First Chapter of “The Dreaming Tree”, Matthew Mather’s next novel, due out Jan. 28, 2018

May 4th

Surgical Rehab Wing of Valhalla Corporation

Manhattan, New York, present day…

 

 

“What do you mean, head replacement?”

A face came into focus–a mane of shaggy gray-blond hair, with blue eyes nestled in weathered wrinkles. Soothingly familiar, alarmingly unknown. “Buddy, take it easy,” said the face, the words whispered. “Just take it easy…”

A steady beeping in the background gave way to an alarm, a rising klaxon.

Shaggy-beard-face receded, revealing an eggshell-white ceiling glowing from hidden lights.

A new face appeared. Angular. Green piercing eyes this time, set deep in smooth skin. Also familiar, but not soothing. “Tell me your name. Do you know your name?” The accent was Eastern European. New-face scowled after asking the question. He turned and spewed a tumble of unintelligible words at unseen recipients.

The klaxon stopped.

My name? What is my name? The question reverberated, echoed from one side of empty mind-space to the other. The answer tickled the back of the throat, a too-distant taste of the past gulped back by terrible nothingness. Blank fear strangled competing thoughts. And then–

“Royce,” came the answer, the word rolling out by itself, a stray rock from unseen heights, emerging whole as if from someone else’s lips. A pause, and then: “Royce Lowell.” These two words were more confident, attached to a bloom of recognition coloring the empty canvas of the mind. I’m Roy, he thought. My name is Roy. Relief tingled his scalp, and then…is that right? That’s not my name, is it? Am I Roy?

“Good, very good, that’s right,” new-face said. “And I am Dr. Danesti–”

“Lowell-Vandeweghe. Royce Lowell-Vandeweghe,” interrupted another voice–higher pitched–the owner out of view. “That’s your full name. Roy, my God, it’s me. This is all my fault…”

Roy tried to turn his head, but couldn’t. Tried to shift his body. Nothing. Panic dribbled into his veins. Where am I?

“Please, Mrs. Vandeweghe.” Dr. Danesti held up the palm of one hand, the fingers spread out hard.

Penny, Roy thought, now recognizing the woman’s voice, that’s Penelope. He rolled his eyes as far right as he could, and just caught a glimpse of her cropped blond hair. My wife.

Dr. Danesti turned back to Roy. “Do you know who I am?”

I know you, Roy thought, but the words refused to form. Another wheezing rattle of air through a constricted windpipe. Is that my lungs? He tried to breathe deep, but felt nothing. The still-smoldering fear tightened its knuckles around his brain stem.

“Blink once if you can hear me,” Danesti said, his voice gaining pitch.

Again the siren wailed, inundating Roy’s already-brittle senses. He blinked, once, twice, three times in rapid succession. A white-clad figure materialized to his left, and then disappeared just as fast. A languid ooze settled over and into Roy’s mind. The room went quiet again.

He remembered what he was trying to remember. “You’re my mother’s doctor.”

“That’s right.” Danesti’s voice was calm again. “And now, I am your doctor. Do you know what year it is?”

“Who won the last World Series?” the comforting-but-gruff voice said. Shaggy-beard-face loomed into view again, adding: “I’m telling you, Roy would hardly remember what year it was even when he was sober. But baseball–”

“Rangers, the Rangers won last year,” Roy wheezed. Shaggy-beard man is Sam, Roy remembered. Samuel Phipps. My best friend. The cool ooze filled more of his brain, the familiar patina of drugs sliding over his mind’s eye. “I won five grand off you.”

“That’s right. See, what’d I tell ya?” Sam said, turning to Danesti. Their faces hovered in Roy’s field of vision. “And the Rangers ain’t never won in sixty years before that. I told you he was okay.” In a lower voice he asked the doctor. “Can I hold his head for him?”

The doctor’s hollowed cheeks quivered into a smile. “Be gentle.”

“Wouldn’t ever be any other way.”

A hand slipped under the back of Roy’s head, tender fingers reaching through his sweaty hair. Pressure on his neck, on his windpipe, the sinews at the back of his neck stretching–but that was all Roy felt. The rest of his body was numb–not even numb, just not there. Like dropping over the edge on a roller coaster, the rest of the room swiveled into view as Sam lifted his head. Roy’s eyes fought to focus. A mass of blond hair and alabaster skin rushed at him.

“Roy, baby, thank God,” Penny cried. “I’m so sorry. We’re going to be okay.”

His wife deposited wet kisses on his cheeks. Lips warm against his clammy skin. Roy wanted to reach up to hold her, but he couldn’t budge. This time no panic, just the detached observation. She brushed back his hair and kissed his forehead.

“What…what happened?” Roy stammered, the words hoarse and thready.

“There was a terrible accident, we were almost killed,” Penny replied. “A car accident. Do you remember? I was driving, we went over the cliff–”

“What…I don’t, I don’t…” What was the last thing he remembered? I don’t know. Images of faces. “We were at the…” Soft music. Red velvet curtains. “…the party? A party?”

“The Chegwiddens,” Penny said. “That’s right, baby. We were at the Chegwidden’s house. Oh God. Thank God.”

Penny retreated a step, her hands coming together as if in prayer, and Roy noticed the smooth red scar across her left forehead, an insult to the perfect skin on her perfect face. His brain tried to add up the details. The scar looked smooth. Why couldn’t he move? He tried to look down. He couldn’t shift anything. Couldn’t feel anything. His eyes darted left and right. Featureless white walls. Where am I again?

“Am I paralyzed?” Roy asked instead.

“That would not be the correct terminology,” Dr. Danesti replied. “At least, we hope it is not.”

Roy’s brain tried to parse the doctor’s meaning. Right. An operation. Some surgery. “How long?” he said after taking a moment.

Did I already ask this? He got the sense this wasn’t the first time he’d been in this room, but it was the only time he could remember. A second ago he couldn’t even remember his name. Just take it slow.

“Five months since the accident,” Dr. Danesti answered. “You’ve been in a medically induced coma for most of that.”

Roy blinked to clear his eyes. Three other figures loomed at the back wall of the room. The lights were low. One of them advanced. A woman, also with blond hair and striking features, but unnatural; old skin pulled tight over high cheekbones, lips artificially swollen, her sweep of hay-colored hair thin and brittle.

“Mother,” Roy croaked, the single word dry and cracked.

“A miracle,” Virginia weeped, leaning in to kiss her son’s forehead. “I just wanted to…my God. Thank you, God.”

“Praise be to God,” Sam whispered.

A lot of God stuff here, Roy thought, a random flash. He’d never been to church in his life, certainly never with his mother. Raindrops of past-life sprinkled into his mind.

The figures in the back of the room came into focus. One was a large African-American man in a rumpled suit sitting in a corner chair. His sweaty bald pate, ringed with a halo of white hair, reflected the overhead lighting. A wide nose, flattened off center from some insult, slouched over a thick gray bristle of a mustache.

Atticus, Roy remembered, his lawyer. Their family lawyer.

“What do you remember, Roy?”

Atticus sagged forward in his chair to stand. The man grunted in effort as he stood, but then he was huge. Six and a half feet and at least three hundred pounds. Most of it fat, but enough of it muscle. A Marine, Roy remembered, served in Vietnam. Something he rarely let Roy forget.

“Do you remember what happened?” Atticus asked again, more insistent. “Before the accident?” He checked his watch.

Roy closed his eyes.

The Chegwiddens’ house, in Montauk.

A rush of blurred images emerged from the haze of his mind.

“We took my old Porsche, we drove in…” It felt as though everyone in the room leaned closer.

His mind slid back, filled with a vision of startling clarity. They’d driven in from Manhattan, waited for the traffic to ease off. He’d asked the concierge to bring around his baby blue 356 Speedster. Penny hated it, couldn’t stand the way it blew her hair around when he took the top down. He remembered she tried to insist that they get the driver to bring them in the Escalade, or take the helicopter shuttle from West 30th, but he’d refused. Said it was too expensive, that they weren’t that rich. Said that anyway, it was his birthday–New Year, every year, a cursed day for a birth if there ever was one.

The smell of the leather seats, the bite of the frigid air and Penny’s hair flying in the wind–images of the drive on the Long Island Expressway flashed in his mind, and then of scraggly chokeberry and bayberry bushes half-lit in the beam of the car’s headlights, the washed gray cedar shingles of the Chegwiddens’ rambling New England home rising up from the knotted wind-blown pines around it. White-framed windows cast warm yellow light over patches of sea grass atop sand dunes. A distant crash of waves, a full moon reflecting off the Atlantic. Strains of a cello, soft clink of plates and glasses, black-suited kitchen staff serving hors d’oeuvres on silver platters, hushed conversation and peels of laughter, a flash of a diamond necklace, and then…

Screaming, but not in an accident. He was yelling at someone. Or was someone yelling at him?

“I just…I only remember…the house. Getting to there. That’s it.” Roy coughed. “The accident wasn’t on the Expressway?”

“It was in Montauk,” Atticus replied. “Don’t you remember–”

“Gentleman, ladies, ” Danesti said, “I think Mr. Lowell-Vandeweghe has–”

“Roy. Just call me Roy.”

“I think that Roy,” Danesti continued, “has had enough for today. We needed to expect some memory loss, as I took pains to explain before in our meetings together. We need to give him some rest.”

“Of course,” Atticus said. “I just wanted to be here…for the family.”

“Me too,” said the other man at the back of the room, standing beside Atticus.

He wore a uniform. A police uniform. Roy didn’t recognize him–or at least, his brain couldn’t dredge up anything.

“That’s Captain Harris, he pulled you and Penny from the wreck,” Roy’s mother whispered. “When the doctor said they were waking you up today, he wanted to be here. We all wanted to be here.”

Roy’s brain took a moment to process, then he said, “Thank you,” as loud as he could to Captain Harris. Attempted a smile he didn’t feel.

The captain nodded. Said he wished Roy a speedy recovery, that he was here to help and that anyone could call him. He left quietly with Atticus, putting an arm around the lawyer’s shoulders as they left together, bent toward each other in muted conversation. The door swung shut behind them.

Medical equipment beeped in the ensuing silence. Sam’s fingers flexed under Roy’s head.

“Why can’t I move?” The question came without fear now, the intravenous drugs a safety net for any emotional performance.

Danesti smiled. “This is a complex question–”

“Just give it to me. Am I paralyzed?” If yes, then turn the machines off. Kill me. Make it painless, his inner voice urged. Or painful. Maybe you deserve some pain. Roy frowned. “What did you say before? A transplant? What was transplanted?”

“Relax, buddy,” Sam whispered. His grip tightened on the back of Roy’s skull.

“But what did you say before?”

Penny stepped back, raising a hand to her mouth. She pulled away and, by accident, took the bed sheet halfway with her, exposing one of Roy’s arms, his torso and a leg and foot. Roy focused on his big toe. Except it wasn’t his big toe. His eyeballs rolled left. The leg. That hand. Was he hallucinating? The room seemed to swirl, the air sucked from Roy’s lungs.

“We had to perform a very aggressive surgical transplant to save you.” Dr. Danesti pulled back the sheets to cover the body.

“What did you do?” Roy strained but couldn’t move anything except his eyes. He darted them side to side and up and down, trying to find a way to escape.

The soft beep of the machines quickened in tempo. Sam’s finger’s slip away. The ceiling slumped back into view. The machines beeped faster, their beat faltering into a staccato arrhythmia.

Dr. Danesti’s sunken-cheeked face appeared close to his right side. “We call the procedure a body transplant.”

“What body?” Roy wheezed.

“Your body was crushed”–Penny leaned over Roy from his left, a tear streaming down one pink cheek–“destroyed in the accident. There was no hope. No other way.”

“We replaced your body with a donor body,” Dr. Danesti said, matter-of-factly. “You are a very lucky man, Roy. One of the very first few to successfully–”

“What do you mean donor body? Whose body? I’m attached to someone else’s body?” His eyes swiveled down as far as they could in their sockets. “You mean my head is attached to someone else’s body? Where’s my…here’s their head? How the hell…what…”

Black dots raced and coalesced in Roy’s vision, the machines’ stuttering beeps merging into a single high-pitched whine.

“Nurse,” Danesti called out, and then yelled: “Nurse!”

Roy’s mind dropped backward and away into the dark maelstrom churning behind consciousness.

***

Note from Matthew Mather — Hope you enjoyed the first chapter of my upcoming novel, The Dreaming Tree. I will release more chapters in the next two months before its release on Jan. 28th!

 

 

 

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