Doctor Sleep (The Shining, #2)(60)

“Casey—” Billy began.

“Hush,” Casey said, and returned his attention to Dan. “I think you do know, by God. Is it his lungs? That seems the most likely, the way he smokes.”

Dan decided he had come too far to turn back now. He sighed and said, “No, I think it’s something in his guts.”

“Except for a little indigestion, my guts are—”

“Hush I said.” Then, turning back to Dan: “A gut doctor, then. Tell Johnny D. it’s important.” He paused. “Will he believe you?”

This was a question Dan was glad to hear. He had helped several AAs during his time in New Hampshire, and although he asked them all not to talk, he knew perfectly well that some had, and still did. He was happy to know John Dalton hadn’t been one of them.

“I think so.”

“Okay.” Casey pointed at Billy. “You got the day off, and with pay. Medical leave.”

“The Riv—”

“There’s a dozen people in this town that can drive the Riv. I’ll make some calls, then take the first two runs myself.”

“Your bad hip—”

“Balls to my bad hip. Do me good to get out of this office.”

“But Casey, I feel f—”

“I don’t care if you feel good enough to run a footrace all the way to Lake Winnipesaukee. You’re going to see the doctor and that’s the end of it.”

Billy looked resentfully at Dan. “See the trouble you got me in? I didn’t even get my morning coffee.”

The flies were gone this morning—except they were still there. Dan knew that if he concentrated, he could see them again if he wanted to . . . but who in Christ’s name would want to?

“I know,” Dan said. “There is no gravity, life just sucks. Can I use your phone, Casey?”

“Be my guest.” Casey stood up. “Guess I’ll toddle on over to the train station and punch a few tickets. You got an engineer’s cap that’ll fit me, Billy?”

“No.”

“Mine will,” Dan said.


9

For an organization that didn’t advertise its presence, sold no goods, and supported itself with crumpled dollar bills thrown into passed baskets or baseball caps, Alcoholics Anonymous exerted a quietly powerful influence that stretched far beyond the doors of the various rented halls and church basements where it did its business. It wasn’t the old boys’ network, Dan thought, but the old drunks’ network.

He called John Dalton, and John called an internal medicine specialist named Greg Fellerton. Fellerton wasn’t in the Program, but he owed Johnny D. a favor. Dan didn’t know why, and didn’t care. All that mattered was that later that day, Billy Freeman was on the examining table in Fellerton’s Lewiston office. Said office was a seventy-mile drive from Frazier, and Billy bitched the whole way.

“Are you sure indigestion’s all that’s been bothering you?” Dan asked as they pulled into Fellerton’s little parking area on Pine Street.

“Yuh,” Billy said. Then he reluctantly added, “It’s been a little worse lately, but nothin that keeps me up at night.”

Liar, Dan thought, but let it pass. He’d gotten the contrary old sonofabitch here, and that was the hard part.

Dan was sitting in the waiting room, leafing through a copy of OK! with Prince William and his pretty but skinny new bride on the cover, when he heard a lusty cry of pain from down the hall. Ten minutes later, Fellerton came out and sat down beside Dan. He looked at the cover of OK! and said, “That guy may be heir to the British throne, but he’s still going to be as bald as a nine ball by the time he’s forty.”

“You’re probably right.”

“Of course I’m right. In human affairs, the only real king is genetics. I’m sending your friend up to Central Maine General for a CT scan. I’m pretty sure what it’ll show. If I’m right, I’ll schedule Mr. Freeman to see a vascular surgeon for a little cut-and-splice early tomorrow morning.”

“What’s wrong with him?”

Billy was walking up the hall, buckling his belt. His tanned face was now sallow and wet with sweat. “He says there’s a bulge in my aorta. Like a bubble on a car tire. Only car tires don’t yell when you poke em.”

“An aneurysm,” Fellerton said. “Oh, there’s a chance it’s a tumor, but I don’t think so. In any case, time’s of the essence. Damn thing’s the size of a Ping-Pong ball. It’s good you got him in for a look-see. If it had burst without a hospital nearby . . .” Fellerton shook his head.


10

The CT scan confirmed Fellerton’s aneurysm diagnosis, and by six that evening, Billy was in a hospital bed, where he looked considerably diminished. Dan sat beside him.

“I’d kill for a cigarette,” Billy said wistfully.

“Can’t help you there.”

Billy sighed. “High time I quit, anyway. Won’t they be missin you at Rivington House?”

“Day off.”

“And ain’t this one hell of a way to spend it. Tell you what, if they don’t murder me with their knives and forks tomorrow morning, I guess I’m going to owe you my life. I don’t know how you knew, but if there’s anything I can ever do for you—I mean anything at all—you just have to ask.”