"No, don't - "
"Tom." Nick put his hand on Tom's shoulder, but Tom felt nothing... it was as if Nick's hand was nothing but smoke. "If he dies, you and Kojak have to go on. You have to get back to Boulder and tell them that you saw the hand of God in the desert. If it's God's will, Stu will go with you... in time. If it's God's will that Stu should die, then he will. Like me."
"Nick," Tom begged. "Please - "
"I showed you my leg for a reason. There are pills for infections. In places like this."
Tom looked around and was surprised to see that they were no longer on the street. They were in a dark store. A drugstore. A wheelchair was suspended on piano wire from the ceiling like a ghostly mechanical corpse. A sign on Tom's right advertised: CONTINENCE SUPPLIES.
"Yes, sir? May I help you?"
Tom whirled around. Nick was behind the counter, in a white coat.
"Nick?"
"Yes, sir." Nick began to put small bottles of pills in front of Tom. "This is penicillin. Very good for pneumonia. This is ampicillin, and this one's amoxicillin. Also good stuff. And this is V-cillin, most commonly given to children, and it may work if the others don't. He's to drink lots of water, and he should have juices, but that may not be possible. So give him these. They're vitamin C tablets. Also, he must be walked - "
"I can't remember all of that! " Tom wailed.
"I'm afraid you'll have to. Because there is no one else. You're on your own."
Tom began to cry.
Nick leaned forward. His arm swung. There was no slap - again there was only that feeling that Nick was smoke which had passed around him and possibly through him - but Tom felt his head rock back all the same. Something in his head seemed to snap.
"Stop that! You can't be a baby now, Tom! Be a man! For God's sake, be a man!"
Tom stared at Nick, his hand on his cheek, his eyes wide.
"Walk him," Nick said. "Get him on his good leg. Drag him, if you have to. But get him off his back or he'll drown."
"He isn't himself," Tom said. "He shouts... he shouts to people who aren't there."
"He's delirious. Walk him anyway. All you can. Make him take the penicillin, one pill at a time. Give him aspirin. Keep him warm. Pray. Those are all the things you can do."
"All right, Nick. All right, I'll try to be a man. I'll try to remember. But I wish you was here, laws, yes, I do!"
"You do your best, Tom. That's all."
Nick was gone. Tom woke up and found himself standing in the deserted drugstore by the prescription counter. Standing on the glass were four bottles of pills. Tom stared at them for a long time and then gathered them up.
Tom came back at four in the morning, his shoulders frosted with sleet. Outside, it was letting up, and there was a thin clean line of dawn in the east. Kojak barked an ecstatic welcome, and Stu moaned and woke up. Tom knelt beside him. "Stu?"
"Tom? Hard to breathe."
"I've got medicine, Stu. Nick showed me. You take it and get rid of that infection. You have to take one right now." From the bag he had brought in, Tom produced the four bottles of pills and a tall bottle of Gatorade. Nick had been wrong about the juice. There was plenty of bottled juice in the Green River Superette.
Stu looked at the pills, holding them closely to his eyes. "Tom, where did you get these?"
"In the drugstore. Nick gave them to me."
"No, really."
"Really! Really! You have to take the penicillin first to see if that works. Which one says penicillin?"
"This one does... but Tom..."
"No. You have to. Nick said so. And you have to walk."
"I can't walk. I got a bust leg. And I'm sick." Stu's voice became sulky, petulant. It was a sickroom voice.
"You have to. Or I'll drag you," Tom said.
Stu lost his tenuous grip on reality. Tom put one of the penicillin capsules in his mouth, and Stu reflex-swallowed it with Gatorade to keep from choking. He began to cough wretchedly anyway, and Tom pounded him on the back as if he were burping a baby. Then he hauled Stu to his good foot by main force and began to drag him around the lobby, Kojak following them anxiously.
"Please God," Tom said. "Please God, please God."
Stu cried out: "I know where I can get her a washboard, Glen! That music store has em! I seen one in the window!"
"Please God," Tom panted. Stu's head lolled on his shoulder. It felt as hot as a furnace. His splinted leg dragged uselessly.
Boulder had never seemed so far away as it did on that dismal morning.