There was a great outpouring of comfort and good wishes from the Cleaves Mills student body in the following week; Herb Smith told her later that Johnny received better than three hundred cards. Almost all of them contained a hesitant personal note saying they hoped Johnny would be well soon. Vera answered each of them with a thank-you note and a Bible verse.
Sarah’s discipline problem in her classes disappeared. Her previous feeling that some returning jury of class consciousness was bringing in an unfavorable verdict changed to just the opposite. Gradually she realized that the kids were viewing her as a tragic heroine, Mr. Smith’s lost love. This idea struck her in the teacher’s room during her free period on the Wednesday following the accident, and she went off into sudden gales of laughter that turned into a crying jag. Before she was able to get herself under control she had frightened herself badly. Her nights were made restless with incessant dreams of Johnny—Johnny in the Halloween Jekyll-and-Hyde mask, Johnny standing at the Wheel of Fortune concession while some disembodied voice chanted, “Man, I love to watch this guy get a beatin,” over and over. Johnny saying, “It’s all right now, Sarah, everything’s fine,” and then coming into the room with his head gone above the eyebrows.
Herb and Vera Smith spent the week in the Bangor House, and Sarah saw them every afternoon at the hospital, waiting patiently for something to happen. Nothing did. Johnny lay in a room on the intensive care ward on the sixth floor, surrounded by life-support equipment, breathing with the help of a machine. Dr. Strawns had grown less hopeful. On the Friday following the accident, Herb called Sarah on the phone and told her he and Vera were going home.
“She doesn’t want to,” he said, “but I’ve gotten her to see reason. I think.”
“Is she all right?” Sarah asked.
There was a long pause, long enough to make Sarah think she had overstepped the bounds. Then Herb said, “I don’t know. Or maybe I do and I just don’t want to say right out that she isn’t. She’s always had strong ideas about religion and they got a lot stronger after her operation. Her hysterectomy. Now they’ve gotten worse again. She’s been talking a lot about the end of the world. She’s connected Johnny’s accident with the Rapture, somehow. Just before Armageddon, God is supposed to take all the faithful up to heaven in their actual bodies.”
Sarah thought of a bumper sticker she had seen somewhere: IF THE RAPTURE’S TODAY, SOMEBODY GRAB MY STEERING WHEEL! “Yes, I know the idea,” she said.
“Well,” Herb said uncomfortably, “some of the groups she ... she corresponds with ... they believe that God is going to come for the faithful in flying saucers. Take them all up to heaven in flying saucers, that is. These ... sects ... have proved, at least to themselves, that heaven is somewhere out in the constellation of Orion. No, don’t ask me how they proved it. Vera could tell you. It’s ... well, Sarah, it’s all a little hard on me.”
“Of course it must be.”
Herb’s voice strengthened. “But she can still distinguish between what’s real and what’s not. She needs time to adjust. So I told her she could face whatever’s coming at home as easily as here. I’ve ...” He paused, sounding embarrassed, then cleared his throat and went on. “I’ve got to get back to work. I’ve got jobs. I’ve signed contracts ...”
“Sure, of course.” She paused. “What about insurance? I mean, this must be costing a Denver mint ...” It was her turn to feel embarrassed.
“I’ve talked with Mr. Pelsen, your assistant principal there at Cleaves Mills,” Herb said. “Johnny had the standard Blue Cross, but not that new Major Medical. The Blue Cross will cover some of it, though. And Vera and I have our savings.”
Sarah’s heart sank. Vera and I have our savings. How long would one passbook stand up to expenses of two hundred dollars a day or more? And for what purpose in the end? So Johnny could hang on like an insensible animal, pissing brainlessly down a tube while he bankrupted his dad and mom? So his condition could drive his mother mad with unrealized hope? She felt the tears start to slip down her cheeks and for the first time—but not the last—she found herself wishing Johnny would die and be at peace. Part of her revolted in horror at