The Touch

Charles

"I'll be damned!" he said aloud as he looked at the computer analysis of the repeat PET scan.

It was still grossly abnormal, but the computer said that the glucose uptake had increased over the past twenty-four hours as compared to Saturday's scan. The improvement wasn't visible to the naked eye, but the computer saw it, and that was good enough for Charles.

And good news for Bulmer, although it didn't bring Charles any closer to a diagnosis.

He now spread out the new two-hour EEG on his desk top. Despite the cotton mouth and pounding headache from too much bourbon last night, he'd managed to remember to pick up a tide chart for the East River on his way to the Foundation this morning. When he had seen that high tide was due at 9:17 a.m., he had ordered a stat EEG on Bulmer at 8:30.

And here before him on paper was the same sine-wave configuration that had appeared on the twenty-four-hour EEG two days ago, rising approximately thirty minutes before high tide at 8:46 and ending at 9:46.

He took a certain perverse satisfaction in his newfound ability to predict the occurrence of something he had been absolutely sure did not exist.

His private line buzzed. He picked it up, wondering who would be calling him here on a Sunday morning.

He recognized the senator's hoarse voice immediately.

"Why haven't I seen a report yet?"

"And a very good morning to you, too, Senator. I'll be finishing up testing today."

"You've done enough tests! The Knopf case is proof enough for me."

"Maybe so, but it explains nothing."

"I don't care about explanations. Can you deny that he has a healing power? Can you?"

"No." It killed him to admit that.

"Then that does it! I want you to—"

"Senator," Charles said sharply. He had to put McCready off for a little while longer. He couldn't let Bulmer go just yet. "This power, or whatever it is that he has, works sporadically. By tonight I'll have the exact pattern of its occurrence confirmed. With that nailed down we can predict to the minute when it's operating. Until we do that, we'll just be fumbling around in the dark. One more day. That's all. I promise."

"Very well," McCready said with obvious reluctance. "But I've waited a long time."

"I know. Tomorrow morning for sure."

Charles hung up and stared at Buhner's EEG without seeing it. The report McCready was looking for had already been dictated, and tomorrow Marnie would type it into the main computer's word processor. But Charles hadn't mentioned that, because he knew the senator was not really after a report.

He was after a cure.

McCready wanted Alan Bulmer to touch him and make his myasthenia gravis go away. So he was becoming more anxious, more impatient, and more demanding than usual. And why shouldn't he? If he was going to restore Bulmer's reputation and credibility as a physician, he had a right to a touch.

But in order to give Bulmer back his credibility, he needed Charles Axford's signature on the report stating that Dr. Alan Bulmer could indeed, at the right time of day, cure the incurable with a simple touch of his hand. Charles, however, needed one last bit of proof, one final shred of irrefutable evidence before he would sign.

He intended to acquire that proof tonight, sometime after 9:00. But first he wanted a tete-a-tete with Bulmer.

"So that's the Hour of Power, ay?" Bulmer said, looking down at the sine waves flowing through the EEG laid out on his bed.

"If you want to call it that."

Bulmer looked at him. "You never give in, do you?"

"Not often."

"And you say my PET scan is better?"

"Minimally, yes."

"Then I might as well get out of here."

"No!" Charles said, a bit more quickly and loudly than he would have liked. "Not yet. I just want to hook you up to the EEG tonight and have you use your so-called power on a patient while we're recording."

Bulmer frowned, obviously not happy with the idea. "This place is getting on my nerves. I'm bored out of my mind."

"You've come this far. What difference is another twenty-four hours going to make?"

Alan laughed. "Do you know how many times I've said those exact words to inpatients with hospitalitis? Thousands!" He shook his head. "Okay. One more day and then I'm out of here."

"Right." Charles turned at the door. He didn't want to ask this question, but he needed the answer. "By the way, how do you make this bloody power work?"

"What power?" Bulmer said with a smile. "The one that doesn't exist?"

"Yes. That one."

He scratched his head. "I don't really know. When the hour's on, I just put my hand on the person and sort of… will it."

"Just touching them in passing's not enough?"

"No. Many times I've done a physical on someone—ENT, heart, lungs, blood pressure, and so on—and nothing's happened. Then I've found something, wished it gone and"—he shrugged—"it went."

Charles saw the light in Bulmer's eyes and realized for the first time that the man was a true healer, power or no power. Charles knew plenty of physicians who loved the practice of medicine—ferreting out the cause of a problem and then eliminating it. Bulmer was that sort, too, but Charles had come to see that he had another, almost mystical dimension. He wanted to heal. Not merely to stamp out the disease, but to make a person whole again, and he was bloody damned elated when he could. You could be taught to do the first; you had to be born to do the second.

And damned if he wasn't starting to like the man.

"Do you have to know the diagnosis?"

"I don't know. I usually know because I talk to them and examine them." He cocked an eyebrow toward Charles. "Just like a real doctor."

"Do you feel anything when it happens?"

"Yeah." His eyes got a faraway look. "I've never shot dope or snorted cocaine, but it must be something like that."

"That good?"

"Great."

"And the patients? Do they all have seizures?"

"No. Mr. K probably had his because all of a sudden his brain metastases were gone and that triggered something off. A lot of them seem to feel a brief pain in the target organ, but he's the only one ever to seizure on me. Why the interest all of a sudden?"

Charles started for the door again and did not look back. "Just curious."

Since it was Sunday night and there were no technicians around, he had brought the EEG telemetry set to Bulmer's room and hooked him up himself. Just as well. He didn't want an audience tonight. The leads were now fastened to his scalp and the telemetry pack hooked to his belt. Charles flicked the switch and started transmission.

He checked his watch: 9:05. High tide was scheduled for 9:32. The Hour of Power had begun and it was time for Charles to perform the most difficult task of his life.

"I want you to meet someone," he told Bulmer. He went to the door and motioned Julie in from where she had been waiting.

"Dr. Bulmer," he said as she stepped into the room, "I'd like you to meet my daughter, Julie."

A look of confusion passed over Bulmer's face, then he stepped up to Julie, smiled, and shook her hand.

"Hello, Ms. Axford!" he said with a bow. "Do come in."

Julie threw Charles an uncertain look but he smiled and motioned her forward. He had warned her that the man would have wires on his head, but had said nothing else beyond the fact that they were going to meet a man he knew. He couldn't bring himself to say anything more than that, couldn't risk allowing the slightest glimmer of hope to glow in her when he didn't dare hope himself.

Bulmer made a big fuss over Julie, seating her in his chair, finding her a Pepsi in his little refrigerator.

"I can only have two ounces," she told him.

He paused and then nodded. "Then that's all you shall have."

He turned on the telly for her, and as she turned her attention to a situation comedy, Alan turned to Charles.

"When's her next dialysis?"

Charles was speechless for a few seconds. "Did Sylvia tell you?"

He shook his head. "Didn't even know you were a father. I saw how pale she was, the puffiness around her eyes, and then I spotted the fistula when her cuff slipped up. Care to tell me about it?"

Charles made the long story short—chronic atrophic pyelonephritis due to congenital ureteral atresia, a contracted bladder, donor rejection, high cytotoxic antibody titers.

"Poor kid," Bulmer said, and there was genuine feeling in his eyes. But not all of it seemed to be for Julie.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" Charles asked.

Bulmer tapped his forehead. "I can imagine what it cost you up here to bring her to me."

He went over and talked to Julie, gradually drawing her away from the telly. She responded to him, and soon she was babbling on and on about her dialysis treatments and how she measured her daily fluids and took her dozens of pills. Charles found himself responding to Bulmer, almost wishing, despite his abhorrence of the very thought of being in private practice, that he had his knack with people.

Suddenly Bulmer grasped both of Julie's shoulders and closed his eyes for a second. He shuddered and Julie gave a little cry of pain.

Charles leaped toward her. "What's wrong?"

"My back!"

He could feel his teeth baring as he turned toward Bulmer. "What did you do to her?"

"I think she'll be all right now."

"I'm okay, Daddy," Julie said. "He didn't touch my back. It just started to hurt."

Not knowing what to think, Charles hugged Julie to him.

"You're pretty lucky with your timing, you know," Bulmer said.

"What do you mean?"

"Bringing her here during the Hour of Power."

"It wasn't luck. I used the tide chart."

Bulmer looked at him as if he were crazy. "Tide chart? What's that got to do with it?"

"It's high tide now. That's what brings on your so-called Hour of Power."

"It does? When did you find that out? Why didn't you tell me?"

Charles felt a cool lump of dread settle on the back of his neck. "You don't remember me telling you?"

"Of course not! You never did!"

Charles had no intention of arguing with him. He called radiology and ordered a repeat PET scan in the morning, top priority. He had a dreadful suspicion as to the cause of Bulmer's cognitive deficits and abnormal scans.

But right now he wanted to get Julie home. It was time for her dialysis.

They said good-bye to the slightly confused Alan Bulmer and headed for the elevator. He let Julie press all the buttons, and she seemed as happy as a clam until they were about halfway to the ground floor. Suddenly she leaned forward and bent her knees, jamming her thighs together.

"Oh, Daddy, it hurts!"

Alarmed, he crouched beside her. "Where?"

"Down there!" she cried, pointing toward her pubic region. Then she was sobbing. "And it's all wet!"

He looked and he saw the wet stain spreading down her thighs, turning her jeans a darker shade of blue. The air within the elevator car filled with the unmistakable ammonia odor of the urine that was pouring out of a child who hadn't produced more than an ounce a week for years, pouring into a bladder that had forgotten how to hold it.

Charles" hugged his daughter against him as his chest threatened to explode. He closed his eyes in a futile attempt to muffle the sobs that racked his body from head to toe, and to hold back the tears that streamed down his cheeks.