Now he looked at Denker, frowning.
Denker. Denker. Where have I known you, Denker? Was it Patin? Is that why I don’t want to know? But surely, two survivors of a common horror do not have to be afraid of each other. Unless, of course…
He frowned. He felt very close to it, suddenly, but his feet were tingling, breaking his concentration, annoying him. They were tingling in just the way a limb tingles when you’ve slept on it and it’s returning to normal circulation. If it wasn’t for the damned body-cast, he could sit up and rub his feet until that tingle went away. He could Morris’s eyes widened.
For a long time he lay perfectly still, Lydia forgotten, Denker forgotten, Patin forgotten, everything forgotten except that tingly feeling in his feet Yes, both feet, but it was stronger in the right one. When you felt that tingle, you said My foot went to sleep.’
But what you really meant, of course, was My foot is waking up.
Morris fumbled for the call-button. He pressed it again and again until the nurse came.
The nurse tried to dismiss it — she had had hopeful patients before. His doctor wasn’t in the building, and the nurse didn’t want to call him at home. Dr Kemmelman had a vast reputation for evil temper… especially when he was called at home. Morris wouldn’t let her dismiss it He was a mild man, but now he was prepared to make more than a fuss; he was prepared to make an uproar if that’s what it took. The Braves had taken two. Lydia had sprained her hip. But good things came in threes, everyone knew that At last the nurse came back with an intern, a young man named Dr Timpnell whose hair looked as if it had last 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.
‘Well 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. The hostages were still hostages. A new Gallup poll showed that, if the election were to be held right then, there were four Republican candidates who could beat Jimmy Carter. And there had been racial incidents following the murder of a black child in Atlanta (it would be another six months before a grisly pattern of murder began to emerge in the Atlanta murders) — ‘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.