sleep with you."
"How did you get off your medicine this time?"
"Step knows," said Lee.
"He hid it inside his chewing gum," said Step.
Lee looked crestfallen. "You told."
Dr. Weeks pushed the plunger down and Lee watched, fascinated, as the fluid went into his arm. "Is this the fast stuff?"
"Yes," said Dr. Weeks.
It was true. By the time they got him to the ambulance, Lee wasn't walking under his own power. They strapped him down inside. "Take him right in," Dr. Weeks told them. "They're expecting him. I'll be there very soon."
They drove off. Dr. Weeks stood there on the lawn, facing Step. "Thank you," she said.
"It must be hard," said Step. "Being a psychiatrist, and having a manic-depressive child."
"Lee is the reason I became a psychiatrist. So I could understand him."
"And do you?"
"No," she said. "Not when he's like this. Not even when he's not like this. I think he likes his madness better. I think he doesn't want to get well." She smiled wanly. "You don't like me, Mr. Fletcher."
"I think you should have warned us about Le e when he joined the Church."
"When one is alone and at wit's end," she said quietly, "one seizes upon even the tiniest hope."
"Did you think we could heal him?" asked Step, thinking of Sister LeSueur and wondering if she would think herself up to the job.
"No," she said. "But I thought, since you believed ... as you believe ... that God talks to human beings ... I thought you might accept him."
"We did," said Step. "As best we could."
"And I, too," said Dr. Weeks. "As best I can."
After she left, he rummaged through the hedge, looking for whatever it was that Lee had been reaching for.
It wasn't a weapon after all. It was the Book of Mormon that the missionaries had given him.
The autumn wore on, the routine changing but not in any important way. Jerusha brought along a physical therapist on her October visit, and he told Step that what he was doing, stretching out Zap's muscles and moving his limbs through their full range of motion, was not only good but essential. "It's like his brain doesn't have the normal connections to his muscles. When he shoots off a command, it does too much, which is why he kicks so hard, but then it disappears, just like that, and so he can't sustain anything. By himself he can't keep his limbs limber, so to speak. So you have to keep his tendons from tightening up on him. Same thing they do for coma patients."
"We'll have to do this for how long?" asked Step.
"Till he finds some alternate neural pathway to let him do it for himself. He will, you know. Just give him time."
It was encouraging, and now DeAnne and Step took turns twice a day, flexing and extending all of Zap's joints. Robbie and Stevie even picked up on it-Stevie silently, wordlessly doing exactly what he had seen Step and DeAnne do; Robbie far too rough and ne ver quite correctly, so that they had to insist that he only do "Zap bending" when they were there.
DeAnne's hardest job with Zap was bathing him. Zap didn't cry much-only when he was in real pain, which happened mostly when she fed him formula and he didn't burp enough. However, bathtime was torment for him. For some reason the water terrified him. Maybe, Step speculated, because gravity was the one constant, the one thing that felt in control in his life, and in the water the gravity just wasn't there the same way. DeAnne only answered, Maybe, but who can know? What mattered was that bathtime was the only time that Zap ever got really upset, and then he was frantic, and his desperate cries just tore DeAnne apart, because she couldn't help him feel better and yet she couldn't give up bathing him, either. Finally what she evolved was a song that she called "Tubby Time for Jeremy." It was completely absurd and the first time she realized Step was listening to her she blushed and stopped, but he insisted she teach him the words and he sang along with her, so she wasn't embarrassed anymore.
Tubby time in the city.
Tubby time in the town.
Tubby time for Jeremy, It's tubby time right now.
So Tubby-dub and scrubby-dub, It's time for your nightgown.
It's tubby time all over the world, So please don't frown.
As she explained to Step, the song didn't really help Zap at all. But it helped her,- it soothed her so she