Three times a week (Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays), the patient recreation room was converted into a lecture hall. Each of the seventy-six patients who called Harmony House home took turns presenting twenty-minute lectures on a subject of their choice to a dozen or so of their colleagues. This meant that each patient gave a lecture every six months. Of course, each patient always chose the same subject, because that’s the way it is with autism. But to date, no one had ever complained about the repetitiveness of it, and it was a near certainty that no one ever would.
Today was Eddie’s turn. He was dressed in his best approximation of a professor, including a houndstooth blazer and an untucked oxford shirt, while the ten other patients in the room wore sweatshirts from prestigious institutions. Harvard, Yale, MIT, Stanford, Cal Tech, and the others watched with great apparent interest as Eddie began to fill the large whiteboard with the same complex equations that appeared in his binders.
The sound of the dry-erase pen Eddie used to write his complicated algorithms was soothing to him. Not because it was pleasant. Far from it. But the SHRILL sound meant that he was teaching, or as close as he would ever come to actually teaching, and that made him feel good. Important. Even scholarly. At least, his approximation of those feelings. Some of his favorite people in the world had been teachers. While many of his proctors were downright overwhelmed by the challenge of handling a special-needs student with an IQ of 193, a special few understood that Eddie was unlike anyone they would ever teach again, and relished the opportunity. These were the ones Eddie hoped to emulate.
All but one of the people currently in the recreation room had already heard his lecture multiple times, but they didn’t seem to mind, just as he didn’t mind listening to their lectures when it was their turn to teach. The staff called it academic therapy. Another brainstorm of Dr. Marcus Fenton. Like kids playing house, only this was neurologically diverse people playing university.
Today, Eddie was the professor, and the other patients were his students. Two were adolescents. The oldest was in her sixties. The other seven were somewhere in between. Some appeared to be neurotypical, like anyone you’d expect to see attending a lecture on acoustics by the world’s leading authority. Others, like the guy picking his nose with a disturbing vengeance, could never fool anyone for an instant in the outside world, former Mensa chapter president or not.
Among the other patients, specialties included string theory, cold fusion, biomolecular construction, silent propulsion systems, and machine learning. Among the staff supervising the proceedings was Gloria Pruitt, whom all the patients called Nurse Gloria. She had worked at Harmony House since 2007 and had a natural air of authority about her. She carried the wisdom that came from age and experience. Gloria stood steadfast by the door with her hands clasped behind her. She had already heard Eddie’s lecture a great many times, but you never would have known it from her expression.
Also in attendance was the one person in the room who hadn’t previously heard Eddie’s talk. She was the new medical resident he had just been introduced to.
Earlier that morning, after a breakfast of Froot Loops (with the purple loops removed) and orange juice that both rated a four, Eddie had recognized her footsteps well before Dr. Fenton knocked on his door and asked if they could come in. Right away, he knew what he wanted to ask her, which he did before even seeing her. “What were you feeling last Friday afternoon when you left Dr. Fenton’s office?”
The old man smiled as he opened the door. “Eddie, I would like to introduce you to our new medical resident, Dr. Skylar Drummond.”
She knew not to try and shake his hand. Many people with Asperger’s cannot stand physical contact, particularly with a stranger. Skylar raised her hand and waved very slightly. “Hi, Eddie.”
He stared at her for a moment. His face was, of course, without expression. He didn’t say a word.
Dr. Fenton grew concerned. “Eddie, are you all right?”
The patient stared at his new doctor without blinking. “You’re pretty.”
“Thank you.”
Fenton glanced over at a framed photo of Eddie’s mother and father sitting on his desk. The similarity between Michelle Parks and Skylar was unmistakable. And no coincidence.
Eddie kept staring at his new doctor. “People who are pretty get told that a lot. Do you get told that a lot, Dr. Drummond?”
“No, not really.”
He made a BUZZER sound like the response on a game show when a contestant gives the wrong answer.
Fenton turned to Skylar. “Eddie is a walking polygraph. It’s pointless to be less than truthful around him.” He paused as if to say, Yes, really. “You’ll get used to it.”
She turned to Eddie, doing her best to conceal her amazement. “It’s very nice to meet you.”
No buzzer. She was speaking the truth. “Thank you,” he replied mechanically. He liked the sound of her voice. It was soothing. Warm. He repeated his question, asking what she had been feeling the first time he heard her footsteps.
“Dr. Fenton had just hired me, and I was feeling happy.”
“Did you feel like you were going to be happy for the rest of your life?” Eddie hoped her answer would be yes.
“Well, maybe not for the rest of my life, but I knew I was happy in that moment, and probably would be for the foreseeable future.”
Eddie jotted down her exact words in one of his binders, then paused. “Exactly how long would you say the foreseeable future is?”
Edward Parks was just as Dr. Fenton had told her he would be. “Well, I expected it would last at least until the end of the day.”
Eddie nodded, seeming satisfied with the answer. “Dr. Drummond, would you like to attend my lecture this morning?”
“Yes, I would, Eddie. But, please, call me Skylar.”
“It starts at nine o’clock sharp, Skylar.”
“Then I will be on time.”
He looked at her without emotion. “I will, too.”
As Skylar and Fenton walked away from Eddie’s room, her expression was the same one that most people had after first meeting him. Dr. Fenton glanced at her. “That was a big deal, you know.”
“What was?”
“For him to invite you to his lecture. It usually takes Eddie quite a while before he feels comfortable enough with someone new to share his work with them.”
“Why did he want to know what I was feeling?”
“So he could say what you said the next time someone asks what he is feeling.”
“But he never saw me.”
“Doesn’t matter. He heard you. Just like he can hear us now.” They were over fifty feet away from Eddie’s closed door.
She glanced behind them. “You’re joking.”
“When the opportunity presents itself, ask him to repeat this conversation. Eddie’s sense of hearing is astonishing.”
“Is there a connection to the Asperger’s?”
He nodded. “Having one of their senses heightened is commonplace among patients on the spectrum. We believe those on the lower-functioning end simply can’t communicate what they are experiencing, which compounds their feelings of being overwhelmed and frustrated. That’s what makes Eddie so unique. He can tell us.”
“Does he hear more than we do, or does he simply process the same things we hear better?”
“We’re honestly not sure.”
The answer surprised her. “Why not?” It was quickly becoming clear why she’d been required to sign a seventeen-page confidentiality agreement as part of her employment contract.
“He once had such a severe panic attack in an MRI that he broke the machine. He can’t handle electrodes or anything else being attached to his body that would allow us to gather any meaningful data.”
“I think I can help with that.”
“I believe you can, too. I want your initial focus to be on Eddie. He’s very close to a breakthrough.”
“What kind of breakthrough?” She assumed he meant developmental.
“After you’ve heard his lecture, you’ll understand.”
Skylar’s footsteps echoed as she and Fenton neared the end of the hall. “He can’t possibly hear us now, can he?” she asked quietly.
From nearly one hundred feet behind them, Eddie poked his head out of his door. “After you’ve heard his lecture, you’ll understand.” Eddie’s delivery sounded more like a male version of Siri, but it was still striking. Then he closed his door.
Skylar shook her head as she and Fenton turned a corner. “Amazing.”
“You have no idea.”
CHAPTER 12