“Josh?” Dr. Lane indicates it’s time.

The structural scan begins. What sounds like loud hammering, and images of Dr. Self’s brain are displayed on Josh’s computer screen. They don’t reveal much. Unless there is some gross pathology, such as a tumor, they will see nothing until later, when thousands of images captured by the MRI are analyzed.

“We’re ready to begin,” Dr. Lane says over the intercom. “You all right in there?”

“Yes.” Impatient.

“The first thirty seconds, you’re not going to hear anything,” Dr. Lane explains. “So be silent and relax. Then you’re going to hear an audiotape of your mother’s voice, and I want you to just listen. Be completely still and just listen.”

Dr. Self’s vitals remain the same.

An eerie sonar sound that brings to mind a submarine as Benton looks at Dr. Self’s blanketed feet on the other side of the glass.

“The weather here’s been perfectly wonderful, Marilyn.” The recorded voice of Gladys Self. “I haven’t even bothered with the air conditioner—not that it works. Rattles like a huge insect. I just keep the windows and doors open because the temperature isn’t so bad right now.”

Although this is the neutral set, the most innocuous one of all, Dr. Self’s vital signs have changed.

“Pulse seventy-three, seventy-four,” Benton says, writing it down.

“I’d say this isn’t neutral for her,” Dr. Lane says.

“I was thinking of all those gorgeous fruit trees you used to have when you lived down here, Marilyn, the ones the Department of Agriculture had to cut down because of the citrus canker. I love a pretty yard. And you’d be pleased to know that silly eradication program has pretty much ground to a halt because it doesn’t work. Such a shame. Life is all about timing, isn’t it?”

“Pulse seventy-five, seventy-six. Pulse ox ninety-eight,” Benton says.

“…The darnedest thing, Marilyn. This submarine going back and forth all day about a mile offshore. Has a little American flag waving from the whatever you call it. The tower where the periscope is? Must be the war. Back and forth, back and forth, some kind of practice, the little flag waving. I say to my friends, practice for what? Did anybody tell them they don’t need submarines in Iraq…?”

The first neutral set ends, and during a thirty-second recovery period, Dr. Self’s blood pressure is taken again. It’s gone up to one sixteen over eighty-two. Then her mother’s voice again. Gladys Self talks about where she likes to shop these days in South Florida, and the never-ending construction, high-rises sprouting up everywhere, she says. A lot of them empty because the real estate market has gone to hell. Mainly because of the war in Iraq. What it’s done to everyone.

Dr. Self reacts the same way.