pages and pages of handwritten notes the homeopath wants to turn over to our office. Then, with instructions from Phil, the detective returns to the conference room and closes the door behind him.
And as the spools in the tape recorder twirl in their place in their box, Carissa resumes speaking, her hands in her lap, repeating exactly the lies I've concocted.
Chapter 3.
Numbers 9 and 11
In the state of health the spirit-like vital force (dynamis) animating the...human organism reigns in supreme sovereignty.
It is only this vital force thus untuned which brings about in the organism the disagreeable sensations and abnormal functions that we call disease.
Dr. Samuel Hahnemann,
Organon of Medicine, 1842
.
In that period before it became clear to Jennifer Emmons that friendship with me would be intolerable, she told me doctors would come into the ICU room in which Richard was lying, and they would talk to her with the complete confidence that her husband couldn't hear a word they said. "The surgery won't relieve the intracranial pressure," one physician informed her, her husband so close that either could touch him. "But that's not its purpose. What the procedure will do is allow us to implant a switch over his brain so we can monitor the pressure."
"A switch?" she had whispered. The nurses, unlike the doctors, all behaved as if Richard could hear them. They'd talk to him as they worked over him, as if he had merely broken his leg. Or had just had a gallstone removed. An appendectomy, maybe. When the nurses wanted to share something with Jennifer that might have upset the patient, they would motion her into the corridor, or they would whisper.
Jennifer appreciated the nurses' hopefulness and their faith, and so she always whispered, too, when she had a question for a physician. Just in case. Likewise, she recalled, she had explained to the children that although their father was in a coma and was unable to speak, he probably heard them when they told him they loved him.
Some moments, she said, she believed this herself, but those moments grew less and less frequent as the days passed by after Christmas.
"An electrode monitoring device," the doctor had continued. "The surgeon will drill a small hole through the front of Richard's skull and lower the device in place. It really doesn't take very long. And to you, or anyone who comes here to see Richard, it will just look like there's a little watch battery in his forehead."
She had probably nodded, she told me, if only because she recalled nodding all the time. She either asked questions or she nodded. That's all that a person who knows nothing really can do.
Jennifer, I would learn, was the sort who would nod with the doctors but ask lots of questions of lawyers.
I was lying beside Abby in the bed in her room, our noses within inches of each other. I watched her eyes close for a second longer than a blink, then abruptly open wide. She was fighting sleep as long as she could, determined to make it to the end of the story. She was adorable.
"And even though the trolls were only four and five inches tall," I murmured, making the story up as I went along, "they stood on each other's shoulders so that they could reach the handle on Abby's door...."
She looked so comfortable and content, I grew envious of the fact that she was already in her pajamas and under the covers. I hadn't even taken my necktie off yet. And because I'd spent so much time with Carissa, I'd decided to allow Abby to stay up with me until ten o'clock, which meant I wouldn't be in bed before midnight.
"The troll on the top of the living troll ladder had to use both of his incredibly pudgy hands to turn the knob, and it took all of his strength...."
I thought to myself that I might not even bother to reheat that calzone.
"God's really strong, isn't he?" Abby asked. The question seemed sudden, but I knew there was a natural connection somewhere in my four-year-old's brain. The word strength, maybe.
And as the spools in the tape recorder twirl in their place in their box, Carissa resumes speaking, her hands in her lap, repeating exactly the lies I've concocted.
Chapter 3.
Numbers 9 and 11
In the state of health the spirit-like vital force (dynamis) animating the...human organism reigns in supreme sovereignty.
It is only this vital force thus untuned which brings about in the organism the disagreeable sensations and abnormal functions that we call disease.
Dr. Samuel Hahnemann,
Organon of Medicine, 1842
.
In that period before it became clear to Jennifer Emmons that friendship with me would be intolerable, she told me doctors would come into the ICU room in which Richard was lying, and they would talk to her with the complete confidence that her husband couldn't hear a word they said. "The surgery won't relieve the intracranial pressure," one physician informed her, her husband so close that either could touch him. "But that's not its purpose. What the procedure will do is allow us to implant a switch over his brain so we can monitor the pressure."
"A switch?" she had whispered. The nurses, unlike the doctors, all behaved as if Richard could hear them. They'd talk to him as they worked over him, as if he had merely broken his leg. Or had just had a gallstone removed. An appendectomy, maybe. When the nurses wanted to share something with Jennifer that might have upset the patient, they would motion her into the corridor, or they would whisper.
Jennifer appreciated the nurses' hopefulness and their faith, and so she always whispered, too, when she had a question for a physician. Just in case. Likewise, she recalled, she had explained to the children that although their father was in a coma and was unable to speak, he probably heard them when they told him they loved him.
Some moments, she said, she believed this herself, but those moments grew less and less frequent as the days passed by after Christmas.
"An electrode monitoring device," the doctor had continued. "The surgeon will drill a small hole through the front of Richard's skull and lower the device in place. It really doesn't take very long. And to you, or anyone who comes here to see Richard, it will just look like there's a little watch battery in his forehead."
She had probably nodded, she told me, if only because she recalled nodding all the time. She either asked questions or she nodded. That's all that a person who knows nothing really can do.
Jennifer, I would learn, was the sort who would nod with the doctors but ask lots of questions of lawyers.
I was lying beside Abby in the bed in her room, our noses within inches of each other. I watched her eyes close for a second longer than a blink, then abruptly open wide. She was fighting sleep as long as she could, determined to make it to the end of the story. She was adorable.
"And even though the trolls were only four and five inches tall," I murmured, making the story up as I went along, "they stood on each other's shoulders so that they could reach the handle on Abby's door...."
She looked so comfortable and content, I grew envious of the fact that she was already in her pajamas and under the covers. I hadn't even taken my necktie off yet. And because I'd spent so much time with Carissa, I'd decided to allow Abby to stay up with me until ten o'clock, which meant I wouldn't be in bed before midnight.
"The troll on the top of the living troll ladder had to use both of his incredibly pudgy hands to turn the knob, and it took all of his strength...."
I thought to myself that I might not even bother to reheat that calzone.
"God's really strong, isn't he?" Abby asked. The question seemed sudden, but I knew there was a natural connection somewhere in my four-year-old's brain. The word strength, maybe.
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