Doctor Sleep (55 page)

“Come ahead, darling,” she said. “And stay angry. The angrier you are, the more foolhardy you'll be. Come and see your auntie Rose.”

There was a snap. She looked down and saw she had broken off the lower half of the EarthCruiser's steering wheel. Steam conveyed strength. Her hands were bleeding. Rose threw the jagged arc of plastic aside, raised her palms to her face, and began to lick them.

The moment Dan closed his phone, Dave said, “Let's pick up Lucy and go get her.”

Dan shook his head. “She says they're okay, and I believe her.”

“She's been drugged, though,” John said. “Her judgment might not be the best right now.”

“She was clear enough to help me take care of the one she calls the Crow,” Dan said, “and I trust her on this. Let them sleep off whatever the bastard drugged them with. We have other things to do. Important things. You've got to trust me a little here. You'll be with your daughter soon enough, David. For the moment, though, listen to me carefully. We're going to drop you off at your grandmother-in-law's place. You're going to bring your wife to the hospital.”

“I don't know if she'll believe me when I tell her what happened today. I don't know how convincing I can be when I hardly believe it myself.”

“Tell her the story has to wait until we're all together. And that includes Abra's momo.”

“I doubt if they'll let you in to see her.” Dave glanced at his watch. “Visiting hours are long over, and she's very ill.”

“Floor staff doesn't pay much attention to the visiting rules when patients are near the end,” Dan said.

Dave looked at John, who shrugged. “The man works in a hospice. I think you can trust him on that.”

“She may not even be conscious,” Dave said.

“Let's worry about one thing at a time.”

“What does Chetta have to do with this, anyway? She doesn't know anything about it!”

Dan said, “I'm pretty sure she knows more than you think.”

They dropped Dave off at the condo on Marlborough Street and watched from the curb as he mounted the steps and rang one of the bells.

“He looks like a little kid who knows he's going to the woodshed for a pants-down butt whippin,” John said. “This is going to strain the hell out of his marriage, no matter how it turns out.”

“When a natural disaster happens, no one's to blame.”

“Try to make Lucy Stone see that. She's going to think, ‘You left your daughter alone and a crazy guy snatched her.' On some level, she's always going to think it.”

“Abra might change her mind about that. As for today, we did what we could, and so far we're not doing too badly.”

“But it's not over.”

“Not by a long shot.”

Dave was ringing the bell again and peering into the little lobby when the elevator opened and Lucy Stone came rushing out. Her face was strained and pale. Dave started to talk as soon as she opened the door. So did she. Lucy pulled him in—
yanked
him in—by both arms.

“Ah, man,” John said softly. “That reminds me of too many nights when I rolled in drunk at three in the morning.”

“Either he'll convince her or he won't,” Dan said. “We've got other business.”

Dan Torrance and John Dalton arrived at Massachusetts General Hospital shortly after ten thirty. It was slack tide on the intensive care floor. A deflating helium balloon with FEEL BETTER SOON printed on it in particolored letters drifted halfheartedly along the hallway ceiling, casting a jellyfish shadow. Dan approached the nurses' station, identified himself as a staffer at the hospice to which Ms. Reynolds was scheduled to be moved, showed his Helen Rivington House ID, and introduced John Dalton as the family doctor (a stretch, but not an actual lie).

“We need to assess her condition prior to the transfer,” Dan said, “and two family members have asked to be present. They are Ms. Reynolds's granddaughter and her granddaughter's husband. I'm sorry about the lateness of the hour, but it was unavoidable. They'll be here shortly.”

“I've met the Stones,” the head nurse said. “They're lovely people. Lucy in particular has been very attentive to her gran. Concetta's special. I've been reading her poems, and they're wonderful. But if you're expecting any input from her, gentlemen, you're going to be disappointed. She's slipped into a coma.”

We'll see about that,
Dan thought.

“And . . .” The nurse looked at John doubtfully. “Well . . . it's really not my place to say . . .”

“Go on,” John said. “I've never met a head nurse who didn't know what the score was.”

She smiled at him, then turned her attention back to Dan. “I've heard wonderful things about the Rivington hospice, but I doubt very much if Concetta will be going there. Even if she lasts until Monday, I'm not sure there's any point in moving her. It might be kinder to let her finish her journey here. If I'm stepping out of line, I'm sorry.”

“You're not,” Dan said, “and we'll take that into consideration. John, would you go down to the lobby and escort the Stones up when they arrive? I can start without you.”

“Are you sure—”

“Yes,” Dan said, holding his eyes. “I am.”

“She's in Room Nine,” the head nurse said. “It's the single at the end of the hall. If you need me, ring her call bell.”

Concetta's name was on the Room 9 door, but the slot for medical orders was empty and the vitals monitor overhead showed nothing hopeful. Dan stepped into aromas he knew well: air freshener, antiseptic, and mortal illness. The last was a high smell that sang in his head like a violin that knows only one note. The walls were covered with photographs, many featuring Abra at various ages. One showed a gapemouthed cluster of little folks watching a magician pull a white rabbit from a hat. Dan was sure it had been taken at the famous birthday party, the Day of the Spoons.

Surrounded by these pictures, a skeleton woman slept with her mouth open and a pearl rosary twined in her fingers. Her remaining hair was so fine it almost disappeared against the pillow. Her skin, once olive-toned, was now yellow. The rise and fall of her thin bosom was hardly there. One look was enough to tell Dan that the head nurse had indeed known what the score was. If Azzie were here, he would have been curled up next to the woman in this room, waiting for Doctor Sleep to arrive so he could resume his late-night patrol of corridors empty save for the things only cats could see.

Dan sat down on the side of the bed, noting that the single IV going into her was a saline drip. There was only one medicine that could help her now, and the hospital pharmacy didn't stock it. Her cannula had come askew. He straightened it. Then he took her hand and looked into the sleeping face.

(
Concetta
)

There was a slight hitch in her breathing.

(
Concetta come back
)

Beneath the thin, bruised lids, the eyes moved. She might have
been listening; she might have been dreaming her last dreams. Of Italy, perhaps. Bending over the household well and hauling up a bucket of cool water. Bending over in the hot summer sun.

(
Abra needs you to come back and so do I
)

It was all he could do, and he wasn't sure it would be enough until, slowly, her eyes opened. They were vacant at first, but they gained perception. Dan had seen this before. The miracle of returning consciousness. Not for the first time he wondered where it came from, and where it went when it departed. Death was no less a miracle than birth.

The hand he was holding tightened. The eyes remained on Dan's, and Concetta smiled. It was a timid smile, but it was there.

“Oh mio caro! Sei tu? Sei tu? Come e possibile? Sei morto? Sono morta anch'io? . . . Siamo fantasmi?”

Dan didn't speak Italian, and he didn't have to. He heard what she was saying with perfect clarity in his head.

Oh my dear one, is it you? How can it be you? Are you dead? Am I?

Then, after a pause:

Are we ghosts?

Dan leaned toward her until his cheek lay against hers.

In her ear, he whispered.

In time, she whispered back.

Their conversation was short but illuminating. Concetta spoke mostly in Italian. At last she lifted a hand—it took great effort, but she managed—and caressed his stubbly cheek. She smiled.

“Are you ready?” he asked.

“
Sì
. Ready.”

“There's nothing to be afraid of.”

“
Sì,
I know that. I'm so glad you come. Tell me again your name,
signor
.”

“Daniel Torrance.”

“
Sì
. You are a gift from God, Daniel Torrance.
Sei un dono di Dio
.”

Dan hoped it was true. “Will you give to me?”

“
Sì,
of course. What you need
per
Abra.”

“And I'll give to you, Chetta. We'll drink from the well together.”

She closed her eyes.

(
I know
)

“You'll go to sleep, and when you wake up—”

(
everything will be better
)

The power was even stronger than it had been on the night Charlie Hayes passed; he could feel it between them as he gently clasped her hands in his and felt the smooth pebbles of her rosary against his palms. Somewhere, lights were being turned off, one by one. It was all right. In Italy a little girl in a brown dress and sandals was drawing water from the cool throat of a well. She looked like Abra, that little girl. The dog was barking.
Il cane. Ginata. Il cane si rotolava sull'erba
. Barking and rolling in the grass. Funny Ginata!

Concetta was sixteen and in love, or thirty and writing a poem at the kitchen table of a hot apartment in Queens while children shouted on the street below; she was sixty and standing in the rain and looking up at a hundred thousand lines of purest falling silver. She was her mother and her great-granddaughter and it was time for her great change, her great voyage. Ginata was rolling in the grass and the lights

(
hurry up please
)

were going out one by one. A door was opening

(
hurry up please it's time
)

and beyond it they could both smell all the mysterious, fragrant respiration of the night. Above were all the stars that ever were.

He kissed her cool forehead. “Everything's all right,
cara
. You only need to sleep. Sleep will make you better.”

Then he waited for her final breath.

It came.

He was still sitting there, holding her hands in his, when the door burst open and Lucy Stone came striding in. Her husband and her daughter's pediatrician followed, but not too closely; it was as if they feared being burned by the fear, fury, and confused outrage that surrounded her in a crackling aura so strong it was almost visible.

She seized Dan by the shoulder, her fingernails digging like claws into the shoulder beneath his shirt. “Get away from her. You don't know her. You have no more business with my grandmother than you do with my daugh—”

“Lower your voice,” Dan said without turning. “You're in the presence of death.”

The rage that had stiffened her ran out all at once, loosening her joints. She sagged to the bed beside Dan and looked at the waxen cameo that was now her grandmother's face. Then she looked at the haggard, beard-scruffy man who sat holding the dead hands, in which the rosary was still entwined. Unnoticed tears began rolling down Lucy's cheeks in big clear drops.

“I can't make out half of what they've been trying to tell me. Just that Abra was kidnapped, but now she's all right—supposedly—and she's in a motel with some man named Billy and they're both sleeping.”

“All that's true,” Dan said.

“Then spare me your holier-than-thou pronouncements, if you please. I'll mourn my momo after I see Abra. When I've got my arms around her. For now, I want to know . . . I want . . .” She trailed off, looking from Dan to her dead grandmother and back to Dan again. Her husband stood behind her. John had closed the door of Room 9 and was leaning against it. “Your name is Torrance? Daniel Torrance?”

“Yes.”

Again that slow look from her grandmother's still profile to
the man who had been present when she died. “Who are you, Mr. Torrance?”

Dan let go of Chetta's hands and took Lucy's. “Walk with me. Not far. Just across the room.”

She stood up without protest, still looking into his face. He led her to the bathroom door, which was standing open. He turned on the light and pointed to the mirror above the washbasin, where they were framed as if in a photograph. Seen that way, there could be little doubt. None, really.

He said, “My father was your father, Lucy. I'm your half brother.”

After notifying the head nurse that there had been a death on the floor, they went to the hospital's small nondenominational chapel. Lucy knew the way; although not much of a believer, she had spent a good many hours there, thinking and remembering. It was a comforting place to do those things, which are necessary when a loved one nears the end. At this hour, they had it all to themselves.

“First things first,” Dan said. “I have to ask if you believe me. We can do the DNA test when there's time, but . . . do we need to?”

Lucy shook her head dazedly, never taking her eyes from his face. She seemed to be trying to memorize it. “Dear Jesus. I can hardly get my breath.”

“I thought you looked familiar the first time I saw you,” Dave said to Dan. “Now I know why. I would have gotten it sooner, I think, if it hadn't been . . . you know . . .”