The House of Thunder Read online

“Electroencephalogram,” she said. “I never had one of those.”

  “Yes, you did,” he said. “While you were in the coma. But of course you weren’t aware of it. You wouldn’t remember it. Now, don’t be afraid. It doesn’t hurt at all.”

  “I know.”

  “It’ll give us a look at the pattern of your brain waves. If you’ve got abnormal brain function of any kind, it’s almost sure to show up on an EEG.”

  “Almost?”

  “It’s not perfect.”

  A nurse rolled the EEG machine out of the corner where it had been standing, and she positioned it beside Susan.

  “This works best if you’re relaxed,” McGee told Susan.

  “I’m relaxed.”

  “It won’t be very reliable at all or easily interpreted if you’re in an emotional turmoil.”

  “I’m relaxed,” she assured him.

  “Let’s see your hand.”

  She lifted her right hand off the stretcher’s three-inch-thick mattress.

  “Hold it straight out in front of you, keeping the fingers together. Okay. Now spread the fingers wide apart.” He watched closely for a few seconds, then nodded with satisfaction. “Good. You’re not trying to fake me out. You are calmer. You aren’t trembling any more.”

  As soon as they had brought her downstairs, Susan became relatively calm, for she felt that progress, however limited, was finally being made. After all, as a first-rate physicist, she could understand, appreciate, and approve of what was happening now: tests, laboratories, the scientific method, a carefully planned search for answers conducted by eliminating possibilities until the solution stood alone, exposed. She was comfortable with that process and trusted it.

  She trusted Jeffrey McGee, too. She had a lot of faith in his medical abilities and confidence in his intellect. He would know what to look for, and, more importantly, he would know how to recognize it when he saw it.

  The tests would provide an answer, perhaps not quickly but eventually. McGee was now taking the first tentative steps toward putting an end to her ordeal.

  She was sure of it.

  “Calm as a clam,” she said.

  “Oyster,” he said.

  “Why oyster?”

  “It seems to fit you better.”

  “Oh, you think I look more like an oyster than like a clam?”

  “No. Pearls are found in oysters.”

  She laughed. “I’ll bet you’re a shameless come-on artist in a singles’ bar.”

  “I’m a shark,” he said.

  McGee attached eight saline-coated electrodes to Susan’s scalp, four on each side of her head.

  “We’ll take readings from both the left and the right side of the brain,” he said, “then compare them. That’ll be the first step in pinpointing the trauma.”

  The nurse switched on the EEG apparatus.

  “Keep your head just as you have it,” McGee told Susan. “Any sudden movement will interfere.”

  She stared at the ceiling.

  McGee watched the green, fluorescent screen of the EEG monitor, which was not in Susan’s line of sight.

  “Looks good,” he said, sounding somewhat disappointed. “No spikes. No flats. A nice, steady pattern. All within normal parameters.”

  Susan kept very still.

  “Negative,” he said, more to himself than to either her or the nurse.

  Susan heard him click a switch.

  “Now I’m taking a look at the comparative readings,” McGee told her.

  He was silent for a while.

  The nurse moved off to another corner, readying another piece of equipment either for Susan or for a patient who had not yet been brought into the room.

  After a while, McGee shut off the machine.

  “Well?” Susan asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing at all?”

  “Well, the electroencephalograph is a useful device, but the data it provides aren’t one hundred percent definitive. Some patients with serious intracranial diseases have been known to exhibit normal patterns during an EEG. And some people with no demonstrable disease have abnormal EEGs. It’s a helpful diagnostic tool, but it isn’t where we stop. It’s where we begin.”

  Disappointed, but still certain that one or more of these tests would pinpoint her malady, Susan said, “What’s next?”

  As McGee removed the electrodes from Susan’s scalp, he said, “Well, radiology’s right next door. I want new X rays taken of your skull.”

  “Sounds like fun.”

  “Oh, it’s a genuine laugh riot.”

  The Radiology Lab was an off-white room filled with lots of cumbersome, shiny, black and white equipment that looked somewhat dated to Susan. Of course she wasn’t an expert on X-ray technology. Besides, she couldn’t expect a hospital in rural Oregon to have all the very latest diagnostic tools. Though they might be a bit dated, Willawauk’s machines looked more than adequate.

  The radiologist was a young man named Ken Piper. He developed the plates while they waited, then pinned the sheets of X-ray film to a pair of light boxes. He and McGee studied the pictures, murmuring to each other, pointing at shadows and areas of brightness on the film.

  Susan watched from the wheeled stretcher to which she had returned from the X-ray table.

  They took down the first X rays, pinned up others, murmured and pointed again.

  Eventually, McGee turned away from the light boxes, looking thoughtful.

  Susan said, “What’d you find?”

  He sighed and said, “What we didn’t find are signs of brain lesions.”

  “We couldn’t detect any collections of fluid, either,” Ken Piper said.

  “And there’s been no shifting of the pineal gland, which you sometimes find in cases where the patient suffers from really vivid hallucinations,” McGee said. “No depressions in the skull; not the slightest indication of intracranial pressure.”

  “It’s just a perfectly clean set of pictures,” Ken Piper said brightly, smiling down at her. “You’ve got nothing to worry about, Miss Thorton.”

  Susan looked at McGee and saw her own feelings mirrored in his eyes. Unfortunately, Ken Piper was wrong; she had plenty to worry about.

  “Now what?” she asked.

  “I want to do an LP,” McGee said.

  “What’s that?”

  “A lumbar puncture.”

  “Spinal tap?”

  “Yeah. We might have missed something with the EEG and the X rays, something that’ll show up in the spinal. And there are some conditions that can be identified only through spinal fluid analysis.”

  McGee used radiology’s phone to ring the hospital’s lab. He told the answering technician to get set up for a complete spinal workup on the samples he was about to take from Susan.

  When he put the phone down, she said, “Let’s get this over with.”

  In spite of the fact that McGee anesthetized Susan’s lower spinal area with Novocain, the lumbar puncture wasn’t painless, but neither was it remotely as bad as she had expected it to be. It brought quick, sharp tears to her eyes, and she winced and bit her lip; but the worst part was having to remain perfectly still, worrying about the needle breaking off in her if she twitched or jerked suddenly.

  McGee kept one eye on the manometer as he extracted the fluid, and he said, “Normal pressure.”

  A couple of minutes later, when the final sample had been taken, Susan whimpered with relief and wiped at the stinging tears that had beaded on her eyelashes.

  McGee held up one glass tube full of spinal fluid and stared at it against the light. “Well, at least it’s clear,” he said.

  “How long until we get the results?” Susan asked.

  “It’ll take a little while,” McGee said. “In the meantime, we’ve still got a few minor tests to run. Feel up to giving some blood?”

  “Anything for the cause.”

  Shortly before ten o’clock, while McGee went to the lab to see how the spinal workup was
coming along, Murf and Phil arrived in diagnostic to escort Susan back to room 258. Although she knew that yesterday’s terror in the elevator had not been real, although she knew that the orderlies were innocent of the malicious behavior that she had attributed to them in her hallucinations, she felt somewhat ill at ease with them.

  “Everyone’s missed you up on the second floor,” Phil told Susan as they wheeled her stretcher into the hall.

  “Lots of glum faces up there,” Murf said.

  “Oh, I’ll bet,” she said.

  “It’s true,” Phil said.

  “The place seems so grim without you,” Murf said.

  “Like a dungeon,” Phil said.

  “Like a cemetery,” said Murf.

  “Like a hospital,” said Phil.

  “It is a hospital,” she said, playing along with them in an effort to keep her spirits up as they approached the elevators.

  “You’re absolutely right,” Murf told her.

  “It is a hospital, of course,” Phil said.

  “But with you around, fair lady—”

  “—it seems warmer, brighter—”

  “—like a resort hotel—”

  “—in some country where it’s always sunny—”

  “—someplace exciting, exotic—”

  “—like Mesopotamia.”

  They reached the elevators, and Susan held her breath.

  “Phil, I told you yesterday—there isn’t a Mesopotamia any more.”

  One of them pushed the elevator call button.

  “Then where have I been going every winter, Murf? My travel agent always told me it was Mesopotamia.”

  “I’m afraid you’ve got a crooked travel agent, Phil. You’ve probably been going to New Jersey.”

  The elevator doors opened, and Susan stiffened, but there were no dead men waiting.

  “No, I’m sure I’ve never been to New Jersey, Murf.”

  “Lucky for New Jersey, Phil.”

  Dammit, I can’t live like this! Susan thought grimly as they rolled her out of the elevator and into the second-floor corridor. I just can’t go through life being suspicious and frightened of everyone I meet. I can’t cope with this constant expectation that one horror or another will pop out at me from behind every door and from around every corner.

  How could anyone possibly get through an entire life that was like a continuous, exhausting ride through an especially nasty, gruesome, carnival funhouse?

  Why would anyone want to get through such a life?

  Jessica Seiffert was gone.

  The curtain was open.

  An orderly was stripping off the last of the soiled sheets and dropping them into a laundry cart. In answer to Susan’s question, he said, “Mrs. Seiffert took a turn for the worse. They had to rush her down to intensive care.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Well, everyone expected it,” the orderly said. “But it’s still a shame. She’s such a nice lady.”

  Susan was sorry for Jessica Seiffert, but she was also relieved that her roommate was gone.

  It was nice to be able to see the window, even though the day was gray and misty and teetering on the edge of another storm.

  Ten minutes after Susan had been delivered to her room by Phil and Murf, as she was sitting in bed, adjusting the covers around her, Mrs. Baker came in with a tray of food.

  “You missed breakfast this morning. And honey, you just can’t afford to skip a single meal. You’re not well padded like I am. I could afford to skip a whole week of meals!”

  “I’m starved.”

  “I don’t doubt it for a minute,” the nurse said, putting the tray down on the bed table. “How do you feel, kid?”

  “Like a pincushion,” Susan said, aware of a dull pain in her back, a souvenir of the spinal tap.

  “Did Dr. McGee handle most things himself?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then it could have been worse,” Mrs. Baker said, removing the lid from the tray. “There are some around here who’re not as gentle as McGee.”

  “Yes, but I’m afraid he’s going to be late to his office.”

  “He doesn’t have office hours Wednesday mornings,” the nurse said. “Just five hours in the afternoon.”

  “Oh, and by the way,” Susan said, “I saw so little of you yesterday that I forgot to ask you how everything went on Monday night.”

  Mrs. Baker blinked, and her forehead creased in perplexity. “Monday night?”

  “How was your date? You know—the bowling and the hamburger dinner?”

  For a couple of seconds, the nurse appeared to have no idea what Susan was talking about. Then her eyes suddenly brightened. “Oh! The date. Of course. My jolly big lumberman.”

  “The one with the shoulders to measure a doorway,” Susan said, quoting what Mrs. Baker herself had said on Monday when describing her beau.

  “And those big, hard, gentle hands,” the nurse said rather wistfully.

  Susan grinned. “That’s better. I didn’t think you could’ve forgotten him.”

  “It was a night to remember.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  A mischievous expression came over Mrs. Baker’s face. She said, “We knocked down all the pins. And I don’t just mean at the bowling alley, either.”

  Susan laughed. “Why, Mrs. Baker, you’ve got a randy streak in you wider than I’d have thought.”

  The nurse’s merry eyes gleamed behind her white-framed glasses. “Life’s not very tasty if you don’t add just a dash of spice now and then.”

  Unfolding her paper napkin and tucking it into the collar of her pajamas—she had changed into her recently laundered blue pair after returning from downstairs—Susan said, “I suspect you flavor it with more than just a dash of spice.”

  “Whole tablespoons sometimes.”

  “I knew it. Mrs. Baker, you’re a regular Sybarite.”

  “No. I’m a Methodist, but Methodists know how to have fun, too. Now, you eat everything on that tray, honey. It’s really good to see you starting to fill out in the face a little. We don’t want any backsliding.”

  For the next half hour, Susan ate her late breakfast and watched the turbulent sky that roiled beyond the window. Masses of clouds, painted a dozen shades of gray, raced from horizon to horizon.

  A few minutes after eleven o’clock, Jeff McGee came by. “Sorry I’ve been so long. We had the lab results some time ago, but I’ve been up in the intensive-care ward with Jessie Seiffert.”

  “How’s she doing?”

  “Fading fast.”

  “That’s a shame.”

  “Yeah. It’s a shame she has to die. But since there wasn’t anything we could do for her, I’m glad she’s finally going downhill in a hurry. She was always an active woman, and it was hard on her to be bedridden, harder than it might have been on a lot of other people. I hated to see her lingering and suffering these past few weeks.” He shook his head sadly, then snapped his fingers as a thought struck him. “Say, something occurred to me when I was with Jessie, upstairs in intensive care. You know why you might have hallucinated Jerry Stein’s corpse when you were actually looking at Jessie? I think there was a trigger that did it for you, that set you off.”

  “Trigger?”

  “Yes. Initials.”

  “Initials,” Susan echoed, not sure what he was talking about.

  “That’s right. Don’t you see? Jerry Stein and Jessica Seiffert—both JS.”

  “Oh. I hadn’t noticed that.”

  “Maybe you didn’t notice it on a conscious level. But nothing escapes the subconscious; it’s too damned observant. I’ll bet you were aware of it subconsciously. It might have been the coincidence of their initials that fixated you on the curtain and made you so afraid of it. If that’s the case, then perhaps none of your attacks is merely a random, spontaneous event. Maybe all of them were triggered by one thing or another, unimportant little events and observations that harkened back to some memory connecte
d with the House of Thunder. And once that connection was made on an unconscious level, maybe the hallucinatory episode followed like clockwork.”

  He was visibly excited by the theory, and Susan said, “If what you say is true, what difference does it make?”

  “I’m not entirely sure. I haven’t had much time to think about all the ramifications. But I suspect it could be important in helping me decide whether or not the official diagnosis should come down on the side of a physical cause.”

  She didn’t like what she was hearing.

  Frowning, she said, “If my hallucinations aren’t merely random, spontaneous sparks thrown off by an injured brain, then perhaps the root cause of them isn’t physical at all. Is that what you’re saying? If the visions are triggered by some subtle psychological mechanism, then possibly the entire problem is best left to a psychiatrist.”

  “No, no, no,” McGee said quickly, making a placating gesture with his hands. “We don’t have enough data to leap to conclusions like that. We still have to pursue a physical explanation because that seems by far the most likely possibility, considering that you did suffer a head injury and were in a coma for more than three weeks.”

  Susan wanted very much to believe that her problem was entirely physical, nothing more than the expected consequences of vital tissue damage. If it was a tiny blood clot in the brain, a lesion, or some other malady of the flesh, medical science would take care of it posthaste. She trusted medical science precisely because it was a science. She distrusted psychiatry because, to her way of thinking, which had been shaped by her education as a physicist, psychiatry was not really a science at all; she thought of it as little more than voodoo.

  She shook her head adamantly. “You’re wrong about the trigger effect of the initials. JS. It wasn’t that. This isn’t a psychological condition.”

  “I tend to agree with you,” he said. “But we can’t rule out any possibilities at this stage.”

  “I can. I’ve ruled it out.”

  “But I can’t. I’m a doctor. And a doctor’s got to remain objective.”

  For the first time since entering the room, he took her hand, and his touch was wonderfully soothing.