Law

Law

By Ed Willis

Copyright 2012 Ed Willis

Smashwords Edition

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To Selaine

Credits

Part 1, Chapter 3:

Parisian Dream by Charles Baudelaire, from Les Fleurs Du Mal translated by Richard Howard, 1982.

Do not go gentle into that good night, by Dylan Thomas, from The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas 1934-1952, 1953.

Find meat on bones, by Dylan Thomas, from The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas 1934-1952, 1953.

O Saisons, O Chateaus, from Arthur Rimbaud: Complete Works, translated by Paul Schmidt, 1967.

The Drunken Boat, from Arthur Rimbaud: Complete Works, translated by Paul Schmidt, 1967.

Part 1

Chapter 1

Will there be any pain?

They assure Max that there won’t be much. The local anesthetic will be the worst of it, and the bone saw. He will need to be conscious throughout. There will be some unpleasantness with the vibration and noise when he’s opened up, but once that’s done, the brain, itself, has no receptors and so the majority of the procedure will be painless.

They cover post-operative details. Max will be moved to a room on the top floor for recovery. They offer to take him up for a look after their discussion.

He declines.

Dr. Hull sits casually atop a small filing cabinet beside the desk while Dr. Watson sits at the desk itself. They exchange a glance. Watson begins enumerating the details of the contract. He summarizes each section in turn and notes that everything has been settled except the matter of Max’s compensation. Watson notes that they can be quite accommodating on this aspect of their arrangement. He suggests that charities, church, family or friends might all benefit from Max’s generosity.

He declines.

The doctors seem unsatisfied by Max’s response. They direct him to reconsider the matter more than once. They fall silent for a moment.

Hull clears his throat and details the care Max can expect during his recovery and afterward. He makes clear the extremes to which Hull, Watson and their colleagues will go to ensure his continuing good health. Hull is careful to point out that no further surgical procedures are permitted save for those required to sustain his health.

Watson says that should cover the last of the contract details, unless Max has any further questions.

He declines.

Watson assures him that there is no rush and suggests that he take a couple of days to think it over. Max asks if they have the contract ready now. Hull and Watson pause a moment, looking him over carefully. Watson calls his secretary in and asks for the paperwork. The secretary will need a few minutes to print it off.

Max stands up and goes to the window. He leans against the frame and looks down to the street beyond. His eyes follow the slow, halting progress of a blind man down on the pavement.

The secretary comes in with the papers. Max sits down again.

Where do I sign?

#

Max returns to his room. He climbs the stairs and passes two of his neighbors without greeting them. He closes the door behind him. He sits down on the edge of his bed, smoking, his unfocused eyes fixed on the wall just under the window. He realizes he’d forgotten to ask how long he’d have.

He turns on the TV and lies back on the bed, his dull eyes reflecting distorted TV images and his slack lips betraying such emptiness. They would soon be so full.

Chapter 2

They burst into the apartment. The door slammed into the wall. John reached for the light switch, lost his balance and fell to the hallway floor.

She was on him in a second, dropping to her knees beside him and tugging at his belt. He kicked the door closed. He pulled her shirt off over her head. She had his cock free and in her mouth. Her tongue slid like a quick, darting fish on him. He rolled her on top and covered her ears, neck, and her breasts with kisses. She jumped up and ran to the bedroom, calling to him over her shoulder. John ran after her, pulling his clothes off as he went. He had one leg out of his pants when he stumbled and crashed into the wall. A picture frame fell and shattered. Glass flew everywhere. He cut his foot and left bloody footprints on the carpet. He tumbled onto the bed. He wrapped his arms around her. He felt his foot bleeding. She pulled him between her legs. He slipped in smooth, tight and perfect. He took a deep breath. Slow, so slow. He stroked her breasts. She traced her lips around him. She bucked up at him to go faster. They were covered in sweat, and the bed, too, was hot and damp. Faster and faster, then, but the movement divorced from him as their bodies raced. Abruptly, his mind broke free and jerked upwards to the ceiling. He watched their bodies below him dispassionately. A perpetual motion device made of meat. He receded further, vanishing towards the horizon. There was no pleasure.

Sudden traveling, a lurching sense of motion, of translation. He closed his eyes against the vertigo, and pictured there, he discovered a dim landscape under an even, dusky sky. A rocky plain where sky ran down to earth in an ambiguous blur, without trees, without animals, without insects.

Faintly, far below him on the ground, there were two points of light, alone on that wide, empty plain. The wind screamed utter silence through rocks and sand. He shot himself over the landscape, made right angle turns, broke the sound barrier with a shocking roar. He returned and hung himself over those two fragile spots.

She sighed.

He opened his eyes. They were finished. Their skin stuck together. The bed was soaked. The sheets were tangled around his feet and clung to him as he rolled off onto his back. She was dozing.

He closed his eyes and found himself returned miles above that colorless desert. Turning away from the ground, there were no stars for him to see, no clouds, no moon. Turning back, he strained to find again the two distant lights down below. He surged towards them. In an instant, he was there, hovering over them so near the ground. Two street lamps before a brownstone, half painting it in stark unreal mercury vapor fluorescence. Yet even within those two intersecting circles of light, all was depicted in the fainter shades of gray, the grays of dusk when color gives in to black. The brownstone stood tall, the top well beyond the reach of the street lights. The windows were yawning, blown-out mouths, and the wind made a spectral sound as it sucked at every room and doorway—a baleful moaning, the cold keening of garbage trucks before dawn. By the stairs, a sign hung on one hinge from a post, twisting and creaking in the wind. Just as he moved to it, the hinge gave way with a snap that echoed flatly around him. The sign fell to the ground, raising a cloud of dust that vanished instantly into the wind.

You are here. You are here.

He woke up, dizzy and sick to his stomach. The sheets were stiff and stuck to his legs like a second skin. He turned on the lights. The bed was covered in blood.

Chapter 3

Max’s face is hidden in the shadow cast by the canopy that encircles the top of his head. His shaved scalp tingles and is numbed by the anesthetic spreading from the injections he’s been given.

There is no pain.

Dr. Watson, standing behind him, flexes his fingers and begins.

Scalpel.

Dr. Hull hands him the scalpel and glances back at the ECG. Max’s heart rate is rising quickly.

Relax. Close your eyes, Max. This won’t hurt a bit.

Watson completes the incision in the scalp in one smooth cut. The thick flap of skin makes a sucking noise as he peels it away from the skull underneath. He pins it back out of the way.

OK, Max, this is important. We’re going to need your help throughout this procedure. Our understanding of your condition depends on it. These monitors can only tell us so much.

Max starts to speak.

Hull interrupts him. No, not yet, we’ll tell you when. He pats Max’s shoulder with a gloved hand.

Max twitches at the first soft touch of the saw.

You’ve got to control yourself, Hull says, You will only make things more difficult if you can’t lie still. It will be unpleasant but we’ll try our best to get though it as quickly as we can. I can promise you there will be no pain.

Max’s hands ball into fists as his skull is cut open in an oval from just over the top of his neck through to the middle of his forehead. The noise seems to come from everywhere at once, and his mind vanishes into it. His vision rattles and shakes with the vibration. He feels the coolant running off the saw in a steady stream down the side of his neck. He smells just a hint of smoke. He counts the torturous seconds one by one as the saw makes its slow, steady progress around the back of his head. Watson, his face tense with concentration, emerges again as the saw comes around his temple. Max closes his eyes.

Finally there is silence. His ears are ringing so badly from the howl of the saw that he can hardly hear the doctors speaking to him. Max’s eyes snap open.

That’s the worst of it behind us now. Hull is smiling under the mask.

Watson stretches his fingers again. Alright, here we go. From here on we’re going to need your help to assess our progress. Essentially we need to take inventory of the different motor and sensory functions—I’ll ask you to move specific muscles or tell me what you’re seeing or hearing—things like that. Are you ready?

Yes, Max replies.

Let’s get started. Max, move your right arm. Now your right leg … your left arm now … your left leg. Blink your eyes, say something.

My eyes are very dry—no.

‘No’ what, Max?

I can only move them side to side. They won’t go up and down.

"Now?

Side to side’s gone too.

Good. How are they now?

Everything’s blurry.

Excellent, Max, excellent. And now?

I can’t blink my eyes. Are my eyes blinking?

Watson ignores the question and works quickly.

Now?

It’s like shooting stars in my peripheral vision. No, wait, they’re gone now. I can’t see.

Hull shines a pen light into each eye in turn and examines the pupils. He closes Max’s eyelids with two gloved fingers. He puts the light back on the tray beside him and nods to Watson.

Good, Max. Now move your right arm … your right leg … your left arm … your left leg … Max does as he is told.

Hull dips a cotton swab in a small bottle of liquid. He closes the lid on the bottle and puts it back on the tray. He holds the swab under Max’s nose.

Max, do you smell that? Tell us, what does that smell like?

Perfume … no … alcohol? I can’t tell.

Hull discards the swab in a bin under the tray.

That’s fine, Max. What do you think this one is?

Is it fish? I don’t know.

Max does not react as Hull opens a bottle of smelling salts and holds it below his nose.

Good, you’re doing just fine. Max, from this point forward, both now during the procedure and after it—at all times—you must keep communicating with us, do you understand? Non-stop, we’ve got to hear from you, OK?

Max makes a sound, a tentative note, and then holds it.

No, Max, not just noises. We need you to talk to us. Say anything you like, it doesn’t matter what but you must keep talking to us.

Max pauses for a moment.

‘It is a terrible terrain / no mortal eye has seen—’

Fine, that’s fine, Max. Max, now we need you to lift your right leg a few inches from the table and hold it there.

‘—whose image still seduces me / this morning as it fades—’

Dr. Hull slips his gloved hands under Max’s leg, but does not support it. Watson makes a few precise incisions and the leg drops limp into Hull’s hands. He lays it on the table gently.

‘—Sleep is full of miracles!’

Max, can you wiggle the toes on your right leg for us?

Are they moving—I can’t tell?

Max’s leg lies still on the table.

Alright, now let’s do the same with your left leg. Can you lift it up and hold it there?

Through the hours, Hull works his way incrementally around the table.

‘… Though wise man at their end know dark is right, / Because their words had forked no lightning they / Do not go gentle into that good night—’

Now clench your stomach as if you were going to do a sit-up. Good, now hold it like that.

Little by little, muscle by muscle, working their way up the table from his feet to his head, Max is paralyzed.

Lift your right arm … your left arm … your right arm … your right leg …

I can’t tell what I’m doing. Am I moving?

Max lies motionless on the table.

Good—Max, you’re doing fine. We’re in the home stretch now—almost done.

‘Find meat on bones that soon have none …’

Tell me when you feel the pin prick.

Hull jabs the sterilized pin into Max’s right foot, then his left, his right ankle, his left, and slowly moves up Max’s body—his chest, his shoulders, his neck.

There.

Watson calls for more light and makes a small cut. He nods to Hull, who pokes the needle in Max’s neck, his cheek and nose.

"‘O seasons, O chateaus! / Where is the flawless soul? / O seasons, O chateaus,

I learned the magic of / Felicity. It enchants us all …’"

Hull empties a syringe of bitter saline into Max’s mouth and wipes it away when it drools out again from the corners of his mouth.

‘Washed in your languors, Sea, I cannot trace / The wake of tankers foaming through the cold, / Nor assault the pride of pennants and flags, / Nor endure the slave ship’s stinking hold.’

Watson stands and stretches his back. He exchanges a glance with Hull before speaking, Max, this is it. We’re just about done now. I need you to remember this one thing always—keep talking. We’re helpless without you. All of this will be come to nothing if you don’t keep talking to us.

Max complies.

Watson returns to his work.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

"Can you hear me?

Yes.

"Can you hear me?

Yes—no, not now. There’s nothing now.

Watson replaces the bone in the hole in Max’s skull and reconnects the veins and arteries that keep it alive. He inserts pins to help the bone heal and then sews the scalp closed. Max’s skin droops down the side of his face like a stroke victim, but Watson has to take care to avoid Max’s furiously moving jaws and lips.

Nolo contendre.

Watson and Hull unhook Max from the monitors and wheel him from the room. Max is still speaking, never pausing, his voice thick and hoarse, and already with just a hint of speech in a vacuum, the voice of the deaf.

"Nolo contendre,