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  'Ma'am? Need some help?' The salesman pushed back his chair and came across the room. Before she'd told him what she needed, he'd caught Marshall's flailing hands. 'Now, you don't want to do that, sir.' The 'ma'am' and the 'sir' emphasized, somehow, that he was in charge of the situation, which Billie found immensely reassuring.

  'He thinks I'm somebody else,' she confided to the man. 'Sometimes he gets a little, you know, confused.'

  'Oh, that's okay, I get a little confused now and then myself,' the man said heartily. He had dropped one of Marshall's hands now and was pumping the other one gently, pretending to be shaking hands. Billie thought that was nice. 'Sir,' he went on, bending close as if Marshall couldn't see very well and raising his voice as though he couldn't hear, 'my name's Stanley Bartlett. I'm the guy that supplies your food here.'

  Saying by rote, 'Glad to make your acquaintance,' Marshall heard his own voice and suddenly snapped into an understanding of where and who he was, what was happening, what was expected of him and what he could expect. The residual effect of the earlier state of mind—a sense of having been terrified and with good reason—threatened to leave him tremulous, but he managed to steady both his voice and his grip as he, in fact, shook hands with Stanley Bartlett, repeated gravely, 'I'm glad to meet you,' and even added, comprehending almost completely what this interaction concerned, 'We appreciate all that you do.' He still saw Faye superimposed on his beloved Billie, but now he knew she wasn't real. It wasn't the first time he'd dreamed about her, or imagined he glimpsed her in a crowd (or felt her hands on him the way they would be when she was loving him, or felt his hands on her).

  'Would you mind helping me walk him back to his room?' Billie appealed to Mr Bartlett, although she wasn't sure she'd need his help now that Marshall was almost himself again, as much himself as he ever was anymore. She spread her hands apologetically. 'I don't know where the girls are. They must be short-handed today.'

  'Sure,' Bartlett agreed, but she could tell he didn't want to and she was embarrassed that she'd asked. He glanced toward the kitchen and at his watch. 'Looks like Ros isn't ready for me anyway.'

  Marshall stood up on his own. Bartlett reached helpfully for his elbow, which threw Marshall off-balance; he tipped sideways but righted himself by pushing off against Billie's shoulder, eluding her grasp. Then at a respectable pace he got himself out of the dining room and down the hall to the right, which was the direction of his room. Billie and the salesman followed to make sure he got where he was going. Faye followed, too, a short distance, before spinning back to meet Ros as she slammed out through the swinging kitchen door.

  Distraught as she was, Roslyn Curry would be easy to enter. Faye slid right in, just as Bob Morley stepped in front of her demanding his breakfast. 'Sure! No problem!' Ros hissed, bringing her face close to Bob's and locking gazes with him. 'Sit down right there, sir, make yourself comfortable, and I'll be just pleased as punch to serve you.'

  Bob didn't know what to do. He was slow; he didn't always get things. He sat down. He was hungry.

  But she didn't come back out of the kitchen. She didn't bring him his breakfast. He got hungrier and hungrier and madder and madder. He could hear funny noises from back there, like a woman crying. It pissed him off when a woman cried. He got up. He knocked over the chair. 'Hey! I'm hungry!' Nobody did anything.

  Fists clenched, mind completely focused on food, Bob kicked at the metal swinging door into the kitchen and it opened. He hadn't exactly known it would open, but when it did he barged in. Somebody was over by the big refrigerators. She was shaking, and all kinds of colors fizzed out from her. Bob stayed away. He looked for food. The stove that didn't look much like a stove didn't have any food on it. There was a garbage can in the corner with its lid off, and he peered down into it and saw pancakes.

  He pulled them out. They were specked with coffee grounds but he didn't care. Now he needed syrup. 'Syrup!' he grunted.

  Somebody told him, silkily, 'Under the counter. Right in front of you. In the big plastic bottle. You can have as much as you like.' Bob liked syrup.

  Clutching the gritty pancakes in one hand, he squatted to look under the counter. There was the big plastic bottle the voice had been talking about. He tugged at it but it was heavier than he'd expected. He needed both hands, so he laid his pancakes down on the floor and managed to get the jug out. Somebody was coming, he heard footsteps and voices outside the kitchen. He had to hurry. He jerked the cap off and poured lots of thick syrup onto the pancakes right there between his feet and grabbed the sticky mass and shoved it into his mouth.

  It smelled funny. It tasted funny. It burned his throat going down. His belly hurt.

  Chapter 6

  From the supine position in which he'd had Abby place him on the bed, Alexander Booth could see only the ceiling and a few inches of the walls on three sides, with attendant variations in color and texture. This ceiling was institutionally typical, in need of scrubbing and painting; most people, he thought wryly, didn't observe ceilings as extensively and intensively as he did, even those whose responsibilities would seem to demand it.

  Little besides the neglected ceiling was in his field of vision, but he had other ways of determining who was in his presence. His method was not infallible, but over the years he had come to trust his own perceptions, and the greater his confidence the greater their efficacy. Perhaps it was a form of intuition risen out of his need, far greater than normal, for self-protection and vigilance about the environment, or perhaps it was simply that his senses had developed in compensation for other lost or diminished functions. He was even willing to entertain the possibility of extrasensory perception given room to manifest by the weeding out and paring down of ordinary physical perception.

  Whatever the mechanism and its purpose, Alex knew Abby was there. She was standing in the doorway in what he guessed she imagined to be silence; she would be unaware of the minuscule rustlings and tappings a normal human body made in the space it occupied; at her age, before his accident had, in a split second, rendered his body absolutely motionless and still, he had been unaware of them himself.

  She was watching him, taking his measure, attempting to understand him and, he hoped, her feelings for him, assuming he didn't know she had finally come in answer to his summons. His lips actually ached from whistling so long and hard. He was on the verge of saying something to her, though he hadn't decided whether it would be greeting or reprimand, plea or complaint - most effective if he could pull it off would be a mixture of all of the above - when he perceived another presence as well, and he decided to wait until he had an idea of who else was there.

  But now there seemed to be no one other than Abby, and she made herself known to him in the conventional manner, speaking aloud to him, moving to where he could see her, touching his shoulder where he would feel her although the sensation was much muted compared to what it once would have been. Although he had all but given up the dream of finding a woman with whom he could fully communicate, in all the ways available to them both, Alex was nonetheless struck by this further evidence of Abby's conventionality; for one so young, she was shockingly unimaginative. On the other hand, she was easy to read because of it, easy to predict, which would be an advantage to him. And there was something quite appealing about her innocence and simplicity.

  'Yes, Alex. What can I do for you?'

  Alex felt his eyes fill with tears. He had no control over the emotional lability that commonly resulted from a high spinal-cord injury such as his; indeed, the external manifestations—tears, flushed and contorted face, penile erection, unsteady voice—were no longer directly expressive of contemporaneous emotions. But he could control the use to which he put such symptoms, and in the decades since the accident he'd learned, albeit unwillingly at first, that opportunism could be quite as effective as forethought. 'I'm so sorry to be a nuisance,' he began now.

  There was a pause. A more analytical person would have been deciding how to respond. He doubted, thoug
h, that Abby consciously considered her interactions with him or anyone else; he hoped his assessment was accurate in this regard. 'I'm sorry to take so long to answer,' she said.

  'I know you're busy.'

  'Actually, it's not so bad tonight. Everybody on the schedule showed up for a change.' Alex said nothing, but he made his silence heavily expressive, and she said, almost at once, defensively, 'But we were tied up with another—patient.'

  He heard her voice quaver slightly, saw embarrassment redden the curve of her cheek, and was gratified to realize their relationship had progressed to the point where referring to him as a patient caused her discomfort. This was a good sign. He was gaining influence over her more rapidly and more deeply than he had over his current wife and the girls before her. Experience and wisdom acquired with age assuredly had their advantages.

  Fondness for Abby welled, gratitude toward her along with an appreciation of his own power that never failed to move him, and he was weeping again. Alex regularly visualized himself crying, as well as laughing, making love, excreting, eating, sleeping, performing any physical function he could think of, in order to accustom himself to the image, to divest it of its horror and render it familiar, acceptable—even, eventually, welcome. It was a technique he had discovered a long time ago, some years after the accident, taught to him by no counselor, modeled by no other quad, and so he suspected he might well be the only one who knew it, a patentable method for turning misfortune into advantage. Lemons into lemonade, if you will; dross into gold. Alchemy. Off and on he considered launching a career as an inspirational speaker and writer, but was reluctant to share what he knew with the public at large, out of apprehension that the efficacy of the insight would be diluted if he broadcast it.

  Again, now, he put the visualization technique to use, not so much to view himself as Abby might be seeing him—Alex didn't take much interest in other people's opinions—but in order to reinforce the way in which he perceived himself:

  Fifty years old. Giving the impression of being at once older and younger than that, because of the long-term flaccidity of his muscles, his skin well-tended—smooth, no breaks or tears, virtually no wrinkles—over underlying sagging flesh. Many were put off by this age-indefinite appearance, regarding it as 'unnatural'; it was, of course, fundamentally natural for him.

  Light brown hair, graying now and thinning. Green eyes, not the green more properly termed hazel which changed hue according to surroundings or mood, but brilliant, clear, consistent emerald. Tanned skin. He had

  his aides place him for a few carefully monitored minutes in the sunshine every morning and every afternoon, and was pleased to be living in a climate which afforded him three hundred days of sunshine in a typical year. The pallor of the invalid which pearled under his tan was inescapable and, therefore, a factor he incorporated into his self-image. He had come rather to like the way it looked.

  Abby didn't respond immediately to his tears; Alex didn't begrudge her her hesitation, but he noted it. When finally he did feel the drying of his cheeks by a tissue in her hand, she was saying gently, but with a quasi-professional detachment that did not bode well, 'I'm sorry, Alex. It must be hard to have to wait for somebody all the time.'

  Alex pressed the slight advantage he felt he had. 'You said you weren't especially busy.' Deliberately he stopped short of direct accusation.

  'We were having a problem with another—a patient.' She squirmed again, which was precisely what he'd hoped for.

  Delicately he inquired, 'Oh?'

  She shouldn't tell him, but she did. 'Myra Larsen went off on us again.'

  'Who did she think she was this time?' Alex found Myra Larsen vexing, pitiable, occasionally amusing, sometimes—although less and less so as time went on—interesting in a clinical sort of way. Depending on whom he was talking to, he emphasized one or another of these reactions, all of which had equal claim to honesty. With Abby, he had guessed, correctly, that sympathy would be the most appropriate; she would not be the sort to find humor or intellectual diversion in what she would consider another's misfortune. 'Poor lady,' he murmured, for good measure.

  'I'm not sure. Shirley thought she was saying ''Faye," but it could have been "Hey" or any other word like that. She seriously tried to hurt Shirley.'

  'Are you all right?' His concern for her was genuine, the alarm with which he expressed it perhaps a trifle exaggerated since he could tell she was, in fact, unhurt.

  Directly in his line of vision now, she smiled. Satisfaction warmed Alex's heart and belly, in the part of his body—by far the majority—in which he could feel nothing external. She had a lovely, winsome smile. 'I'm fine. She just pulled my hair a little.'

  He took a breath and made certain the exhalation was a bit tremulous. 'I wish you didn't have to endure such abuse.'

  'It's not a big deal, Alex.' But he could tell she was shaken, and pleased by his concern.

  So he expressed it again. 'You deserve better than this.'

  'I like my job,' she said, a little sternly, and he thought perhaps he had gone too far, but then she reached toward him, and he felt her gentle fingertips on his brow. He allowed this gesture to play itself out, enjoying both the physical sensations and their mental and emotional ramifications. She really was a very sweet girl. 'Everybody's having trouble keeping their mind on their work. After what happened.'

  Alex knew she was referring to the patient who had died as a result of eating oven cleaner instead of pancake syrup. He had heard about the incident from various angles, first the alteration of the ambient noise of the facility indicating something out of the ordinary, then the rush and clamor of emergency vehicles, the distinctive

  clatter of the gurney wheels rapidly down the hall, the Carrasco woman's red-ants-in-the-rectum monologue perhaps slightly more urgent than usual. Staff had openly discussed the matter in his presence, as they often did. He had made a few discreet inquiries.

  He considered concealing his rather extensive knowledge and asking Abby to tell him what had happened, but that strategy seemed unnecessarily cumbersome, so he said quietly, 'I heard about Bob. What a terrible way to die.'

  'Nobody knows what will happen to Ros.'

  She should be in jail sprang to his lips, but he decided such a comment was too risky at this point, since he hadn't yet gauged Abby's position regarding the cook.

  Abby went on. 'She didn't do it on purpose. He got the wrong bottle himself. Patients aren't allowed in the kitchen. He knew that.'

  Alex hazarded, 'Still, it was at the very least gross negligence.'

  'I guess. And it wasn't like Ros. She's always so careful. And she takes a special interest, you know? She always made sure Bob got fed, even when he wouldn't eat at the right time.' Alex held his peace until Abby sighed, shook her head, and asked, 'What did you need?'

  What he had needed, still needed and was not getting, was her, her responsiveness, her attention, her company. What he had devised to say was not different from that, but slightly reconfigured. 'I am terribly lonely tonight for some reason, Abby. Do you think you might be able to stay with me a while? Perhaps read to me?'

  She stared at him as though he'd requested something perverse instead of only very much out of the ordinary. 'Read to you? While I'm on duty?'

  Alex turned his head so he wasn't looking at her except out of the corner of one eye. 'I suppose you're right,' he said softly, without a trace of irony. 'Actually spending time with your patients isn't in your job description, is it?'

  It was a calculated risk. A more experienced aide would have laughed at him or responded in kind to the underlying sarcasm, and he'd have paid for his temerity with slowed response time to his whistle and surly if not downright careless handling. But Abby, as he'd surmised, was susceptible to the view—in her case, largely unarticulated—that having to ask for such a thing in the first place was a human tragedy. Flustered, she scrambled guiltily for some way she could do what he wanted. 'I could stay a little while after my shift. Not very
long. My neighbor lady's watching the girls and I can't'

  Alex was shaking his head back and forth on the thin pillow. 'That's eleven o'clock at night, Abby. I can't be awake that late. I'm sorry. This just isn't going to work.' The balance between them had shifted nicely, so that now it was as though he were regretfully denying her a request.

  'No, wait, I'll come in on my break.' He saw her blush a little. 'But I'm not exactly a good reader.'

  Alex had strong opinions about the state of the American educational system, but he chose to put them aside for the moment. 'When will you eat?'

  'I'll eat with you.'

  'Are you sure?'

  'Sure. You're better company than most of them anyway.' He didn't know how seriously to take that last comment, whether she was patronizing him or not.

  Judging, though, by the haste with which she asked if he needed anything else, the relief with which she accepted his assurance that he did not although it would actually have been nice to be up in the chair for a while now, and the clumsiness of her movements as she hurried out of his room, Alex surmised that she did, in fact, prefer his company to that of the other staff, and he was quite pleased.