“Show me where,” Beth said.
Jacopetti raised his right hand and drew a circle on his shirt above the breastbone.
“There in the center?” Nod.
“How about your arm? Does your arm hurt at all?”
“No.”
“How about your breathing?”
“Tight.”
Gendy, Beth levered back the man’s head so his chin jutted up. “Mr. Jacopetti, I know this is a personal question, but are those false teeth?”
“Dentures,” he managed. “Why?”
“Can you take them out? In case you fall asleep or anything. It’s safer. Or I can take them out for you.”
Jacopetti pried out his teeth. Abby had always been a little frightened of this man—his barrel-shaped body, his booming voice, his invincible cynicism. But Jacopetti without his teeth looked altogether less threatening. His cheeks seemed to collapse inward, giving him an old man’s gummy frown.
Jacopetti looked up at his audience. “Thuck you,” he said/Thuck all oth you.”
“We could use some more light,” Beth said hurriedly. “Maybe if everybody would just sit back down?”
They did, though Abby stayed close, mad at herself for failing this test. If it hadn’t been for the noise…
“Mr. Jacopetti,” Beth said, “are you nauseated?”
Nod.
“Feel like you might throw up?”
“Maybe.”
“Could somebody fetch a towel just in case?” Chuck Makepeace dashed for the bathroom.
“Mr. Jacopetti, listen to me… Did you ever have this pain before?”
“Not as bad.”
“But you’ve had it before?” Nod.
“Seen a doctor about it?”
“No.”
“It always went away?” Nod.
“Okay,” Beth said. “That’s good. I think what you have isn’t a bad heart attack. I think it’s angina. It’ll probably pass if you lie still.”
Joey Commoner, leaning against the wall with a strained expression, said: “How would you know?”
“Hush,” Abby told him, and got a sullen glare in exchange.
Bob Ganish, his claustrophobia forgotten—misplaced along with his common sense, Abby thought—offered: “This man should be in a hospital.”
Jacopetti: “I am in a hothpital, you athholel”
Ganish reddened. “I mean, he needs proper medical attention.”
Abby took the salesman aside a second time. “I know he does, Bob, but our proper medical attention seems to be lost in the storm. Let’s sit down, shall we?” She looked at her watch. Seven-forty-five. How much worse could this weather get? Much worse, she supposed. The eye, the Helper had told her, would probably pass directly over Buchanan, possibly around midnight. And that was only half the storm.
“I wish,” she muttered, “somebody would turn off this goddamned noise.”
Matt felt as if he had fallen into some peculiar time warp: The smaller the distance between himself and his destination, the more slowly he was forced to proceed.
The enemy wasn’t so much wind—though that was bad enough—nor even Miriam Flett’s relentless backseat driving. The enemy was visibility. More precisely, invisibility.
All traces of daylight had passed. The rain was continuous and dense as fog. It carried with it tiny particles of salt and something else, a crystalline dust, some sort of sea life, Matt presumed. The effect of this was to obscure his vision so completely that he turned onto Campbell Road, the direct route to the hospital, without any certainty that he had chosen the right intersection. There were no landmarks, nothing perceptible beyond five or six feet from the car even in the high beams. He drove hugging the right side of the road, scanning for the sign that marked the entrance to the hospital, then worrying that he’d passed it—maybe it was set too far back from the tarmac.
A particularly strong wind rocked the car up on its right-hand wheels; Miriam sucked in her breath. “I should have stayed home!”
“Home might be underwater by now,” Matt said. “Try not to worry, Miriam. We don’t have far to go, and we’ll be safe at the hospital.”
“Can you guarantee that?”
“Stake my life on it.”
“Not funny, Dr. Wheeler.”
“Not meant to be.” Desperate, he took the next available right. It looked like the entrance to the hospital—the shrub on the corner seemed familiar.
But it wasn’t the hospital. He identified, on close approach, an unfamiliar yellow speed bump, a parking lot that curved the wrong way; finally, the broken window of the local 7-Eleven.
Miriam’s hands were clenched together in her lap, arthritic knuckles knotted together. She said, “Are we stopping for snacks?”
It wasn’t the hospital, but it was at least a landmark. Matt tried to recall the relationship of the 7-Eleven to Buchanan General. He’d driven this route at least twice a week for years, but when he tried to map it in his head… was the 7-Eleven before the hospital? Certainly. Close to it? He thought so. But how many yards exactly? Was there another store en route, possibly a camera store? He seldom stopped at any of these shops; they were vague in his mind.
He navigated turtle-fashion back to Campbell Road and crawled onward.
Miriam gasped as a yard-long tree limb came whirling out of the darkness and struck the rear left window. The glass starred but didn’t shatter. Miriam whispered something inaudible. Matt clenched his teeth and drove.
He slowed where the curb yielded to a driveway on the right. He exchanged a glance with Miriam, then turned the wheel. This might be the hospital. It probably was. Better be.
The access lane seemed to crawl on forever in front of the car. Matt began to entertain the possibility that he had driven from the 7-Eleven into a horizonless limbo of rain and wind, all landmarks erased. He fought the temptation to check his watch every thirty seconds, try to calculate his progress. He was suddenly aware of the pungent smell of the sealed automobile, his own sweat mingled with the lighter, sourer odor of Miriam and the reek of wet upholstery and wet clothing.
He was grateful when a brick wall loomed up in the twin circles of his headlights—even more grateful when he recognized it as the east wall of Buchanan General.
He pulled abreast of the Emergency entrance. “Thank God,” Miriam said.
Matt switched off the engine but left the lights on. “I’ll come around to your side. Wait for me. We’ll go in together.” He didn’t say it, but he was afraid Miriam was light enough that the wind might simply sweep her away.
She nodded.
The door was wrenched out of his hand as soon as he opened it. The wind, Matt thought, had made everything dangerous, even an ordinary act like opening a car door. The door banged against its stops and bounced back, whacking his hip. Matt stepped aside and pushed it closed, sparing Miriam more than a momentary blast of salty rain.
He fumbled around the hood of the car with his hands braced against the cold metal. The wind was nearly strong enough to lift him up—certainly strong enough to knock his feet out from under him if he took a miscalculated step. The combination of wind and rain was blinding. With his eyes pressed tight in the darkness, every surface of his body awash, it was as if the world had been reduced to some few essential elements: the wind, the automobile, the wet concrete under his feet. Variables in a complex equation.
He groped along Miriam’s side of the car until he found the door handle. Then he steadied himself, took as deep a breath as the wind allowed, and opened the door. Instantly, the door kited into its stops; but this time Matt was ready for it; he wedged his body against the door frame and held it fully open.