1636_ The Saxon Uprising - Eric Flint [2]
“And this means…?”
“The temporal lobes play a major role in the way our brains process language.” Nichols cocked his head slightly. “I take it you haven’t seen your cousin yet?”
Hand shook his head. “No. I decided to stop off here on my way to Berlin. I was stationed in the Oberpfalz and Magdeburg was directly on my route.”
He hesitated; then, added: “I would appreciate it if you would not mention this visit to anyone, Doctor Nichols. I, ah…Let us say that my assignment from the king—given to me before his injury, of course—is of a very confidential nature.”
Nichols studied him for a moment. The Moor’s dark eyes seemed very shrewd, as Hand had feared they might be. He’d been hoping that Europe’s greatest medician would be a naïf in all other matters. No great hope, though, given what he knew of the doctor’s history.
Suddenly, Nichols smiled. “Do I take it that when you meet Chancellor Oxenstierna you will be equally discreet, Colonel?”
Erik stiffened. “Of course! It is well known among Sweden’s highest circles—it is certainly known to Axel—that I serve Gustav Adolf as his personal agent. My business is with the king, and the king alone.”
That was true enough, as far as it went. But Hand was fairly certain that Nichols saw through the subterfuge involved. Hand was now operating entirely on his own, a fact which he would try to conceal by referring to his longstanding and close relationship to his cousin.
But the doctor made no further reference to the matter. His smile vanished, and he continued with his medical assessment.
“What you will discover when you come into your cousin’s presence is that he speaks—quite easily, in fact—but his speech makes no sense. It’s as if the mechanism which translates thoughts into words has been broken. The technical medical term for the condition is ‘aphasia.’ Beyond that…”
He leaned back in the chair in his office. “He’s apparently still not recognizing anyone. The temporal lobes are involved in handling visual content, too. He’s apparently had no seizures yet, but he might have them in the future. And he’s apparently suffering from occasional onsets of blind fury.” Sourly, he added: “You’ll have to forgive my excessive use of the term ‘apparently.’ I’m no longer on the scene and the few reports I’ve gotten since I left are skimpy at best.”
“Will he recover?”
“He might, yes. But there’s no way to know yet, Colonel—nor, even if he does recover, do we know how long it might take.”
“Your best estimate, please.”
Nichols shrugged. “Assuming he recovers at all, and given that it’s now been several weeks since the injury, I don’t see much chance of any major improvement until a few months have gone by. I could easily be proven wrong, you understand.”
“Could it take years?”
“Possibly. But…” Nichols made a little face. “Look, here’s how it is with brain traumas. Strokes, too. There are some outliers, true enough. There have even been a few cases where people recovered after almost twenty years in a coma. But the general rule of thumb is that once what you might call the normal recovery period has passed, the odds that the patient will recover start dropping pretty quickly. So my gut feeling is that if Gustav Adolf doesn’t recover—mostly, anyway—within a year, then he’s not going to recover at all.”
Hand nodded. “Thank you. That’s quite helpful, I think.”
Now that he was on the scene in Berlin, Hand could see that the doctor’s assessment had been quite helpful. It gave him what he most needed as a guide to action: a time frame.
Six months, Hand decided. That would be his framework.
Chancellor Oxenstierna had escorted the colonel into the room in the former Elector’s palace where Gustav Adolf was kept. He’d been silent since, allowing the king’s cousin to interact as best he could without distraction.
Now, finally, he spoke. “As you can see, Erik, he does not have his wits about him any longer.”
Hand thought it would be better to say that the king’s wits were wandering somewhere inside his brain, trying to find a way out. But under the circumstances, the less he said to