The Terminal Man

The Terminal Man Page 6

Psychodex was relatively simple. It was a test that took straightforward answers to psychological questions and manipulated the answers according to complex mathematical formulations. As the data were fed into the computer, Ross watched the screen glow with row after row of calculations.

She ignored them; the numbers, she knew, were just the computer's scratch pad, the intermediate steps that it went through before arriving at a final answer. She smiled, thinking of how Gerhard would explain it - rotation of thirty by thirty matrices in space, deriving factors, making them orthogonal, then weighting them. It all sounded complicated and scientific, and she didn't really understand any of it.

She had discovered long ago that you could use a computer without understanding how it worked. Just as you could use an automobile, a vacuum cleaner - or your own brain.

The screen flashed "CALCULATIONS ENDED. CALL DISPLAY SEQUENCE."

She punched in the display sequence for three-space scoring. The computer informed her that three spaces accounted for eighty-one percent of variance. On the screen she saw a three-dimensional image of a mountain with a sharp peak. She stared at it a moment, then picked up the telephone and paged McPherson.

McPherson frowned at the screen. Ellis looked over his shoulder. Ross said, "Is it clear?"

"Perfectly," McPherson said. "When was it done?"

"Today," she said.

McPherson sighed. "You're not going to quit without a battle, are you?"

Instead of answering, she punched buttons and called up a second mountain peak, much lower. "Here's the last one previously."

"On this scoring, the elevation is- "

"Psychotic mentation," she said.

"So he's much more pronounced now," McPherson said. "Much more than even a month ago."

"Yes," she said.

"You think he was screwing around with the test?"

She shook her head. She punched in the four previous tests, in succession. The trend was clear: on each test the mountain peak got higher and sharper.

"Well, then," McPherson said, "he's definitely getting worse. I gather you still think we shouldn't operate."

"More than ever," she said. "He's unquestionably psychotic, and if you start putting wires in his head- "

"I know," McPherson said. "I know what you're saying."

"- he's going to feel that he's been turned into a machine," she said.

McPherson turned to Ellis. "Do you suppose we can knock this elevation down with thorazine?" Thorazine was a major tranquilizer. With some psychotics, it helped them to think more clearly.

"I think it's worth a try."

McPherson nodded. "I do, too. Janet?"

She stared at the screen and didn't reply. It was odd how these tests worked. The mountain peaks were an abstraction, a mathematical representation of an emotional state. They weren't a real characteristic of a person, like fingers or toes, or height or weight.

"Janet? What do you think?" McPherson repeated.

"I think," she said, "that you're both committed to this operation."

"And you still disapprove?"

"I don't 'disapprove.' I think it's unwise for Benson."

"What do you think about using thorazine?" McPherson persisted.

"It's a gamble."

"A gamble not worth taking."

"Maybe it's worth it, and maybe it's not. But it's a gamble."

McPherson nodded and turned to Ellis. "Do you still want to do him?"

"Yes," Ellis said, staring at the screen. "I still want to do him."

7

As always, Morris found it strange to play tennis on the hospital court. The hospital buildings looming high above him always made him feel slightly guilty - all those rows of windows, all those patients who could not do what he was doing. Then there was the sound. Or, rather, the absence of sound. The freeway ran near the hospital, and the reassuring thwock! of the tennis balls was completely obliterated by the steady, monotonous rush of passing cars.

It was getting dark now, and he was having trouble with his vision; the ball seemed to pop unexpectedly into his court. Kelso was much less hampered. Morris often joked that Kelso ate too many carrots, but whatever the explanation, it was humiliating to play late with Kelso. Darkness helped him. And Morris hated to lose.

He had long ago become comfortable with the fact of his own competitiveness. Morris never stopped competing. He competed in games, he competed in work, he competed with women. More than once Ross had pointed that out to him, and then dropped the subject in the sly way that psychiatrists raise a point, then drop it. Morris didn't mind. It was a fact of his life, and whatever the connotations - deep insecurity, a need to prove himself, a feeling of inferiority - he didn't worry about it. He drew pleasure from competition and satisfaction from winning. And so far in his life he had managed to win more often than not.

In part, he had joined the NPS because the challenges were very great and because the potential rewards were enormous. Privately, Morris expected to be a professor of surgery before he was forty. His past career had been outstanding- that was why Ellis had accepted him - and he was equally confident about his future. It wouldn't hurt to be associated with a major landmark in surgical practice.

All in all, he was in a good mood, and he played hard for half an hour, until he was tired and it was too dark to see. He signaled to Kelso - no point in calling above the freeway sounds - to end the game. They met at the net and shook hands. Morris was reassured to see that Kelso was sweating heavily.

"Good game," Kelso said. "Tomorrow, same time?"

"I'm not sure," Morris said.

Kelso paused. "Oh," he said. "That's right. You have a big day tomorrow."

"Big day," Morris nodded. Christ, had the news even reached the pediatric residents? For a moment he felt what Ellis must be feeling - the intense pressure, abstract, vague, that came from knowing that the entire University Hospital staff was watching this procedure.

"Well, good luck with it," Kelso said.

As the two men walked back to the hospital, Morris saw Ellis, a distant solitary figure, limping slightly as he crossed the parking lot and climbed into his car, and drove home.

Wednesday, March 10, 1971: Implantation

1

At 6 a.m. Janet Ross was on the third surgical floor, dressed in greens, having coffee and a doughnut. The surgeons' lounge was busy at this hour. Although operations were scheduled to begin at six, most didn't get going for fifteen or twenty minutes after that. The surgeons sat around, reading the newspaper, discussing the stock market and their golf games. From time to time one of them would leave, go to the overhead viewing galleries, and look down on their ORs to see how preparations were coming.

She was the only woman in the room, and her presence changed the masculine atmosphere subtly. It annoyed her that she should be the only woman, and it annoyed her that the men should become quieter, more polite, less jovial and raucous. She didn't give a damn if they were raucous, and she resented being made to feel like an intruder. It seemed to her that she had been an intruder all her life, even when she was very young. Her father had been a surgeon who never bothered to conceal his disappointment and irritation that he had a daughter instead of a son. A son would have fitted into his scheme of life; he could have brought him to the hospital on Saturday mornings, taken him into the operating rooms - those were all things you could do with a son. But a daughter was something else, a perplexing entity not suited for a surgical life. And therefore an intrusion...

She looked around at all the surgeons in the lounge, and then, to cover her unease, she went to the phone and dialed the seventh floor.

"This is Dr. Ross. Is Mr. Benson on call?"

"He was just sent."

"When did he leave the floor?"

"About five minutes ago."

She hung up and went back to her coffee. Ellis appeared and waved to her across the room. "There'll be a five-minute delay hooking into the computer," he said. "They're tying in the lines now. Is the patient on call?"

"Sent five minutes ago."

"You seen Morris?"

"Not yet."

"He better get his ass down here," Ellis said.

Somehow that made her feel good.

Morris was in the elevator with a nurse and Benson, who lay on a stretcher, and one of the cops. As they rode down, Morris said to the cop, "You can't get off on the floor."

"Why not?"

"We're going onto the sterile floor directly."

"What should I do?" The cop was intimidated. He'd been docile and hesitant all morning. The routine of surgery left him feeling a helpless outsider.

"You can watch from the viewing gallery on the third floor. Tell the desk nurse I said it was all right."

The cop nodded. The elevator stopped at the second floor. The doors opened to reveal a hallway with people, all in surgical greens, walking back and forth. A large sign read STERILE AREA. NO ADMITTANCE WITHOUT AUTHORIZATION. The lettering was red.

Morris and the nurse wheeled Benson out of the elevator.

The cop remained behind, looking nervous. He pushed the button for the third floor, and the doors closed.

Morris went with Benson down the corridor. After a moment, Benson said, "I'm still awake."

"Of course you are."

"But I don't want to be awake."

Morris nodded patiently. Benson had gotten pre-op medications half an hour earlier. They would be taking effect soon, making him drowsy. "How's your mouth?"

"Dry"

That was the atropine beginning to work. "You'll be okay." Morris himself had never had an operation. He'd performed hundreds, but never experienced one himself. In recent years, he had begun to wonder how it felt to be on the other side of things. He suspected, though he would never admit it, that it must be awful.

"You'll be okay," he said to Benson again, and touched his shoulder.

Benson just stared at him as he was wheeled down the corridor to OR 9.

OR 9 was the largest operating room in the hospital. It was nearly thirty feet square and packed with electronic equipment. When the full surgical team was there - all twelve of them - things got pretty crowded. But now just two scrub nurses were working in the cavernous gray-tiled space. They were setting out sterile tables and drapes around the chair.

OR 9 had no operating table. Instead, there was a softly cushioned upright chair, like a dentist's chair. Janet Ross watched the girls through the windows in the door that separated the scrub room from the operating room. Alongside her, Ellis finished his scrub and muttered something about fucking Morris being fucking late. Ellis got profane before operations. He also got very nervous, though he seemed to think nobody noticed that. Ross had scrubbed with him on several animal procedures and had seen the ritual - tension and profanity before the operation, and utter bland calmness once things were under way.

Ellis turned off the faucets with his elbows and entered the OR, backing in so that his arms did not touch the door. A nurse handed him a towel. While he dried his hands, he looked back through the door at Ross, and then up at the glass-walled viewing gallery overhead. Ross knew there would be a crowd in the gallery watching the operation.

Morris came down and began scrubbing. She said, "Ellis wondered where you were."

"Tour guide for the patient," he said.

One of the circulating nurses entered the scrub room and said, "Dr. Ross, there's somebody here from the radiation lab with a unit for Dr. Ellis. Does he want it now?"

"If it's loaded," she said.

"I'll ask," the nurse said. She disappeared, and stuck her head in a moment later. "He says it's loaded and ready to go, but unless your equipment is shielded it could give you trouble."

Ross knew that all the OR equipment had been shielded the week before. The plutonium exchanger didn't put out much radiation - not enough to fog an X-ray plate - but it could confuse more delicate scientific equipment. There was, of course, no danger to people.

"We're shielded," Ross said. "Have him take it into the OR."

Ross turned to Morris, scrubbing alongside her. "How's

Benson?"

"Nervous."

"He should be," she said. Morris glanced at her, his eyes questioning above the gauze surgical mask. She shook her hands free of excess water and backed into the OR. The first thing she saw was the rad-lab man wheeling in the tray with the charging unit on it. It was contained in a small lead box. On the sides were stenciled DANGER RADIATION and the triple-blade orange symbol for radiation. It was all faintly ridiculous; the charging unit was quite safe.

Ellis stood across the room, being helped into his gown. He plunged his hands into his rubber gloves and flexed his fingers. To the rad-lab man he said, "Has it been sterilized?"

Chapter 5

"Sir?"

"Has the unit been sterilized?"

"I don't know, sir."

"Then give it to one of the girls and have her autoclave it. It's got to be sterile."

Dr. Ross dried her hands and shivered in the cold of the operating room. Like most surgeons, Ellis preferred a cold room - too cold, really, for the patient. But as Ellis often said, "If I'm happy, the patient's happy."

Ellis was now across the room standing by the viewing box, while the circulating nurse, who was not scrubbed, put up the patient's X-rays. Ellis peered closely at them, though he had seen them a dozen times before. They were perfectly normal skull films. Air had been injected into the ventricles, so that the horns stood out darkly.

One by one the rest of the team filtered into the room.

All together, there were two scrub nurses, two circulating nurses, one orderly, Ellis, two assistant surgeons including Morris, two electronics technicians, and a computer programmer. The anaesthetist was outside with Benson.

Without looking up from his console, one of the electronics men said, "Any time you want to begin, Doctor."