The Bird Cage (3 page)

“He’s stable, no change,” she said. “Tomorrow I’ll start the recovery period.”

“I want to see him as soon as he’s awake,” he said.

“No, Mr. Markham. He’ll need two days to recover, and after that four to six days, perhaps even a little more time, for the same physical tests he had before the procedure, and the same psychological tests. Until that is done, no visitors, no outsiders will be allowed.”

“I want to see him! As soon as he can talk.”

“I won’t permit that,” she said levelly. “This is my field, Mr. Markham, my regimen, and I will decide every aspect of this procedure, which I just outlined. You will not see him until I say so and that will be in from seven to ten days from today.”

His eyes narrowed, and his pasty complexion darkened. He looked very ill, more so than the previous week, as if his disease was worsening rapidly. He was off his medication, she knew. After looking over his list of medications and supplements she had told him he had to stop taking anything. Too many of them could cause a fatal reaction with the drugs she would infuse when the time came. She had hoped the fear of the consequences of stopping medication would dissuade him.

She had explained the parameters to him, temperature, medications, infusions of electrolytes, hydration… They could only be changed one by one, not in a cluster. She felt certain the temperature was correct, and changing anything else meant another waiting period for observation of the effects. Minute changes, incremental changes. It had to be the drugs. She knew the effects of temperature change. Too cold, death. Too warm, not enough drop in metabolism, either death from hypothermia or brain damage.

And he had his own parameters. Stop medications too soon, too abruptly, without supervision, a rapid deterioration in his illness. He had cursed the parameters, hers and his. She hoped he would die before that young man was released back into his life.

“You’re playing a dangerous game,” Markham said gratingly. “You forget your place here, Dr. Wooten.”

“I forget nothing,” she said. “He has to be in a totally neutral environment when he wakes up. An environment untainted by any outside influence, by any emotional outburst, or inappropriate questions. We don’t know how vulnerable he will be, how susceptible to fear or intimidation, or demands for answers he may not be able or ready to provide. I can ensure that environment. You cannot.”

“What fear? What intimidation? I just want to see him, make sure it worked. It’s my life at stake here!”

She rose from her chair.
Your fear of death, Edward Markham. Your bullying,
Her answer to his question remained silent. “If you’ll excuse me, I have work to do. Please do not return until I call you. There is nothing you can see here that has any meaning for you. There is nothing for you to do at this time.”

His expression was venomous as he laboriously pulled himself upright. So, fire me, she thought. If this test failed, if there was even a hint that the young man was damaged and she refused to proceed with Markham, he would fire her. She suspected that he already had someone else in mind to take over in that event. But not yet. Now he needed her. He understood that it would take time for a replacement to catch up, to learn enough to take the next step. Later she would not care. If it worked, she would publish, and she would quit, write a book, sleep. Later she would sleep.

After Markham was gone, she stood at the side of the cold water bed for a short time. Sleep well, she thought. Pleasant dreams. One more night, just one more night for you, my young friend, then, soon after that, perhaps I can sleep well and have pleasant dreams.

Jean sat in the hospital coffee shop waiting for Trevor, thinking of all the things he had talked about on the way to the hospital. He was an electrical engineer, divorced, his ex had taken off for Los Angeles, leaving him the house and mortgage, taking all the money, about growing up at the orchard, how he and Cody had fought, played together, fished, hiked. Monthly poker games with pals, books he liked, music… It had been a long slow drive and he never had stopped talking.

She had called his mother the day before to get Cody’s address, and she had spent the rest of the day accepting that she had to find him, then denying it. Back and forth all day. Mrs. McCrutchen had been cheerful and claimed to remember Jean. She had been pleased to tell her where he lived.

She might have had a heart attack at the wheel, Jean thought, not a flashback at all, but a heart attack or a stroke or something, and they had nothing to fear about driving, or swimming, or anything else. Strange memories surfacing didn’t have to mean anything else, just memories.

Lying about it didn’t help, she thought with a soft groan. Thinking about it didn’t help either. Where had Cody gotten twenty-five thousand dollars? She visualized his apartment, almost monkish in its barrenness, and boxes and boxes of books stacked against the wall, unopened, unread for more than two years. Trevor had talked about that, too. Cody and his girlfriend, together for three years, had split.

“He was in graduate school,” Trevor had told her, talking, talking about whatever came to mind. “She wanted to get married, start a family, but money was too tight, and he wanted that graduate degree. Horticulture. He broke it off after one big fight too many, I guess. It was a bad time. He dropped out of the program and bummed around for a couple of years, and just a year ago he started to save to go back. God, I hope it wasn’t drug money. Anything, almost anything but that.”

Thinking about it, she shook her head. He wouldn’t have deposited it in the bank, not if it was from drugs. It had to have some legitimacy to be so open about it. That might be a start, a way to find him, tell him she was sorry.

Abruptly she stood. Not again. Don’t play that over again. There had been a newspaper stand in the lobby, she remembered, and went out to get something to read, something else to think about.

She took a newspaper back to the cafeteria, got coffee, and sat in a booth trying to read one article after another as if she were back in school, cramming for a test. Finally Trevor joined her.

“How is she?”

“Stable, a little improved, they said. They put a reclining chair in for Dad so he can stay with her. He won’t leave and I can’t go in, so here I am.”

“Want some pretty bad coffee?”

He shook his head, then craned to see the article and photograph below the fold. She had read it. A local woman had hanged herself. Trevor’s face turned ashen and he snatched up the paper.

“You knew her?”

“Elise Bronstein,” he said. “Good God! Elise!” He let the newspaper fall. “She was Cody’s girl friend. She attempted suicide after the break up.”

Jean stared at him in horror. “You think she… Like your mother? Like you and me?”

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” he said raggedly.

Back in the car he sat with both hands clutching the steering wheel, staring ahead blindly. “I saw her a couple of months ago. She was happy, with a guy, thinking about getting married. She and Cody… always stormy, fighting the last six months or longer. I have to find him!” he said. “He could be hurt, or something. Like us, like my mother.”

He didn’t add like Elise, but Jean did in her head. “Let’s go back to his apartment, find out who gave him all that money. He must have a check book, someplace where he recorded the deposit. Online banking maybe.”

He started the engine.

“Keep talking, Trevor. Tell me about him, about Cody. Did you two keep in touch?”

Driving very slowly, keeping to side streets through neighborhoods she had never seen before, he talked about his brother. “He was a daredevil as a kid, never afraid of anything. And smart, smarter than me. He wants to make a difference in farming, soil management or something, or he did before he dropped out. He was devastated when Elise attempted suicide. Blamed himself. We were planning to hike up in the Olympic wilderness in August, looking forward to it… ”

Most of his rambling was meaningless, Jean thought, just random thoughts, memories of a man who loved his kid brother. They talked every week or so, and Cody had a cell phone. She made a mental note of that. They emailed each other more often than they talked, another note—there was a computer in that little studio apartment. They could search files or something. He worked as a groundskeeper somewhere, just another of a series of go-nowhere jobs while he tried to accumulate a little money before he got back in school. He had not been willing to take a real job with a real commitment, he wanted to get back on his own track, finish what he had started. He had not mentioned going away, leaving.

Trevor was in the middle of another bit of trivia when he pulled up to the curb outside Cody’s apartment building and stopped talking.

“Made it,” he said after a moment. “Jean, are we being stupid?”

“No,” she said. “We are not. Let’s find his computer and see what’s on it. Maybe find his cell phone, check recent messages. Find out where he worked. Someone signed pay checks for him. Find out if he turned up at work this week. Like you said, we have to find him, get to the bottom of this. It seems as if everything going on revolves around him one way or another.”

“Good thinking,” he said. “I’ve been too busy talking to think about a thing. I’ve never talked so much in such a short time in my life. Let’s go in.”

Inside the dreary apartment, Jean checked the refrigerator that proved to be almost as barren as the furnishings of the place. No vegetables, no milk, no perishables. She searched pockets for a cell phone as Trevor began to search the files on a laptop that he had found under a lot of papers on the table. Jean found the cell phone and his check book in a wind breaker pocket.

An hour later they considered the meager results of their searches.

“He worked for a company called Markham Enterprises,” Trevor said. “They’re into a lot of different things, but primarily land development. Somewhere they have property that requires a regular crew of grounds keepers.”

He drew in a long breath. “And that big check apparently was paid to him by the company, signed by Markham. That’s all he entered in his check book, just Markham.”

She nodded. “I think he knew he’d be gone for more than a few days, and he cleaned out his refrigerator.”

“Go away and leave his wallet, his cell phone, lap top, check book? It doesn’t make any sense,” Trevor said. “You take ID if nothing else, even if you’ve gone camping. His camping gear is in the closet.”

She felt as helpless as he looked. Hesitantly she said, “Maybe you should notify the police. Make a missing person report or something.”

He thought about a twenty-five thousand dollar check recently deposited and shook his head. “He could be in real trouble. Something he wouldn’t want the police to know about,” he said in a low voice. “Scare my dad even more than he is now. Not yet. Maybe later, but not yet.”

“Is his car here?”

“He sold it, said it was an expense he could do without. He uses a bike to get around.” He jumped up. “I didn’t think to check it out. Wait here.” He hurried from the apartment, returned a minute later and said flatly. “It’s chained to the rack. Someone came to get him. He must have emptied his pockets and left with him.”

He looked about the apartment, crossed to the table and snatched up Cody’s cell phone. “Let’s get out of here,” he said.

“What are you going to do?”

“Let’s go to my place. Get something to drink. I’m going to call every number in his address book. Someone has to know where he is. He wouldn’t have walked out with a stranger.”

After another hellish drive with Trevor talking all the way, they were on his patio drinking iced tea. No alcohol, Jean had said. He had to go to the hospital by five to check on his mother, relieve his father, let him leave her long enough to take a walk, eat something.

“If anything happens… ” she had said turning down beer, a mixed drink. “You know. They shouldn’t smell alcohol.”

Now he was making another call.

She listened to the one-sided conversation dully. Nothing. No one knew anything. He disconnected and put the phone on a table. “I’ll finish later,” he said. “I have to go. I’ll finish calling later.” He drained his glass and stood. “Jean, why don’t you stay here. I’ll get a cab. You can rest.”

She jumped up. “No! I don’t want to be alone! Stay together, you said that we should stay together.” She heard the panic in her voice and drew in a long breath. “I’ll drive this time. We should take turns. Trevor, I don’t want to be alone. Not yet.”

He examined her face, nodded. “Yeah, we should stay together for now. Let’s go.”

He sat with his eyes closed as she drove and talked about whatever came to mind. She had been an interior decorator. The company tanked and she lost the job, got hired by someone called Lizzie, a fabric shop. She liked to ski. Her voice faltered and stopped and he said quietly, “Keep talking, Jean.” She started again.

“I thought I had wet myself. But I hadn’t. When I took off my snow pants, I was dry. He was wet, not me, but I felt wet and ashamed.”

“Keep talking,” he said again in a strained voice. He had felt his legs burning, Cody’s legs burning. “You’re doing fine. We’ll be there in a few minutes.”

Her mouth was dry. But she had felt wet that day. She talked without any real awareness of what she was saying. Now and again she glanced at him, now and then caught him glancing at her.

Again in the coffee shop, this time with a book, she was prepared to wait a long time for him to return, and that day at the pond played in her head, the sensation of being wet, freezing cold and wet, screaming. She wanted to scream and bit her lip, forced herself to look at the open book she held, and could not remember what she had read. She started over.

Finally he came to the booth and slumped into the seat opposite her. “She’s a little better,” he said. “Breathing without the ventilator. If the improvement continues through the night, they might move her to a private room tomorrow. Still critical, but better.”

“Your father? How’s he doing?”

“He went out to eat, but he won’t leave again tonight. Ready to drive?”