The House of Thunder Read online

  “Miss Thorton,” he said, “I’m delighted to see you sitting up, awake and aware.” He came to the bed. His smile was even nicer than Thelma Baker’s. “I’m your physician. Doctor McGee. Jeffrey McGee.”

  He extended his hand to her, and she took it. It was a dry, hard, strong hand, but his touch was light and gentle.

  “I thought Dr. Viteski was my physician.”

  “He’s chief of the hospital medical staff,” McGee said, “but I’m in charge of your case.” His voice had a reassuringly masculine timbre, yet it was pleasingly soft and soothing. “I was the admitting physician when you were brought into the emergency room.”

  “But yesterday, Dr. Viteski—”

  “Yesterday was my day off,” McGee said. “I take two days off from my private practice every week, but only one day off from my hospital rounds—only one day, mind you—so of course you chose that day. After you laid there like a stone for twenty-two days, after you worried me sick for twenty-two days, you had to come out of your coma when I wasn’t here.” He shook his head, pretending to be both astonished and hurt. “I didn’t even find out about it until this morning.” He frowned at her with mock disapproval. “Now, Miss Thorton,” he teased, “if there are going to be any medical miracles involving my patients, I insist on being present when they occur, so that I can take the credit and bask in the glory. Understood?”

  Susan smiled up at him, surprised by his lighthearted manner. “Yes, Dr. McGee. I understand.”

  “Good. Very good. I’m glad we got that straightened out.” He grinned. “How are you feeling this morning?”

  “Better,” she said.

  “Ready for an evening of dancing and bar-hopping?”

  “Maybe tomorrow.”

  “It’s a date.” He glanced at her breakfast tray. “I see you’ve got an appetite.”

  “I tried to eat everything, but I couldn’t.”

  “That’s what Orson Welles said.”

  Susan laughed.

  “You did pretty well,” he said, indicating the tray. “You’ve got to start off with small, frequent meals. That’s to be expected. Don’t worry too much about regaining your strength. Before you know it, you’ll be making a pig of yourself, and you’ll be well along the road to recovery. Feeling headachy this morning? Drowsy?”

  “No. Neither.”

  “Let me take your pulse,” he said, reaching for her hand.

  “Mrs. Baker took it just before breakfast.”

  “I know. This is just an excuse to hold hands with you.”

  Susan laughed again. “You’re different from most doctors.”

  “Do you think a physician should be businesslike, distant, somber, humorless?”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “Do you think I should try to be more like Dr. Viteski?”

  “Definitely not.”

  “He iz an egg-cellent doktor,” McGee said, doing a perfect imitation of Viteski’s accented voice.

  “I’m sure he is. But I suspect you’re even better.”

  “Thank you. The compliment is duly noted and has earned you a small discount off my final bill.”

  He was still holding her hand. He finally looked at his watch and took her pulse.

  “Will I live?” she asked when he finished.

  “No doubt about it. You’re bouncing back fast.” He continued to hold her hand as he said, “Seriously now, I think a little humor between doctor and patient is a good thing. I believe it helps the patient maintain a positive attitude, and a positive attitude speeds healing. But some people don’t want a cheerful doctor. They want someone who acts as if the weight of the world is on his shoulders. It makes them feel more secure. So if my joking bothers you, I can tone it down or turn it off. The important thing is that you feel comfortable and confident about the care you’re getting.”

  “You go right ahead and be as cheerful as you want,” Susan said. “My spirits need lifting.”

  “There’s no reason to be glum. The worst is behind you now.”

  He squeezed her hand gently before finally letting go of it.

  To her surprise, Susan felt a tug of regret that he had released her hand so soon.

  “Dr. Viteski tells me there are lapses in your memory,” he said.

  She frowned. “Fewer than there were yesterday. I guess it’ll all come back to me sooner or later. But there are still a lot of holes.”

  “I want to talk with you about that. But first I’ve got to make my rounds. I’ll come back in a couple of hours, and I’ll help you prod your memory—if that’s all right with you.”

  “Sure,” she said.

  “You rest.”

  “What else is there to do?”

  “No tennis until further notice.”

  “Darn! I had a match scheduled with Mrs. Baker.”

  “You’ll just have to cancel it.”

  “Yes, Dr. McGee.”

  Smiling, she watched him leave. He moved with self-assurance and with considerable natural grace.

  He’d already had a positive influence on her. A simmering paranoia had been heating up slowly within her, but now she realized that her uneasiness had been entirely subjective in origin, a result of her weakness and disorientation; there was no rational justification for it. Dr. Viteski’s odd behavior no longer seemed important, and the hospital no longer seemed the least bit threatening.

  Half an hour later, when Mrs. Baker looked in on her again, Susan asked for a mirror, then wished she hadn’t. Her reflection revealed a pale, gaunt face. Her gray-green eyes were bloodshot and circled by dark, puffy flesh. In order to facilitate the treatment and bandaging of her gashed forehead, an emergency room orderly had clipped her long blond hair; he had hacked at it with no regard for her appearance. The result was a shaggy mess. Furthermore, after twenty-two days of neglect, her hair was greasy and tangled.

  “My God, I look terrible!” she said.

  “Of course you don’t,” Mrs. Baker said. “Just a bit washed out. There’s no permanent damage. As soon as you gain back the weight you lost, your cheeks will fill in, and those bags under your eyes will go away.”

  “I’ve got to wash my hair.”

  “You wouldn’t be able to walk into the bathroom and stand at the sink. Your legs would feel like rubber. Besides, you can’t wash your hair until the bandages come off your head, and that won’t be until at least tomorrow.”

  “No. Today. Now. My hair’s oily, and my head itches. It’s making me miserable, and that’s not conducive to recuperation.”

  “This isn’t a debate, honey. You can’t win, so save your breath. All I can do is see that you get a dry wash.”

  “Dry wash? What’s that?”

  “Sprinkle some powder in your hair, let it soak up some of the oil, then brush it out,” Mrs. Baker said. “That’s what we did for you twice a week while you were in a coma.”

  Susan put one hand to her lank hair. “Will it help?”

  “A little.”

  “Okay, I’ll do it.”

  Mrs. Baker brought a can of powder and a brush.

  “The luggage I had with me in the car,” Susan said. “Did any of it survive the crash?”

  “Sure. It’s right over there, in the closet.”

  “Would you bring me my makeup case?”

  Mrs. Baker grinned. “He is a handsome devil, isn’t he? And so nice, too.” She winked as she said, “He isn’t married, either.”

  Susan blushed. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  Mrs. Baker laughed gently and patted Susan’s hand. “Don’t be embarrassed, kid. I’ve never seen one of Dr. McGee’s female patients who didn’t try to look her best. Teenage girls get all fluttery when he’s around. Young ladies like you get a certain unmistakable glint in their eyes. Even white-haired grannies, half crippled with arthritis, twenty years older than me—forty years older than the doctor—they all make themselves look nice for him, and looking nice makes them feel better, so it’s all sort of therapeutic.�
�

  Shortly before noon, Dr. McGee returned, pushing a stainless-steel cafeteria cart that held two trays. “I thought we’d have lunch together while we talk about your memory problems.”

  “A doctor having lunch with his patient?” she asked, amazed.

  “We tend to be less formal here than in your city hospitals.”

  “Who pays for lunch?”

  “You do, of course. We aren’t that informal.”

  She grinned. “What’s for lunch?”

  “For me, a chicken-salad sandwich and apple pie. For you, unbuttered toast and tapioca and—”

  “Already, this is getting monotonous.”

  “Ah, but this time there’s something more exotic than cherry Jell-O,” he said. “Lime Jell-O.”

  “I don’t think my heart can stand it.”

  “And a small dish of canned peaches. Truly a gourmet spread.” He pulled up a chair, then lowered her bed as far as it would go, so they could talk comfortably while they ate.

  As he put her tray on the bed table and lifted the plastic cover from it, he blinked at her and said, “You look nice and fresh.”

  “I look like death warmed over,” she said.

  “Not at all.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Your tapioca looks like death warmed over, but you look nice and fresh. Remember, I’m the doctor, and you’re the patient, and the patient must never, never, never disagree with the doctor. Don’t you know your medical etiquette? If I say you look nice and fresh, then, by God, you look nice and fresh!”

  Susan smiled and played along with him. “I see. How could I have been so gauche?”

  “You look nice and fresh, Susan.”

  “Why, thank you, Dr. McGee.”

  “That’s much better.”

  She had “washed” her hair with talcum powder, had lightly applied some makeup, and had put on lipstick. Thanks to a few drops of Murine, her eyes were no longer bloodshot, though a yellowish tint of sickness colored the whites of them. She had also changed from her hospital gown into a pair of blue silk pajamas that had been in her luggage. She knew she looked far less than her best; however, she looked at least a little better, and looking a little better made her feel a lot better, just as Mrs. Baker had said it would.

  While they ate lunch, they talked about the blank spots in Susan’s memory, trying to fill in the holes, which had been numerous and huge only yesterday, but which were fewer and far smaller today. Upon waking this morning, she had found that she could remember most things without effort.

  She had been born and raised in suburban Philadelphia, in a pleasant, white, two-story house on a maple-lined street of similar houses. Green lawns. Porch swings. A block party every Fourth of July. Carolers at Christmas. An Ozzie and Harriet neighborhood.

  “Sounds like an ideal childhood,” McGee said.

  Susan swallowed a bit of lime Jell-O, then said, “It was an ideal setting for an ideal childhood, but unfortunately it didn’t turn out that way. I was a very lonely kid.”

  “When you were first admitted here,” McGee said, “we tried to contact your family, but we couldn’t find anyone to contact.”

  She told him about her parents, partly because she wanted to be absolutely sure that there were no holes in those memories, and partly because McGee was easy to talk to, and partly because she felt a strong need to talk after twenty-two days of silence and darkness. Her mother, Regina, had been killed in a traffic accident when Susan was only seven years old. The driver of a beer delivery truck had suffered a heart attack at the wheel, and the truck had run a red light, and Regina’s Chevy had been in the middle of the intersection. Susan couldn’t remember a great deal about her mother, but that lapse had nothing whatsoever to do with her own recent accident and amnesia. After all, she had known her mother for only seven years, and twenty-five years had passed since the beer truck had flattened the Chevy; sadly but inevitably, Regina had faded from Susan’s memory in much the same way that an image fades from an old photograph that has been left too long in bright sunlight. However, she could remember her father clearly. Frank Thorton had been a tall, somewhat portly man who had owned a moderately successful men’s clothing store, and Susan had loved him. She always knew that he loved her, too, even though he never told her that he did. He was quiet, soft-spoken, rather shy, a completely self-contained man who was happiest when he was alone in his den with just a good book and his pipe. Perhaps he would have been more forthcoming with a son than he had been with his daughter. He always was more at ease with men than with women, and raising a girl was undoubtedly an awkward proposition for him. He died of cancer ten years after Regina’s passing, the summer after Susan graduated from high school. And so she had entered adulthood even more alone than she had been before.

  Dr. McGee finished his chicken-salad sandwich, wiped his mouth with a paper napkin, and said, “No aunts, no uncles?”

  “One aunt, one uncle. But both of them were strangers to me. No living grandparents. But you know something—having such a lonely childhood wasn’t entirely a bad thing. I learned to be very self-reliant, and that’s paid off over the years.”

  As McGee ate his apple pie, and as Susan nibbled at her canned peaches, they talked about her university years. She had done her undergraduate work at Briarstead College in Pennsylvania, then had gone to California and had earned both her master’s and doctorate at UCLA. She recalled those years with perfect clarity, although she actually would have preferred to forget some of what had happened during her sophomore year at Briarstead.

  “Is something wrong?” McGee asked, putting down a forkful of apple pie that had been halfway to his mouth.

  She blinked. “Huh?”

  “Your expression...” He frowned. “For a moment there, you looked as if you’d seen a ghost.”

  “Yeah. In a way I did.” Suddenly she was not hungry any more. She put down her spoon and pushed the bed table aside.

  “Want to talk about it?”

  “It was just a bad memory,” she said. “Something I wish to God I could forget.”

  McGee put his own tray aside, leaving the pie unfinished. “Tell me about it.”

  “Oh, it’s nothing I should burden you with.”

  “Burden me.”

  “It’s a dreary story.”

  “If it’s bothering you, tell me about it. Now and then, I like a good, dreary story.”

  She didn’t smile. Not even McGee could make the House of Thunder amusing. “Well... in my sophomore year at Briarstead, I was dating a guy named Jerry Stein. He was sweet. I liked him. I liked him a lot. In fact, we were even beginning to talk about getting married after we graduated. Then he was killed.”

  “I’m sorry,” McGee said. “How did it happen?”

  “He was pledging a fraternity.”

  “Oh, Christ!” McGee said, anticipating her.

  “The hazing... got out of hand.”

  “That’s such a rotten, stupid way to die.”

  “Jerry had so much potential,” she said softly. “He was bright, sensitive, a hard worker...”

  “One night, when I was an intern on emergency-room duty, they brought in a kid who’d been severely burned in a college hazing ritual. They told us it was a test by fire, some macho thing like that, some childish damned thing like that, and it got out of hand. He was burned over eighty percent of his body. He died two days later.”

  “It wasn’t fire that killed Jerry Stein,” Susan said. “It was hate.”

  She shuddered, remembering.

  “Hate?” McGee asked. “What do you mean?”

  She was silent for a moment, her thoughts turning back thirteen years. Although the hospital room was comfortably warm, Susan felt cold, as bitterly cold as she had been in the House of Thunder.

  McGee waited patiently, leaning forward slightly in his chair.

  At last she shook her head and said, “I don’t feel like going into the details. It’s just too depressing.”

  “The
re were an unusual number of deaths in your life before you were even twenty-one.”

  “Yeah. At times it seemed as if I were cursed or something. Everyone I really cared about died on me.”

  “Your mother, your father, then your fiancé.”

  “Well, he wasn’t actually my fiancé. Not quite.”

  “But he was the next thing to it.”

  “Everything but the ring,” Susan said.

  “All right. So maybe you need to talk about his death in order to finally get it out of your system.”

  “No,” she said.

  “Don’t dismiss it so quickly. I mean, if he’s still haunting you thirteen years later—”

  She interrupted him. “But you see, no matter how much I talk about it, I’ll never get it out of my system. It was just too awful to be forgotten. Besides, you told me that a positive mental attitude will speed up the healing process. Remember?”

  He smiled. “I remember.”

  “So I shouldn’t talk about things that just depress me.”

  He stared at her for a long moment. His eyes were incredibly blue, and they were so expressive that she had no doubt about the depth of his concern for her well-being.

  He sighed and said, “Okay. Let’s get back to the matter at hand—your amnesia. It seems like you remember nearly everything. What holes haven’t filled in yet?”

  Before she answered him, she reached for the bed controls and raised the upper end of the mattress a bit more, forcing herself to sit straighter than she had been sitting. Her back ached dully, not from an injury but from being immobilized in bed for more than three weeks. When she felt more comfortable, she put down the controls and said, “I still can’t recall the accident. I remember driving along a twisty section of two-lane blacktop. I was about two miles south of the turnoff to the Viewtop Inn. I was looking forward to getting there and having dinner. Then, well, it’s as if somebody just turned the lights out.”