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.
I told him…”
Lois drowned him out, shrieking like a firebell.
[“Quit it, Lois.” Quit it right now!!
Whatever happened to you is over now.” It’s over and you’re all right.” But Lois continued to struggle, dinning those inarticulate screams into his head, trying to tell him how awful it had been, how he’d been rotting, that there were things inside him, eating him alive, and that was bad enough, but it wasn’t the worst. Those things were around, she said, they were bad, and they had known she was there.
[“Lois, you’re with me You’re with me and it’s all right.” One of her flying fists clipped the side of his jaw and Ralph saw stars. He understood that they had passed to a plane of reality where physical contact with others was impossible-hadn’t he seen Lois’s hand pass directly into McGovern, like the hand of a ghost?-but they were obviously still real enough to each other; he had the bruised jaw to prove it.
He slipped his arms around her and hugged her against him, imprisoning her fists between her breasts and his chest. Her cries however, continued to rant and blast in his head, He locked his hands together between her shoulderblades and squeezed.
He felt the power leap out of him again, as it had that morning, only this time it felt entirely different. Blue light spilled through Lois’s turbulent red-black aura, soothing it. Her struggles slowed and then ceased. they felt her draw a shuddering breath. Above and around her, the blue glow was expanding and fading. The black bands disappeared from her aura, one after the other, from the bottom to top, and then that alarming shade of infected red also began to fade. She put her head against his arm. sorry, Ralph-I went nuclear again, didn’t I?”] That’s The trouble.”
“I suppose so, but ever mind. You’re okay now, that’s the important thing.”] [“If ’ you knew how horrible that was-… touching the thing “You put it across very well, Lois.
She glanced down the corridor, where McGovern’s friend was now getting a drink. McGovern lounged against the wall next to him, talking about how the Exalted amp; Revered Bob Polhurst had always done the Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle in ink.
“He used to tell me that wasn’t pride but optimism,” McGovern said, and the deathbag swirled sluggishly around him as he spoke, flowing in and out of his mouth and between the fingers of his gesturing, eloquent hand.
[“We can’t help him, can we, Ralph? There’s not a thing in the world we can do.”] Ralph gave her a brief, strong hug. Her aura, he saw, had entirely returned to normal.
McGovern and his friend were walking back down the corridor toward them. Acting on impulse, Ralph disengaged himself from Lois and stepped directly in front of Mr. Plum, who was listening to McGovern hold forth on the tragedy of old age and nodding in the right places.
[“Ralph, don’t do that.”] [“It’s okay, don’t worry.”
But all at once he wasn’t so sure it was okay. He might have stepped back, given another second. Before he could, however, Mr. Plum glanced unseeingly into his face and walked right through him.