Page 66 of Going Home in the Dark

On hearing that, Spencer marveled that fate had brought him to this room.

“I hate to waste things,” Jim James said. “Would you like my pudding?”

“I despise pudding, too,” said Spencer.

Jim James said, “The only pudding I’ll eat is crème brûlée.”

“Me too! But nobody calls it pudding.”

“Nobody does,” Jim James agreed, “but, darn it, crème brûléeispudding.”

As the nurse tried to maneuver the wheeled table in front of Harry, he cursed the Rubik’s Cube, threw it at a wall, cursed the nurse, and began to spasm in the strangest way.

The nurse pressed the call button on Harry’s bed and alerted the physician on duty. “Heart attack in three forty-four. I need help stat.”

“Well, this is a downer,” said Jim James. “But I’m sure he’ll be okay. They provide excellent care here.”

Spencer said, “I better be going, get out of their way.”

“You’ll come back tomorrow?”

“I’ll certainly try,” Spencer assured Jim James. He stepped out of the room as a doctor and a bevy of nurses arrived on the run.

The scene was powerful, dramatic. Spencer wished he were the kind of artist who could draw so that he could produce a painting that would convey the emotion of the moment, but he wasn’t that kind of artist.

Two minutes later, at the south end of the southeast wing of County Memorial, he came to a fire-rated metal door that was closed. A sign declaredno admittance / credentialed personnel only.

The short wings of the hospital connected with the Keppelwhite Institute. He wondered what part of the institute might be found beyond this door.

He looked behind him. The hallway was deserted at the moment, perhaps because the staff in the immediate area had been summoned to Jim and Harry’s room.

When he tried the lever handle, he was not surprised to find the door locked. Whatdidsurprise him was the chill that shivered through him and the sense of dread that made his heart race and his knees quiver as if they would fail him.

Here. Here is where they’d gone on that long-ago Thanksgiving. They had seen something beyond this door that they had been made to forget—something they needed to remember if they were to save Ernie and themselves.

38The Other Toe

In room 315, the additional two balloons had been tied to the headrail of the bed. The book of jokes about bodily functions was within Butch’s reach, on the nightstand with the flower arrangement.

Although the pizza and beer had yet to be delivered, he was eating the candy, guided by the diagram on the inner face of the box lid, which identified the flavor of each piece.

For some reason she couldn’t understand, Rebecca felt a need to mother Butch, perhaps because of his unfortunate head or because he looked somewhat like a huge baby, except for being so exceptionally hairy. Perched on a stool provided to lift a sitting visitor to eye level with the patient, she said, “Don’t eat so many that you spoil your dinner when it gets here.”

“Angel, don’t you worry about me. I never have taken my meals in any particular order. Sometimes, I’ll start with the potatoes, follow them with the dessert, then move on to the meat. Sometimes I make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich by eating the peanut butter out of its jar, then eating the jelly out of another jar, and then eating the bread with nothing on it. I’ve always been an independent thinker about many, many things. If someone tells me I can’t have mud pie and chicken wings and coleslawon the same plate—by God, I will, with gravy. Anyhow, this is diabetic candy. It doesn’t have calories.”

“It has calories,” Rebecca said. “It just doesn’t have sugar.”

“Whatever,” Butch said. “It’s not filling, and I have a big appetite. I’ve been in this place for three days. Considering how bland the food is, it’s a wonder I haven’t shrunk away to nothing.”

“You said you’re here because of your toe.”

“That’s right.”

“What’s wrong with your toe?”

“If you don’t mind, I’d rather not go there.”

“I didn’t mean to pry,” Rebecca said.

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