Fiction complete, p.78
Fiction Complete, page 78
In spite of the gradual numbing of all sensation, Julie could still see and hear. The conversation, she had to remind herself, concerned her.
Porter’s face was flushed. “Where is that nurse? Doctor, you are proposing a monstrous thing. It’s tantamount to euthanasia.”
“I disagree. As long as Julie lives,” Tony insisted, “we may discover a way to remove the tumor. I’ll take full responsibility for her nourishment and exercise . . . if she lives.”
“And you’ll go to the gas chamber if she dies! The malpractice act of 2015, prescribes capital punishment for euthanasia. You know that well as I do.”
A SLIGHT commotion at the door made Julie strain her eyes. The nurse had arrived with the hypo. Porter snatched it from her. “About time! Step aside, doctor!” Surprisingly, Tony did so. But when Porter advanced toward the bed, Tony grabbed his wrist and wrenched hard. The syringe smashed to the floor. Bending the captive arm back, he hustled the astounded doctor to the door and shoved him outside. Quickly he closed and secured it with a tilted chair.
Now he was bending over her, brushing the golden hair from her perspiring forehead with a touch so light she could scarcely feel it. “Can you hear me, Julie?” he asked.
She blinked her eyes in reply. Tears squeezed out and rolled down her cheeks.
“I love you, sweetheart. I’ll take care of you; I’ll always love you!” he swore brokenly and lay his head on her breast.
A week wasn’t much time to make a man fall in love with you, but she had succeeded beyond her hopes. Of all the gifts her beauty had won for her, Tony’s gift was the most precious.
Death! Sweet oblivion.
She was beyond physical feeling now, but the bitterness of the situation struck through to the hard core of intelligence that was all that remained of Julie Raeburn, stage, screen and video star. Six months ago she was the toast of the nation, healthy, wealthy and beloved. At a mere 23, her lithe body had danced her to the top of the ladder.
YET ALL the power her wealth could command was too little to buy her release from the pain. Only love, the emotion she had spurned, had proven the final key to her escape.
He bent close. His face was lean, hollow-eyed, gaunt. But to Julie, it was a beautiful face.
In her self-centered suffering, she had neglected to make a will. And now the terms of the bargain denied him even the love she was willing to return.
A critic had once called her a poor actress; he was right. Julie couldn’t bluff this time. She had needed Tony’s love desperately, but all she could make was a down payment with her own.
If only there were some way—
SHE BEGAN to regain consciousness during the 28,110th exercise cycle early in the 20th year.
At first there was only the sound of her own breathing, which was rather heavy and somewhat irregular. Then she became aware of tension in her legs, a tightening in her calves and thighs.
She had been lying on some incredibly soft material, but now, unbidden by her mind, her stomach muscles tensed and her legs raised a few inches—lowered, relaxed. Now her arms moved, one set of muscles opposing another. Then her shoulders, her back arching slightly.
Strange. Limb by limb, muscle by muscle, she was exercising without the slightest. volition.
She opened her eyes. After a minute she was able to focus them. In the faint, violet light she saw that she was in a rectangular cell, somewhat like an oversized coffin. There was a light taint of ozone in the warm, softly moving air.
Flexible tubes taped to each arm buried their tips in her flesh, and their other ends disappeared through the walls of the cell.
The pain!
Her mind recoiled from a prickle in her spine, but there was no longer the insulated refuge. The prickle persisted; she tensed, awaiting the onslaught that did not come.
Then she felt a vibration, and her returning kinesthetic senses told her that her cell was moving, feet-first, horizontally. Diffused light broke through the translucent walls at her feet and swept up as the cell emerged. The lid came off. Faces looked down at her. Strange faces. Then the sides lowered gently, and they were detaching the tubes from her arms.
GENTLE hands fumbled at the base of her skull. A chill spray localized the area, then she felt tiny jerks as though fine wires were being withdrawn from positions deep beneath the surface.
Then she was in a hospital bed sucking broth through a tube and blinking at a very old man who stood beside her, fingers on her pulse.
At length he spoke. “I’m Dr. Porter, Julie; can you hear me?”
The name, Porter, dropped into the placid pool of her mind like a pebble, and. the ripples left a wake of memories. She tried to speak and found that she had forgotten how. She nodded slightly.
Porter! Her last memory of him was his being pushed out a door by—by whom?
“You’ve been asleep a long, long time,” Porter was saying.
Now questions began to rush to her tongue. She tried to rise up on her elbows and speak, but her throat still wouldn’t respond.
Porter patted her hand. “Don’t be hasty, girl! You have things to learn again. Just rest, and I’ll be in to see you each day.” He left with a shuffling gait. He must be ninety, she thought.
PORTER was right. Although her muscle tone seemed healthy, Julie’s coordination, at first, was that of an infant. She could control her eyes, and she could suck from a tube, but her hands, when she tried to raise them, went any which way.
All afternoon she practiced speaking, but the sounds she made were unintelligible to her own ears. That night she lay awake long, trying to remember. She had been a dancer. There were memories of audiences and great bouquets and champagne parties. She had been wealthy. The memory of rare furs, precious stones, closets full of fabulous gowns. And her luxurious penthouse where she had entertained famous people.
But all this seemed, somehow, inconsequential. There was something else she must recall—an obligation having to do with a person. A man.
She fell asleep without remembering.
It was not until Dr. Porter’s visit the next morning that events leading up to her long sleep came back to her. The old doctor asked her a few questions that she could answer by shaking or nodding her head. Then she remembered the terrible pain that had been in her back—the inoperable tumor, and—“Tony!”
THE WORD blurted from her lips without effort. Porter looked both pleased and distressed. “You are remembering,” he smiled. “I know the questions that must be on your mind. First of all, don’t worry about your back; it is well now. The pain will never return.
“As for your Tony, well, we’ll talk about Dr. Anthony Milton a little later. I don’t want you to brood Over this, Julie. All that matters is that you came through it in fine shape. You have no worries at all. The courts placed your estate in trust, and you have a considerable fortune now with the accrual of the interest.”
As he spoke she was reliving the moments preceding the merciful oblivion that destroyed her pain so long ago. The young intern, Tony—her pleading for death—the deep hypo in her back—Dr. Porter dropping the antidote—and Tony leaning over her at the last. Now she knew why it had seemed important to remember. She had wanted so badly to repay Tony for risking imprisonment, perhaps capital punishment. He had loved her, and—
She tried to evaluate her own feelings, to recapture the tremendous emotion she had felt. It was impossible. She had told herself that she loved Tony, but she would have told herself anything to win freedom from the terrible pain.
Porter was right. She mustn’t dwell on it.
THE DOCTOR was telling her how famous she was. “The people have never forgotten you, Julie. The story of your illness and your long sleep is one of the most cherished stories of the century. And now you are in the headlines again.”
He didn’t produce any evidence to prove it, but he spoke with such quiet sincerity that she didn’t doubt him. “You will have your choice of hundreds of contracts for personal appearances. The networks have bid up the price for your first World-wide video interview to $200,000. You are a legend, the fairytale of Sleeping Beauty in reality.”
Julie frowned; she failed to see the comparison. However, the thought that she had retained her position in the hearts of her public throughout the years was very pleasant.
The next day she could talk a little. She asked for a mirror. Dr. Porter stalled a little at first. “You must realize, Julie, that you are now 43 years old. You are still a lovely woman, but—are you certain you want to look just yet?”
She nodded. She had reconciled herself to the toll that time must have taken.
Still it was a shock. Dr. Porter touched a button on the wall, and the ceiling became a mirror. Julie looked up into sunken eyes and hollow cheeks that made the fine bones of her face stand out in startling relief. Yet she was not too disappointed. Her hair, miraculously, was still a skein of spun gold silk, and they must have given her ultra-violet baths, for her skin was tanned smoothly. A few weeks of normal eating to fill out the hollows. Dr. Porter assured her, and she would be her lovely self.
A NOURISHING diet, injections and physical therapy did, indeed, bring a change. Not only was her body responding, but her mind was alert now. Shortly she was looking forward to meeting the press and planning her public appearances.
She asked Dr. Porter when this would be possible, one morning. She expected protests from him, but he said merely, “Whenever you feel equal to it, Julie.”
“Why, I feel quite strong already,” she said. “See here, I can brush my own hair, walk around the room, touch my toes ten times—”
Porter smiled at her demonstration. “Then perhaps it is time we talked about Dr. Anthony Milton.”
Julie pulled the green robe about her tightly as if a chill had entered the room. She sat on the edge of the bed. “Must we? I—I thought—”
Porter waited, but she said no more. He stared down at his hands. “I didn’t know what you would think about Tony, my dear; perhaps I had it wrong. Maybe I believed some of the romantic nonsense that was printed during the trials and after. At any rate, I didn’t want my star patient to die of a broken heart before she recovered.”
JULIE smiled calmly. “That was very thoughtful of you, doctor. I can imagine how my press agents must have played it up. Naturally, I am curious. Is the rash young intern still around? If he’s in prison I must visit him, of course.”
Instantly, Julie was aware she had said something wrong. The old man’s face tightened and the sympathy went out of it. “Yes, he’s still—around; but he’s no longer in prison.”
He moved into the hall and returned with a wheel chair.
“Sit down, please.” It was more an order than an invitation. She did so, wonderingly. Silently the chair glided out into a vaulted hall. It was different from her memory of the hospital.
“Things have changed,” she remarked. There was no odor of iodoform or ether, no white-capped nurses scurrying about with trays and syringes and the usual paraphernalia.
“This is not the hospital to which you were admitted,” Porter spoke over her shoulder. “In fact this is not a hospital at all. This is the Anthony Milton Memorial Comatarium, an annex of the Mayo Medical Foundation in Rochester, Minnesota.”
Julie raised her eyebrows. “Well! Our boy made a name for himself, after all. Incidentally, what’s a comatarium? And how soon can I break out of here?” She shivered. “It reminds me of a mausoleum.”
“Miss Raeburn,” Porter said coldly, “you are about to see the function of a comatarium. And I must ask you to reserve your remarks for the moment. The Sisters of Mercy wouldn’t understand. Until this minute you have been a much revered person, a tradition, you might say. For you were the inspiration for all the achievements of Dr. Milton.”
THEY TURNED through a great arch and moved into a chamber almost a city block long and some fifty feet wide. On either side of the single aisle was a continuous bank of translucent squares, some four feet to the side, flush to the black marble wall. From each a dim, violet light emitted.
Females of a religious order in white, hooded capes moved along the panels studying the dials in the wall above each, making adjustments and peering through vision slots.
Julie comprehended at once. These were the ends of the crypt-like cells such as had cradled, fed and exercised her body for twenty years. Now hundreds of persons lay as she, free from the torture of pain.
“But—you said—”
“Prison. Yes, Tony Milton went to prison after a trial that blew the hypocritical stuffings out of the medical world, the theologians and every narrow-thinking minority that had successfully agitated against euthanasia.
“Tony was given an indeterminate sentence pending your possible death, but in conducting his own trial he kindled a revolt against one of civilization’s most brutal sacred cows. He maintained, all the way up to the Supreme Court, that the mission of medicine was to relieve pain for the dying as well as those who might recover.
“AT ONE TIME, he pointed out, the occasional hopeless case might expect a merciful end at the hand of a compassionate physician willing to risk disgrace. But the capital punishment law not only stopped this practice, but it killed all research toward the end of solving the horrible enigma.
“Tony cited your case in point. He told of the suffering that would have killed you eventually, and he defended his action by appealing to all who knew you and loved you. It was most effective.”
As he spoke they progressed slowly down the aisle. Porter continued, “Tony went to jail, but a movement sprang up to release him. I—I am ashamed to admit that I was not among the first to join the movement. Anyway, we succeeded. Tony asked that he be allowed to attend you. I gave my permission gladly, for you were a considerable problem.
“For several years Tony spent all his waking hours taking care of you, flexing your muscles like a polio patient, studying your metabolism, force-feeding—doing all known to keep you alive. Slowly he developed means for doing this automatically. Meanwhile his agitation to revoke certain laws freed him to research the various derivatives of Comatone. He developed a new drug of similar effect, but which could be neutralized at any time, and the patient brought back to full consciousness.
“Citing his success in keeping you alive, Tony launched a campaign to offer the new coma to any so-called hopeless patient who sought escape from unbearable pain. He succeeded, largely thanks to the legend that surrounded you, Miss Raeburn.”
JULIE asked in a quiet voice, “My tumor—was he responsible for its removal?”
“Yes, at a terrible cost to himself. He was doing the work of two men, and five years ago he contracted angina pectoris.
“Still he persisted in yet another project with which he had struggled for fifteen years—the reduction of your spinal malignancy.”
“Is there no cure for this, this angina thing?” she asked.
“The cure is rest, principally. We have surgical techniques, but without months of complete inactivity they are impossible to attempt. Tony refused to stop work. He knew that when you came out of your coma the pain would kill you, and we were reluctant to administer the newer drugs in your weakened condition.
“He succeeded. He devised a new operation and tried to perform it on you; he collapsed, and I had to complete it.”
“Then—he did die?”
“No. He regained consciousness, but the pain would have finished him quickly if we had not administered the coma-drug.”
“Dr. Porter, he’s here, in one of these cells!” She knew it must be true, and she had a vague foreboding.
Porter’s silence was her answer.
“Can’t you operate now?”
“It is much too late. The cardiac damage is done. He might live another year, five years, in the cell, but his heart will not support him in an active metabolism.”
HER EYES turned to sweep the long row of cells. “Is this true for all these people? Is this the way you dodged the objections to euthanasia?”
“Not at all. Some may die, but for most there is hope, active research on new treatments, new techniques that may free them from their disorders. Meanwhile, they aren’t suffering needlessly.” They had reached the end of the rows. Porter stopped the wheelchair before the last cell on the right tier. Next to it a vacant space gaped at her like an empty eye-socket. The cell was missing, the only one in both banks.
“Why are we stopping here?”
“This is where you were,” Porter said.
A white-robed sister stood quietly beside the very last cell, face averted, waiting.
“And Tony? He—he is in there?”
“Yes, Julie. For almost five years he lay beside you.” The old man came around and stood before her. “His last wish was that we waken him when you were able to see him. He assumed, of course, that you would be willing to face him. Are you?”
HER HANDS gripped the arms of the wheelchair until the knuckles whitened. “Yes, yes—no, wait—I—I don’t know. Will it hurt him?”
“Angina has been called the most painful disease of man. The emotion of seeing you again is almost certain to bring on another attack of pain. Probably it will kill him.”
“He knew this?”
“Yes.”
She was silent for a full minute. “You said,” she began slowly, “that for these others there was some hope. Why not for Tony?”
Porter sighed. “Our efforts to rebuild hearts have given no promise whatsoever.”
“But—you are still trying?”
“Yes. Yes, of course. Research never stops, but the prospects of success are almost nil. The heart is a—”
