"Here's Anthony Forbes's card, in case you want to call him in the interim."
"Thanks," Ralph said, taking the second card. "I owe you."
"The only thing you owe Me is a return visit SO I can find out how it went. I'm concerned, There are doctors who won't prescribe anything for insomnia, you know. They like to say that no one ever died from lack of sleep, but I'm here to tell you that's crap."
Ralph supposed this news should have frightened him, but he felt pretty steady, at least for the time being. The auras had gone away-the bright gray gleams in Wyzer's eyes as he'd laughed at whatever Hong's receptionist had said had been the last. He was starting to think they had just been a mental fugue brought on by a combination of extreme tiredness and Wyzer's mention of hyper-reality. There was another reason for feeling good-he now had an appointment with a man who had helped this man through a similar bad patch.
Ralph thought he'd let Hong stick needles into him until he looked like a porcupine if the treatment allowed him to sleep until the sun came up.
And there was a third thing: the gray auras hadn't actually been scary. They had been sort of... interesting.
""People die from lack of sleep all the time," Wyzer was saying, although the medical examiner usually ends up writing suicide on the cause-of-death line, rather than insomnia. Insomnia and alcoholism have a lot in common, but the major thing is this: they're both diseases of the heart and mind, and when they're allowed to run their course they usually gut the spirit long before they're able to destroy the body. So yeah-people do die from lack of sleep. This is a dangerous time for you, and you have to take care of yourself.
If you start to feel really wonky, call Litchfield Do you hear me?
Don't stand on ceremony. Ralph grimaced. "I think I'd be more apt to call you."
Wyzer nodded as if he had absolutely expected this. "The number under Hong's is mine," he said.
Surprised, Ralph looked down at the card again. There was a second number there, marked J.W.
Wyzer said. "Really. You won't disturb my wife; we've been divorced since 1983."
Ralph tried to speak and found he couldn't. All that came out was a choked, meaningless little sound. He swallowed hard, trying to clear the obstruction in his throat.
Wyzer saw he was struggling and clapped him on the back. "No bawling in the store, Ralph-it scares away the big spenders. You want a Kleenex?"
"No, I'm okay." His voice was slightly watery, but audible and mostly under control.
Wyzer cast a critical eye on him. "Not yet, but you will be."
Wyzer's big hand swallowed Ralph's once more, and this time Ralph didn't worry about it. "For the time being, try to relax. And remember to be grateful for the sleep you do get."
"Okay. Thanks again."
Wyzer nodded and walked back to the prescription counter.
Ralph walked back down Aisle 3, turned left at the formidable condom display, and went out through a door with THANK YOU FOR SHOPPING AT RITE AID decaled above the push-bar. At first he thought there was nothing unusual about the fierce brightness that made him squint his eyes almost shut-it was midday, after all, and perhaps the drugstore had been a little darker than he had realized.
Then he opened his eyes wide again, and his breath came to a dead stop in his throat.
A look of thunderstruck amazement spread over his face. It was the expression an explorer might wear when, after pushing his way through just one more nondescript tangle of bushes, he finds himself looking at some fabulous lost city or brain-busting geological feature-a cliff of diamonds, perhaps, or a spiral waterfall, Ralph shrank back against the blue mailbox standing to one side of the drugstore's entrance, still not breathing, his eyes shuttling jerkily from left to right as the brain behind them tried to understand the wonderful and terrible news it was receiving.
The auras were back, but that was a little like saying Hawaii was a place where you didn't have to wear your overcoat. This time the light was everywhere, fierce and flowing, strange and beautiful.
Ralph had had only one experience in his entire life which was remotely similar to this. During the summer of 1941, the year he'd turned eighteen, he'd been riding his thumb from Derry to his uncle's place in Poughkeepsie, New York, a distance of about four