{271}

Dr. Larch was still gripping the operating table when he heard the stationmaster's assistant scream. There was just one scream, followed by a prolonged series of whimpers. Homer and Candy and Wally never heard the scream; Wally had already started the car.

The assistant had waited the longest time before forcing himself out of the deep, low chair. He had not wanted to look more closely at the contents of the white enameled examining tray, but the little fingers had beckoned to him and he had felt himself drawn to the tray, where a full and close-up view of the opened-up fetus had caused him (like Curly Day) to wet his pants. He screamed when he discovered that his legs wouldn't move; the only way he could manage to leave Nurse Angela's office was on all fours; he went whimpering down the hall like a beaten dog. Dr. Larch blocked his way at the operating room door.

'What is the matter with you?' Larch asked the assistant scathingly.

'I brought you all his catalogues!' the stationmaster's assistant managed to say while still on all fours.

'Catalogues?' said Larch, with evident distaste. 'Stand up, man! What's wrong with you?' He seized the quaking assistant under his armpits and drew him, trembling, to his feet.

'I just wanted to view the body,' the assistant protested weakly.

Wilbur Larch shrugged. What is this fascination the world has with death? he wondered, but he stepped aside, ushering the assistant into the operating room where the stationmaster, with his heart and his brain stem very well exposed, was instantly in view.

'A sudden change in the heart's rhythm,' Wilbuir Larch explained. 'Something frightened him to death.' It was not hard for the assistant to imagine being frig;htened to death, although he thought that the stationmaster appeared to have been run over by a train-or else had fallen victim to the same evil responsible for the hideous baby upon the typewriter. {272}

Thank you,' the assistant whispered to Dr. Larch, then ran so fast down the hall and outdoors that the sound of his footsteps roused Nurse Edna from her weeping; her own crying had prevented her from hearing the assistant's screams or his whimpers.

It seemed to Nurse Angela that nothing would console Curly Day and so she attempted to make herself comfortable on his narrow bed, believing she was in for a long night.

Dr. Larch sat in his usual place, at the typewriter; the fetus displayed by Homer Wells disturbed him not in the slightest. Perhaps he appreciated that Homer had left something behind that would need attention-busy work, busy work, give me busy work, thought Wilbur Larch. Just before night fell, he leaned forward in his chair enough to turn on the desk lamp. Then he settled back in the chair in which he had spent so many evenings. He appeared to be waiting for someone. It was not yet dark but he could hear an owl outside-very distinctly. He knew the wild wind from the coast must have dropped.

When it was still light, Melony looked out her window and saw the Cadillac pass. The passenger side of the car faced the girls' division, and Melony had no trouble recognizing Homer Wells in the passenger seat-his profile turned to her. He sat rigidly, as if he were holding his breath; he was. If he had seen her-or worse, if he had needed to speak to her in order to finalize his escape-he knew he couldn't have succeeded in saying to her that he would be back in just two days. Melony knew what a lie was and what a promise was^ and she knew the instant that a promise was broken. She saw a flash of the beautiful girl with the long legs in the back seat of the car, and she supposed that the handsome young man was driving; she had a longer, better look at the profile of Homer Wells. When she slammed the stolen copy of Little Dorrit shut, the ink was still wet and her inscription was smudged. She threw the book against {273} the wall, which only Mrs. Grogan heard-Mary Agnes was still violently ill and too much surrounded by her own noise.

Melony put herself straight to bed without her dinner. Mrs. Grogan, worried about her, went to Melony's bed and felt her forehead, which was feverish, but Mrs. Grogan could not coax Melony to drink anything. All Melony said was, 'He broke his promise.' Later, she said, 'Homer Wells has left Saint Cloud's.'

'You have a little temperature, dear,' said Mrs. Grogan, but when Homer Wells didn't come to read Jane Eyre aloud that evening, Mrs. Grogan started paying closer attention. She allowed Melony to read to the girls that evening; Melony's voice was oddly flat and passionless. Melony's reading from Jane Eyre depressed Mrs. Grogan -especially when she read this part:

…it is madness in all women to let a secret love kindle within them, which, if unreturned and unknown, must devour the life that feeds it…

Why, the girl didn't bat an eye! Mrs. Grogan observed.

Nurse Angela had hardly any more success, reading aloud to the boys' division from Dickens. Dicikensian description was too strenuous for her-she got lost in the longer passages-and when she had to keep going back to the beginning, she saw that the boys were losing interest.

Nurse Edna tried her best with the nightly benediction; Dr. Larch refused to leave Nurse Angela's office; he said he was listening to an owl, and he wanted to keep listening. Nurse Edna felt extremely self-conscious with the benediction, which she'd never fully understood in the first place-she took it to be a kind of private joke between Dr. Larch and the universe. Her voice was too shrill, and startled sick little Smoky Fields out of sleep, and produced a long, loud wail from Curly Day-before Curly returned to his more steady sobbing.

'Good night, you Princes of Maine! You Kings of New {274} England!' Nurse Edna peeped. Where is Homer? several voices whispered, while Nurse Angela continued to rub Curly Day between his shoulder blades in the darkness.

Nurse Edna, extremely agitated by Dr. Larch's behavior, got up the nerve to march right down to Nurse Angela's office. She was going to walk right in and tell Dr. Larch that he should go give himself a good snort of ether and then get a good night's sleep! But Nurse Edna grew more timid as she approached the solitary light shining from the office. Nurse Edna hadn't known about the fetal autopsy, either, and when she rather cautiously peered into Nurse Angela's office, she was given quite a turn by the gruesome fetus. Dr. Larch just sat at the typewriter, unmoving. He was composing in his mind the first of many letters he would write to Homer Wells. He was attempting to gentle his anxieties and calm his thoughts. Please be healthy, please be happy, please be careful, Wilbur Larch was thinking-the darkness edging in around him, the supplicant hands of the murdered baby from Three Mile Falls reaching out to him. {275}