“Can you help me get over? They say you can help people.”
“Yes. I can help.” He took Charlie’s other hand, as well. “It’s just going to sleep. And when you wake up—you will wake up—everything is going to be better.”
“Heaven? Do you mean heaven?”
“I don’t know, Charlie.”
The power was very strong tonight. He could feel it flowing through their clasped hands like an electric current and cautioned himself to be gentle. Part of him was inhabiting the faltering body that was shutting down and the failing senses
(hurry up please)
that were turning off. He was inhabiting a mind
(hurry up please it’s time)
that was still as sharp as ever, and aware it was thinking its last thoughts . . . at least as Charlie Hayes.
The bloodshot eyes closed, then opened again. Very slowly.
“Everything’s all right,” Dan said. “You only need sleep. Sleep will make you better.”
“Is that what you call it?”
“Yes. I call it sleep, and it’s safe to sleep.”
“Don’t go.”
“I won’t. I’m with you.” So he was. It was his terrible privilege.
Charlie’s eyes closed again. Dan closed his own and saw a slow blue pulse in the darkness. Once . . . twice . . . stop. Once . . . twice . . . stop. Outside the wind was blowing.
“Sleep, Charlie. You’re doing fine, but you’re tired and you need to sleep.”
“I see my wife.” The faintest of whispers.
“Do you?”
“She says . . .”
There was no more, just a final blue pulse behind Dan’s eyes and a final exhalation from the man on the bed. Dan opened his eyes, listened to the wind, and waited for the last thing. It came a few seconds later: a dull red mist that rose from Charlie’s nose, mouth, and eyes. This was what an old nurse in Tampa—one who had about the same twinkle as Billy Freeman—called “the gasp.” She said she had seen it many times.
Dan saw it every time.
It rose and hung above the old man’s body. Then it faded.
Dan slid up the right sleeve of Charlie’s pajamas, and felt for a pulse. It was just a formality.
5
Azzie usually left before it was over, but not tonight. He was standing on the counterpane beside Charlie’s hip, staring at the door. Dan turned, expecting to see Claudette or Jan, but no one was there.
Except there was.
“Hello?”
Nothing.
“Are you the little girl who writes on my blackboard sometimes?”
No response. But someone was there, all right.
“Is your name Abra?”
Faint, almost inaudible because of the wind, there came a ripple of piano notes. Dan might have believed it was his imagination (he could not always tell the difference between that and the shining) if not for Azzie, whose ears twitched and whose eyes never left the empty doorway. Someone was there, watching.
“Are you Abra?”
There was another ripple of notes, then silence again. Except this time it was absence. Whatever her name was, she was gone. Azzie stretched, leaped down from the bed, and left without a look back.
Dan sat where he was a little longer, listening to the wind. Then he lowered the bed, pulled the sheet up over Charlie’s face, and went back to the nurses’ station to tell them there had been a death on the floor.
6
When his part of the paperwork was complete, Dan walked down to the snack alcove. There was a time he would have gone there on the run, fists already clenched, but those days were gone. Now he walked, taking long slow breaths to calm his heart and mind. There was a saying in AA, “Think before you drink,” but what Casey K. told him during their once-a-week tête-à-têtes was to think before he did anything. You didn’t get sober to be stupid, Danny. Keep it in mind the next time you start listening to that itty-bitty shitty committee inside your head.
But those goddam fingermarks.
Carling was rocked back in his chair, now eating Junior Mints. He had swapped Popular Mechanics for a photo mag with the latest bad-boy sitcom star on the cover.
“Mr. Hayes has passed on,” Dan said mildly.
“Sorry to hear it.” Not looking up from the magazine. “But that is what they’re here for, isn’t i—”
Dan lifted one foot, hooked it behind one of the tilted front legs of Carling’s chair, and yanked. The chair spun away and Carling landed on the floor. The box of Junior Mints flew out of his hand. He stared up at Dan unbelievingly.
“Have I got your attention?”
“You sonofa—” Carling started to get up. Dan put his foot on the man’s chest and pushed him back against the wall.
“I see I have. Good. It would be better right now if you didn’t get up. Just sit there and listen to me.” Dan bent forward and clasped his knees with his hands. Tight, because all those hands wanted to do right now was hit. And hit. And hit. His temples were throbbing. Slow, he told himself. Don’t let it get the better of you.