She came over to Ralph and for a moment he thought she was going to try to take his pulse.
Instead, she had put her arms around him. She[“Ralph? Ralph, are you all right?”
He looked around at Lois, started to say he was fine, and then remembered there was precious little he could hide from her while they were in this state.
[“Feeling sad. Too many memories in here. Not good others.”] [“I understand… but look on, Look on the floor,, Ralph He did, and his eyes widened. The floor was covered with an overlay of multicolored tracks, some fresh, most fading to invisibi Its.
Two sets stood out clearly from the rest, as brilliant as diamonds ill a litter of paste imitations. They were a deep green-gold in which ai few tiny reddish flecks still swam.
[“Do they belong to the ones we’re looking for, Ralph?”] [“Yes-the docs are here.”] Ralph took Lois’s hand-it felt very cold-and began to lead her slowly up the hall.
CHAPTER 17
They hadn’t gone far when something very strange and rather frightening happened. For a moment the world bled white in front of them. The doors to the rooms ranged along the hall, barely visible in this bright white haze, expanded to the size of warehouse loading bays.
The corridor itself seemed to simultaneously elongate and grow taller.
Ralph felt the bottom go out of his stomach the way it often had back when he was a teenager, and a frequent customer on the Dust Devil roller coaster at Old Orchard Beach. He heard Lois moan, and she squeezed his hand with panicky tightness.
The whiteout lasted only a second, and when the colors swarmed back into the world, they were brighter and crisper than they had been a moment before. Normal perspective returned, but objects looked thicker, somehow. The auras were still there, but they appeared both thinner and paler-pastel coronas instead of spraypainted primary colors. At the same time Ralph realized he could see every crack and pore in the Sheetrocked wall to his left… and then he realized he could see the pipes, wires, and insulation behind the walls, if he wanted to; all he had to do was look.
Oh my God, he thought. Is this really happening? Can this really, be happening?
Sounds were everywhere: hushed bells, a toilet being flushed, muted laughter. Sounds a person normally took for granted, as part of everyday life, but not now. Not here. Like the visible reality of things, the sounds seemed to have an extraordinarily sensuous texture, like thin overlapping scallops of silk and steel.
Nor were all the sounds ordinary; there were a great many exotic ones weaving their way through the mix. He heard a fly buzzing deep in a heating duct. The fine-grain sandpaper sound of a nurse adjusting her pantyhose in the staff bathroom. Beating hearts. Circulating blood. The soft tidal flow of respiration. Each sound was perfect on its own; fitted into the others, they made a beautiful and complicated auditory ballet-a hidden Swan Lake of gurgling stomachs, humming power outlets, hurricane hairdryers, whispering wheels on hospital gurneys.
Ralph could hear a TV at the end of the hall beyond the nurses’ station. It was coming from Room 340, where Mr. Thomas Wren, a kidney patient, was watching Kirk Douglas and Lana Turner in The Bad and the Beautiful. “If you team up with me, baby, we’ll turn this town on its ear,” Kirk was saying, and Ralph knew from the aura which surrounded the words that Mr. Douglas had been suffering a toothache on the day that particular scene was filmed. Nor was that all; he knew he could go (higher? deeper? wider?) if he wanted. Ralph most definitely did not want. This was the forest of Arden, and a man could get lost in its thickets.
Or eaten by tigers.
[“Jesus It’s another level-it must be, Lois A whole other level [“I know.
[“Are you okay with this?” [“I think I am, Ralph… are you?”] [“I guess so, for now… but if the bottom drops out again, I don’t know. Come on.”] But before they could begin following the green-gold tracks again, Bill McGovern and a man Ralph didn’t know came out of Room 313. They were in deep conversation.
Lois turned a horror-struck face toward Ralph.
[“Oh, o.” Oh God, no! Do you see, Ralph? Do you see?”] Ralph gripped her hand more tightly. He saw, all right. McGovern’s friend was surrounded by a plum-colored aura. It didn’t look especially healthy, but Ralph didn’t think the man was seriously ill, either; it was just a lot of chronic stuff like rheumatism and kidney gravel. A balloon-string of the same mottled purple shade rose from the top of the man’s aura, wavering hesitantly back and forth like a diver’s air-hose in a mild current.
McGovern’s aura, however, was totally black. The stump of what had once been a balloon-string jutted stiffly up from it. The thunderstruck baby’s balloon-string had been short but healthy; what they were looking at now was the decaying remnant of a crude amputation. Ralph had a momentary image, so strong it was almost a hallucination, of McGovern’s eyes first bulging and then popping out of their sockets, knocked loose by a flood of black bugs. He had to close his own eyes for a moment to keep from screaming, and when he opened them again, Lois was no longer at his side.
McGovern and his friend were walking in the direction of the nurses’ station, probably bound for the water-fountain. Lois was in hot pusuit, trotting up the corridor, bosom heaving, Her aura flashed with twizzling pinkish sparks that looked like neon-flavored asterisks.
Ralph bolted after her. He didn’t know what would happen if she caught McGovern’s attention, and didn’t really want to find out. He thought he was probably going to, however.
[“Lois.” Lois, don’t do that.” She ignored him.
[“Bill, stop! You have to listen to me.” Something’s wrong with you./’,] McGovern paid no attention to her; he was talking about Bob Polhurst’s manuscript, Later That Summer. “Best damned book on the Civil War I ever read,” he told the man inside the plum-colored aura, “but when I suggested that he publish, he told me that was out of the question. Can you believe it? A possible Pulitzer Prize winner, but-” [“Lois, come back! Don’t go near him."’] [“Bill.” Bill! B-“I Lois reached McGovern just before Ralph was able to reach her.
She put out her hand to grab his shoulder. Ralph saw her fingers plunge into the murk which surrounded him… and then slide into him.
Her aura changed at once, from a gray-blue shot with those pinkish sparks to a red as bright as the side of a fire engine. jagged flocks of black shot through it like clouds of tiny swarming insects. Lois screamed and pulled her hand back. The expression on her face was a mixture of terror and loathing. She held her hand up in front of her eyes and screamed again, although Ralph could see nothing on it.
Narrow black stripes were now whirring giddily around the outer edges of her aura; to Ralph they looked like planetary orbits marked on a map of the solar system. She turned to flee. Ralph grabbed her by the upper arms and she beat at him blindly.
McGovern and his friend, meanwhile, continued their placid amble up the hall to the drinking fountain, completely unaware of the shrieking, struggling woman not ten feet behind them. “When I asked Bob why he wouldn’t publish the book,” McGovern was continuing, “he said that I of all people should understand his reasons.