Johnny's first surgery was scheduled for May 28. Both Weizak and Brown had explained the procedure carefully to him. He would be given a local anesthetic - neither of them felt a general could be risked. This first operation would be on his knees and ankles. His own ligaments, which had shortened during his long sleep, would be lengthened with a combination of plastic wonder-fibers. The plastic to be used was also employed in heart valve bypass surgery. The question was not so much one of his body's acceptance or rejection of the artificial ligaments, Brown told him, as it was a question of his legs' ability to adjust to the change. if they had good results with the knees and the ankles, three more operations were on the boards: one on the long ligaments of his thighs, one on the elbow-trap ligaments, and possibly a third on his neck, which he could barely turn at all. The surgery was to be performed by Raymond Ruopp, who had pioneered the technique. He was flying in from San Francisco.
'What does this guy Ruopp want with me, if he's such a superstar?' Johnny asked. Superstar was a word he had learned from Marie. She had used it in connection with a balding, bespectacled singer with the unlikely name of Elton John.
'You're underestimating your own superstar qualities,' Brown answered. 'There are only a handful of people in the United States who have recovered from comas as long as yours was. And of that handful, your recovery from the accompanying brain damage has been the most radical and pleasing.'
Sam Weizak was more blunt. 'You're a guinea pig, huh?'
'What?'
'Yes. Look into the light, please.' Weizak shone a light into the pupil of Johnny's left eye. 'Did you know I can look right at your optic nerve with this thing? Yes. The eyes are more than the windows of the soul. They are one of the brain's most crucial maintenance points.'
'Guinea pig,' Johnny said morosely, staring into the savage point of light.
'Yes.' The light snapped off. 'Don't feel so sorry for yourself. Many of the techniques to be employed in your behalf - and some of those already employed - were perfected during the Vietnam war. No shortage of guinea pigs in the V.A. hospitals, nuh? A man like Ruopp is interested in you because you are unique. Here is a man who has slept four-and-a-half years. Can we make him walk again? An interesting problem. He sees the monograph he will write on it for The New England Journal of Medicine. He looks forward to it the way a child looks forward to new toys under the Christmas tree. He does not see you, he does not see Johnny Smith in his pain, Johnny Smith who must take the bedpan and ring for the nurse to scratch if his back itches. That's good. His hands will not shake. Smile, Johnny. This Ruopp looks like a bank clerk, but he is maybe the best surgeon in North America.'
But it was hard for Johnny to smile.
He had read his way dutifully through the tracts his mother had left him. They depressed him and left him frightened all over again for her sanity. One of them, by a man named Salem Kirban, struck him as nearly pagan in its loving contemplation of a bloody apocalypse and the yawning barbecue pits of hell. Another described the coming Antichrist in pulp-horror terms. The others were a dark carnival of craziness: Christ was living under the South Pole, God drove flying saucers, New York was Sodom, L.A. was Gomorrah. They dealt with exorcism, with witches, with all manner of things seen and unseen. It was impossible for him to reconcile the pamphlets with the religious yet earthy woman he had known before his coma.
Three days after the incident involving Weizak's snap-shot of his mother, a slim and dark-haired reporter from the Bangor Daily News named David Bright showed up at the door of Johnny's room and asked if he could have a short interview.
'Have you asked the doctors?' Johnny asked.
Bright grinned. 'Actually, no.'
'All right,' Johnny said. 'In that case, I'd be happy to talk to you.'
'You're a man after my own heart,' Bright said. He came in and sat down.
His first questions were about the accident and about Johnny's thoughts and feelings upon slipping out of the coma and discovering he had misplaced nearly half a decade. Johnny answered these questions honestly and straightforwardly. Then Bright told him that he had heard from 'a source' that Johnny had gained some sort of sixth sense as a result of the accident.
'Are you asking me if I'm psychic?'
Bright smiled and shrugged. 'That'll do for a start.'
Johnny had thought carefully about the things Weizak had said. The more he thought, the more it seemed to him that Weizak had done exactly the right thing when he hung up the phone without saying anything. Johnny had begun to associate it in his mind with that W. W. Jacobs story, 'The Monkey's Paw'. The paw was for wishing, but the price you paid for each of your three wishes was a black one. The old couple had wished for one hundred pounds and had lost their son in a mill accident - the mill's compensation had come to exactly one hundred pounds. Then the old woman had wished for her son back and he had come - but before she could open the door and see what a horror she had summoned out of its grave, the old man had used the last wish to send it back. As Weizak had said, maybe some things were better lost than found.
'No,' he said. 'I'm no more psychic than you are.'
'According to my source, you...
'No, it isn't true.'
Bright smiled a trifle cynically, seemed to debate pressing the matter further, then turned to a fresh page in his notebook. He began to ask about Johnny's prospects for the future, his feelings about the road back, and Johnny also answered these questions as honestly as he could.
'So what are you going to do when you get out of here?' Bright asked, closing his notebook.
'I haven't really thought about that. I'm still trying to adjust to the idea that Gerald Ford is the president.'