In a voice she hardly recognized as her own, a voice distorted by anguish, she said, “There’ve been times—usually late at night when I’m alone, which is most nights, most days, most always, God help me—times when I’ve thought there’s something missing in me, some tiny piece that’s an essential part of being human. I’ve felt different from other people, almost as if I’m a member of another species. I mean, God, the rest of the world seems driven at least as much by emotion as by intellect, as much by sentiment as by truth. I see others giving in to their emotions, abandoning reason, doing absurd things just for the hell of it.
Just for
the hell of it! I’ve never done anything in my life just for the hell of it. And the thing is, when I see friends or acquaintances just giving themselves over to their emotions, just
flowing
with their emotions ... the thing of it is, they seem to enjoy it. And I can’t. Never could. Too uptight. Too controlled. Always controlled. The iron maiden. I mean, I never cried over my mother’s death. Okay, so maybe at seven I was too young to understand that I should cry. But I didn’t cry at my father’s funeral, either. I dealt with the mortician and ordered flowers and arranged for the grave to be dug and handled all the details with commendable efficiency, but I didn’t cry for him. I loved him, in spite of his standoffish manner, and I missed him—God, how I missed him—but I didn’t cry. Shit. I didn’t cry for him. And so I told myself that it was good that I was different from other people. I told myself I was a better person than they were, superior to most of the rabble. I took tremendous pride in my unshakable self-control, and I built a life on that pride.” She was shaking. Violently. She hugged herself. She looked at McGee. He seemed shocked. And she couldn’t stop talking. “I built a life on that pride, dammit. Maybe not a very exciting life by most standards. But a life. I was at peace with myself. And now this has to happen to me. I know it isn’t rational to fear Richmond, Johnson, Bradley, O’Hara ... But I do fear them. I can’t help myself. I have this intellectually stupid but emotionally powerful conviction that something extraordinary, something indescribably bizarre, maybe even something occult is happening here. I’ve lost control. I’ve given in to my emotions. I’ve become what I thought I wasn’t. I’ve thrown over what I was, tipped it over and rolled it down a long hill. I’m no longer the Susan Thorton I was ... and ... it’s ... tearing ... me ... apart.”
She shuddered, choked, doubled over on the bed, sitting with her head to her knees, and gasped for breath, and wept, wept.
McGee was speechless at first. Then he got her some Kleenex. Then some more Kleenex.
He said, “Susan, I’m sorry.”
He said, “Are you all right?”
He got her a glass of water.
Which she didn’t want.
He put it back on the nightstand.
He seemed confused.
He said, “What can I do?”
He said, “Jesus.”
He touched her.
He held her.
That
was what he could do.
She put her head against his shoulder and sobbed convulsively. Gradually, she became aware that her tears did not make her feel even more miserable, as she had expected they would when she had been trying so hard to repress them. Instead, they made her feel cleaner and better, as if they were flushing out the pain and misery that had caused them.
He said, “It’s all right, Susan.”
He said, “You’re going to be fine.”
He said, “You’re not alone.”
He comforted her, and that was something that no one had ever done for her before—perhaps because she had never allowed it.
A few minutes later.
“More Kleenex?” he asked.
“No, thank you.”
“How do you feel?”
“Wrung out.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It wasn’t anything you did.”
“I kept browbeating you about Bradley and O’Hara.”
“No, you didn’t. You were only trying to help.”
“Some help.”
“You did help. You forced me to face up to something that I didn’t want to face up to, something I desperately needed to face up to. I’m not as tough as I thought I was. I’m a different person than I thought I was. And maybe that’s a good thing.”
“All those things you said about yourself, all that stuff about how you thought you were different from other people—did you really believe that?”
“Yes.”
“All those years?”
“Yes.”
“But everyone has a breaking point.”
“I know that now.”
“And there’s nothing wrong with being unable to cope now and then,” he said.
“I’ve sure been unable recently. In spades.”
He put one hand under her chin, lifted her head, and looked at her. His marvelous eyes were the bluest that she had yet seen them.
He said, “Whatever’s wrong with you, no matter how subtle it might be, no matter how difficult it is to uncover the root of the problem, I’ll find it. And I’ll make you well again. Do you believe me, Susan?”
“Yes,” she said, realizing that for the first time in her life she was, at least to some extent, willingly placing her fate in the hands of another person.
“We will discover what’s causing this perceptual confusion, this quirky fixation on the House of Thunder, and we’ll correct it. You won’t have to go through the rest of your life seeing Ernest Harch and those other three men in the faces of total strangers.”
“If that’s what’s happening.”
“That is what’s happening,” he said.
“Okay. Until you’ve found the cause of my condition, until you’ve made me well, I’ll try to cope with this craziness, with dead men who suddenly come back to life as hospital orderlies. I’ll do my best to handle it.”
“You can. I know it.”
“But that doesn’t mean I won’t be scared.”
“You’re allowed to be scared now,” he said. “You’re no longer the iron maiden.”
She smiled and blew her nose.
He sat there on the edge of the bed for a minute, thinking, and then he finally said, “The next time you think you see Harch or Jellicoe or Quince or Parker, there’s something you can do to keep from panicking.”
“I’d like to hear it.”
“Well, when I was completing my residency at a hospital in Seattle—more years ago than I like to remember—we had a lot of cases of drug overdose. People were always coming into the emergency ward—or being brought in by police—suffering from bad drug trips, uncontrollable hallucinations that had them either climbing walls or shooting at phantoms with a real shotgun. No matter whether it was LSD, PCP, or some other substance, we didn’t treat the patient with just counteractive drugs. We also talked him down. Encouraged him to loosen up. We held his hand and soothed him. Told him the big bad boogeymen he was seeing weren’t real. And you know something? Usually, the talk did the trick, had a tremendous calming effect. I mean, frequently the talking down seemed more effective than the counteractive drugs that we administered.”
“And that’s what you want me to do when I see Harch or one of the others. You want me to talk myself down.”
“Yes.”
“Just tell myself they aren’t real?”
“Yes. Tell yourself they’re not real and they can’t hurt you.”
“Like saying a prayer to ward off vampires.”
“In fact if you feel that praying would ward them off, don’t hesitate. Don’t be embarrassed to pray.”
“I’ve never been a particularly religious person.”
“Doesn’t matter. If you want to pray, do it. Do whatever works for you. Do whatever you need to do to keep yourself calm until I’ve had a chance to come up with a permanent, medical solution for your condition.”
“All right. Whatever you say.”
“Ah, I’m pleased to see that you’ve finally got the proper subservient attitude toward your doctor.”
She smiled.
He glanced at his wristwatch.
Susan said, “I’ve made you late to the office.”
“Only a few minutes.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. The only patients who had appointments this morning were all just hypochondriacs anyway.”
She laughed, surprised that she still could laugh.
He kissed her cheek. It was just a peck, a quick buss, and it was over before she realized it was happening. Yesterday, she had thought that he was going to kiss her on the cheek, but he had backed off at the last second. Now he had done it—and she still didn’t know what it meant. Was it merely an expression of sympathy, pity? Was it just affection? Just friendship? Or was it something more than that?
As soon as he had kissed her, he stood up, straightened his rumpled lab coat. “Spend the rest of the morning relaxing as best you can. Read, watch TV, anything to keep your mind off the House of Thunder.”
“I’ll call in the four look-alikes and get a poker game going,” she said.
McGee blinked, then shook his head and grinned. “You sure spring back fast.”
“Just obeying doctor’s orders. He wants me to keep a positive attitude, no matter what.”
“Mrs. Baker’s right.”
“About what?”
“About you. She says you’ve got plenty of moxie.”
“She’s too easily impressed.”
“Mrs. Baker? She wouldn’t be impressed if the Pope and the President walked through that door arm-in-arm.”
Self-conscious, feeling that she didn’t really deserve this praise after having broken down and wept, Susan straightened the blanket and the sheets around her and avoided responding to his compliment.
“Eat everything they give you for lunch,” McGee said. “Then this afternoon, I want you to take the physical therapy you were scheduled for this morning.”
Susan stiffened.
McGee must have seen the sudden change in her, for he said, “It’s important, Susan. You need to have physical therapy. It’ll get you back on your feet considerably faster. And if we discover some physical cause for your perceptual problems, something that necessitates major surgery, you’ll withstand the stress and strain of the operation a great deal better if you’re in good physical condition.”
Resigned, she said, “All right.”
“Excellent.”
“But please ...”
“What is it?”
“Don’t send Jelli—” She cleared her throat. “Don’t send Bradley and O’Hara to take me downstairs.”
“No problem. We’ve got plenty of other orderlies.”
“Thank you.”
“And remember—chin up.”
Susan put one fist under her chin, as if propping up her head, and she assumed a theatrical expression of heroic, iron-hard determination.
“That’s the spirit,” he said. “Think of yourself as Sylvester Stallone in Rocky.”
“You think I look like Sylvester Stallone?”
“Well ... more than you look like Marlon Brando.”
“Gee, you sure know how to flatter a girl, Dr. McGee.”
“Yeah. I’m a regular lady-killer.” He winked at her, and it was the right kind of wink, very different from that which Bill Richmond had given her in the hall yesterday. “I’ll see you later, when I make my evening rounds.”
And then he was gone.
She was alone. Except for Jessica Seiffert. Which was the same as being alone.