Chương 5
“Of course.”
“And I want you to stop calling people before I decide who we call.”
“I called Patel because you asked for another doctor.”
“I know.”
“I’m trying to help.”
“I know that too.”
The softness in her voice hurt more than anger.
“For three years,” Evelyn said, “every time I panicked, you handled something. Every time I got tired, you handled more. Eventually you were handling things before I knew they existed.”
Richard looked down.
Teresa studied a bookcase.
Noah finished his orange juice.
Evelyn said, “I need you with me. I don’t need you in front of me.”
Richard rubbed the bridge of his nose.
“All right.”
It was not easy to say.
That was precisely why he said it.
At the medical center that evening, Dr. Patel tested Evelyn for nearly an hour.
No miracles occurred.
That was the first thing Evelyn trusted about it.
Sometimes she identified pressure correctly. Sometimes she did not. She distinguished sharp from dull in a few places below the knee and failed in others. On the right side, she could detect light touch near the outside of the foot more reliably than on the left. When Patel asked her to move her right big toe without watching, nothing happened the first three times.
On the fourth, the tendon shifted.
Barely.
Patel repeated the request after several minutes.
Another flicker.
Evelyn began to cry then, quietly and angrily.
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?” Patel asked.
“I don’t know.”
Patel handed her a tissue.
“Then don’t apologize yet.”
Richard sat against the wall and kept his mouth shut.
Noah and Teresa had gone home. Before leaving, Noah had written his phone number on the back of an old Hale Foundation donation envelope even though Richard pointed out that Richard already had Teresa’s number.
“It’s mine,” Noah said.
“You have your own phone?”
“No.”
Richard looked at the number.
“Then whose is this?”
“My mom’s.”
Teresa had rolled her eyes.
Now, under fluorescent hospital lights, Richard folded and unfolded the envelope in his pocket.
Patel finished the examination and sat on a stool across from Evelyn.
“What I can tell you tonight is that you have reproducible sensory function in areas you believed were insensate, and I saw trace voluntary movement that deserves formal evaluation.”
Evelyn held the tissue in both hands.
“Can I walk?”
“I don’t know.”
“When did this come back?”
“I don’t know.”
“Was I misdiagnosed?”
“I don’t know.”
Richard watched his sister’s jaw tighten at each answer.
Patel continued before frustration could harden into despair.
“I know those answers are unsatisfying. But uncertainty is not bad news. It’s simply where we are.”
Evelyn asked, “Could this have been there for years?”
“Yes.”
“Could it have been missed?”
“Yes.”
“Could someone have known?”
Patel paused.
“That is not a question I can answer from examining you tonight.”
Richard asked, “What do we need?”
Evelyn looked at him.
He lifted both hands.
“Sorry.”
To his surprise, she smiled.
A little.
Patel noticed but said nothing.
“We need your original records,” she said. “Hospital notes, rehabilitation notes, imaging, serial neurological examinations, therapy documentation. And we need to separate several questions that feel like one question right now.”
Evelyn nodded.
“Whether I have function. Whether it was there before. Whether Vale knew.”
“Yes.”
“And whether anything can still improve.”
“Yes.”
Evelyn looked at her feet.
“Four questions.”
“At least.”
“Good.”
Richard frowned.
“Good?”
“For three years I had one answer.”
Never.
She didn’t say the word.
No one had to.
The next morning, Evelyn woke before six.
She lay still in the east bedroom, staring at the shape of her feet beneath the sheet.
For years she had trained herself not to look at them first thing in the morning. The habit had begun during inpatient rehabilitation, when every waking moment seemed to contain a test she might fail. Move this. Feel that. Push against me. Again. Again. Again.
Later, after Vale explained that continued self-testing could worsen anxiety, she stopped.
It had felt like surrender at first.
Then it felt like discipline.
Eventually it felt like nothing.
Now she pulled back the sheet.
Her right foot looked exactly as it had the day before.
She closed her eyes.
The room hummed faintly with central air.
A grounds mower started somewhere far across the estate.
She touched her smallest toe with one finger.
Nothing.
Again.
Nothing.
She changed pressure.
Something.
Maybe.
A faint sense of contact arrived without location, as if the information had traveled from a distant room.
Evelyn opened her eyes and laughed once.
Then she covered her face with both hands.
By seven-thirty, Richard was in the kitchen making coffee badly.
He owned a machine that cost more than Teresa Reed’s car and still managed to produce something resembling hot mud whenever the staff had not prepared it.
Evelyn rolled in while he was reading three emails at once.
“You look terrible.”
He glanced up.
“You look expensive.”
She looked down at her ivory blouse.
“This is cotton.”
“You paid eight hundred dollars for it.”
“I paid three.”
“That is not helping your argument.”
He poured her coffee.
She took it.
Neither mentioned the previous day for almost a minute.
Then Richard said, “Vale called me six times.”
“Me too.”
“Did you answer?”
“No.”
“Neither did I.”
She studied him over the rim of her cup.
“Was that difficult?”
“Extremely.”
“Good.”
He nodded.
“Patel’s office sent the records request forms.”
“I saw them.”
“I didn’t touch them.”
“Congratulations.”
“I’d like that formally noted.”
Evelyn smiled despite herself.
Then her phone buzzed.
The smile disappeared.
She looked at the screen.
“Caroline Mott.”
Richard set down his coffee.
“Interesting.”
Evelyn answered on speaker.
“Hello.”
Caroline’s voice was breathless.
“Evelyn, I heard something happened yesterday.”
“From whom?”
A pause.
“Dr. Vale.”
“Of course.”
“I just wanted to check on you.”
“Why?”
Another pause.
Richard looked at Evelyn.
She stared at the table.
May you like
Caroline said, “Because I cared for you for nearly a year.”
“You also supervised Teresa Reed.”
