Free Brain Child by John Saul

want something stronger, you might poke around the office while I’m gone. I’ve heard rumors that sometimes there’s a bottle in here.”
    Jim eyed the nurse. “Any rumors about just where it might be?”
    “No,” Barbara replied. Then, as she left the office, she spoke once more. “But if I were you, I’d start looking in the credenza. Bottom right.”
    Ellen Lonsdale sat in a straight-backed chair that had been pulled close to Alex’s bed, her right hand resting gently on his. He lay as he had been placed, on his back, the cast on his left arm suspended slightly above the mattress, his limp right arm extended parallel to his body. His face, covered with the respirator mask and a mass of bandages, was barely visible, and totally unrecognizable. Around him was an array of equipmentthat Ellen couldn’t begin to comprehend. All she knew was that the monitors and machinery were somehow keeping her son alive.
    She had been there for nearly five hours now. The sky outside the window was beginning to brighten, and she shifted slightly in her chair, not as a reaction to the stiffness that had long ago taken over her body, but so that she could get a clearer look at Alex’s eyes.
    For some reason, she kept thinking they should be open.
    The night had been filled with odd thoughts like that.
    Several times she had found herself feeling surprise that the respirator was still operating.
    Once, when they brought Alex back from one of the tests—she couldn’t remember which one—she had been shocked at the warmth of his hand when she touched it.
    She knew what the odd feelings were about.
    Despite what she had been told—despite her own inner resolve—she still had the horrible feeling that Alex was dead.
    Several times she had found herself studying the monitors, wondering why they were still registering life signs in Alex.
    Since he was dead, the graphic displays of his heartbeat and breathing should be flat.
    She kept reminding herself that he wasn’t dead, that he was only asleep.
    Except he wasn’t asleep.
    He was in a coma, and despite what everyone kept saying, he wasn’t going to come out of it.
    Abstractly she already understood that it wasn’t a matter of waiting to see what would happen. It was a matter of deciding when to remove the respirator and let Alex go.
    She didn’t know how long that thought had been in her mind, but she knew she was beginning to get used to the reality of it. Sometime today, or perhaps tomorrow, after all the test results had been studied and analyzed, she and Marsh were going to have to makethe most difficult decision of their lives, and she wasn’t at all sure either of them would be up to it.
    If Alex’s brain was, indeed, dead, they were going to have to accept that keeping Alex alive the way he was was cruel.
    Cruel to Alex.
    She stared again at all the machinery, and momentarily wondered why it had ever been invented.
    Why couldn’t they just let people die?
    And yet, she realized with sudden clarity, even though she understood the reality of Alex’s situation, she would never simply let him die.
    If she were going to, she would have done it already. During the last two hours there had been plenty of opportunities. All she would have had to do was turn off the respirator. Alarms would have gone off, but she could have dealt with that. And it wouldn’t have taken long—only a minute or two.
    But she hadn’t done it. Instead, she’d simply sat there battling her feelings of despair, strengthening her resolve not to let him die, and whispering encouraging words to Alex as she held his hand.
    And even though part of her still insisted that Alex was already dead, the other part of her, the part that was determined that he should live, was growing stronger by the hour.
    Suddenly the door opened, and Barbara Fannon stepped into the room, closing the door behind her.
    “Ellen? It’s eight o’clock—you’ve been here all night.”
    Ellen turned her head. “I