He let himself into Annie-Vic’s room. The shades were open, letting in the sun. The plate glass of the windows looked as if it would be cold to the touch. He walked over to the bed and looked down at her. He was glad the family wasn’t here this time. He always felt that they didn’t trust them. Annie-Vic in her bed looked tiny, so fine-boned she would break if she so much as turned over. Somebody had washed her hair and brushed it back away from her face. Gary wondered yet again if she had seen the person who had attacked her. He supposed she had, but even if she woke up out of this coma, there was no guarantee that she’d remember. Gary had talked to the doctor about that, and he’d been very firm.
There was a cough from behind him, and Gary turned. Dr. Willard was standing in the doorway, wearing his white coat, a stethoscope around his neck. Gary wondered why doctors were always dressed like that, even in their own offices. It was like a costume that they all felt required to wear, so that if they ever wanted to stop being real doctors they could at least play doctors on TV.
Dr. Willard came into the room. He wasn’t local, and he was very young. Gary could never remember his first name.
“She’s comfortable,” he said. “And I look in on her at least twice a day. But there hasn’t been any change. I’d call you if there had been.”
“I know. I just like to check.”
“I think it’s a very good thing that you check,” Dr. Willard said. “I think she knows when people visit. I think she knows when people talk to her. I don’t think she knows it the way you or I would know something, but I do think she knows.”
“Does she have brain damage?” Gary asked. “I understand that she’s in a coma, so that means she doesn’t wake up or respond to people in the normal way. I just don’t understand why she’s in a coma.”
“Nobody understands why anybody is in a coma,” Dr. Willard said. “We do know that comas tend to happen when there’s been trauma to the brain, but that’s not saying very much. Lots of people have trauma to the brain without ending up in comas, and lots of people in comas don’t seem to have sustained that much trauma to the brain. And trauma is not the same thing as damage. So—”
“So you still can’t answer my question about whether she’s going to remember anything if she comes round.”
“Sorry,” Dr. Willard said. “I really would like to help you. It’s not much fun, thinking that there’s somebody out there who was willing to bash in the head of an old woman just for kicks. I do hope you find him.”
“I do, too. We’ve brought in a consultant—”
“Gregor Demarkian,” Dr. Willard said. “I heard about it. Somebody who’s been on American Justice. We’ve all been impressed.”
“Yeah,” Gary said. He looked down at Annie-Vic again. She hadn’t moved. There was no change of expression on her face. He turned away. “Well,” he said. “I’d better be getting back. Call me if there’s any change.”
“Oh, I will,” Dr. Willard said. “But it’s like I told that Miss Marbledale this morning. There are always changes in coma patients, they just don’t mean much.”
2
Coming back down from the schools complex, Alice McGuffie thought she was going to explode. Who did any of those people think they were, anyway? She wasn’t some tenth grader with missing homework. She wasn’t a fool, either. Schools complex, for God’s sake. She’d liked it better when the schools had been the way they were when she attended them, right there in the middle of town, and made out of red brick with big windows. They were built in the thirties, those schools, and they were good enough. It was a crock, all this talk about education and how important it was. It was important for people to be able to read and write, yes, and to speak English, which a lot of them couldn’t do, at least down in places like Philadelphia, but all the rest of it was just stupid. History, for instance. Who the Hell cared about what happened in history? There was the American Revolution and the Pilgrims and all that, and it made sense to teach it especially to immigrant children who weren’t real Americans, but what difference did it make in the end? She hadn’t been alive when any of that happened. She didn’t know why anybody should expect her to know about it, and she didn’t see why anybody should expect Barbie to know about it, either. Barbie had a right to a real American high school experience, with cheerleading and football and proms and all the rest of it, and pretending that people like that Mallory Cornish were important in any way was, well, just stupid.