Well, he thinks, maybe on the Fox Network.
He picks Judy up in his arms and is appalled all over again, this time by how light she is. She's lost maybe twenty pounds since the last time I picked her up like this, he thinks. At least ten. How could I not have noticed? But he knows. Preoccupation with work was part of it; a stubborn refusal to let go of the idea that things were basically all right was the rest of it. Well, he thinks, carrying her out the door (her arms have crept tiredly up and locked themselves around his neck), I'm over that little misconception. And he actually believes this, in spite of his continued blind confidence in his son's safety.
Judy hasn't toured their bedroom during her rampage, and to Fred it looks like a cool oasis of sanity. Judy apparently feels the same way. She gives a tired sigh, and her arms drop away from her husband's neck. Her tongue comes out, but this time it gives only a feeble little lick at her upper lip. Fred bends and puts her down on the bed. She holds up her hands, looks at them.
"I cut myself . . . scraped myself . . ."
"Yes," he says. "I'm going to get something for them."
"How . . . ?"
He sits beside her for a moment. Her head has sunk into the soft double thickness of her pillows, and her eyelids are drooping. He thinks that, beyond the puzzlement in them, he can still see that terrifying blankness. He hopes he is wrong.
"Don't you remember?" he asks her gently.
"No . . . did I fall down?"
Fred chooses not to answer. He is starting to think again. Not much, he's not capable of much just yet, but a little. "Honey, what's a gorg? What's an abbalah? Is it a person?"
"Don't . . . know . . . Ty . . ."
"Ty's fine," he says.
"No . . ."
"Yes," he insists. Perhaps he's insisting to both of the people in this pretty, tastefully decorated bedroom. "Honeybunch, you just lie there. I want to get a couple of things."
Her eyes drift closed. He thinks she will sleep, but her lids struggle slowly back up to half-mast.
"Lie right there," he says. "No getting up and wandering around. There's been enough of that. You scared poor Enid Purvis out of a year's life. You promise?"
"Promise . . ." Her eyelids drift back down.
Fred goes into the adjoining bathroom, ears alert for any movement behind him. He has never seen anyone in his life who looks more bolt-shot than Judy does right now, but mad people are clever, and despite his prodigious capacity for denial in some areas, Fred can no longer fool himself about his wife's current mental state. Mad? Actually stark raving mad? Probably not. But off the rails, certainly. Temporarily off the rails, he amends as he opens the medicine cabinet.
He takes the bottle of Mercurochrome, then scans the prescription bottles on the shelf above. There aren't many. He grabs the one on the far left. Sonata, French Landing Pharmacy, one capsule at bedtime, do not use more than four nights in a row, prescribing physician Patrick J. Skarda, M.D.
Fred can't see the entire bed in the medicine-cabinet mirror, but he can see the foot of it . . . and one of Judy's feet, as well. Still on the bed. Good, good. He shakes out one of the Sonatas, then dumps their toothbrushes out of the glass — he has no intention of going all the way downstairs for a clean glass, does not want to leave her alone that long.
He fills the glass, then goes back into the bedroom with the water, the pill, and the bottle of Mercurochrome. Her eyes are shut. She is breathing so slowly that he has to put one hand on her chest to make sure she's breathing at all.
He looks at the sleeping pill, debates, then gives her a shake. "Judy! Jude! Wake up a little, hon. Just long enough to take a pill, okay?"