Ripper Read Online Free Page B

concentrate, he wavers when he walks. If he doesn't concentrate, his mind picks the wrong word. Strange to have to think about thinking itself.
    After brain surgery, you sleep a lot. Twelve to fourteen hours, well into the next day. Released from the Hong Kong hospital, he returns to the farm. The headaches he gets are screamers, but gradually they ease. On the mend, he doesn't envision lasting consequences . . .

    . . . he's to take Dilantin prophylactically for a year. The anticonvulsant guards against seizures while his brain heals. A plastic pinwheel by his bed reminds him to take two caps in the morning and two at night. Later the quadruple dose is reduced. The postop nightmare fades . . .

    . . . when he was a boy there was this story in Ripley's Believe It or Not. A man walked past a shop window as a burglar inside blew the safe. The blast hurled an iron bar through the glass, striking the passerby in the head, entering his brain. Still conscious, the injured man found a doctor's office, and later the missile was removed by hospital surgeons. By chance the shaft had speared an unused part of his brain, so believe it or not, the wound healed with no lasting effect.
    A year after the gunshot, Zinc hopes that applies to him . . .

    . . . the seizure comes unexpectedly when he's mending a barbwire fence. First he tastes licorice, which he hasn't had in years. Then the wire squiggles as if it's alive, the barbs folding and unfolding like a spider's dance. As the fit takes hold, his head revolves on his neck like a wobbly top. Objects around him shrink until he's Gulliver trapped in Lilliput. His legs are rubber, akin to a bad dream. He knows he's going to topple, then he does. The fit knocks the wind out of him, catching him short. The earth heaves as one by one his motor capabilities—walking, talking—are lost. Consciousness slips and he goes into convulsive shakes. Tom, his brother, finds him jerking on the ground, with his neck arched, making mewling sounds . . .

    . . . head inside a CT, white noise surrounds him as the machine CAT scans his brain.
    Discussing the results, he says, "Give it to me straight, Doc. No bedside manner."
    "Combined, the bullet and surgery left an internal scar. The lesion is on the anterior aspect of your frontal lobe. Luckily it's on the same side as your dominant hand. If it were on the opposite, the effect would be worse.
    "The onset of your seizure was out of the ordinary. Frontal lobe discharge usually produces immediate convulsions. With you, the electrical misfiring that brought on the fit traveled along the fiber tract running from your frontal lobe to the temporal lobe beside your ear. There it discharged secondarily, producing the aura—or premonition—prior to your blackout. Which means you get a warning."
    "What's the bottom line, Doc?"
    "You have epilepsy. Seizures will be a danger for the rest of your life."
    "Treatment?"
    "We're back to four caps of Dilantin a day. They worked for the past year, and should suppress onset in the future. You must avoid alcohol and sleeplessness. And never—I repeat never— miss taking your drugs . . .

    . . .  epilepsy, Zinc thinks. A stigma disease. Might as well he leprosy.
    As late as the nineteenth century, epileptics were thought to be demoniacally possessed. They were caged with the deviant or insane. Many were sterilized.
    Epilepsy.
    Welcome to Hell indeed . . .

    * * *
    "Who's your friend?" DeClercq said, indicating the scarecrow.
    "Mr. Bojangles," Zinc replied.
    "He's seen better days."
    "Haven't we all?"
    Misery may like company, but DeClercq didn't feel that way. His dedication to the Force had cost him everything he cherished at heart, yet having paid the price at least he had his job. Chandler's deprivation now matched his own, except—having lost it all—he'd also lost his shield.
    "Why the binoculars?"
    "Watching owls."
    DeClercq saw nothing but the barn and sunny fields of snow.
    "In the loft," Zinc said, handing