The Dark Half(2)

New Jersey.

Pritchard ordered the X-rays and read them. He showed them to the Beaumonts, asking them to look with particular care at a vague shadow he had circled with a yellow wax pencil.

'This,' he said. 'What's this?'

'How the hell should we know?' Glen Beaumont asked. 'You re the goddam doctor.'

'Right,' Pritchard said dryly.

'The wife said it looked like he pitched a fit,' Glen said.

Dr Pritchard said, 'If you mean he had a seizure, yes, he did. If you mean he had an epileptic seizure, I'm pretty sure he didn't. A seizure as serious as your son's would surely have been grand mal, and Thad showed no reaction whatever to the Litton Light Test. In fact, if Thad had grand mal epilepsy, you wouldn't need a doctor to point the fact out to you. He'd be doing the Watusi on the living room rug every time the picture on your TV set decided to roll.'

'Then what is it?' Shayla asked timidly..Pritchard turned back to the X-ray mounted on the front of light-box. 'What is that?' he responded, and tapped the circled area again. 'The sudden onset of headaches coupled with any lack of previous seizures suggests to me that your son has a brain tumor, probably still small and hopefully benign.'

Glen Beaumont stared at the doctor stonily while his wife stood beside him and wept into her handkerchief. She wept without making a sound. This silent weeping was the result of years of spousal training. Glen's fists were fast and hurtful and almost never left marks, and after twelve years of silent sorrow, she probably could not have cried out loud even if she had wanted to.

'Does all this mean you want to cut his brains?' Glen asked with his usual tact and delicacy.

'I wouldn't put it quite that way, Mr Beaumont, but I believer exploratory surgery is called for, yes.' And he thought: If there, really is a God, and if He really made us in His Own image, I don't like to think about why there are so damned many men like this one, walking around with the fates of so many others in their hands.

Glen was silent for several long moments, his head down, his brow furrowed in thought. At last he raised his head and asked the question which troubled him most of all.

'Tell me the truth, Doc - how much is all this gonna cost?'

The assisting O.R. nurse saw it first.

Her scream was shrill and shocking in the operating room, where the only sounds for the last fifteen minutes had been Dr Pritchard's' murmured commands, the hiss of the bulky life-support machinery, and the brief, high whine of the Negli saw.

She stumbled backward, struck a rolling Ross tray on which almost two dozen instruments had been neatly laid out, and knocked it over. It struck the tiled floor with an echoing clang which was followed by a number of smaller tinkling sounds.

'Hilary!' the head nurse shouted. Her voice was full of shock and surprise. She forgot herself so far as to actually take half a step toward the fleeing woman in her flapping green-gown.

Dr Albertson, who was assisting, kicked the head nurse briefly in the calf with one of his slippered feet. 'Remember where you are, please.'

'Yes, Doctor.' She turned back at once, not even looking toward the O.R. door as it banged open and Hilary exited stage left, still screaming like a runaway fire engine.

'Get the hardware in the sterilizer,' Albertson said. 'Right away. Chop-chop.'

'Yes, Doctor.'

She began to gather up the instruments, breathing hard, clearly flustered, but under control.

Dr Pritchard seemed to have noticed none of this. He was looking with rapt attention into the window which had been carved in Thad Beaumont's skull.

'Incredible,' he murmured. 'Just incredible. This is really one for the books. If I weren't seeing it with my own eyes - '

The hiss of the sterilizer seemed to wake him up, and he looked at Dr Albertson.

'I want suction,' he said sharply. He glanced at the nurse. 'And what the f**k are you doing? The

Sunday Times crossword? Get your ass over here with those!'

She came, carrying the instruments in a fresh pan.

'Give me suction, Lester,' Pritchard said to Albertson. 'Right now. Then I'm going to show you something you never saw outside of a county fair freak-show.'

Albertson wheeled over the suction-pump, ignoring the head nurse, who leaped back out of his way, balancing the instruments deftly as she did so.

Pritchard was looking at the anesthesiologist..'Give me good B.P., my friend. Good B.P. is all I ask.'

'He's one-oh-five over sixty-eight, Doctor. Steady as a rock.'

'Well, his mother says we've got the next William Shakespeare laid out here, so keep it that way. Suck on him, Lester - don't tickle him with the goddam thing!'

Albertson applied suction, clearing the blood. The monitoring equipment beeped steadily, monotonously, comfortingly, in the background. Then it was his own breath he was sucking in. He felt as if someone had punched him high up in the belly.

'Oh my God. Oh Jesus. Jesus Christ.' He recoiled for a moment . . . then leaned in close. Above his mask and behind his horn-rimmed spectacles, his eyes were wide with sudden glinting curiosity. 'What is it?'

'I think you see what it is,' Pritchard said. 'It's just that it takes a second to get used to. I've read about it but never expected to actually see it.'

Thad Beaumont's brain was the color of a conch shell's outer edge - a medium gray with just the slightest tinge of rose.