Flashback (1988) (51 page)

“I believe that. I don’t think he’ll speak with you, though,” she added. “He’s very upset—at everybody. And he’s very depressed.”

“He doesn’t have to speak, Mom. He just has to listen. Who sent the flowers?”

He motioned toward an enormous vase of lilies, orchids, and birds of paradise that he estimated must have cost one hundred fifty dollars—probably even more.

“It just arrived from Frank,” she said. “Whether you know it or not, you owe your brother quite a thank-you. He was very
helpful in keeping us all under control last night. Very helpful.”

“I’ll … I’ll thank him just as soon as I can, Mom.”

“I just don’t know what we would have done without him.” She dabbed her handkerchief at the corner of one eye.

“I understand,” Zack said, fighting off a wave of rage.

“I only wish Lisette were around. At least then I’d know he was getting a decent meal once in a while.”

“He told you about Lisette?”

“He told me she and the girls are in Virginia visiting an old friend of hers, if that’s what you mean.”

“Sure, Mom,” Zack said through nearly clenched teeth. “That’s what I meant.”

At that moment, the private duty nurse, an expansive woman with pendulous upper arms and thick ankles, wheeled her cart from the room.

“He’s all set, dear,” she said. “Sorry to take so long, but that husband of yours is a big man.…” She eyed Zack warily. “Still no visitors, Doctor,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“Mom, I need to go in to talk to the Judge.”

Cinnie took a moment to size up the exchange.

“It’s okay, Mrs. Caulkin’s,” she said. “I’ll take care of things here. You go do whatever it is you have to.” She waited until the woman had gone. “Zachary, I’ll ask your father if your visit would be okay, but I don’t expect him to say yes.”

“Mom, it’s important—very important that I speak with him.”

She hesitated.

“Mom, please …”

“You won’t say anything to upset him?”

“Promise.”

“Well, then, I suppose you should be allowed to go in there and say your piece.”

“Mom, thank you.”

“And Zachary?” She continued to work her handkerchief over and over in her hands. “I know you didn’t mean things to turn out this way.”

“That’s right, Mom,” he said, knowing that she would miss the understatement—the sad irony in his voice. “I certainly didn’t.”

* * *

Muted sunlight, filtering through the nearly closed blinds, provided the only illumination in the room. The Judge, wearing a blue hospital johnny, lay on his back, staring at the ceiling. An intravenous line was draining into one arm.

“Hello, Judge,” Zack said.

Clayton Iverson glanced over at him, and then looked away.

“Are you in much pain?” There was no response.

“Judge, it won’t hurt to talk to me. Believe me, it won’t.… Okay, okay, suit yourself.”

It might have been a mistake to have come. Zack could see that now. Merely going against the mans wishes was enough to warrant the silent treatment, let alone going against his wishes and achieving such disastrous results. He reminded himself that the Judge could be as petulant and inflexible as Frank.

Zack turned to go, but then he stopped. There were things he had to get out—if not for his father, then for himself.

“Okay, Judge, you don’t have to say a word. I won’t stay long. I just wanted to tell you that I feel very badly for the way things have turned out. I was only doing what I spent so many years training to do—using my judgment, and trying to do my best.”

He pulled a chair over as he spoke, and sat down by his father’s hand. The Judge continued to stare at the ceiling.

“Judgment, Dad … that’s what you have to rely on, too, now that I think about it. Maybe in time, that will help you understand the dilemma I was in.…

“Judge, you’re my father. I love you for that—for the things you’ve done for me, for the kind of person you’ve helped me become. I would never want to see you hurt. Never. I honestly believe that I would give up my life, if necessary, to protect you. But that’s
my
life.…

“Anyhow, I guess what I really want you to know is that although I’m sorry as hell for the way everything turned out, given the information I had to work with last night, if the same situation arose again, I would make the same choices. That’s the sort of person my parents raised me to be, and the sort of surgeon I was trained to be. I came up here to ask for understanding, not absolution.”

He paused, hoping for some sort of reply. There was none. In that moment, he decided to say nothing of what had transpired with Frank. Soon, the Judge would learn it all
anyhow, but this was not the time to attack the mans myth of his quarterback son.

“Well, then,” he said. “I guess that’s that.” He rose. “Oh, except for one other thing. I’m going to that meeting today to present Guy’s case to the board. I don’t expect to sway many votes, but I think Guy was right. I think we need to take a hard look at what we’re willing to give up in exchange for a few shiny pieces of equipment and some black ink on the bottom line. So if you could just talk to me enough to tell me where that folder of his is, I’ll—”

“It’s gone,” Clayton Iverson said flatly, still not looking at his son.

“What!”

“I said the folder is gone. I … I gave it to the Ultramed people to examine. They have it. Now please, go.”

Zack sighed.

“You certainly underwent one heck of a change of heart there, Dad,” he said. “I asked you to leave.”

“I’m going. I’m going.”

As he turned, Zack’s hand brushed against the instruments in his pocket. He hesitated, took several steps toward the door, and then turned back.

“Judge, I know you want me out of here,” he said, “but … but I’d like to examine a couple of things on you if I could before I go.”

Tentatively, he returned to the bedside, waiting for the man’s outburst. There was none. He lifted the sheet off his father’s legs.

“Thank you, Dad,” he whispered, gauging the muscle tone of one calf with his fingertips. “Thank you for trusting me this much. This will only take a minute.”

In fact, Zack’s examination, carried out mostly with his touch and reflex hammer, took just over five minutes. Clayton Iverson watched him work in stony silence, although there was a spark of curiosity in his eyes.

By the time Zack had finished, by the time he had dropped down on a corner of the bed, shaken and mentally drained, the loose-fitting pieces of the clinical puzzle had been pulled apart and rearranged in the strangest of patterns.

“Mom, can you come in here, please?” he called out, after
he had regained some composure. “There’s something I want both of you to hear together,”

Cinnie Iverson entered, took the chair next to the Judge, and held his hand.

Zack paced from one side of the room to the other, choosing each word carefully, suddenly frightened that the tendon and muscle activity he had detected were not true neurologic indicators at all, but rather the phantoms of his own hopes.

“Judge, Mom,” he began, “have either of you ever heard of a conversion reaction?”

Cinnie Iverson shook her head. Clayton did not move.

“An older term for it was conversion hysteria, but I never liked that phrase, because hysteria implies craziness, and a conversion reaction is much more an intense, involuntary focusing of emotional energy than it is a sign of anything crazy.”

“Zachary, what are you saying?” Cinnie asked.

“I’m saying that there are certain reflexes that disappear when the spinal cord is damaged, and others that show up. The pattern Im finding now isn’t consistent with that.”

“I’m not sure I understand,” Cinnie said.

“Judge, I know this may not make total sense to you at the moment, but I’m picking up signs—fairly strong signs—that your paralysis may be due to factors other than spinal cord damage—emotional factors.”

“Emotional factors?”

Cinnie sounded incredulous. The Judge showed no reaction at all.

“I know it sounds far out,” Zack said, “but believe me, it isn’t. It happens all the time. One of my first cases on my neurology service was a man with psychologically induced blindness. There was absolutely nothing wrong with his eyes, yet he positively couldn’t see. In fact, after hypnotherapy, much of his vision returned.

“Heart attacks in Type A personalities, gastric ulcers in situations of high stress—our emotions have power over every organ in our bodies. There’s even a well-documented condition called pseudocyesis in which a woman who desperately wants to become pregnant has her periods stop, her breasts grow large, and her abdomen swell. Only a blood test or an ultrasound or X ray can prove she’s not pregnant.”

“And you think your father may be having one of these—what are they called?”

“Conversion reactions. Yes, Mom, I do. Judge, your neurologic findings simply don’t jibe well with any other explanation.”

The Judge looked away.

“But why?” Cinnie asked.

Zack shrugged.

“I’m not certain,” he said. “Anger at me is the most likely possibility. There are other factors that could be at work, too, I guess: fear, grief, guilt. Only you can fill in the blanks, Judge. But whatever it is, is very powerful stuff. At the moment, even you might not know. Many times, though, as soon as the source of the conversion is identified, the symptoms begin to resolve.”

“Are you sure about this?” Cinnie asked.

“No, Mom, I’m not. It’s just that the other diagnoses don’t fit with the operative findings and Dad’s clinical picture, and conversion reaction does. I might be wrong. All I can do is hope that I’m not, and tell you what I think.”

“Clayton?” she asked.

The Judge, tight-lipped, would not answer.

“Zachary,” she said, “perhaps you’d better go now. We can talk about this again soon.” She rose and kissed him on the cheek, her expression begging him to leave them be—to allow them the chance to digest what he had said.

“Sure enough,” he said. “When is the ambulance due?”

“Any time now, I think.”

“Fine … Dad, I—” He looked down at his fathers pallid, emotionless face. “I’ll be thinking of you.”

As he reached the doorway, Zack checked the corridor for his brother or a security guard, and then headed for a room at the far end of the hall. If, as it seemed, he was running out of time within the walls of Ultramed-Davis, he would use what little he had left to make one last run at a clinical puzzle that was no less perplexing than his fathers, and far more lethal.

“I knew it,” Barbara Nelms said as Zack finished recounting his interview with her son and the theories he had developed as a result. “You are not a very good liar, Dr. Iverson. I could see it in your eyes that night in your office. I should have called you on it then, dammit. You know, holding out on me like that was a very cruel thing to do.”

“I know, and I’m sorry. But I had no proof.”

“Dr. Iverson, Toby is my son.”

“I understand.”

Barbara was propped up in her hospital bed by several pillows. Her right arm was in a sling and her left was fixed to an intravenous line that was infusing a potent antibiotic. Despite her pallor and the heavy shadows engulfing her eyes, her glare was piercing.

“I’m not sure that you do, Dr. Iverson,” she said after some thought. “But I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt—at least for now.”

“Thank you.”

“You said that you held back information from me and my husband because you had no proof of your theories. Am I to assume that situation has changed?”

Zack hesitated.

“Dr. Iverson, please,” she said. “Don’t try to lie to me again. My son nearly stabbed me to death yesterday without even knowing I was there.”

“Okay,” he said. “Okay. The truth is, as things stand, I have no direct proof of anything. But the circumstantial evidence supporting my belief is quite strong—at least to me it is.”

“Tell me.”

Zack reviewed his impressions of Pearl and Mainwaring’s gallbladder cases, and summarized his conversation with Tarberry at Johns Hopkins. He could see the anger smoldering in Barbara Nelms’s eyes. In time, whether Toby survived or not, she would be out for blood. And where once that notion had been the impetus to have him lie to her, now it goaded him to share every detail. Frank had been given his chance to clean house, but he had ignored it.

“I wouldn’t blame you a bit for being skeptical,” Zack said as he concluded his account, “but that’s the way I see it.”

“Dr. Iverson,” Barbara Nelms responded, her fury barely contained, “this is the first time since this nightmare began that an explanation has fit with the facts as I know them. I believe every word you’ve told me. Every word.”

She turned and stared out the window. Resting on the rim of her sling, her fist was clenched. Slowly, her fingers relaxed. The tension in her neck and back lessened. When she turned back to Zack, the anger had given way to determination.

“Now then, Dr. Iverson,” she said, “what can we do to save my son?”

Zack took a moment to sort his thoughts.

“Well, first of all,” he said finally, “it would help tremendously if we could find the trigger.”

“You mean the thing that sets Toby off?”

“Exactly.”

“But how?”

“I want you to close your eyes, lean back, listen to my voice, and begin to tell me everything you can think of surrounding Toby’s attacks. Everything, no matter how trivial it may sound.”

“Are you going to hypnotize me?”

“I can. And I will, if it seems appropriate. But I believe all you’ll need is a little help. Now, relax as much as you can, open your mind, and let it drift back to Toby’s very first episode.”

“He … he was in his pajamas.…”

“Good. Go on.”

“It was before bed.… He was playing.…”

“Playing what?”

“I … I can’t remember.”

“Was he in his room?”

“Yes … No, no, wait. He ended up in his room, but I don’t think he started there. He … he was in the den. He was watching television. Yes, that’s right. That’s exactly right.”

“Good. Very good. Now, what was he watching?

“The show?”

“Yes,”