To Ride Pegasus

Then he saw her, fingers clawing for leverage on the stairpost, foot poised for the step from the landing. A too-thin adolescent figure, frozen for a second with indecision and shock; strands of black hair like vicious scars across a thin face, distorted and ugly from the tremendous physical and mental efforts of the frantic will. Her huge eyes, black with insane fury and terror, bloodshot with despair and the salty sweat of her desperate striving for escape, looked into his.

She knew him for what he was; and her hatred crackled in his mind …

The slick pavement, oily with rain and motor lubricants that had dripped from the hundreds of ill-repaired vehicles utilizing the major north-south artery into Jerhattan, caused the accident. Henry Darrow had not been exceeding the speed limit when he passed the old two-seater. But he had a date with destiny. And kept it on time.

Had there been no rain that day, or had the lane been closed as scheduled for resurfacing, or had the old two-seater maintained the minimum speed in the left-hand lane, Henry Darrow would not have been exasperated enough to pass, would not have skidded on the slick paving, would not have crashed into the guard rail, would not have fractured his skull so that a bone fragment pressed against the brain pan; had the accident occurred even half a mile further up the arterial road, Henry Darrow would not have been sent to the one hospital in the area equipped with a special electro-encephalograph.

As things came to pass, this was how his accident was to occur: exactly how. In fact, he had jotted down the exact time in his astral notebook: 10:02:50 post meridian. He had also reminded himself that day not to take the arterial route back into Jerhattan but he had not foreseen one slight delay at the gasoline station which caused him to change his mind and take the fateful route, forgetful of his own prognostication.

Of course, since it was a major turning for him as well as millions of other people, he could never have avoided
the accident. Which is why his subconscious—or so it is maintained—prevented him from remembering his forecast at the critical moment.

Henry Darrow was therefore injured, seriously, with minor fractures in the left leg as well as the depressed fragment of skull bone. Had Henry been fully conscious during surgery, he would have assured the surgeons that, despite the severity of the wound, he would live. They would have been dubious. Henry Darrow
knew
when he was going to die—from myocardial infarction, some fifteen years, four months, and nine days in the future.

He couldn’t tell them since the cranial pressure affected his speech center and he was mercifully unaware of his surroundings. Brain surgery can be a harrowing experience.

The operation was technically successful and Henry was assigned a bed in the intensive care ward, cardiac and encephalographic monitors keeping close track of his vital systems. The Southside General Hospital boasted the very latest technology, including one of the ultra-sensitive electroencephalographs, familiarly known as “Gooseggs.” The Goosegg equipment was developed during the Apollo flights in the 70s, to monitor the effects of the mysterious “lights” which periodically afflicted the astronauts, and to record any suspected damage by cosmic radiation to the brain tissue. The ultra sensitive equipment was primarily used now in hospitals to detect brain damage to newborn infants suffering oxygen starvation during birth, or, as in Henry Darrow’s case, brain injuries where similar oxygen deprivation, bleeding, and pressure must be ascertained.

The intensive care nurse on duty when Darrow regained his sense after surgery was, as Destiny preordained, Molly Mahony, a rather plain girl who good-naturedly bore a lot of teasing from her colleagues for her avowed dedication to nursing. She was invariably assigned the critical cases because she had a knack of pulling them through the crises.

“Dr. Scherman, would you look at the print-out on
Mr. Darrow’s EEG?” she said when the resident checked in at her station. “The alphas are unusually strong for a man as critically injured as he, aren’t they?”

Scherman looked obediently at the graphs, nodded sagely and then gave her a wink. “He been conscious at all? Giving you a line?”

Molly shook her head, very serious though she knew he was teasing her. Scherman always did. “He’s not regained consciousness, Dr. Scherman. I’m to notify Dr. Wahlman when he does. But should I give him a ring about these readings?”

“Ah, don’t bother, Molly. That one’s lucky he can print anything out on the Goosegg. You’d’ve thought he’d’ve known better.”

“Better? About what? He was an accident casualty, wasn’t he?”

“Better about going out at all. He’s Henry Darrow, the astrologer. Christ, it costs a fortune to consult him about your future.” Scherman snorted. “And he couldn’t cast his own properly.”

Scherman left after a cursory glance at the other i.c. patients. Molly Mahony looked with renewed interest at the brain injury. She knew of Henry Darrow, though she wouldn’t have admitted it to many. No more than she would have admitted to anyone that she felt she had the gift of healing. Unlike her grandmother who’d had no medical background and ran into problems with her “healing hands,” Molly had professional cachet and knew best how and when to apply her “whammy.”

Having a unique talent, Molly was keenly interested in all the paranormal manifestations. In her lexicon, the astrologist merely used the signs of the zodiac to focus a precognitive gift, one fortunately more scientifically based than tea-leaf reading or card-telling. Just as the nursing profession allowed her to focus her healing talent on a scientific basis. So she knew of Henry Darrow and now tiptoed, like an awed sycophant, to the bedside and stared down at a face she hadn’t noticed before.

His face had character even in lax-jawed abnormal coma. The eye-sockets were black and blue pits, and here and there a trace of blood had escaped the emergency clean-up. It was unfair of her to look at him in such a condition. She laid the back of her hand gently against his cheek, not liking the color of his skin. She flicked back the sheet, took a fold of the pectoral skin, and gave it a brutal twist Well, at least he had reactions. She patted the sheet into place and stroked his cheek again.

The cardiograph pulsed slow but regular, though there were traces in the reading that spelled the beginnings of arteriosclerosis. No more than would be apparent in any reading of a forty-two-year-old heart which had lived well and hard.

Now she placed strong, slender fingers on his temples, pressing lightly, trying to “feel” where the real injury was. Not that which the surgeons had corrected when they removed the splinter and released the pressure on the brain. But the psychic injury, the essential blow to the vitalities of the man, which had been shocked by the proximity of death, by the exigency of the operation—that ultimate violation of personal integrity.

So often in her reading of case histories, she’d seen the simple term “heart failure,” or the more complex medical annotation of heart stoppage for a variety of physically inexplicable and unnecessary reasons. Shock, they would term it for lack of better explanation, “the patient died of shock.” Fright, Molly called it. When a patient of hers retreated from reality in this sort of fright, Molly would draw that violated integrity back again with her Talent.

The response to her healing touch on Henry Darrow’s brow was different and puzzling. The cardiogram etched bolder, stronger peaks and the Goosegg made frantic passes on all four recording bands.

Henry Darrow’s eyelids flickered, opened, and a faint smile crossed his lips.

“What the hell hit me?” he asked.

“You hit you,” Molly replied, “on the center post of your car when you crashed into the guard rails, Mr. Darrow. Head ache?”

“Christ yes!” He moaned and tried to reach upward.

“Don’t. You’ve suffered a severe concussion, head lacerations, your left leg is fractured …”

There was mischief in the clear green eyes that met Molly’s. “You’re not supposed to tell me such things, are you?”

Molly smiled. “You know anyhow. And you really ought to pay more attention to your own predictions, Mr. Darrow.”

The Goosegg chattered crazily and Molly whirled to see what was happening. But Henry Darrow was grabbing her arm, his eyes widening with bewildered surprise and incredulity.

“You’re a Gemini. What’s your name? You’re going to marry me.”

Love at first sight is a rare enough incident, particularly in a hospital setting, despite what the romances say. But far rarer was the scientific accident that proved a long suspected truth. For what had registered on the Goosegg’s chart was indisputable proof that the parapsychic talent exists. Henry Darrow had a precognitive experience when he looked at Molly Mahony as a person, not just the nurse in attendance and “knew” she would be his wife.