Luminarium Read Online Free

this woman, didn’t much care for her condescension, her impeccable posture, the overall feeling she gave him that he was sitting slouched in a petri dish, looking up through a tube of microscope lenses into her giant, peeled eye. A few minutes ago, when he’d grabbed her forearm to steady himself upon getting up from the helmet chair, her eyes had popped like his hand was electrified, like he was some experimental slime monster that had breached the containment barriers. Or maybe his grip had just been too strong. As they ticked across what he assumed was his file on her screen, he noticed her contact lenses again. And still that squint. He contemplated telling her she needed a new prescription. It wasn’t a particularly confidence-instilling detail.
    “From the application it sounds like it’s a pretty hard time for you right now.” She nodded again, giving him permission to be having a pretty hard time right now. “Can you tell me a little more about George? Is he still in a coma?”
    “As of this morning,” he said, steeling himself.
    “You wrote that he had lymphoma, and then lapsed into the coma. So the one caused the other?”
    In the gunmetal bookcase on the wall opposite him, at the corner of a shelf with some stereo equipment and a stack of recordable CDs, a snow globe caught his eye, one of the few decorations in the room, a New York skyline of maybe twenty years ago submerged in brackish water.
    “They said the cancer cells probably produced a hormone that caused his sodium levels to drop too low. Apparently it’s not uncommon. The coma resulted from that.”
    “Are they still trying to treat the cancer?”
    The room closed around him like a fist.
    “They can’t. Or won’t, so long as he doesn’t wake up. He went through chemo and radiation when he was first diagnosed. Then it spread to his lungs. Then they told him he only had two or three months to live and he gave up treatment. That was seven months ago. The last six of which, he’s been in the coma.”
    He knew what was coming next. He was resenting her before she even asked.
    “Was there ever a discussion about just”—her voice was quieter now—“stopping treatment?”
    “Early on, they didn’t want to put him on life support. My parents probably would have caved. But I insisted. After a couple weeks, he didn’t need the life support anymore. He’s been on his own power ever since.” He said it like a boast, like he felt no guilt whatsoever about what he’d committed to putting everyone, including George, through. On Fred’s first and last visit to a therapist a couple months back, when he’d made the mistake of relating these details in a less self-assured manner, the woman had assumed he was remorseful about his decision, and proceeded to offer her cloying reassurances that it was a mistake any loving relative could make. Mira’s reaction was in its own way worse: a look of sympathy stopping just short of approval. Before she could say anything, he went on:
    “The doctors don’t know why he hasn’t died. They see no point in doing more tests, but the cancer must be in remission, seeing as he’s still … around.”
    She closed her eyes, opened them. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Fred, I’m merely asking. This isn’t quite my area of expertise.” The way she deployed that quite emphasized that in fact it was, broadly speaking, within her expertise. “But six months is a long time to be in a coma. Are there any signs of brain activity?”
    “Some. Especially in the brain stem. People have come back from that. Not often, I know. But it’s happened.”
    He couldn’t blame her, this time, for busying herself with half a minute’s typing. He looked around the little office some more. His guess was she hadn’t been here long. A few large textbooks—neuroethology, neurotheology (he wondered briefly if one of these was a typo, and if so, which), neuropsychology—on the bookshelf. Van Gogh’s starry night above