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Overview
O'Connell has crafted a spellbinding novel about stories and what they can do for and to those who create them and those who consume them. About the nature of consciousness and the power of the unknown. And, ultimately, about forgiveness and the depth of our need to extend it and receive it.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781565126398 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill |
| Publication date: | 09/22/2009 |
| Sold by: | Hachette Digital, Inc. |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 336 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
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Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Alone in the doctor's office, Sweeney's eyes lingered on the final panel and, once again, he found himself feeling something close to sympathy for the cartoon strongman, exiled and adrift, the world torn down in a random instant and supplanted with a precarious replacement.
Closing the comic book, Sweeney tried to bring himself back to the here and now. But in seconds he found himself studying the cover, this grotesque family portrait of circus freaks that an artist had elevated into icons. Then he heard the door open and, immediately, he rolled the book and slipped it into his back pocket, covering it with the tail of his sport jacket.
"Sorry for the interruption," Dr. Peck said, coming around the desk and sliding back into his seat.
"Not a problem," Sweeney said.
Dr. Peck was one of those individuals whose voice, on the phone, had conveyed his appearance: entirely bald, bordering on gaunt, well groomed but with lips that were too thin and pale. He looked as if his grandfather had owned the most efficient general store on the prairie. But Sweeney knew this wasn't the case.
"We were speaking, I believe, about the accident," Peck said as he reopened Danny's file, then sat back and waited.
Like everyone else, Dr. Peck wanted a recounting. One more smug little prick who had to have the story. He sat and waited, actually folded his hands across the hollow that passed for his belly and assumed a position of clinical concern. His vision seemed to focus on the knot of Sweeney's necktie, a Christmas present festooned with chicken boys.
Sweeney cleared his throat and tried to stay calm.
"As I was saying, it's been a difficult year. But I think this move will be a step in the right direction for us."
"The doctor in Cleveland —"
"Lawton."
"He will be forwarding the rest of the boy's records?"
"Daniel."
Peck squinted as if he didn't understand. As if the name weren't on the file in front of him.
"The boy's name is Daniel," Sweeney said and crossed his legs. "You should have received the records already. I'll call this afternoon to remind Dr. Lawton."
Peck nodded and opened the manila folder on his desk.
"Coma is a complex condition, Mr. Sweeney. The word itself is used incorrectly more often than not."
Sweeney nodded back. He needed the job and he'd burned all his bridges back in Ohio. But there was still a limit to the amount of patronizing shit he'd endure.
"As you might imagine, doctor," he said, "I've immersed myself in the literature since the accident."
Peck sniffed and closed Danny's file, pushed back just a bit from the desk and lifted the coffee mug that featured a line drawing of the Clinic.
"I'm not trying to be difficult, Mr. Sweeney," Peck said. "I understand what you've been through. This is a heartbreaking situation — "
"This is my life, doctor. This is not a situation, this is my life. And I don't mean to be disrespectful or ungrateful. But your associates offered me this position and I accepted it. I pulled my son out of the St. Joseph and moved us eight hundred miles from home. And now you're sitting here telling me I might not have the job."
Peck put the mug down on Danny's file.
"That's not what I'm saying, Mr. Sweeney. Not at all. I simply want to make sure things are clear here at the start. I'm certain we both have some natural concerns and —"
"I have one concern and that's the well-being of my boy. You tell me what your concerns are and I'll address them."
Peck picked the mug up and Sweeney saw that it had left a brown circle on Danny's folder. The doctor was quiet for a minute and then he sniffed again. His voice, when it came, was lower.
"I want to make sure you have a realistic picture of what we can and cannot do here. Your son, Daniel, has had minimal brain activity since the day of the accident. According to the records I've received, the doctors at the St. Joseph have administered all the standard and appropriate therapies. We're a research facility and we do good work. But the last thing I would want is to give you false hope."
"I can promise you," Sweeney said, "I'm a realist."
They looked at each other until Peck blinked.
"All right," the doctor said, putting on the weary voice. "I'll take you at your word."
"I appreciate that," Sweeney said.
Peck looked at his watch and then slid another file out from beneath Danny's. Sweeney felt some relief — the interview was coming to an end.
"Your CV looks fine," Peck said. "You studied at Ohio State?"
A nod, waiting.
"Concentration in pharmacognosy?"
Another nod.
"But you never went into research?"
"I had intended to," Sweeney said, trying not to sound defensive, "but it didn't work out that way."
Peck smiled as if he understood, then asked, "What made you decide on pharmacology in the first place?"
"My father had his own shop."
"You liked working for the big outfits?"
Sweeney shrugged. "They paid well. They moved you along. I was thinking of buying my own franchise before the accident."
Peck let the last sentence hang for a beat or two.
"And your wife was a pharmacist as well?"
A nod, thinking, Just ask, you little hump. When the doctor refused, Sweeney said, "We met in school."
"May I ask if you've pursued any counseling in the last year?"
It was not what Sweeney expected and he took a moment before saying, "May I ask how that's pertinent to my job here at the Clinic?"
Peck maintained a bland expression but scratched his nose.
"You've suffered extraordinary stress and grief. You've lost your wife and, for all intents and purposes, your son. And I'm about to put you in charge of the Clinic's drug room. Which is to say, I'm giving you responsibility for all of the Clinic's patients."
Sweeney wanted to stand up. He wanted to move around the desk and pick up the coffee mug and break the man's stuffy nose with it. He wanted to put the fucker on the floor and kick him in the head until Dr. Peck was a patient at his own Clinic.
He did none of those things. He folded his hands on his knee and said, "You've got my letters of reference there, doctor. You've got my employment history and you've probably got the results of your inquiry to the Ohio board. I've never been cited for anything. My performance reviews have all been excellent. This position means a pay cut for me. But it seems to be the best place for my son. Now either I have the job that was promised me or I don't. If I don't, please let me know. Because if that's the case, I have to phone my lawyer and make new arrangements for my boy."
Peck let the room go quiet before he stood up.
"I apologize," he said, "if you feel my question was inappropriate."
He extended his hand. Sweeney stood and took it across the desk.
A smile now, as the doctor moved to the exit.
"You'll call Cleveland and see about those missing records?"
"I'll call," Sweeney said.
Peck opened the door to the office.
"You'll find human resources downstairs. They'll have some paperwork for you to fill out and you'll need to have your photo taken."
Sweeney stepped into the reception area and said, "Thank you, Dr. Peck."
Dr. Peck nodded and said, "Welcome to the Clinic."
THE PERSONNEL MANAGER was an older woman named Nora Blake. She wore a white summer suit and a perfume that Sweeney hadn't smelled in twenty years. She filled out his paperwork in the basement cafeteria, where she bought him coffee from an antique vending machine.
The coffee was wretched but Nora Blake was delightful and Sweeney almost sprayed their table when she called Dr. Peck a vain little bastard.
"Do you talk like this to all the new hires?" Sweeney asked.
"I'm retiring in three months," she said. "I've been at the Peck for thirty years. I've met a lot of arrogant doctors. But Peck is just a shit."
"I wish I could disagree."
Nora actually patted his free hand. "Not to worry, Mr. Sweeney. You're working nights. You won't see much of him."
"You can just call me Sweeney," he said. "Everyone does."
"All right, Sweeney," pulling a pack of Virginia Slims from a jacket pocket and lighting up. "You want to tell me why you asked to work third shift?"
He shrugged. "I'm a night owl."
"Okay," mouth working around the cigarette. "You want to tell me why you left the senior pharmacist position at the largest CVS in Cleveland to come to this nightmare?"
Sweeney sat back in the chair. It moved and the legs screeched a little against the linoleum.
"You're really the personnel manager, right?"
"For another twelve weeks."
"Why'd you stay for thirty years if it's such a nightmare?"
"I got bored," Nora said, contorting her lips to blow her smoke away from him, "living off the trust fund."
"Ms. Blake," Sweeney said, "I've never had a job interview quite like this."
"This isn't an interview. According to this," indicating his paperwork with her cigarette, "you already got the job."
He decided to let himself banter.
"You're allowed to smoke in here?" he asked.
"This is the smoking section," she said.
"I don't see a sign, Ms. Blake."
"When I'm sitting here," Nora said, "it's the smoking section. And knock off the Ms. Blake, all right? You make me feel like a stenographer."
"Well," Sweeney said and drained the last of the coffee, "you've sold me on the place so far."
"That's what I'm here for," Nora said. "For another ninety days, anyway."
She squinted at him through her smoke, shifted in her seat, and stifled a wince. Then she pointed at him with the cigarette and said, "In the beginning, I came here for the same reason you did."
"Your son?" Sweeney asked.
She shook her head. "My husband, Ernie." She threw out a hand and leaned toward him, an instant confidant. "He was a gorgeous man, let me tell you."
"Your husband's a patient?"
She smiled at him and he saw some of her lipstick had smudged across her front teeth. He wasn't sure whether or not he should tell her.
"He was," she said. "For almost twenty years. Industrial accident. He worked the line over at the Gordon Brothers. It was a slip and fall. We got a little settlement, but what am I going to do? Sit home and feel awful?"
"Twenty years," Sweeney repeated.
Nora shrugged. "You know they can go that long. Don't tell me you haven't read all the books. That's what the families do. We read all the books. We look for the answers. We become goddamned specialists, don't we? Twenty years isn't so unusual. Ernie was young and strong."
Sweeney had nothing to say to that.
"You know, he didn't hurt anything else. No broken bones. Just his head. The first doctor says to me It's a fluke. If he'd hit the floor at another angle, who knows? A concussion. A week off from the mill. As if this is supposed to make me feel better. All these years later, I'm still frosted."
Sweeney had a response to that. "Their job isn't to make you feel better," he said. "You find that out immediately."
Nora saw the opening and used it. "How'd it happen to you? Your son, I mean. Do you mind me asking? I know some of the general details, but ..."
He did mind. He hated it every time and it never got easier. But he'd found a way to tell it. He'd made it into a story. Like a joke you've memorized so that you use the same words. The same tone and the same pauses with each telling. He took a breath, got himself ready.
"I was working," he began and wished he hadn't finished the coffee. "It was about seven o'clock. I'd gotten called in. The night shift guy — Anwar — he'd phoned in sick. I couldn't get anybody. So Kerry was home alone with Danny. This was early summer and we'd just gotten the pool going. We'd had a barbecue on Memorial Day. Invited the neighbors. We were new to the neighborhood."
But this wasn't how he normally told it. Why did he mention the barbecue? He looked across the table at Nora, took another breath, and started again.
"Danny had just turned six that spring. Kerry had gotten him started with swimming lessons at the Y."
The instructor had been nineteen. He couldn't remember her name. She wore a red lifeguard's suit and had blond hair, chopped at the neck. He'd made it to the lessons only that one time. The lifeguard had freckles and a tattoo on her ankle.
"And he loved it. He was a real waterdog."
He remembered Danny in the girl's arms. Holding these colored plastic rings in each fist. Danny would scoop them off the bottom of the pool. He was so light — thirty pounds on his sixth birthday — that the lifeguard had to help him dive down to grab the rings.
"You were at work," Nora said, nudging him along.
"I was at work," he said. "I must've filled a dozen asthma inhalers that night. The air quality was terrible all week. I had all these parents hovering in front of the counter. They haven't had dinner, you know, and the kid's gone from a wheeze to a real gasp."
He sees the black woman, young, her first child, terrified. She can't find her insurance card. She dumps her purse into her lap.
"And your wife," Nora said, "was home with your boy."
He felt the coffee start to churn in his stomach.
"He was in his pajamas already. Kerry had gone out to the patio to turn on the grill. She was going to throw a kabob on for dinner. She left the sliders open. And she went back in and poured herself a glass of wine."
He stopped then and stared at the old woman in her white summer suit, with lipstick on her front tooth. He swallowed and changed his voice and said, "I'm sorry. Is there a restroom around here?"
Nora Blake motioned with her head.
"Turn left out of here and go to the end of the corridor."
THE MEN'S ROOM was empty. He walked into a stall and closed the door. He put a hand across his mouth and tried to breathe through his nose. He felt his pulse hammering in his neck. He felt his bowels going loose and that instant jet of perspiration breaking under his arms and across his groin. He pulled down his tie, unbuttoned the shirt. The room tilted and he leaned against the green metal partition. He could smell something like bleach. Some old-fashioned disinfectant. Then the pain broke across his forehead and temples. His vision blurred. He bent, went down on one knee, and vomited.
Afterward, he splashed his face with cold water, washed out his mouth, and popped a peppermint candy. He bought the candies in bulk and always kept a half dozen in his pocket. He put a hand on the sink and steadied himself, then looked in the mirror. He rebuttoned the shirt and adjusted the tie.
He stood up straight, brushed at the knee of his pants, and walked back to the cafeteria. Nora Blake was still seated at their table, writing something in his employment file. She closed the file as he sat down.
"You all right?" Nora asked.
Sweeney bit into the peppermint and nodded.
"The first year after Ernie's accident," she said, "I lost twenty-five pounds."
He was still breathing heavily, but the sweats and the pain in the head were gone.
Nora watched him as she tongued her front teeth. Then she added, "And I've never put one of them back on."
HE SPENT THE rest of the morning getting the Nora Blake Tour. It was an amazing performance, one part architectural lecture, three parts stand-up routine. And all of it seasoned with a little social commentary and a lot of staff gossip. Nora could spiel. Nora knew her shtick. Three decades showing new recruits the inside of the nightmare had honed her travelogue. She delivered it with a dry and deadpan voice that had been refined into gravel by years of cigarette smoke and stoicism.
The Clinic was a sandstone monster on fifty acres of private land near Quinsigamond's western border. It sat between a wildlife preserve and an abandoned quarry. The Peck family had owned it from the beginning. Generations of doctors begetting doctors, a priestly clan of cool Yankees elected by God to care for the sick and the dying. They made their money in cotton and wool, but they gave their hearts to disease and deformity. And over time, the family hospital became the model for American health care, the kind of place where charity and science could lie together in order to breed healing.
This history weighed heavily on the current Pecks. They knew their tradition and they let it guide their decisions. Especially the decision, made a little more than thirty years ago, to alter their mission, to specialize. Many felt it was a radical break with the past, but Dr. Peck has never looked back. And today, the Peck Clinic is breaking new ground once again, setting the standard as the finest long-term care and research facility for patients trapped inside coma and persistent vegetative state.
What others might call grand or stately, Sweeney saw as ominous. The Clinic was heavy and dark on the outside, a Romanesque mausoleum with a central manse and two dark wings that fanned out from each side. And the inside was even worse, a maze of cavernous rooms and bad lighting and narrow, vertigo-inducing corridors.
At full capacity, the Clinic could maintain a hundred patients. But fees were so high and Dr. Peck's criteria for admittance so stringent that there were rarely more than fifty sleepers at any time.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Resurrectionist"
by .
Copyright © 2008 Jack O'Connell.
Excerpted by permission of ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
What People are Saying About This
"In four remarkable books, Jack O'Connell has riffed on language, fire-cleansed genre conventions, and stripped the artifice from the modern noir novel, creating a body of work that is both exciting with his wife and children."
—George Pelecanos