Past Imperfect (13 page)

'And do either of them speak to you in the dreams?'

'My father has twice, my mother never. On the one occasion I was sure I saw her, she was turned from me, walking away. And I was trying to catch up.'

'I see.' Lambourne glanced at his notes. One area where the dreams offered a convenient allegory; it would have been awkward to ask straight out which parent Eyran felt closest to.

'Did you catch up with your parents in any of the dreams?'

'No. My father was closest, but he always remained just out of reach.'

'Do you think there's any reason why your father appears more than your mother in the dreams? Were you closer to him?'

'When I was younger, no. But as I got older, I felt I could talk to him more. You know, if I was having trouble with someone picking a fight, some problem with my bike, or selection for the school football team. I just felt he'd know more about those things than my mum.'

'So you went to him for help, confided in him more. But you felt equally close to both of them?'

'Yes.'

'And did you love them both equally - mum and dad?' Stupid question, but it was necessary to have Eyran say it, admit the attachment before he started suggesting other object attachments.

'Yes.'

'And do you miss them?'

Longer pause this time; Eyran's brow was slightly furrowed. 'Yes, of course...'

Clasping. Unclasping
.

The muted voices through the door after a while made Stuart’s mind drift. Back through the nightmare which had finally brought him to David Lambourne's office.

Hands clasped behind his back as he looked out at the view: two large palm trees like sentinels either side of the garden. A faint mist rising from the swimming pool. December in Southern California.

Moment's break from packing boxes with Jeremy's personal papers and mementoes. Behind him, Helena, Jeremy's Mexican maid, saying something he didn't quite catch. On arrival, she'd grasped his hand extended in greeting in both hers as she looked deep into his eyes and expressed her sorrow. He could tell that she had been crying, and as she kept grip a second longer, willing home her emotions with eyes brimming with watery compassion, she burst into tears again. He'd cried enough on the flight over and since, identifying the bodies of his brother and Allison in the morgue, seeing Eyran laying helpless and prostrate in the hospital bed - to be able to join her.

Death. The morning mist somehow mirrored his mood. Looking through the sliding windows towards the pool and patio; happier times. Jeremy at the barbecue, Eyran and Tessa swimming, Allison and Amanda sipping Long Island iced teas and preparing a salad. He snapped himself away, back to packing boxes. Another minefield of memories: Jeremy's diplomas from Cambridge and his bar exams, photos with his old rugby team in Hertfordshire, him and Jeremy sitting at a restaurant table in Mykonos, one of their few holidays together. They'd been in their early twenties and Stuart couldn't even remember the name of Jeremy's girlfriend at the time who had taken the picture. Two boxes had already been filled with a mixture of photos, papers, mementoes and small ornaments. How long did it take to tidy away the personal effects of a lifetime? Leave the room neat and tidy, so no memories, no trace remained.

The day before had been a nightmare, a blizzard of paperwork and officialdom. Forms to be filled out at the police station and morgue, more at the hospital, then onto Jeremy's employers, Hassler and Gertz, to deal with Jeremy's probate and insurance details.

It seemed that all he'd done since arriving in California was sign papers; autograph his brother's aftermath. Perhaps it was all part of the grieving process. 'You've now witnessed and signed fifteen papers relating to your brother's death, surely you can now finally accept that he is dead.' Hadn't he read somewhere that the grieving process didn't start until
after
acceptance.

Then when Stuart went finally into Eyran's room, the thought of Eyran at that moment in the hospital deep in coma, barely clinging to life - gripped him hard. Posters of Pamela Anderson, the Power Rangers, Jurassic Park, the Daytona racetrack. It was amazing how quickly they grew up. Had he started thinking of girls when he'd been eleven? From the stereo and a small stack of CDs to one side, he picked out four: Janet Jackson, Seal, Madonna, UB40. Quick scan of the rest of the room - probably the last time he would see it: a semi-precious rocks and minerals collection, some model sports cars, an SX25 computer with a small box of disks, a signed baseball bat, a model dolphin from San Diego SeaWorld, a large corner box full of assorted toys - many obviously from when Eyran was much younger.

Stuart bit his lip as he packed. But at least this duty carried with it a bit more hope. Mementoes for the living.

Hands clasping
.

Clutched tight to the report as Eyran’s surgeon in California, Dr Torrens, delivered his stark prognosis.

Traumatic intracranial haemotomas. Two small parietal lobe haemotomas. Larger temporal lobe haemotoma. Risk of oedema. Irregular EEG recording.

But which one had carried the possibility of later psychological disturbance, thought Stuart.
Which one?

At the time, all he'd hoped and prayed for had been Eyran awaking; he hadn't looked beyond. Torrens had mentioned only the possibility of later disorientation of direction, topography and shapes due to the temporal lobe haemotoma. Usually hardly noticeable outside of reading detailed maps or directions, or sorting out complex puzzles. 'If that's all we're facing, be thankful.'

In the end there had been two EEG activity recordings: 94 hours and 17 hours respectively before Eyran finally waking. In answer to his key questions - chances of survival, how long the coma might last and degrees of damage that might persist if and when Eyran finally awoke - Dr Torrens seemed reluctant to speculate, hiding mainly behind text book statistics from a cross section of American hospitals. Stuart recalled that 14% of coma victims made a full recovery and another 14% made recoveries with impairments so slight as to be unnoticeable, though a daunting 49% did not survive at all, the mid-ground taken up by cases ranging from moderate disablement to complete vegetative states.

Easy to get lost in the medical terminology, Stuart thought. Acceptance by conditioning. Concern and grief, all so real when focused on a loved one, swallowed up as part of the grander scale of general statistics affecting all coma patients. The first shock had come learning that Eyran's heart had stopped for 54 seconds when first admitted. Stuart had asked if that might have contributed - but Torrens felt that the direct head injuries and cranial haemotomas were likely the prime cause of coma.

Clasping -
as a nurse had led him finally to Eyran's bedside - an image to match with Torren's stark report. Tubes and wires feeding and monitoring, Eyran's face grey and wan. He found it hard to relate with the Eyran he remembered, so full of curiosity and enthusiasm - and suddenly came to mind a day out in his sports car, Eyran at his side, cheeks rosy with the crisp air.

Eyran had been only six, and they were driving up Highgate Hill. Stuart pointed theatrically towards the cemetery. 'Do you know who's buried there? Karl Marx!' To which Eyran's eyes lit up with enthusiasm. 'Was he one of the Marx brothers?' It had remained part of Stuart's dinner party repertoire for almost two years.

Talk to him, Torrens had said. Familiar voices, shared memories. Stuart started with the Karl Marx incident, then went on to relate another story from when Eyran had been seven and asked him what was the rudest word. At first, he'd tried to avoid it by saying he didn't know, but Eyran was persistent. 'But you must know lots of rude words at your age, uncle Stuart.' Knowing that he couldn't easily escape, but not wishing to get into trouble with Jeremy for teaching Eyran rude words, he'd finally offered 'Codswollop'.

'Is that the rudest word?'

'Yes, absolutely. It's a terrible swear word - never to be used.'

'But is it the rudest, rudest?'

'Yes, it's the rudest, rudest. You must never,
ever
say codswollop.'

A moment's thought as Eyran compared with what he'd heard in the school playground. 'Is it ruder than fuck?'

Jeremy had burst out laughing when Stuart told him, finding Stuart's vain attempt to preserve his son's already tainted innocence particularly amusing; yet another dinner party anecdote. Eyran too had been let in on the joke later when he was old enough. But relating the story to Eyran, hearing only the echo of his own voice, Stuart found it unsettling. Like a comedian on stage with no audience.

And so half an hour later when his one man dialogue ran out of steam - he turned to the CDs he'd brought from Eyran's room and let Janet Jackson take over.
Familiar voices, familiar music
. Torrens had arranged for a player.

But now listening to the muted mumbling beyond Lambourne's door, he recalled with clarity the feeling that had crept over him in that instant. Dreading the moment - if and when his tearful wishes of Eyran awaking were fulfilled - that he would have to tell Eyran his parents were dead.

And when that moment did finally come, the haunted, lost look in Eyran's eyes - still lingering days and even weeks later. He should have guessed then that a part of Eyran would always cling on, refuse to accept.

David Lambourne flicked back through Torrens' report. So, what did he know after the first session? The first aim had been to judge Eyran's responsiveness.

Made just four days after Eyran had revived from his coma, the report showed ten to fifteen percent impairment on conventional thought and speech response. If anything, there had been improvement since then; Eyran's response had been slow on very few questions. Though perhaps when he entered the more complex and problematical areas of Eyran's dreams, responsiveness would drop. The barriers would go back up.

Thirty eight percent below average on IQ puzzles. Lambourne couldn't help much there: the best indicators would come from maths results at his new school. Or perhaps he could get some standard tests from St Barts for the Capels to do at home.

But the main problem was Eyran's increasingly violent dreams, and the key question: were they a by-product of the accident and the coma, some chemical imbalance causing dementia; or a defence mechanism of Eyran's subconscious, unwilling to accept that his parents were dead?

With the first, Lambourne realized he'd have limited control, swept along on the changing tide of the condition, leaving him little range within which to wield influence. Damage limitation. But if it was the latter, he'd have far more control, and at first glance the analysis was straightforward: Eyran couldn't accept that his parents were dead, so his subconscious had manifested various scenarios, played out through his dreams, where he could find them alive. Text book Freud denial/ mourning/object attachment.

Though Lambourne had conducted his main studies in the Freudian school, he liked to think that he'd kept an open mind on later theories and papers - some of them contradictory to Freud's principals. Jung, Winnicott, Adler, Eysenck, and then the later radicals Lacan, Laing and Rollo May. Twenty-two years in practice, seventeen of them at St Barts, Lambourne prided himself on keeping up to date with his papers and readings, felt that he was better equipped than most to pick and choose at the smorgasbord of psychoanalysis, return with the plate most suited to his patient.

Lambourne looked around his office. The furniture had hardly changed since St Barts. The same old floral pattern sofa, his upright padded seat chair, a rolled top walnut desk, the dark oak coffee table with a few magazines strategically scattered. Stuffy, country cottage atmosphere which he felt put patients at ease.

Or perhaps it was all just a replica, a home away from home modelled on the Buckinghamshire country house he'd left his wife in their divorce settlement six years previous. Now he was just a weekend father to their two daughters. He'd learnt more about object loss during the divorce than through the years of study and practice; for the first time he'd actually felt what his patients fought to describe in bland monotones. He could help solve their problems, but not his own.

He'd left St Barts a year after the divorce and decided to combine costs by living in. He loved the theatre, and the main theatre areas and Covent Garden were a short stroll away, past old book, stamp and curio shops, and one in particular he'd discovered specializing in old theatre posters.

He never used the armchair, always the straight backed chair. The armchair made him appear too relaxed, distant from his patients; while in the hard back chair, he invariably ended up leaning forward. He looked more interested in them. Throughout the first fourteen years of his practice, he'd smoked a pipe, but with the more responsible age of doctors taking the lead with non-smoking, had given up. He immediately found his pipe hand, his left, at a complete loss, and so sucked at an empty pipe during sessions for another three years, felt that chewing on the mouthpiece helped him concentrate - until one woman patient had been bold enough to question what he was doing. As he'd explained, her puzzled look had made it clear just who of the two of them should be on the couch. So now there was no more pipe, just one orphaned hand.

Jojo?
Eyran's imaginary dream friend who always promised he could find Eyran's parents. A simple invention to support non-acceptance of their death, or a possibly threatening secondary personality? Lambourne wondered.

One of the key factors was going to be separation from reality, if any illusions in the dreams started crossing over into Eyran's thoughts while awake. And if they did, to what extent might Eyran accept or adopt them? At present, they were at arm's length. But Jojo trampling through Eyran's conscious thoughts could be disastrous.

There was also the maze of object attachments to fight through: not just Eyran's loss of his parents, but attachments and memories with the house in San Diego, their previous house in England and old play areas - which perhaps due to their closeness to his uncle's house were resurging strongly.