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here with that!” Donna smiled.
    Donna saw
the patient’s reaction first and held up her hand for Rachel seriously to stop
it. He began to tremble as if shaken from the inside out. His head vibrated
back and forth in hysterical denial. His arms and legs began to move aimlessly,
uselessly in a lame attempt to get away.
    “No. No.
No. No. No. No. No.”   he repeated. Each
"No" was separate from the others, as though to emphasize the terror
of each moment the patient had suffered under some such instrument.
    “Rachel,”
Donna said. “Put it away, quick.”
    Rachel
swung the device behind her and backed slowly out of the room. Donna put her
hand on the man’s shoulder to quiet him.
    “Sorry,”
Rachel said to Donna.
    “It’s
okay,” Donna said to the man. “It’s okay. It’s gone now. It’s gone now.”
    Like
waves in a pool that slowly flatten to nothing, the man finally settled, calmed
and slept.
    Rachel
waited a few moments then returned to the room, a little sheepishly.
    “What was
that all about?” she asked Donna.
    “I’d say
the patient has had some experience with that device or something like it,”
Donna replied. “I don’t think he liked the experience very much.”
    For some
perverse reason she couldn’t explain, Rachel was tempted to bring the device
back into the room and show it to him again—real close up.
    “Well,
this just gets more and more mysterious all the time,” she said knowingly for
Donna’s benefit. What she really wanted to do was grab the man and shake him
and make him tell her what it all meant. “I wonder what the relationship is.”
    “We may
be able to find out,” Donna said. “I plan to install the AUD's tomorrow. I
think he can handle it. We know he can speak. If he could hear, we could
communicate with him.”
    “That’s a
good idea,” Rachel said, disguising the anticipation in her voice. “That’s a
real good idea.”
    Sometimes,
during the daylight hours, when her thoughts were busy, confused and filled
with figuring out this or that, she was sure it was only her professional pride
that kept her wondering, seeking answers about the structure and the stranger’s
role in it.
    But it
was in the in-between state, the time between sleep and wakefulness, when
certainty came.
    When she
first awoke, in that half-real state at dawn, clarity came to her and her
questions were answered before they were phrased. Adrift there, she felt in her
nerves, more than thought it in her mind, that the man was part of something
more horrible, more hideous than she could ever imagine. She could feel it, as
surely as she could feel her own flesh, that something terrible, something
loathsome was here; something fantastic, dreadful and vile. Try as she might,
she could find no clue to its form, no hint of its shape. There was no picture
of it, no image of it to be found, but she knew it was there, invisible yet as
tangible, as revolting, as rotten meat.
    There was
something else about the man that frightened her. In his appearance, she found
something terrifying, yet familiar, like an ugly afterimage from a nightmare.
Somehow those limbs stirred the dimmest and most nauseating feelings. She was
sure that, somewhere in the hideous man’s soul, a repugnant thing lay dormant,
squirming, waiting for release. When those feelings occurred, in the half-light
of daybreak, she was sure she held the key to the damned thing’s liberation.
    “Hey,
what’s going on?” John said into her ear. “You’re as tight as a spring.”
    She
patted his arm and made a conscious effort to relax a little. The response drew
a fond and lengthwise hug that caressed her from neck to feet.
     
    * * *
     
    Rachel
wanted to see the operation and to be there when Donna turned on the stranger’s
hearing. She wanted to be the first to ask questions. The problem was that she
didn’t know what those questions should be, but she was sure she could think of
something.
    By the
time she had bathed and dressed and