Hope, Levy, Marc [good summer reads TXT] 📗

shook her head to say no or nodded to say yes, mouthing an answer that struck her as logical, without ever really thinking about it. When she didn’t know what to say, she said nothing.

By the end of the visit, Harold was worried, and Betsy ordered him to keep control of himself. His daughter was alive and awake. She had spoken to him, and he needed to thank his lucky stars that a miracle had been worked.

“But she’s not her normal self,” Harold insisted back at the hotel. “That isn’t what we were promised. I’m not convinced by the doctor’s explanations.”

“Be fair, Harold. Melly spent five months in a coma. Can you give her a few days to find her feet?” Betsy shook her head and sipped at her dry martini.

“I’m going to demand to see the Center director tomorrow. What we saw today is nowhere close to what we were promised.”

“Harold, stop! What you saw today is your daughter. You took her in your arms, and you kissed her. You saw her get up from that chair alone, walk to her bed, look at us, smile at us . . . She’s as beautiful as she was before the accident. You should be as happy as I am, instead of spitting with rage. And you want to blame the people who made this miracle possible?” She glared at her husband. “I’m warning you, Harold. If you don’t change your attitude right now, I’d prefer you go back to New York and let me take care of her,” Betsy said, and poured herself a second martini.

Harold paced the hotel suite. As soon as Betsy closed the bathroom door, he snapped his fingers to activate the voice service on the wall screen.

“Hello, Skivy, call my assistant!” Harold ordered. A few moments later, his assistant was on the line.

“Hello, Mr. Barnett. What can I do for you?”

Harold asked her to make an appointment with Longview’s director the next day, as early as possible.

The next day, Kasuko welcomed him into her office. Harold Barnett needed handling with the greatest care and diplomacy if they were to avoid the full force of his anger. Luke had spent the night at the Center, and delicacy had never been his strong suit.

“When I signed up for your program,” Harold started, “I believe I was one of the very first people to put my trust in you. You told me that if my daughter were to have an accident someday, provided she was still alive, you would be able to fix her. So imagine my surprise yesterday when she barely recognized us!”

“Mr. Barnett, sixty families signed up for the program before you, and many more since. None regret doing so today. At the time, you first came to see me, if I remember rightly, because Melly had become infatuated with a trapeze artist who wanted to show her the ropes, so to speak. You called him a complete moron,” Kasuko added. “Or was he a kite surfer? Maybe I’m thinking of someone else.”

“He was an acrobatic parachute artist, of all goddamn things!”

“That’s right!” she said, snapping her fingers. “Now I remember. But you did call him a moron, didn’t you? You were terrified something would happen to Melly, and we promised you that if anything did ever happen, the Neurolink program would preserve her brain’s capacities and would restore them, and that more generally speaking, Longview would be able to give your daughter the very best in cutting-edge medical care. And that’s exactly what we did, although the moron never made good on his promise to take her parachuting. Your daughter has come a long way. A very long way, when you consider the injuries she arrived with. Where she’s at now is remarkable,” Kasuko said. She could almost see Flinch’s portrait smiling down at her from the meeting room wall. “We promised you the very best that science has to offer. Not a miracle. Melly has her memory back. I have the restore-process report for you to look at, and you can see for yourself: everything went just as it should. But please, do be reasonable. Give her time to recover.”

“Time, time, time. How much longer?”

“On average, it takes two solid months of rehabilitation therapy for full physical recovery.”

“And then she can pick up her career again?”

“At the end of the rehabilitation therapy, yes. I don’t see why that wouldn’t be possible.”

“What about her IQ? Her personality, her memory? That was all part of the deal too.”

“Oh, her IQ is completely intact. And as for the memory, allow me to explain,” Kasuko started. “The first thing to understand is that there are different types of human memory. Five of them are linked to our senses, and three others are related to time. Working memory governs the present. Medium-term memory is capable of recalling a piece of information or event that occurred a minute to a few hours previously. These two forms of memory are already up and running exactly as they should for Melly. She remembers waking up, the people who came to her bedside, and tomorrow, she’ll remember having seen you. Long-term memory is a little more complicated,” Kasuko continued. “Don’t forget that there will always be a gap in Melly’s life, between the date on which we saved the last recording and the crash. Procedural memory, the one that affects Melly’s career, is one of the highest performing. I can assure you that your daughter will have all her talent returned to her. As for her emotional memory, that’ll come back too. But it requires a little effort. No two brains are the same. Each and every patient responds differently. Once your daughter gets home and picks up where she left off, she’ll face all sorts of stimulations that will awaken her memories. In essence, the more Melly lives, the more she’ll remember. The only thing that stands in her way is stress. Stress paralyzes the brain. So take my advice. Don’t show her