something. Dr. Lawton said if I could get Danny into the Peck, I shouldn’t hesitate. I had to go. So I read everything I could find on you people and I made application. And now here I am, and Danny’s got a bed, and I’m having dinner with his neurologist. And I’ve still got no idea why this place is considered the Mecca.”
“But you know about our results—” she began and he cut her off.
“You’ve had two arousals,” he said.
She squinted at him, as if he’d wandered into a language she couldn’t comprehend.
“That’s right,” she said. “And they were both persistent and semivegetative cases.”
“And how do you know you were responsible for those wakings?”
“How do we know?” she said, stunned by the recklessness of the question. “For God’s sake, we’re scientists, Sweeney. We monitor our results scrupulously. We test and retest. We don’t make claims we can’t validate.”
“Then why haven’t the full case studies been published?”
“They will be published,” she said. “Of course they’ll be published. But there are procedures. These things take a lot of time. For precisely that reason, so results can be confirmed definitively. So we don’t give false hope.”
“I understand that,” he said, more frustrated than he expected. “And I’m not suggesting the arousals were spontaneous. I’m sure they weren’t. But you said yourself that your patients are helping you redefine your techniques—”
“Beliefs,” she corrected. “I said beliefs.”
He hurried so he wouldn’t lose the thought.
“And my son is one of those patients now. And I have no idea what your beliefs, or your techniques for that matter, are. I’m his father. And I have no idea. What are you doing here that isn’t being done elsewhere?”
She looked at him for a while as if trying to decide something, then took her napkin from her lap and put it on the table. She looked at her wristwatch and said, “You’re not working tonight?”
He shook his head.
“Then let’s do this,” she said. “I’ll clear the plates and you go into the living room and pour a couple of brandies and we’ll talk some more.”
She got up and started collecting the china before he could answer.
The living room was off the other side of the foyer. There were no ancestors here, but hung over the mantel was a gargantuan photo of the Clinic, matted and framed, pressed under heavy glass and dating, Sweeney guessed, from the turn of the last century. The building had been photographed at either dawn or dusk and the trees that today surrounded it had yet to be planted. As a result, the picture looked like a still from some early German horror film and he wondered what would possess anyone to make it the showpiece of the room.
On the opposite wall, hanging over an uncomfortable-looking couch that was too small for the room, was a family portrait, done in heavy oils. The portrait featured a young Dr. Peck, his wife, toddler Alice, and a scrawny preteen boy, who had to be an unmentioned son and brother. For such a young clan, and despite the artist’s best efforts, the family looked so deeply unhappy that after a few minutes, Sweeney realized he preferred the photo of the Clinic above the mantel.
Logs were stacked on the grate of the fireplace but they hadn’t been lit. He saw another box of kitchen matches on the mantel but decided to see if Alice wanted a fire. Next to the hearth was an antique grandfather clock and next to the clock, a small built-in closet with glass panel doors. He opened it and inspected the bottles inside, took down a cognac and filled the bottom of two snifters.
She came in and caught him with his nose above one of the glasses.
“Are you a connoisseur?”
“If you only knew,” handing her a glass, “how funny that question would be to a lot of people back home.”
She put her drink on the mantel and grabbed the matches, kneeled down before the grate and, in seconds, had a fire building.
“I would’ve done that,” Sweeney said and helped her to her feet.
“It’s fussy,” she said. “Takes a special touch.”
She held onto his hand and led him to the couch but they sat at opposite ends.
He took a sip of cognac and swallowed too quickly and in a second his eyes started to water. He blinked a few times and when he looked up she was staring at him.
“I know what you want,” she said. “And it’s impossible.”
He let himself wipe at his eyes and said, “It is?”
“You want what they all want. All the loved ones. All the family members. Especially the parents. It’s completely natural and completely unreasonable.”
“I’m glad to know I’m not alone,” he said.
She placed her glass atop a felt coaster on the coffee table and came forward to lean on her knees. “All right,” she said. “Let’s get into it then.” She straightened her skirt over her knees and put her hands together as if to pray. “You want me to take a lifetime’s worth of highly specialized research and give it to you in ten minutes. You want it jargon-free, translated into layman’s terms. And you want the end result of that translation to be an answer to your prayers.”
He took another drink and made an effort this time to swallow correctly.
“You make it sound like a chore,” he said.
“Am I wrong?” But it wasn’t really a question. He looked across the room to see that the fire had already died out.
“I doubt,” he said, “that the Pecks are wrong very often.”
When she ignored the comment and launched her spiel, he understood that she agreed with him.
“Here’s the problem. We’re dealing with an extremely emotional issue. And yet, in order to accomplish anything at all, I have to be blunt. From your point of view, your son has been stolen from you.”
“From my point of view,” he repeated but she just went on.
“It’s as if he’s been kidnapped. And in a real sense, he has been. One instant, Danny was a normal, healthy six-year-old. And in the next instant, he’s something else altogether.”
“He’s still Danny,” he said but there wasn’t much conviction in it.
“Okay,” Alice said, “this is where it gets tough. Is he really? Can we honestly say he’s still Danny?”
He bit down on the impulse to defend his son. He said, “I’m not sure I’m following.”
“We’re talking about basic questions of identity, Sweeney. Who we are is, in large part, determined by how we perceive our world.”
He shook his head. “So if Danny doesn’t perceive the world, what? He doesn’t exist?”
“You’re going off track,” she said. “You’re trying to jump ahead of me. I didn’t say that.”
“Jesus, Alice. You’re making my son into a game for stoners.”
“Try to stick with me,” she said. “Listen to what I’m saying.”
“If Danny falls in the woods,” he said, “and I’m not there to hear him—”
“Calm down,” Alice said. “You’re not listening. One of the reasons that coma is so frustrating — and fascinating — is that it forces us to deal with some root beliefs. And this,” coming down on the word, “is exactly where the Peck differs from every other facility I know of.”