Words rose to Johnny's lips and he had to choke them off.
Not for long, Dave. You see, my mother's in the process of blowing her brains out right now. She's just not using a gun. She's going to have a stroke. She'll be dead before Christmas unless my father and I can persuade her to start taking her medicine again, and I don't think we can. And I'm a part of it - how much of a part I don't know. I don't think I want to know.
Instead he replied, 'News travels, huh?'
Dave shrugged. 'I understand through Sarah that your mother has had problems adjusting. She'll come around, Johnny. In the meantime, think about it.'
'I will. In fact, I'll give you a tentative yes right now. It would be good to teach again. To get back to normal.'
'You're my man,' Dave said.
After he left, Johnny lay down on his bed and looked out the window. He was very tired. Get back to normal Somehow he didn't think that was ever really going to happen.
He felt one of his headaches coming on.
4.
The fact that Johnny Smith had come out of his coma with something extra finally did get into the paper, and it made page one under David Bright's byline. It happened less than a week before Johnny left the hospital.
He was in physical therapy, lying on his back on a floorpad. Resting on his belly was a twelve-pound medicine ball. His physical therapist, Eileen Magown, was standing above him and counting off situps. He was supposed to do ten of them, and he was currently struggling over number eight. Sweat was streaming down his face, and the healing scars on his neck stood out bright red, Eileen was a small, homely woman with a whipcord body, a nimbus of gorgeous, frizzy red hair, and deep green eyes flecked with hazel. Johnny sometimes called her - with a mixture of irritation and amusement - the world's smallest Marine D.I. She had ordered and cajoled and demanded him back from a bed-fast patient who could barely hold a glass of water to a man who could walk without a cane, do three chinups at a time, and do a complete turn around the hospital pool in fifty-three seconds - not Olympic time, but not bad. She was unmarried and lived in a big house on Center Street in Old-town with her four cats. She was slate-hard and she wouldn't take no for an answer.
Johnny collapsed backward. 'Nope,' he panted. 'Oh, I don't think so, Eileen.'
'Up. boy!' she cried in high and sadistic good humor. 'Up! Up! Just three more and you can have a Coke!'
'Give me my ten-pound ball and I'll give you two more.'
'That ten-pound ball is going into the Guinness Book of Records as the world's biggest suppository if you don't give me three more. Up!'
'Urrrrrrgrah!' Johnny cried, jerking through number eight. He flopped back down, then jerked up again.
'Great! 'Eileen cried. 'One more, one more!'
'OOOOARRRRRRRRUNCH!' Johnny screamed, and sat up for the tenth time. He collapsed to the mat, letting the medicine ball roil away. 'I ruptured myself, are you happy. all my guts just came loose, they're floating around inside me, I'll sue you, you goddam harpy.'
'Jeez, what a baby,' Eileen said, offering him her hand. 'This is nothing compared to what I've got on for next time.'
"Forget it,' Johnny said. 'All I I'm gonna do next time is swim in the...'
He looked at her, an expression of surprise spreading over his face. His grip tightened on her hand until it was almost painful.
'Johnny? What's wrong? Is it a charley horse?'
'Oh gosh,' Johnny said mildly.
'Johnny?'
He was still gripping her hand, looking into her face with' a faraway, dreamy contemplation that made her feel nervous. She had heard things about Johnny Smith, rumors that she had disregarded with her own brand of hard-headed pragmatism. There was a story that he had predicted Marie Michaud's boy was going to be all right, even before the doctors were one hundred percent sure they wanted to try the risky operation. Another rumor had something to do with Dr. Weizak; it was said Johnny had told him his mother was not dead but living someplace on the West Coast under another name. As far as Eileen Magown was concerned, the stories were so much eyewash. on a par with the confession magazines and sweet-savage love stories so many nurses read on station. But the way he was looking at her now made her feel afraid. It was as if he was looking inside her.
'Johnny, are you okay?' They were alone in the physical therapy room. The big double doors with the frosted glass panels which gave on the pool area were closed.
'Gosh sakes,' Johnny said. 'You better ... yes, there's still time. Just about.'
'What are you talking about?'
He snapped out of it then. He let go of her hand but he had gripped it tightly enough to leave white indentations along the back.
'Call the fire department,' he said. 'You forgot to turn off the burner. The curtains are catching on fire.'
'What...?'
'The burner caught the dish towel and the dish towel caught the curtains,' Johnny said impatiently. 'Hurry up and call them. Do you want your house to burn down?'