Her Parents Brought Suit, But Since She Was Incoherent and Profane

the judge believed the shrink, and on her husband’s
 signature she lay
under the tower clock in her restraints, a needle in her
 vein, an i. v.
butterflied onto her arm. The hill outside was ice. The
 anesthesiologist
said, “Now.” He squeezed the works, and she was under:
 paralyzed: no breath.
Her husband looked down at the pond behind the old
 incinerator house.
Warm spill stumbled into a thawed spot from the ditchbed.
 Helpless,
he had watched her drinking through September, picking
 up odd men,
painting the residue of nightmares, then not sleeping, then
 reporting
that the phone company had put transmitters and receivers
 under her scalp
which finally she had to shave in patches to slice open to
 remove the bugs.

First, she had to leave him: his whole brain had been
 replaced at work
with boards of microcircuitry, no point in struggling any
 more with him,
though she did telephone their children, asking if the
 school nurse
might have scheduled them for odd procedures. She called
 every day.
That first afternoon she missed, he knew. He drove straight
 to the studio
he rented her over the fishmarket. She liked the smell. It
 baffled
ultrasound, she said, and maybe infrared and microwaves.
 It made him
weep. He rang, knocked, slipped a plastic card into the
 latch,
and found her out cold on the bathroom floor, hair wet with
 blood,
phone off the hook, hi-fi and radio and television on full
  blast.

Uphill from the pond, below the hospital, a cloud poured
 from an open pipe
and sheathes of ice formed on bare honeysuckles and
 spirea planted
to conceal the ditch. Elsewhere there was a dust of dingy
 snow.
His fingertips felt cold inside the rabbit lining of his gloves.
The shrink with caliper in both hands hunched his
 shoulders up
to place the two electrodes at right temple and right
 parietal arch.
He said, “OK.” The anesthesiologist rechecked the settings
 on the panel
labelled Hittman, pressed the button, and said, “Here she
 goes.”
The Hittman hummed its low note, and the shrink
 removed the caliper.
Her husband stood far off, feet frozen in two-hundred-
 dollar shoes.

He gazed into the uprush of the steam among the crystal
 twigs
remembering at college when they showered after
 midnight in her dorm
how fierce she turned! How her improvisations tested him
 and pleased him.
Dress-up games. Disguises. Flagrancies in public parks. In
 airplanes.
Fingertips and whispers. Teases. Thrills of a forbidden life.
Bohemian was how he wanted her, and made himself as
 unremarkable
as men need be: the MBA, the classic width of his lapel,
 the Tudor house,
with weekends at the club arriving in a fashionable choice
 of car
to talk collegial, congeneric talk. Her paintings pulled him
 back,
meanwhile, into a smear of orchids and odd persons. It was
 her soul.

The nurse was scanning for the signs of seizure: fingers,
 toes, a twitch,
a few goosebumps, but nothing, she said, “Nothing.”
 ”Right,” the shrink said.
So the meterman cranked up the juice and hit it. Waited.
 Her tenth treatment.

Her resistance up. He set the knobs again, said, “Third
 time charm.” Again
he boosted her. The shrink’s mouth formed a small hurt
 smile. He saw
her limbs gone stiff under the storm of brainwaves jump,
 jump, jump.
And it was good—that this week she could sleep again; she
 had forgotten
their last talk, but she knew who he was, forgot his name,
 but she no longer
feared him, since the phone company did not control the
 hospital; her husband
loved her, he was not a cyborg; voices spoke, but she knew
 they did not

exist, she told herself that, and they faded. Now, though,
 the nurse’s face
was in her face, the mouth was moving, and a voice said,
 ”Mrs. Lindstrom,
you’re awake. The treatment’s over now. That’s it. We’re
 all done.”
So there she was, this person bursting into tears, hearing
 her own voice
whimper, “No. I’m sorry. I just. . . . Please. I’m sorry. It’s
  OK.”