She swallowed, continued to stroke Margo’s hand. And then she felt a presence behind her.
“Good afternoon, Mrs. Green.”
She turned. Dr. Winokur was standing there, a dark, handsome man in crisp white, exuding self-confidence and sympathy. Doris Green knew it wasn’t just his bedside manner: this doctor really cared.
“Would you care to talk in the waiting room?” he asked.
“I’d prefer to stay here. If Margo could hear—and who knows, maybe she can—she’d want to know everything.”
“Very well.” He paused, seated himself in the visitor’s chair, rested his hands on his knees. “The bottom line is this: we simply don’t have a diagnosis. We’ve performed every test we can think of and then some; we’ve consulted with the country’s top coma and neurology specialists, at Doctors’ Hospital in New York and Mount Auburn Hospital in Boston—and we just don’t have a handle on it yet. Margo is in a deep coma, and we don’t know why. The good news is that there’s no evidence of permanent brain damage. On the other hand, her vital signs are not improving, and some important ones are slowly declining. She simply isn’t responding to the normal treatments and therapies. I could load you down with a dozen theories we’ve had, a dozen treatments we’ve tried, but they all add up to one fact: she’s not responding. We could move her to Southern Westchester. But to tell you the truth, there isn’t anything down there that we don’t have here, and the move might not be good for her.”
“I’d prefer she stay here.”
Winokur nodded. “I have to say, Mrs. Green, you’ve been a wonderful patient’s mother. I know this is extremely hard on you.”
She shook her head slowly. “I thought I had lost her. I thought I’d buried her. After that, nothing could be worse. I know she’s going to recover—I know it.”
Dr. Winokur gave a small smile. “You could be right. Medicine doesn’t have all the answers, especially in a case like this. Doctors are more fallible—and illness a great deal more complex—than most people realize. Margo is not alone. There are thousands like her all over the country, very ill and without a diagnosis. I’m not telling you this to comfort you so much as to give you all the information I have. I sense that is how you’d prefer it.”
“It is.” She glanced from the doctor to Margo and back again. “Funny, I’m not much of a religious person, but I find myself praying for her every day.”
“The longer I’m a doctor, the more I believe in the healing power of prayer.” He paused. “Do you have any questions? Is there anything I can do?”
She hesitated. “There is one thing. I got a call from Hugo Menzies. Do you know him?”
“Yes, of course—her employer at the museum. He was with her when she had her seizure?”
“That’s right. He called me to tell me what had happened, what he’d seen—he knew I’d want to know.”
“Of course.”
“Have you spoken to him?”
“Yes, certainly. He’s been very good—he’s dropped in to check on Margo’s condition more than once since her relapse. He seems most concerned.”
Mrs. Green smiled faintly. “Having such a caring employer is a blessing.”
“It most certainly is.” The doctor rose.
“I’ll just stay here a little while with her, Doctor, if you don’t mind,” Doris Green said.
39
Thirty hours before the grand opening, the Tomb of Senef was boiling like a nest of angry hornets. And the swarm was no longer comprised of simply curators, electricians, carpenters, and technicians: a new element had been added to the mix. As Nora walked down the God’s Second Passage toward the Hall of the Chariots, she was met with the glare of television lights and a knot of men setting up cameras and mikes at the far end of the hall.
“Over there, dear boy, over there!”
A slender man with clenched buttocks, wearing a camel’s-hair sport jacket and yellow pinpoint bow tie, stood to one side. He was gesturing furiously with slender hands toward a burly soundman. Nora realized he must be the director Randall Loftus, whom Menzies had recently spoken to her about. He had won huge acclaim for his documentary series The Last Cowboy on Earth, and since then had produced a string of award-winning documentaries for public television.
As she approached, the babel of overlapping voices grew more shrill. “Testing. Testing…”
“Ugh! We’ve got the acoustics of a barn in here!”
Loftus and his crew were setting up to broadcast the premiere of the sound-and-light show on the night of the opening. The local PBS station planned to cover the opening live, and they had energetically syndicated the show to ensure it would not only go out to most PBS affiliates across the nation, but also be carried by the BBC and the CBC. It was a public relations coup that Menzies himself had worked hard to arrange. The resulting international attention, Nora knew, could go a long way toward saving the museum’s bacon. But at the moment, they were causing utter chaos—and at the worst possible time. Their cables lay all over the ground, tripping up assistants carrying priceless Egyptian antiquities. The brilliant lights only added to the heat generated by hot electronics and the dozens of frantic people rushing about in a kind of controlled panic: the air-conditioning system ducts were roaring in a futile effort to lower the exhibit’s temperature.