Garcia's Heart (29 page)

Bolodis regarded him the way Patrick imagined he had looked at patients with brains in varying states of disarray, estimating the wreckage before setting to work. Work wary. Brain wary. In full view of the guards, Bolodis lifted his hand to Patrick's face, put his middle finger just under the angle of Patrick's jaw and examined the contusion closely. It was something only a doctor would have the nerve to do, a gesture at once intimate and distanced, a public act that drew no attention from the guards at their kiosk.

“You didn't go to the hospital.”

“No.”

A fraternal grimace. Patrick knew he understood.

“Follow me, Dr. Lazerenko.”

Bolodis led him down a stairway–they had been downstairs, that much he remembered–and from the first hallway the familiarity of place emerged, previously laid-down tracks rolled out with each corner turned, and he was able to recall the entire maze of corridors that ended in the medical office and the infirmary. The lights were still on and the screen saver on Bolodis's computer flashed a medley of
UN
-approved Den Haag architectural cheesecake photos: the Vredespaleis, the Grote Kerk, and even the tribunal building got a glamour shot, photographed next to a reflecting pool to make it look like a twelfth-century castle rising from its moat. Bolodis extended his hand and Patrick sat up on the examining table.

“Bolodis. That doesn't sound Dutch.”

“It's not. I'm from Latvia. Riga,” Bolodis said, and opened a file. “I came in 1994, a few years after the Soviet Union fell.”

“Do you ever think of going back?”

He looked up at Patrick. “Why do you ask that?”

“No reason. It just seems that with the new freedoms…”

“I could have stayed,” Bolodis answered, shrugging like the thought was a wet coat he wanted to shed. “You're American?”

“I work there. I'm naturalized.”

Bolodis pulled a piece of loose paper out of Patrick's chart: “We make a photocopy of the passports of anyone seen here, and I couldn't help but notice you are an American citizen, but you still have a Canadian passport.”

“I kept it. Some places you have to show your passport to get in.”

“I gave up my Latvian status.” Patrick nodded. “Why are you here at the tribunal?”

“I knew Hernan García when I was young. I grew up in Montreal and worked for him then. The two women–”

“Celia and Nina, his daughters. Yes, I know,” Bolodis added, sitting on the desk opposite the examination table. “Well, let's have a look at you.” Bolodis got up and washed his hands. He snapped on a pair of latex gloves and asked Patrick to open his mouth, his fingers on the skin over the joint to determine how the jaw was opening. He pulled a penlight out of his breast pocket and clicked it into a knifepoint of light. Bolodis held the light in front of Patrick's face, swinging it from one eye to the other. Blindness followed, the intermittent, sequential blindness between the bright lights. The light was painfully intense, and impossibly had the sound of a bonfire when it came near.

“Do you have headaches?” he asked.

“Some. More last night.”

“Follow my finger. Are you dizzy?”

“When I move quickly.”

“Dizzy like spinning or dizzy like being on a boat?”

“Like a boat.”

Bolodis brushed the tips of his index fingers over the skin on Patrick's forehead. The cheeks and chin were tested next: “Do you feel this?” Patrick nodded. “Close your eyes, please. That hurts?”

“Yes.”

“Now please open your mouth.”

The doctor shone the light into Patrick's throat. When he had finished, Patrick asked him how many doctors worked at the tribunal.

Bolodis clicked off the penlight. “I am the only one. If you'd like to see another–”

“No, no,” Patrick replied, and Bolodis disengaged, leaning back on his desk, as though expecting what was coming next. “I didn't come for me. I came because I wanted to speak to Hernan's doctor. I'm worried about him.” Bolodis nodded. He crossed his arms and brought one hand, fingers curled into a loosely held fist, to his mouth. It looked as though he needed to cough.

“What exactly are you worried about?”

“His health.”

“Tell me what you're worried about. Exactly.”

“He's sick. He's obviously having angina. Every time I see him, he's using his nitrospray. Today, I thought he was having a heart attack.”

Bolodis paused. To Patrick, he was a man thinking of job security and working conditions in Riga. “I can't tell you anything. His medical information is confidential. Please understand.” Bolodis took a piece of gauze and dabbed it
against Patrick's swollen lower eyelid. Despite the delicacy of the act, Patrick winced. From what he could see, the gauze was moist but not discoloured.

“No infection,” Bolodis said, happy to get back to the routine of minor trauma. “These are tears.”

“I'm a doctor, I'm a friend of the family.”

“So much more the reason for discretion.”

“Can I see him then, to ask him if he's okay?”

“You know he's refusing visits. That is his right. Would it reassure you to know that we're aware of every detainee's medical history? The fact that he is taking medication in front of you should put your mind at ease, I would hope. And please let me remind you that we have never had a case of someone suffering at our hands…”

“It's not that–”

“You don't practise, do you, Dr. Lazerenko?”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“And he is a cardiologist–”

“
Was
a cardiologist.”

“Yes, yes. He was a cardiologist, Dr. Lazerenko, please remember that. Perhaps he has insights into his own condition that his friends or his family don't have. Turn your head.” There was a pause and Bolodis pointed to his own ear when he saw the puzzled look on Patrick's face. “I have to look inside.” The exam was painful and made Patrick want to yawn. “You do research,” Bolodis said as he examined the other side, as though he had discovered this fact looking into Patrick's ear.

“Yes.”

“I read about it. After you left I did a literature search on you. I read about your research.” Always a non sequitur. He never knew whether to say “Thanks” or “Sorry” when what he
usually meant was “I don't care.” “It was very interesting,” Bolodis said earnestly. “I like to think about these questions too.” A broader version of the smile appeared, which was then revised into something cloudier: “Is that why you're here?”

“I'm sorry?”

“Your research. I read that it hopes to explain certain behaviours.”

Patrick shook his head. “I'm here for personal reasons. Besides, I don't do that kind of research any more.”

“I mean, I can see it, you know. The brain determines our mental states, how we feel, and brain function is subject to physical laws; it's determined.”

“Sure.”

“So, where is his free will? How can he be guilty? How can anybody be guilty?” Patrick was glad Bolodis added the last part, it made it easier not to have to answer him. Bolodis paused, then said, “I've met a fair number of unusual people at the tribunal. You can't help but think. You get a lot of time to think.”

“Do you see Hernan regularly?”

“Yes.”

“Every day?”

“Most days. Yes. Every day.”

“He talks to you, doesn't he?”

“Of course he does. I'm his doctor.”

“No, he
talks
to you. Not just about his medical condition.”

“Confidentiality, Dr. Lazerenko. A physician should respect that.”

“I think he's unwell.”

“I can't discuss this.”

“Why does Hernan think I'm here? Is it because of the research? Because that's not what I do.”

“What
do
you do, Dr. Lazerenko?”

Patrick sighed. “I study how people make certain decisions with their money. Period. I look at situations and variables in order to help make marketing decisions. Who told you I was a researcher in the first place? Did I tell you that when I was here before?”

Bolodis shook his head: “No. Celia told me.” He put the file down on the desk, and as his arm extended, Patrick saw the creases of the elbow of his linen suit open up.

“He should know how he's affecting his family by not talking.”

“I'm sure he's aware,” Bolodis said flatly, and jettisoned the latex gloves into the container next to the examining table.

Bolodis smiled but Patrick understood it was anything but a smile; it was a default mechanism, professionally applied but still a Soviet-bloc–grade obfuscational device. He would prefer open disdain. He had grown used to disdain–in the world of business it had become one of the indicators that he was doing his job well. The smile was like a handshake held too long, a breach of decorum, more flagrant for it being used among people who had some sort of shared experience. But he and Bolodis were not the same. To Bolodis he was a lapsed colleague, a theoretical thinker, a mercenary, a pain in the ass on a Friday afternoon. But he shouldn't be so harsh, he thought, a smile could mean so many things: tolerance, beneficence, sympathy–samplers of goodwill, sentiments lasting long enough to get him out of the office.

“I think you're fit to go, Dr. Lazerenko.”

 

THIRTEEN

The village has been captured by enemy soldiers with orders to kill all civilians. A group of townspeople have sought refuge in the hayloft of an abandoned barn. They can hear the soldiers outside; the soldiers are coming toward the barn. At that moment, a woman's infant daughter begins to cry. She covers the child's mouth to block the sound. If she removes her hand from the child's mouth, the soldiers will be alerted and will kill the woman, her child, and all the townspeople. To save herself and the others, she must kill her child.

The story was a thought experiment, and it preoccupied Patrick as he walked the deserted streets of Den Haag. The crying baby dilemma was meant to highlight the conflict between group welfare and personal moral conviction. The emotional response, the abhorrence associated with the thought of killing one's child was forced to compete with the abstract understanding that the child would die under either circumstance and that many lives could be saved by committing this act.

It was a terrible thing to contemplate. Something visceral occurred, Patrick had felt it. He'd watched as the faces of his undergrad students furrowed, as though for the first time, while considering this dilemma. They'd answer slowly, toeing their way along the process as though they heard ice creaking.

What is the right thing to do? How do we decide what is right? Philosophers had the question to themselves for centuries. Utilitarianism versus deontology. John Stuart Mill against Kant in the ultimate cage match. And after three centuries without a resolution from the philosophers, neuro-scientists had begun eyeing the dilemma–specifically, what part of the brain was activated in a decision-making process and if relatively greater activity in certain parts of the brain reflected a more utilitarian response.

Even though Neuronaut didn't study these sorts of problems, Patrick had thought of this dilemma a lot in the last two years. He had watched from the corporate sidelines as the research of his former colleagues progressed without him. At one time, he had wanted to do the experiments himself, to define a neural basis of conflict in moral judgments, to understand how they are resolved. He wanted to know what happened in the brains of the Nazi doctors to allow them to continue with their day. He wanted to know what sort of brain activity, what deft imbalance between competing regions made it possible for Hernan García to participate in the torture and killings of civilians, in the death of José-Maria Fernandez, a boy he'd taught. A boy he'd known.

Of course, Patrick didn't do this experiment. He was busy getting a prospectus together and figuring what parts of Globomart's new promotional campaign were maximally activating temporal lobe structures. But the study, which
used functional magnetic resonance scans to study the brains of subjects as they considered the “crying baby dilemma” was done, and done well, and showed that parts of the brain–the anterior cingulate cortex and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex–were activated during the moral angst that came with these dilemmas, and when the decision was made to pursue the utilitarian route, to smother the child, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex was even more strongly activated.

He didn't want to think about Hernan practising that pragmatism, killing for a larger cause. It was once a solace for Patrick to think that Hernan made the decision to trade the lives of those held at Battalion 316 for those of his family. And even then, he hoped Hernan had felt anguish, hoped for a moment of moral hesitation when the reflexes of everyday life were stripped away and one's actions had to be considered. But even if he was coerced, Hernan had come to the conclusion that someone's death made sense. It was easier to think about the brain malfunctioning, and that is how he needed to think of Hernan now, that his dorsolateral prefrontal cortex was activated at a crucial moment, resolving the conflict. In some ways it absolved him. It made the smothering of a child easier to contemplate. Evil was unfathomable, but Patrick knew how to measure blood flow.