world worked. Hadn’t his own father pulled a wire to get his final job, as caretaker at the Overlook Hotel? Maybe that wasn’t proof positive that who you knew was a lousy way to get a job, but it certainly seemed suggestive.
“Enjoy your evening, Doctor Sleeeep,” Carling called after him, making no effort to keep his voice down.
At the nurses’ station, Claudette was charting meds while Janice Barker watched a small TV with the sound turned down low. The current program was one of those endless ads for colon cleanser, but Jan was watching with her eyes wide and her mouth hung ajar. She started when Dan tapped his fingernails on the counter and he realized she hadn’t been fascinated but half asleep.
“Can either of you tell me anything substantive about Charlie? Carling knows from nothing.”
Claudette glanced down the hall to make sure Fred Carling wasn’t in view, then lowered her voice, anyway. “That man’s as useless as boobs on a bull. I keep hoping he’ll get fired.”
Dan kept his similar opinion to himself. Constant sobriety, he had discovered, did wonders for one’s powers of discretion.
“I checked him fifteen minutes ago,” Jan said. “We check them a lot when Mr. Pussycat comes to visit.”
“How long’s Azzie been in there?”
“He was meowing outside the door when we came on duty at midnight,” Claudette said, “so I opened it for him. He jumped right up on the bed. You know how he does. I almost called you then, but Charlie was awake and responsive. When I said hi, he hi’d me right back and started petting Azzie. So I decided to wait. About an hour later, he had a nosebleed. Fred cleaned him up. I had to tell him to put the towels in a plague-bag.”
Plague-bags were what the staff called the dissolvable plastic sacks in which clothing, linen, and towels contaminated with bodily fluids or tissue were stored. It was a state regulation that was supposed to minimize the spread of blood-borne pathogens.
“When I checked him forty or fifty minutes ago,” Jan said, “he was asleep. I gave him a shake. He opened his eyes, and they were all bloodshot.”
“That’s when I called Emerson,” Claudette said. “And after I got the big no-way-Jose from the girl on service, I called you. Are you going down now?”
“Yes.”
“Good luck,” Jan said. “Ring if you need something.”
“I will. Why are you watching an infomercial for colon cleanser, Jannie? Or is that too personal?”
She yawned. “At this hour, the only other thing on is an infomercial for the Ahh Bra. I already have one of those.”
4
The door of the Alan Shepard Suite was standing half open, but Dan knocked anyway. When there was no response, he pushed it all the way open. Someone (probably one of the nurses; it almost certainly hadn’t been Fred Carling) had cranked up the bed a little. The sheet was pulled to Charlie Hayes’s chest. He was ninety-one, painfully thin, and so pale he hardly seemed to be there at all. Dan had to stand still for thirty seconds before he could be absolutely sure the old man’s pajama top was going up and down. Azzie was curled beside the scant bulge of one hip. When Dan came in, the cat surveyed him with those inscrutable eyes.
“Mr. Hayes? Charlie?”
Charlie’s eyes didn’t open. The lids were bluish. The skin beneath them was darker, a purple-black. When Dan got to the side of the bed, he saw more color: a little crust of blood beneath each nostril and in one corner of the folded mouth.
Dan went into the bathroom, took a facecloth, wetted it in warm water, wrung it out. When he returned to Charlie’s bedside, Azzie got to his feet and delicately stepped to the other side of the sleeping man, leaving Dan a place to sit down. The sheet was still warm from Azzie’s body. Gently, Dan wiped the blood from beneath Charlie’s nose. As he was doing the mouth, Charlie opened his eyes. “Dan. It’s you, isn’t it? My eyes are a little blurry.”
Bloody was what they were.
“How are you feeling, Charlie? Any pain? If you’re in pain, I can get Claudette to bring you a pill.”
“No pain,” Charlie said. His eyes shifted to Azzie, then went back to Dan. “I know why he’s here. And I know why you’re here.”
“I’m here because the wind woke me up. Azzie was probably just looking for some company. Cats are nocturnal, you know.”