Read Online Brain Child by John Saul - Free Book Online

“I don’t suppose it has.”
    Ellen uttered a sound that was partly a hollow chuckle, partly a sob. “Do you think I’m crazy, talking about how pretty La Paloma is? Well, I’m not. Anyway, I don’t think I am. But I’m having a feeling, and if I let myself think about
that
, then I will go crazy.”
    “Do you want to tell me what it is?”
    There was another long silence, and when she spoke again, Ellen’s voice had gone strangely flat. “He’s dead,” she stated. “I have the most awful feeling that Alex is dead. But he isn’t dead. I … I won’t
let
him be dead!”
    Ellen stared at the knot of people in the emergency waiting room. She recognized most of the faces, though for some reason her mind refused to put names to them. Except for a few.
    Lisa Cochran.
    She was sitting on a couch, huddled close to her father, and a policeman was talking to her. Lisa saw her and immediately stood up and started toward her.
    “I’m sorry,” she blurted. “Oh, Mrs. Lonsdale, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
    “What happened?” Ellen asked, her voice dull.
    “I … I’m not sure,” Lisa stammered. “We had a fight—well, sort of a fight, and I decided to walk home. And Alex must have been coming after me. But he was driving too fast, and …” She went on, blurting out the story of what had happened, while Ellen listened, but only half-heard. Around them, the rest of the people in the waiting room fell silent.
    “It was my fault,” Lisa finished. “It was all my fault.”
    Ellen laid a gentle hand on Lisa’s cheek, then kissed her. “No,” she said quietly. “It wasn’t your fault. You weren’t in the car, and it wasn’t your fault.”
    She turned away to find Barbara Fannon at her elbow. “Where is he?” she asked. “Where’s Alex?”
    “He’s in the O.R. Frank and Benny are working on him. Marsh is in his office.” She took Ellen’s arm and began guiding her out of the waiting room.
    When she came into his office, Marsh was sitting behind his desk, a glass in front of him, staring at nothing. His gaze shifted, and he stood up, came around the desk, and put his arms around her.
    “You were right,” he whispered, his voice strangling on the words. “Oh, God, Ellen, you were right.”
    “Is he dead?” Ellen asked.
    Marsh drew back sharply, as if the words had been a physical blow. “Who told you that?”
    Ellen’s face paled. “No one. I just … I just have a feeling, that’s all.”
    “Well, that one isn’t true,” Marsh told her. “He’s alive.”
    Ellen hesitated; then: “If he’s alive, why don’t I feel it?”
    Marsh shook his head. “I don’t know. But he’s not dead. He’s seriously injured, but he’s not dead.”
    Time seemed to stand still as Ellen gazed deep into her husband’s eyes. At last she quietly repeated Marsh’s words. “He’s not dead. He’s not dead. He won’t die.” Then, despite her determination to be strong, her tears began to flow.
    In the operating room, Frank Mallory carefully withdrew the last visible fragment of shattered skull from the tissue of Alex’s brain. He glanced up at the monitors.
    By rights, the boy should be dead.
    And yet, there on the monitors was the evidence that he was not.
    There was a pulse—weak and erratic, but there.
    And he was breathing, albeit with the aid of a respirator.
    His broken left arm was in a temporary splint, andthe worst of his facial lacerations had been stitched just enough to stop the bleeding.
    That had been the easy part.
    It was his head that was the problem.
    From what Mallory could see, as the car tumbled down the ravine, Alex’s head must have smashed against a rock, crushing the left parietal plate and damaging the frontal plate. Pieces of both bones had broken away, embedding themselves in Alex’s brain, and it was these splinters that Mallory had been carefully removing. Then, with all the skill he could muster, he had worked the fractured pieces as nearly into their