Promise Me Eternity (2 page)

Dr. Patterson placed a hand on his shoulder.
“You mustn’t exert yourself too much. It seems your speech center
has been affected. Do you remember what happened to you?”

The boy slowly moved his head to the
left.

“You had a bad accident on your motorbike.
Your head went through the windshield of a car, and this caused
bleeding in your brain. Are you following me?”

The boy tried to say something:
“A-a-a-a-ah.”

“That’s OK, don’t exert yourself. Your speech
will eventually come back. Right now the most important thing is
for you to rest. You should be able to go home in a week or two.”
At least he hoped this was the case. “You were brought to the
hospital after the accident. We operated on you right away and
removed the coagulated blood.”

Dr. Jerry Duncan added, “The important thing
is that you survived the accident. You could easily have died.”

Dr. Patterson asked the boy, “Does your head
hurt?”

The boy shook his head.

“Good. You see? Everything is coming along
fine. Like I said, rest and try not to think too much.”

The two doctors moved on to the next
patient.

A woman in her late fifties was scowling at
them as they approached. She grumbled, “Good morning.”

“Good morning, Mrs. Malone. How’s your arm
today?” Dr. Patterson asked.

“Same as yesterday and the day before. Part
of it is numb and I can’t feel a thing. It’s not at all pleasant.
Obviously, the nerve operation you did didn’t work.”

“Now, there’s no need to be so pessimistic.
Operating on a nerve is always a very delicate matter. It’s true,
you may need to have a second operation, but first we’ll have to
run a few more tests. There is really no need to worry so much.
We’ll get that arm of yours back to working order. You can be sure
of it.”

The woman pressed her cracked lips together
and huffed in anger. “You operated on my neighbor, Dr. Patterson.
She had a minor tumor. And the poor woman died not long ago.”

“Really? What was your neighbor’s name?”

“Mrs. Bleiweis. German background.”

Dr. Patterson remembered this patient. He had
operated on her about a year earlier. “What was the cause of her
death?”

“The cause of her death? She was always
complaining about her headaches. And then a week ago they found her
dead on the floor. What do
you
think it was?”

Now Dr. Patterson was the angry one. “As far
as I can remember, I only saw Mrs. Bleiweis once after the
operation. There’s not much I can do if I don’t see the
patient.”

The woman made a face. “In any case, without
my right arm I’m useless. What will my husband say if I can’t do
the housework?”

Dr. Duncan said in a soothing tone, “You
really mustn’t jump to any negative conclusions. When we operate on
a nerve, you don’t see the results right away. You have to wait a
few more days, or weeks, or even months. If it’s not better by
then, we’ll do another operation. But until it’s healed, you
certainly will not be doing any housework.”

“Good-bye for now, Mrs. Malone,” Dr.
Patterson said, feeling a little peeved.

Jerry Duncan also said good-bye. The woman
said nothing in return.

The next patient had had a spinal operation.
She had been suffering from severe lower-back pain, and it had been
necessary to remove an intervertebral disc.

Dr. Duncan was the first to greet her. “Good
morning, Mrs. Scott. How are you feeling today?”

Dr. Patterson picked up her hospital chart
and greeted her as well.

The woman, who was in her seventies, could
barely respond. She had dark-blue circles under her eyes and looked
worn out. Nevertheless, she managed a faint smile. “Not too bad,
Doctor. I’m glad I’m still alive.”

“Of course you’re still alive, and you’re
going to stay that way. Did you sleep alright?”

She shook her head. “My back was hurting me.
I didn’t sleep a wink.”

Both doctors nodded sympathetically. Dr.
Patterson wrote something on her hospital chart and said, “I’m
prescribing additional medication for the pain, so it should be
easier for you to sleep. Don’t worry, it will all be fine.”

She looked at him gratefully.

They then visited two more patients, who had
both had operations for malignant tumors. Finally, Dr. Patterson
went to his office and Dr. Duncan set off for the cafeteria.

Chapter 3

_______________________

In the crowded hospital canteen, Anita Carter
placed her tray on an empty table in a far corner of the room and
sat down for lunch. She looked around to make sure she hadn’t
missed saying hello to any of her colleagues. With the tips of her
elegantly manicured fingers she arranged her long black hair that
was softly falling to her shoulders. She had delicate features,
nicely shaped lips, and bright, penetrating gray eyes. She was
thirty-seven.

Jerry also put his tray down and sat opposite
Anita. A mere glance at her told him she was tense: her lively eyes
glistened.

His thoughts were confirmed when she quickly
asked, “Did you talk to him?”

“Who?”

“Patterson, of course. You know, what we were
talking about last night. It’s high time you got a promotion. You
should have become an associate neurosurgeon a long time ago.”

“I didn’t talk to him. He wasn’t in a very
good mood today. You saw that yourself. He seemed a little tense to
me.”

“Listen, Jerry. Patterson’s always like that.
I have never yet seen him laugh. Talk to him. Ask him how it is
that you’ve been an assistant now for over six years. It’s high
time you became an associate.”

He opened a bottle of orange soda and poured
it into a glass. He started eating and then said, “I don’t know if
that’s such a good idea. What if I’m really not ready for it
yet?”

“Of course you’re ready,” Dr. Carter stated.
“You were ready long ago. I know what’s going on here. They’re
trying to cut costs in all areas, including with you. If you were
an associate, they’d have to raise your salary. Which they don’t
want to do.”

He said nothing in reply.

“If you don’t talk to him, I will.”

He put down his knife and fork. “Are you
crazy? How could you even think of doing anything like that?”

“Keep it down,” Dr. Carter quickly whispered.
“Esther, Rosanna, and Leon are coming this way.”

“So I guess we’re done operating today?”
Esther Green said to Leon.

Leon Whitman replied, “Yes, definitely. Time
always flies by whenever Patterson operates. At least that’s how it
feels to me.”

Jerry threw him an annoyed look, then picked
up the tray with his food, which he had barely touched, and lifted
it. “Well, I’ve got work to do. See you all tomorrow.”

Everyone said good-bye and turned to their
meal—everyone except Anita, who watched him with concern as he left
the cafeteria. She loved him, but at the same time she often found
his apathetic behavior exasperating.

Chapter 4

_______________________

Dr. Simon Patterson peered anxiously at
Dorothy the white rabbit, who sat motionless inside her old metal
cage. It seemed to him she lacked energy.
I hope it’s not
because of the vaccine,
he thought.
She should be feeling
better, not worse.

He decided to give her an injection of
vitamins. He got up from his chair and walked over to the old oak
cabinet. It had been a tough day. He could relax now, since his
wife, Helen, wasn’t home yet. He didn’t have the energy to fight
with her.

Dr. Patterson had set up a large private
laboratory in his basement where he could devote himself to his
beloved research. Every day after work he could hardly wait to go
down there, where he’d often stay until 1:00 a.m., and then
silently crawl into bed.

From a bowl on the cabinet he took a small
carrot and offered it to the rabbit. She slowly bit off a tiny
piece and gnawed a few sharp ruts into it. The rest of the carrot
she left untouched.
This really isn’t like her. She hardly ever
turns down a carrot. She eats dozens. So what’s going on with
her?

The laboratory was approximately 430 square
feet. The walls were gray concrete and in places one could see the
gleam of moisture. It of course reeked of dampness. The single
window had been pasted over with cardboard from milk cartons so as
to keep the neighborhood kids from spying on him. A few dusty light
bulbs provided the room with all the light he needed.

Arranged on long wooden tables were the
various instruments and gadgets essential to his experiments: a
sterilizer, scales, water distiller, coolers, various centrifuges,
layering chambers, and incubating equipment, as well as other small
laboratory devices such as a whirling mixer, magnetic mixer with
heating, homogenizer, sonicator, and so on. He had purchased all
these things from various resellers, and in some cases from
hospitals that were upgrading their equipment. Only the microscope
had cost him a huge sum of money—an investment he had never
regretted.

If I succeed, I’ll be able to sell my
vaccine and become rich
, he often repeated to himself.
Then
I can buy myself an amazing house and a fantastic car. I’ll buy one
for Helen too. And I can devote all my time to research.
He
thought about this a lot.

For more than ten years Dr. Patterson had
been researching the aging process in animals. His great aspiration
was to find a way to stop the aging process, or at least slow it
down. To think that he might really be the one to do this took his
breath away. This hope drove him forward and set his blood
racing.

A month earlier he had injected Dorothy with
a dose of the latest version of his antiaging vaccine and was
hoping it would stop the process of aging in her.

“Simon!”

The voice caused a shudder through his
body.

“I hope you’re coming up to eat. Unless you’d
rather stay down there with your darling rats and rabbits.”

He ignored her sarcastic remark and picked up
the hypodermic needle. He stuck it into Dorothy’s leg.

“There you go, sweetie. These vitamins will
make you feel better. I’ll be back to visit you later.” He closed
the cage and, with a dark expression on his face, went up the
stairs.

“I really don’t know how you can spend hours
and hours down there in that dusty basement. It would drive me
crazy,” Helen Patterson said.

She was four years younger than he, slender,
with shiny blond hair reaching to the middle of her neck. Her
dark-blue eyes sparkled as if made of glass when she looked at him
angrily.

He didn’t see the point in responding. He sat
down at the table in the dining room and looked at what she had
fixed for supper.
Spaghetti with Bolognese sauce again.
He
must have eaten it at least six times in the last month alone.
Resigning himself to his fate, he let out a deep sigh.

“It’s a good thing you have me to look after
you. If I didn’t cook supper for you, you’d have probably died from
malnutrition a long time ago. I don’t understand how you can get so
busy at work that you’re not even hungry.” With her hands on her
hips, she looked him up and down. “Seems to me you’ve lost another
three or four pounds.”

“Well, you know I try, but sometimes—”

“That’s no excuse. It’s important to have
regular lunchtimes. And that doesn’t mean three or four o’clock in
the afternoon, but at one. Do you understand? At one o’clock.”

“I can’t eat in the middle of an operation.
Or should I just leave the patient lying there with his head open?”
He sucked in the spaghetti with a slurping sound.

Helen covered her ears with her hands.
“Simon, stop slurping the spaghetti, for God’s sake! If I’ve told
you once, I’ve told you a hundred times. It drives me mad.”

He bit into the strand of spaghetti that was
hanging out of his mouth. “Of course I’d like to have lunch at one,
but that’s not how it works in my profession. Unfortunately, we
don’t have enough surgeons. You’d understand if you worked at a
hospital. You can’t let people—”

“It’s because you work like a dog. Nothing
will ever change. When was the last time you were on vacation? Last
year you took a grand total of two weeks. And even then, they made
you postpone it twice.”

“It was bad luck last year.”

“There’s something every year and it’ll never
get any better.”

Another fight.
They didn’t know
anymore how to have a normal conversation.
Whatever happened to
those times when we were in love and rarely had fights?
He
remembered the years after they married, when they had enjoyed life
and each other. They had a more or less perfect marriage. Helen
wasn’t merely beautiful, but could also be honest, simple, and
direct, and used to laugh frequently. That’s what he really liked
about her. She only had one bad habit: she liked spending money,
while Simon was the opposite. He liked saving more than spending.
But Helen was persistent and persuasive and not a week went by
without her coming up with some new wish. She had so many clothes
that she didn’t have to wear the same thing more than three times a
year. Though she had at least fifty pairs of shoes, her true
passion was suits. Simon was earning a good salary as a surgeon,
but because of Helen’s spending, his bank account was always in the
red by the end of the month. However, since he was good-hearted and
didn’t want to argue, he accepted her as she was. And they did
well—until the accident.

He shivered at the thought of the huge amount
he’d had to pay in damages. Especially since it was his own fault.
He’d had an idea to decorate a Christmas tree in front of the
house, and Helen was very much against it. And luck would have it
that the wiring was old, it short-circuited, and the Christmas tree
caught fire. To make things worse, it happened in the middle of the
night so that no one noticed the fire slowly spreading to another
tree in the yard next door and then to the next tree, until it
reached the house. He was both lucky and unlucky that the neighbors
were not at home that night, but, unfortunately, by the time the
firefighters arrived there was nothing much to save.