business success spoiled by booze, escalating lies, first arrest, broken promises to reform, institutionalization, and the final happy ending. All the stories in the Big Book had happy endings. That was part of its charm.
It was a cold night but overwarm inside, and Dan was edging into a doze when Doctor John raised his hand and said, “I’ve been lying to my wife about something, and I don’t know how to stop.”
That woke Dan up. He liked DJ a lot.
It turned out that John’s wife had given him a watch for Christmas, quite an expensive one, and when she had asked him a couple of nights ago why he wasn’t wearing it, John said he’d left it at the office.
“Only it’s not there. I looked everywhere, and it’s just not. I do a lot of hospital rounds, and if I have to change into scrubs, I use one of the lockers in the doctors’ lounge. There are combo locks, but I hardly ever use them, because I don’t carry much cash and I don’t have anything else worth stealing. Except for the watch, I guess. I can’t remember taking it off and leaving it in a locker—not at CNH or over in Bridgton—but I think I must have. It’s not the expense. It just brings back a lot of the old stuff from the days when I was drinking myself stupid every night and chipping speed the next morning to get going.”
There were nodding heads at this, followed by similar stories of guilt-driven deceit. No one gave advice; that was called “crosstalk,” and frowned on. They simply told their tales. John listened with his head down and his hands clasped between his knees. After the basket was passed (“We are self-supporting through our own contributions”), he thanked everyone for their input. From the look of him, Dan didn’t think said input had helped a whole hell of a lot.
After the Lord’s Prayer, Dan put away the leftover cookies and stacked the group’s tattered Big Books in the cabinet marked FOR AA USE. A few people were still hanging around the butt-can outside—the so-called meeting after the meeting—but he and John had the kitchen to themselves. Dan hadn’t spoken during the discussion; he was too busy having an interior debate with himself.
The shining had been quiet, but that didn’t mean it was absent. He knew from his volunteer work that it was actually stronger than it had been since childhood, though now he seemed to have a greater degree of control over it. That made it less frightening and more useful. His co-workers at Rivington House knew he had something, but most of them called it empathy and let it go at that. The last thing he wanted, now that his life had begun to settle down, was to get a reputation as some sort of parlor psychic. Best to keep the freaky shit to himself.
Doctor John was a good guy, though. And he was hurting.
DJ placed the coffee urn upside down in the dish drainer, used a length of towel hanging from the stove handle to dry his hands, then turned to Dan, offering a smile that looked as real as the Coffee-mate Dan had stored away next to the cookies and the sugar bowl. “Well, I’m off. See you next week, I guess.”
In the end, the decision made itself; Dan simply could not let the guy go looking like that. He held his arms out. “Give it up.”
The fabled AA manhug. Dan had seen many but never given a single one. John looked dubious for a moment, then stepped forward. Dan drew him in, thinking There’ll probably be nothing.
But there was. It came as quickly as it had when, as a child, he had sometimes helped his mother and father find lost things.
“Listen to me, Doc,” he said, letting John go. “You were worried about the kid with Goocher’s.”
John stepped back. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m not saying it right, I know that. Goocher’s? Glutcher’s? It’s some sort of bone thing.”
John’s mouth dropped open. “Are you talking about Norman Lloyd?”
“You tell me.”
“Normie’s got Gaucher’s disease. It’s a lipid disorder. Hereditary and very rare. Causes an enlarged spleen, neurologic disorders, and usually an early, unpleasant death. Poor kid’s basically got a glass skeleton, and he’ll probably die before he’s ten. But how do you know that? From his parents? The Lloyds live way the hell down in Nashua.”
“You were worried about talking to him—the terminal ones drive you crazy. That’s