The Dead Zone(49)

'Save me a drumstick,' Johnny said weakly, and was surprised by the hearty laughter. Ruopp patted his sheet-covered shoulder with one thinly gloved hand.

He watched Ruopp select a scalpel and disappear behind the green drapes hung over the metal hoop that curved above Johnny. The mirror was convex, and Johnny had a fairly good if slightly distorted view of everything.

'Oh yes,' Ruopp said. 'Oh yes, dee-de-dee ... here's what we want ... hum-de-hum... okay ... damp, please, Nurse, come on, wake up for Christ's sake ... yes sir ... now I believe I'd like one of those... no, hold it... don't give me what I ask for, give me what I need ... yes, okay. Strap, please.'

With forceps, the nurse handed Ruopp something that looked like a bundle of thin wires twisted together. Ruopp picked them delicately out of the air with tweezers.

Like an Italian dinner, Johnny thought, and look at all that spaghetti sauce. That was what made him feel ill, and he looked away. Above him, in the gallery, the rest of the bandit gang looked down at him. Their eyes looked pale and merciless and frightening. Then he spotted Weizak, third from the right, his watch pinned neatly to the front of his gown.

Johnny nodded.

Weizak nodded back.

That made it a little better.

3.

Ruopp finished the connections between his knees and calves, and Johnny was turned over. Things continued. The anesthesiologist asked him if he felt all right. Johnny told her he thought he felt as well as possible under the circumstances. She asked him if he would like to listen to a tape and he said that would be very nice. A few moments later the dear, sweet voice of Joan Baez filled the operating room. Ruopp did his thing. Johnny grew sleepy and dozed off. When he woke up the operation was still going on. Weizak was still there. Johnny raised one hand, acknowledging his presence, and Weizak nodded again.

4.

An hour later it was done. He was wheeled into a recovery room where a nurse kept asking him if he could tell her how many of his toes she was touching. After a while, Johnny could.

Ruopp came in, his bandit's mask hanging off to one side.

'All right?' he asked.

'Yes.'

'It went very well,' Ruopp said. 'I'm optimistic.'

'Good.'

'You'll have some pain,' Ruopp said. 'Quite a lot of it, perhaps. The therapy itself will give you a lot of pain at first. Stick with it.'

'Stick with it,' Johnny muttered.

'Good afternoon,' Ruopp said, and left. Probably, Johnny thought, to play a quick nine on the local golf course before it got too dark.

5.

Quite a lot of pain.

By nine P.M. the last of the local had worn off, and Johnny was in agony. He was forbidden to move his legs without the help of two nurses. It felt as if nail-studded belts had been looped around his knees and then cinched cruelly tight. Time slowed to an inchworm's crawl. He would glance at his watch, sure that an hour had passed since the last time he had looked at it, and would see instead that it had only been four minutes. He became sure he couldn't stand the pain for another minute, then the minute would pass, and he would be sure he couldn't stand it for another minute.

He thought of all the minutes stacked up ahead, like coins in a slot five miles high, and the blackest depression he had ever known swept over him in a smooth solid wave and carried him down. They were going to torture him to death. Operations on his elbows, thighs, his neck. Therapy. Walkers, wheelchairs, canes.

You're going to have pain ... stick with it.

No, you stick with it, Johnny thought. Just leave me alone. Don't come near me again with your butchers' knives. If this is your idea of helping, I want no part of it.

Steady throbbing pain, digging into the meat of him.

Warmth on his belly, trickling.

He had wet himself.

Johnny Smith turned his face toward the wall and cried.

6.

Ten days after that first operation and two weeks before the next one was scheduled, Johnny looked up from the book he was reading - Woodward and Bernstein's All the President's Men - and saw Sarah standing in the doorway, looking at him hesitantly.

'Sarah,' he said. 'It is you, isn't it?'

She let out her breath shakily. 'Yes. It's me, Johnny.'

He put the book down and looked at her. She was smartly dressed in a light-green linen dress, and she held a small, brown clutch bag in front of her like a shield. She had put a streak in her hair and it looked good. It also made him feel a sharp and twisting stab of jealousy -had it been her idea, or that of the man she lived and slept with? She was beautiful.

'Come in,' he said. 'Come in and sit down.'

She crossed the room and suddenly he saw himself as she must see him - too thin, his body slumped a little to one side in the chair by the window, his legs stuck out straight on the hassock, dressed in a johnny and a cheap hospital bathrobe.

'As you can see, I put on my tux,' he said.

'You look fine.' She kissed his cheek and a hundred memories shuffled brightly through his mind like a doubled pack of cards. She sat in the other chair, crossed her legs, and tugged at the hem of her dress.

They looked at each other without saying anything.

He saw that she was very nervous. If someone were to touch her on the shoulder, she would probably spring right out of her seat.

'I didn't know if I should come,' she said, 'but I really wanted to.'