“I don’t understand. It just happened two days ago. It’s a coma. People wake up all the time. I read about it.”
Burckhardt rubbed his temples with his thumbs. She wanted to grab the wooden chair she was sitting on and smash it over his head.
“I’ll show it to you,” he said, then reached behind him and flicked the built-in light against the wall, illuminating the CAT scan film on top of it. It looked like an X-ray, only with more resolution, and it showed the outline of a double-layered sphere—the brain. Two long ovals overlapped inside the sphere like black butterfly wings. He pointed at them. “As you can see, there was a lot of internal bleeding, then swelling. All of these neurons are dead.”
Audrey closed her eyes, but the light had burned a temporary impression into her retina. In the dark she saw the outline of wings, and thought, nonsensically: she tried to fly away, but her wings were heavy iron, and trapped her here.
“No,” she said. Her voice was pleading.
Burckhardt didn’t understand. He was looking at the film and not at her. “Yes. There was a brain hemorrhage. You can see it clearly. Her entire frontal lobe. She’ll be a zombie. No language. No inhibition. No basic reasoning. She won’t know you. She won’t—”
Saraub let go of her hand and sat up. “Turn it off,” he barked.
Burckhardt turned away from the screen. “What?”
“—She doesn’t want to see it!”
Both men looked to her, and waited for her to speak for herself. She thought about that, then sat forward in the chair and put her head between her knees. Counted back from ten.
Burckhardt flicked the light and pulled down the film. His voice finally showed an emotion: contrition: “Now you know.”
“Give me a sec,” Audrey answered. She closed her eyes and willed back the tears. Reminded herself that her mother needed attending. There was work to be done. Still, in her mind, she saw those heavy wings. Below her, the chair wobbled, like the floor underneath it would soon open, and red ants would pour forth. She wished she was back at The Breviary, where everything was dark, and still. She wished she was building a door.
She patted her thighs. Once, twice. Blinked away the X-ray light. Cleared her throat. Took a breath. Okay. Good. Enough? It would have to be.
“Where is she?” she asked.
Flustered, Burckhardt took a second to answer, and Audrey knew she’d judged him harshly. He was the chief of psychiatry here and had to oversee more than two hundred patients. If he was any good at what he did, he saved his compassion for them.
Still, her new name for him was Fuckhead.
“Room 27, Ward B1 of the ICU. You should be prepared. She doesn’t look the same, physically, as when she checked in.”
Audrey stood. Saraub followed. Burckhardt handed her his card. “My number’s in there, if you have questions.” Then he handed Saraub a short stack of papers with two yellow signature stick-its attached to the last page. With a lowered voice, he added, “And if you reconsider. For Miss Lucas to read over and sign. In my judgment, she should be taken off life support.”
Audrey averted her gaze. They started out the door. She thought Burckhardt might remember himself, and offer his sympathies, but he didn’t.
20
The Hull
The desk at Ward B1 was unattended. Audrey buzzed the bell, but no one came. She wanted to see her mother and couldn’t wait. She kept walking. The sound of the respirators preceded her. Like a vacuum turning on and off. It reminded her of iron wings, struggling to flap.
There were two beds jammed close together in the small room, and a body lay in each of them. During their Omaha years, the medicine had made Betty slow and round, so Audrey headed for the large woman lying in the near bed. But this woman’s lips were thick, and her hair was dyed brown. Audrey cupped her mouth with her hand: a mistake? Betty, alive?
She headed for the other bed, where she found a skinny woman aged far beyond Betty’s fifty-eight years. Folds of skin pooled in the crook of her neck like rippling water. Her jaw hung slack. Someone had recently given her a quick, jagged haircut (before, or after the coma?) so that her Brillo-like silver bangs were crooked and high up on her forehead.
Audrey leaned in closer. Thin lips, wrinkles where once, there had been dimples. On her shoulder, a