returned, but objects looked thicker, somehow. The auras were still there, but they appeared both thinner and paler-pastel coronas instead of spraypainted primary colors. At the same time Ralph realized he could see every crack and pore in the Sheetrocked wall to his left... and then he realized he could see the pipes, wires, and insulation behind the walls, if he wanted to; all he had to do was look.
Oh my God, he thought. Is this really happening? Can this really, be happening?
Sounds were everywhere: hushed bells, a toilet being flushed, muted laughter. Sounds a person normally took for granted, as part of everyday life, but not now. Not here. Like the visible reality of things, the sounds seemed to have an extraordinarily sensuous texture, like thin overlapping scallops of silk and steel.
Nor were all the sounds ordinary; there were a great many exotic ones weaving their way through the mix. He heard a fly buzzing deep in a heating duct. The fine-grain sandpaper sound of a nurse adjusting her pantyhose in the staff bathroom. Beating hearts. Circulating blood. The soft tidal flow of respiration. Each sound was perfect on its own; fitted into the others, they made a beautiful and complicated auditory ballet-a hidden Swan Lake of gurgling stomachs, humming power outlets, hurricane hairdryers, whispering wheels on hospital gurneys.
Ralph could hear a TV at the end of the hall beyond the nurses' station. It was coming from Room 340, where Mr. Thomas Wren, a kidney patient, was watching Kirk Douglas and Lana Turner in The Bad and the Beautiful. "If you team up with me, baby, we'll turn this town on its ear," Kirk was saying, and Ralph knew from the aura which surrounded the words that Mr. Douglas had been suffering a toothache on the day that particular scene was filmed. Nor was that all; he knew he could go (higher? deeper? wider?) if he wanted. Ralph most definitely did not want. This was the forest of Arden, and a man could get lost in its thickets.
Or eaten by tigers.
["Jesus It's another level-it must be, Lois A whole other level ["I know.
["Are you okay with this?" ["I think I am, Ralph... are you?"] ["I guess so, for now... but if the bottom drops out again, I don't know. Come on."] But before they could begin following the green-gold tracks again, Bill McGovern and a man Ralph didn't know came out of Room 313. They were in deep conversation.
Lois turned a horror-struck face toward Ralph.
["Oh, o." Oh God, no! Do you see, Ralph? Do you see?"] Ralph gripped her hand more tightly. He saw, all right. McGovern's friend was surrounded by a plum-colored aura. It didn't look especially healthy, but Ralph didn't think the man was seriously ill, either; it was just a lot of chronic stuff like rheumatism and kidney gravel. A balloon-string of the same mottled purple shade rose from the top of the man's aura, wavering hesitantly back and forth like a diver's air-hose in a mild current.
McGovern's aura, however, was totally black. The stump of what had once been a balloon-string jutted stiffly up from it. The thunderstruck baby's balloon-string had been short but healthy; what they were looking at now was the decaying remnant of a crude amputation. Ralph had a momentary image, so strong it was almost a hallucination, of McGovern's eyes first bulging and then popping out of their sockets, knocked loose by a flood of black bugs. He had to close his own eyes for a moment to keep from screaming, and when he opened them again, Lois was no longer at his side.
McGovern and his friend were walking in the direction of the nurses' station, probably bound for the water-fountain. Lois was in hot pusuit, trotting up the corridor, bosom heaving, Her aura flashed with twizzling pinkish sparks that looked like neon-flavored asterisks.
Ralph bolted after her. He didn't know what would happen if she caught McGovern's attention, and didn't really want to find out. He thought he was probably going to, however.
["Lois." Lois, don't do that." She ignored him.
["Bill, stop! You have to listen to me." Something's wrong with you./',] McGovern paid no attention to her; he was talking about Bob Polhurst's manuscript, Later That Summer. "Best damned book on the Civil War I ever read," he told the man inside the plum-colored aura, "but when I suggested that he publish, he told me that was out of the question. Can you believe it? A possible Pulitzer Prize winner, but-"