The Passage - By Justin Cronin Page 0,243

dream it had produced, were gone.

“I was just … I don’t know.” Why was he apologizing? “I think I must have dozed off.”

Sara was busying herself with the lantern, moving a wheeled tray to the side of the cot, where the girl was sitting up, an alert and watchful expression on her face.

“How’d you talk Dale into letting you in?”

“Oh, Dale’s all right.”

Sara sat on the girl’s cot and opened her kit to reveal what she’d brought: flatbread, an apple, a wedge of cheese.

“Hungry?”

The girl ate quickly, polishing off her meal with darting bites: first the bread and then the cheese, which she sniffed suspiciously before tasting, and finally the apple, right down to the core. When it was gone she wiped her face with the back of her hand, smearing juice over her cheeks.

“Well, I guess that settles it,” Sara declared. “Not the best table manners I’ve ever seen, but your appetite is normal enough. I’m going to check your dressing, okay?”

Sara untied the gown, drawing it aside to expose the girl’s bandaged shoulder while leaving the rest covered. With a pair of shears, she snipped the cloth away. Where the bolt had entered, tearing skin and muscle and bone, all that remained was a small pink depression. It reminded Peter of a baby’s flesh, that soft freshness of new skin.

“All my patients should heal so fast. No point in leaving those stitches in, I guess. Turn around so I can do the back.”

The girl complied, swiveling on the cot; Sara took up a pair of tweezers and began pulling the sutures from the exit wound, dropping them one by one into a metal basin.

“Does anybody else know about this?” Peter asked.

“About the way she heals? I don’t think so.”

“So nobody else has been in to see her since this afternoon.”

She clipped off the final stitch. “Just Jimmy.” She pulled the girl’s gown back over her shoulder. “There you go, all set.”

“Jimmy? What did he want?”

“I don’t know, I assume Sanjay sent him.” Sara shifted on the cot to look at Peter. “It was kind of strange, actually. I never heard him come in, I just looked up and there he was, standing in the doorway with this … look on his face.”

“A look?”

“I don’t know how else to describe it. I told him she hadn’t said anything, and then he left. But that was hours ago.”

Peter felt suddenly rattled. What did she mean by a look? What had Jimmy seen?

Sara took up her tweezers again. “Okay, your turn.”

Peter was about to say, My turn for what? But then he remembered: his elbow. The bandage had long since worn down to a filthy rag. He guessed the cut was healed by now; he hadn’t looked at it for days.

He sat on one of the empty cots. Sara took a place beside him and unwrapped the bandage, releasing a sour odor of stale skin.

“Did you bother keeping this thing clean at all?”

“I guess I forgot.”

She took hold of the arm, bending closely with the tweezers. Peter was aware of the girl’s eyes, intently watching them.

“Any news from Michael?” He felt a jab of pain as she tugged the first suture. “Ow, be careful.”

“It would help if you held still.” Sara repositioned his arm, not looking at him, and resumed her work. “I stopped by the Lighthouse on the way back from the house. He’s still working. Elton’s helping him.”

“Elton? Is that so smart?”

“Don’t worry, we can trust him.” Her eyes flicked upward with a troubled glance. “Funny how we’re all talking like that, all of a sudden. Who can trust who.” She gave his arm a pat. “There, move it around a little.”

Balling his hand into a fist, he pumped his arm back and forth. “Good as new.”

Sara had stepped to the pump to clean her tools. She turned and faced him, drying her hands on a rag.

“Honestly, Peter. Sometimes I worry about you.”

He realized that he was still holding his arm away from his body. He awkwardly dropped it to his side. “I’m fine.”

She raised her eyebrows doubtfully but said nothing. That one night after the music, Arlo and his guitar and everybody drinking shine; something had come over him, a sudden, almost physical loneliness, but then, the moment he kissed her, a puncturing jab of guilt. It wasn’t that he didn’t like her, nor that she had failed to make her interest less than plain. Alicia was right, what she’d said on the roof of the power station.