The Crystal Child by Theodore Roszak Read Free Book Online Page B

one-horse shay.  I’d say Aaron got too old to live.”
    “We don’t think that way any more in my field,” Julia answered sharply.  “Old people die of something that kills other people too.  They don’t die of old age.”
    The doctor gave her a two-plus-two-equals-four shrug.  “When you’re as far gone as he was, does it matter which system failed first?”
    Twelve hours later, there was nothing new to report.  Aaron, his body infested with a maze of tubes and wires, was unresponsive.  His brain activity was incoherent, suggesting the possibility of serious damage.  Julia cleared her schedule to stay with him. At his bedside, she whispered at his ear several times every hour, hoping some part of his beleaguered brain would hear her words.  “I’m here, Aaron.  I’m waiting for you.  Speak to me.”  There was not the least tremor of awareness. He had folded himself into a tight ball in his bed and lay as unmoving as a statue.  I’ve lost him, Julia said to herself.  She was going dead inside as if she wanted to share her patient’s fate.  It was not simply sorrow she felt; she was ashamed to have raised his hopes, to have promised him life when she could not provide it.  She had used hope to keep him concentrated and striving.  The will to live was there, but she had found no way to transform hope into healthy tissue, durable organs.  She had nothing more to offer except her grieving presence.
    It was time to phone the Laceys.
    Encouraged by Julia’s early success, Aaron’s parents had relocated to Marin County where they both had found jobs.  Only an hour’s drive away across the bridge from the clinic, they had become frequent visitors.  At Julia’s urging they were taking a more active part in Aaron’s treatment, arranging field trips and at-home sleep-overs.  Delighted with their son’s progress, their trust in Julia seemed to know no bounds.  Now she was about to tell them that Aaron might not survive until morning.  Julia had called many times to report a turn for the worse or to announce a death to a patient’s family; but she had never found it so difficult to state the medical facts of a case as now.  The admission of failure was there from the first word she spoke. At the other end of the line Todd Lacey rapidly ran the gamut from shock to fear to anger.  Julia found herself facing a barrage of parental rage and more questions than she could answer.  How could Aaron have suffered a stroke?  They had never been informed of that possibility.  Hadn’t she seen that coming?  Why had she been sending them such encouraging reports if he was this fragile?  What sort of “quack treatments” had she been using that might have damaged his heart?  Julia realized that the more she sought to calm his fears and defend herself, the more suspicious he became.  Clearly his trust in her had crumbled.
    “We’re not sure it was a stroke,” Julia told him.  “We have no idea why this happened.  You should feel free to call in other doctors if you wish, though he is receiving excellent care.”
    “We’ll be there in an hour,” Todd snapped and abruptly hung up.  When he and Louise arrived at the ER, Julia was forced to endure the dressing down she expected.  The same questions again and again.  Why, why, why?
    Louise Lacey, though severely disappointed, was more restrained.  “I’m sure you did all you could.  But, God! this really hurts.  We’d gotten our hopes up.”
    As gently as she could, Julia reminded both the parents that Aaron wasn’t dead.  “You mean he might hang on for a few more hours,” Todd snarled.
    But Aaron lingered longer than that.  A day, another day, another.  A week later, though he was still comatose, his vital signs were stabilizing and his brain activity had returned to normal.   When he at last woke on his sixth day in intensive care, Julia was at his side, where she had been spending her nights.  She heard him let out a loud