After a long, ecstatic, and utterly satisfying time he said, “Eunice honey, I didn’t know you could fox-trot.”
She smiled into his eyes. “You never asked me, Boss. Can you reach past me and shut off the Victrola?”
‘“Sure, Mrs. Wicklund.”
6
Johann Smith became aware that this limbo was no longer featureless—head resting on something, mouth unpleasantly dry and felt crowded, as if with the sort of junk a dental surgeon inflicts on his victims. There was still total blackness but not quite dead silence. A sucking noise— Any sensation was most welcome. Johann shouted, “Hey! I lived through it!”
Two rooms away the monitoring technician on watch jumped up so fast he knocked over his chair. “Patient’s trying to articulate! Get Dr. Brenner!”
Brenner answered quietly over the voice monitor. “I’m with the patient, Cliff. Get a team in here. And notify Dr. Hedrick and Dr. Garcia.”
“Right away!”
Johann said, “Hey, damn it! Isn’t anybody here?” The words came out as incoherent grunts.
The Doctor touched a wand speaker to the patient’s teeth, held the microphone hooked to it against his own throat. “Mr. Smith, do you hear me?”
The patient mumbled again, louder and more forcefully. The Doctor answered, “Mr. Smith, I’m sorry but I cannot understand you. If you hear me, make one sound. Any sort but just one.”
The patient grunted once.
“Good, wonderful—you can hear me. All right, one sound by itself means Yes; two sounds mean No. If you
understand me, answer with two sounds. Two grunts.” Smith grunted twice.
“Good, now we can talk. One sound for Yes, two for No. Do you hurt?”
Two grunts—”Uh. . . ko!”
“Fine! Now we try something else. Your ears are covered and completely soundproofed; my voice is reaching your inner ears through your teeth and upper jawbone. I’m going to remove part of the covering on your left ear and speak to you that way. The sounds may be painfully loud at first, so I will start with whispers. Understand me?”
One grunt— Smith felt gentle firmness as something pulled loose.
“Do you still hear me?”
“Uh . . . ko—”
“Now do you hear me?”
“Uh . . . ko . ah . ee . . oh . . ce . . . oo. . ow!”
“I think that was a sentence. Don’t try to talk yet. Just one grunt, or two.”
Johann said, “Of course I can’t talk, you damned idiot!
Take this junk out of my mouth!” The vowels came through fairly clearly; consonants were distorted or missing.
“Doctor, how the patient can talk with all that gear in the way?”
Brenner said quietly, “Shut up, Nurse. Mr. Smith, we have an aspirator down your throat to keep you from choking on phlegm, drowning in your own saliva. I can’t remove it yet, so try to be patient. Besides that, your eyes are masked. Your eye specialist will decide when that comes off. I can’t—I’m the life-support specialist on duty at the moment, not the physician managing your case; that’s Dr. Hedrick assisted by Dr. Garcia. I can’t do much more than I have till one of them gets here. Are you comfortable? One grunt or two.”
One grunt— “Good. I’ll stay here with you. And talk to you if you want me to. Do you?”
One grunt—
“Okay, I will. You can talk with more than a Yes or No any time you wish. By spelling. I’ll recite the alphabet, slowly, and you stop me with one grunt when I reach a letter you want. And so on for the next letter, until it’s spelled out. It’s slow. . . but neither one of us is going anywhere. Want to try it?”
One grunt— “Good. I’ve had lots of practice at it; I’ve been on many a life-support watch in which the patient could not talk but was awake and perfectly rational. As you are,” the Doctor added, lying hopefully, one eye on the master oscilloscope. “But bored, of course. Very bored—that’s the worst part for a patient in life-support; he’s bored silly, yet we can’t let him sleep all the time; it’s not good for him and sometimes we need his cooperation. All right, any time you want to spell anything, give three distinct grunts and I’ll prove I know my abc’s.”