Different Seasons(92)

At last the nurse came back with an intern, a young man named Dr. Timpnell whose hair looked as if it had been cut by a Lawn Boy with very dull blades. Dr. Timpnell pulled a Swiss Army knife from the pocket of his white pants, folded out the Phillips screwdriver attachment, and ran it from the toes of Morris’s right foot down to the heel. The foot did not curl, but his toes twitched—it was an obvious twitch, too definite to miss. Morris burst into tears.

Timpnell, looking rather dazed, sat beside him on the bed and patted his hand.

“This sort of thing happens from time to time,” he said (possibly from his wealth of practical experience, which stretched back perhaps as far as six months). “No doctor predicts it, but it does happen. And apparently it’s happened to you.”

Morris nodded through his tears.

“Obviously, you’re not totally paralyzed.” Timpnell was still patting his hand. “But I wouldn’t try to predict if your recovery will be slight, partial, or total. I doubt if Dr. Kemmelman will, either. I suspect you’ll have to undergo a lot of physical therapy, and not all of it will be pleasant. But it will be more pleasant than ... you know.”

“Yes,” Morris said through his tears. “I know. Thank God!” He remembered telling Lydia there was no God and felt his face fill up with hot blood.

“I’ll see that Dr. Kemmelman is informed,” Timpnell said, giving Morris’s hand a final pat and rising.

“Could you call my wife?” Morris asked. Because, doom-crying and hand-wringing aside, he felt something for her. Maybe it was even love, an emotion which seemed to have little to do with sometimes feeling like you could wring a person’s neck.

“Yes, I’ll see that it’s done. Nurse, would you—?”

“Of course, doctor,” the nurse said, and Timpnell could barely stifle his grin.

“Thank you,” Morris said, wiping his eyes with a Kleenex from the box on the nightstand. “Thank you very much.”

Timpnell went out. At some point during the discussion, Mr. Denker had awakened. Morris considered apologizing for all the noise, or perhaps for his tears, and then decided no apology was necessary.

“You are to be congratulated, I take it,” Mr. Denker said. “We’ll see,” Morris said, but like Timpnell, he was barely able to stifle his grin. “We’ll see.”

“Things have a way of working out,” Denker replied vaguely, and then turned on the TV with the remote control device. It was now quarter to six, and they watched the last of Hee Haw. It was followed by the evening news. Unemployment was worse. Inflation was not so bad. Billy Carter was thinking about going into the beer business. A new Gallup poll showed that, if the election were to be held right then, there were four Republican candidates who could beat Billy’s brother Jimmy. And there had been racial incidents following the murder of a black child in Miami. “A night of violence,” the newscaster called it. Closer to home, an unidentified man had been found in an orchard near Highway 46, stabbed and bludgeoned.

Lydia called just before six-thirty. Dr. Kemmelman had called her and, based on the young intern’s report, he had been cautiously optimistic. Lydia was cautiously joyous. She vowed to come in the following day even if it killed her. Morris told her he loved her. Tonight he loved everyone—Lydia, Dr. Timpnell with his Lawn Boy haircut, Mr. Denker, even the young girl who brought in the supper trays as Morris hung up.

Supper was hamburgers, mashed potatoes, a carrots-and-peas combination, and small dishes of ice cream for dessert. The candy striper who served it was Felice, a shy blonde girl of perhaps twenty. She had her own good news—her boy-friend had landed a job as a computer programmer with IBM and had formally asked her to marry him.

Mr. Denker, who exuded a certain courtly charm that all the young ladies responded to, expressed great pleasure. “Really, how wonderful. You must sit down and tell us all about it. Tell us everything. Omit nothing.”

Felice blushed and smiled and said she couldn’t do that. “We’ve still got the rest of the B Wing to do and C Wing after that. And look, here it is six-thirty!”

“Then tomorrow night, for sure. We insist ... don’t we, Mr. Heisel?”

“Yes, indeed,” Morris murmured, but his mind was a million miles away.

(you must sit down and tell us all about it)

Words spoken in that exact-same bantering tone. He had heard them before; of that there could be no doubt. But had Denker been the one to speak them? Had he?

(tell us everything)

The voice of an urbane man. A cultured man. But there was a threat in the voice. A steel hand in a velvet glove. Yes.

Where?

(tell us everything. omit nothing.)

(? PATIN ?)

Morris Heisel looked at his supper. Mr. Denker had already fallen to with a will. The encounter with Felice had left him in the best of spirits—the way he had been after the young boy with the blonde hair came to visit him.

“A nice girl,” Denker said, his words muffled by a mouthful of carrots and peas.

“Oh yes—

(you must sit down)

“—Felice, you mean. She’s

(and tell us all about it.)

“very sweet.”

(tell us everything. omit nothing.)

He looked down at his own supper, suddenly remembering how it got to be in the camps after awhile. At first you would have killed for a scrap of meat, no matter how maggoty or green with decay. But after awhile, that crazy hunger went away and your belly lay inside your middle like a small gray rock. You felt you would never be hungry again.