“Hey! Look who’s here!” Jimmy V. exclaimed. His voice was rusty and choked, but Ralph could still hear his South Boston wiseguy accent, where here came out heah. Faye jumped. The hook of chess problems tumbled out of his lap and fell on the floor. He leaned over and took jimmy’s hand, but jimmy ignored him and kept looking across the room at Ralph and Lois. “It’s Ralph Roberts!
And Paul Chasse’s wife widdim! Say, Ralphie, do you remember the day we tried to get into that tent revival so we could hear em sing ’Amazing Grace’?”
[“I remember, jimmy,”] Jimmy appeared to smile, and then his eyes slipped closed again.
Lachesis placed his hands against the dying man’s cheeks and moved his head a bit, like a barber getting ready to shave a customer. At the same moment Clotho leaned even closer, opened his scissors, and slid them forward so that the long blades held jimmy V."s black balloon-string. As Clotho closed the scissors, Lachesis leaned forward and kissed jimmy’s forehead.
[Go in peace, friend.] There was a small, unimportant snick!
sound. The segment of the balloon-string above the scissors drifted up toward the ceiling and disappeared. The deathbag in which Jimmy V. lay turned a momciitary bright white, then winked out of existence just as Rosalie’s had done earlier that evening. jimmy opened his eyes again and looked at Faye. fie started to smile, Ralph thought, and then his gaze turned fixed and distant. The dimples which had begun to form at the corners of his mouth smoothed out.
“Jimmy?” Faye shook jimmy V."s shoulder, running his hand through
Lachesis’s side to do it. “You all right, jimmy?… Oh shit.”
Faye got up and left the room, not quite running.
Clotho: [Do you see and understand that what we do, we do with love an respect? That we are, in fact, the physicians of last resort?
It is vital to our dealings with you, Ralph and Lois, that you understand that”]. [“Yes.”] [“Yes.”] Ralph hadn’t intended to agree with anything either one of them said, but that phrase-the physicians of last resort-sliced cleanly and effortlessly through his anger. It felt true. They had freed jimmy V. from a world where there was nothing left for him but pain.
Yes, they had undoubtedly stood in Room 317 with Ralph on a sleety afternoon some seven months ago and given Carolyn the same release.
And yes, they went about their work with love and respect-any doubts he might have had on that score had been laid to rest when Lachesis kissed jimmy V."s forehead. But did love and respect give them the right to put him-and Lois, too-through hell and then send them after a supernatural being that had gone off the rails Did it give them the right to even dream that two ordinary people, neither of them young anymore, could deal with such a creature?
Lachesis: [Let us move on from this place. It’s going to fill up with people, and we need to talk.]
[“Do we have any choice?”]
[There is always a choice.”] came back quickly, colored with overtones Of surprise.
Their answers [)’es, of colirve.”
Clotho and Lachesis walked toward the door; Ralph and Lois shrank back to let them pass. The auras of the little bald doctors swept over them for a moment, however, and Ralph registered the taste and texture: the taste of sweet apples, the texture of light bark.
As they left, side by side, speaking gravely and respectfully to each other, Faye came back in, now accompanied by a pair of nurses.
These newcomers passed through Lachesis and Clotho, then through Ralph and Lois, without slowing or seeming to notice anything untoward.
In the hall outside, life went on at its usual muted pace. No buzzers went off, no lights flashed, no orderlies came sprinting down the hallway, pushing the crash-wagon ahead of them, No one cried “Stat!” over the loudspeaker. Death was too common a visitor here for such things. Ralph guessed that it was not welcome, even under such circumstances as these, but it was familiar and accepted. He also guessed that jimmy V. would have been happy enough with his exit from the third floor of Derry Home-he had done it with no fuss or bother, and he hadn’t had to show anyone either his driver’s license or his Blue Cross Major Medical card. He had died with the dignity that simple, expected things often hold. One or two moments of consciousness, accompanied by a slightly wider perception of what was going on around him, and then poof. Pack up all my care and woe, blackbird, bye-bye.
They joined the bald docs in the hallway outside Bob Polhurst’s room.
Through the open door, they could see the deathwatch continuing around the old teacher’s bed.
Lois: [“The man closest to the bed is Bill McGover, a friciil o. ours. There’s something wrong withe him. Something awful. If we do what you want, could you-?”] But Lachesis and Clotho were shaking their heads in unison.
Clotho: [Nothing can be changed.] Yes, Ralph thought. Dorrance knew: done-bun-can’the-undone.
Lois: [“When will it happen?”] Clotho: [your friend belongs to the other, to the third. To the one Ralph has already named Atropos. But Atropos could tell you the exact hour of the man’s death no more than we could. He cannot even tell whom he will take next. Atropos is an agent of the Random.] This phrase sent a chill through Ralph’s heart.
Lachesis: [But this is no place for us to talk. Come.] Lachesis took one of Clotho’s hands, then held out his free hand to Ralph. At the same time, Clotho reached toward Lois. She hesitated, then looked at Ralph.
Ralph, in his turn, looked grimly at Lachesis.
[“You better not hurt her.”] [Neither of you will be hurt, Ralph.
Take my hand.] I’m a stranger in paradise, Ralph’s mind finished.
Then he sighed through his teeth, nodded to Lois, and gripped Lachesis’s outstretched hand. That shock of recognition, as deep and pleasant as an unexpected encounter with an old and valued friend, washed over him again, Apples and bark; memories of orchards he had walked through as a kid. He was somehow aware, without actually seeing it, that his aura had changed color and become-at least for a little while-the gold-flecked green of Clotho and Lachesis.
Lois took Clotho’s hand, inhaled a sharp little gasp over her teeth, then smiled hesitantly.
Clotho: [Complete the circle, Ralph and Lois. Don’t be afraid.
All is well. Boy, do I ever disagree with that, Ralph thought, but when Lois reached for his hand, he grasped her fingers. The taste of apples and the texture of dry bark was joined by some dark and unknown spice. Ralph inhaled its aroma deeply and then smiled at Lois.
She smiled back-no hesitation in that smile-and Ralph felt a dim, far off confusion. How could you be afraid? How could you even hesitate when what they brought felt this good and seemed this right-, I empathize, Ralph, but hesitate am,way, a voice counselled.
[“Ralph? Ralph."’] She sounded alarmed and giddy at the same time. Ralph looked around just in time to see the top of the door of Room 315 descending past her shoulders… except it wasn’t the door going down; it was Lois going up. All of them going up, still holding hands in a circle.
Ralph had just gotten this through his head when momentary darkness, sharp as a knife-edge, crossed his vision like a shadow thrown by the slat of a venetian blind. He had a brief glimpse of narrow pipes that were probably part of the hospital’s sprinkler system, surrounded by tufted pink pads of insulation. Then he was looking down a long tiled corridor. A gurney cart was rolling straight at his head… which, he suddenly realized, had surfaced like a periscope in one of the fourth-floor corridors.
He heard Lois cry out and felt her grip on his hand tighten.
Ralph closed his eyes instinctively and waited for the approaching gurney to flatten his skull.
Clotho: [Be calm! Please, be calm.” Remember that these things exist on a different level of reality from the one where you are now.”