ALI
34-year-old assistant professor of neurosurgery at Fletcher Memorial Medical Center, and one of the key players on the team developing SIPNI, a surgically implantable device that, if it works, could help a blind boy see again . . .
Ali: "I'm not a big shot. I'm just an assistant professor—a couple rungs from the bottom of the faculty ladder . . . It's the team I work with that's big."
She was born in Heliopolis, Egypt. Moved with her parents to New York City at age seven. Over the objections of her father, who was himself a physician, she earned an MD degree from McGill University
in Montreal . . .
. . . In medicine she had discovered something bright and wonderful, a place where wisdom and kindness were the only things that mattered, a sanctuary from the frightening and implacable world around her. And she knew that she must never, ever stray beyond its bounds.
Sylphlike, olive-skinned, green-eyed, she has shoulder-length black hair and a slightly aquiline nose.
She is haunted by a childhood trauma that has left her so fearful of her own emotions that she sickens at any outburst of strong
feeling . . .
Kevin: "There's just this little feeling of doom that makes her sick every time she had to tell what she really feels or thinks. Good feelings, bad feelings—either way it's original sin. Thymophobia, to coin a word for it. When things get really tight, she'll pull back into full catatonic, ice-princess mode. Lucky if she even answers to her name then. I often tried to debug her source code, but the problem seemed hard-wired."
. . . She had the skill to cut into the brains of others, but could not heal this abscess within her own.
Her inability to express or act on her feelings has ruined her
marriage . . .
Kevin: "I used to think there was a real flesh and blood woman behind those green eyes of yours. I spent years trying to reach that woman. God knows I did."
. . . Fear infested her like a parasite. Fear had robbed her time and again of the courage to fight for herself. It had robbed her of the simple capacity for trust that lies at the core of every loving relationship.
. . . And has left her helpless to deal with the horrific death of her newborn child . . .
. . . For over a year, she had fought to expunge the memory of her dead son Ramsey. At times, death itself had seemed better to her than to go on seeing that tortured face, those tiny, hopelessly grasping hands, that blood . . . that sudden, shocking, tragic blood.
Shortly after filing for divorce from Kevin, her husband and research collaborator, she began a relationship with her mentor, Dr.
Helvelius . . .
. . . With Helvelius, sex was a sanctuary. She came away from his bed feeling a little more whole, and a little less vulnerable to the perils of her disordered life . . . She didn't ask where the relationship was headed. She had stopped thinking about tomorrow altogether — something quite unusual for her . . .Would it last? She didn't know. But she was closer to being happy than she had been in years.
She struggles to escape her emotions through yoga and through the intense discipline of surgery . . .
. . . She returned to the calm, focused, Zen-like state of mind she always strove for—the sense of order she craved more than anything else in the world.
Ali: "I saw what a small thing it was to climb by toe and bloodied hand over a pile of rocks. The real conquest was of myself—my fears, my weariness, my pain. If I could master that, not all the Alps and rivers and seas in the world could confine my spirit. There was something in me that was unbreakable and inextinguishable."
But the more she suppresses her feelings, the more intense they become . . .
Kevin: "I've always known that you were a volcano inside. God knows, I fell for you because of that volcano. But you never trusted me enough to share what you were really feeling. I've been married to you for five years and still don't even know you."
She has just learned that she is pregnant. Is Kevin the father? Helvelius? She can't be sure . . .
