he guessed the EMMC was more likely. From the way he felt he guessed he had been here for some time—he might have been blacked out for as long as a week or ten days. It was time to get going again.
Time to get going again. That was the thought in Johnny’s mind when things finally jelled all the way back together and he opened his eyes.
It was May 17, 1975. Mr. Starret had long since gone home with standing orders to walk two miles a day and mend his high-cholesterol ways. Across the room was an old man engaged in a weary fifteenth round with that all-time heavyweight champ, carcinoma. He slept the sleep of morphia, and the room was otherwise empty. It was 3:15 P.M. The TV screen was a drawn green shade.
“Here I am,” Johnny Smith croaked to no one at all. He was shocked by the weakness of his voice. There was no calendar in the room, and he had no way of knowing that he had been out of it four-and-a-half years.
3
The nurse came in some forty minutes later. She went over to the old man in the other bed, changed his IV feed, went into the bathroom, and came out with a blue plastic pitcher. She watered the old man’s flowers. There were over half a dozen bouquets, and a score of get-well cards standing open on his table and windowsill. Johnny watched her perform this homey chore, feeling as yet no urge to try his voice again.
She put the pitcher back and came over to Johnny’s bed. Going to turn my pillows, he thought. Their eyes met briefly, but nothing in hers changed. She doesn’t know I’m awake. My eyes have been open before. It doesn’t mean anything to her.
She put her hand on the back of his neck. It was cool and comforting and Johnny knew she had three children and that the youngest had lost most of the sight in one eye last Fourth of July. A firecracker accident. The boy’s name was Mark.
She lifted his head, flipped his pillow over, and settled him back. She started to turn away, adjusting her nylon uniform at the hips, and then turned back, puzzled. Belatedly thinking that there had been somehing new in his eyes, maybe. Something that hadn’t been there before.
She glanced at him thoughtfully, started to turn away again, and he said, “Hello, Marie.”
She froze, and he could hear an ivory click as her teeth came suddenly and violently together. Her hand pressed against her chest just above the swell of her breasts. A small gold crucifix hung there. “O-my-God,” she said. “You’re awake. I thought you looked different. How did you know my name?”
“I suppose I must have heard it.” It was hard to talk, terribly hard. His tongue was a sluggish worm, seemingly unlubricated by saliva.
She nodded. “You’ve been coming up for some time now. I’d better go down to the nurses’ station and have Dr. Brown or Dr. Weizak paged. They’ll want to know you’re back with us.” But she stayed a moment longer, looking at him with a frank fascination that made him uneasy.
“Did I grow a third eye?” he asked.
She laughed nervously. “No ... of course not. Excuse me.”
His eye caught on his own window ledge and his table pushed up against it. On the ledge was a faded African violet and a picture of Jesus Christ—it was the sort of picture of Jesus his mother favored, with Christ looking as if he was ready to bat clean-up for the New York Yankees or something of a similar clean and athletic nature. But the picture was—yellow. Yellow and beginning to curl at the corners. Sudden fear dropped over him like a suffocating blanket. “Nurse!” he called. “Nurse!”
In the doorway she turned back.
“Where are my get-well cards?” Suddenly it was hard for him to breathe. “That other guy’s got ... didn’t anyone send me a card?”
She smiled, but it was forced. It was the smile of someone who is hiding something. Suddenly Johnny wanted her by his bed. He would reach out and touch her. If he could touch her, he would know what she was hiding.
“I’ll have the doctor paged,” she said, and left before he could say anything else. He looked at the African violet, at the aging picture of Jesus, baffled and afraid. After a little while, he drifted off to sleep again.
4
“He was awake,” Marie Michaud said. “He was completely coherent.”