"Just let me guess," Charles said before Senator McCready could go on. "Her supposedly deformed foot is now bloody perfect. Right?"

The senator nodded. "Right. Only 'supposed' isn't quite accurate. I understand the woman's deformity has been common knowledge for many years. There's no evidence of it now."

Charles smirked at the senator's gullibility. "Got any before-and-after X rays?"

"None that can be found. Apparently the woman suffered from an unfortunate combination of poverty and ignorance— she never sought help for it."

"How convenient," Charles said with a laugh.

"Would X rays convince you?"

"Not likely. Especially not old ones. They could be of someone else's foot."

It was the senator's turn to laugh, and there seemed to be genuine good humor in the sound.

"That's what I like about you, Charles! You accept nothing at face value. You trust no one! I take great comfort in knowing that if you believe in something, it's certainly safe for me to do the same."

"I've told you before, Senator—I don't believe in things. I either know something or I don't. Belief is a euphemism for ignorance combined with sloppy thinking."

"You've got to believe in something sometime."

"You are free to believe that if you wish, Senator. I bloody well don't."

Deliver us all from men who "believe," Charles thought as he walked out into the hall.

Marnie, his secretary, held up a yellow slip of paper as he walked into his office.

"Mrs. Nash is at the front desk."

Charles' spirits lifted. Sylvia had been so bloody preoccupied lately, she seemed to have no time left for him. He knew she was worried about Jeffy, but there seemed to be more to it than that.

Well, she was here now and that offered an opportunity to revive the relationship. Perhaps it wasn't going to be a Blue Monday after all.

___28.___

Alan

It threatened to become a mob scene at first. The people in the parking lot recognized him immediately and surrounded his car, pressing so tightly against it that he couldn't get the door open. Finally, after he had leaned on the horn for a full minute, they backed off enough to let him out.

And then it was a sea of hands and faces pressing close, touching him, grabbing his hands and placing them on their heads, or upon the heads of the sick ones they had brought with them. Alan fought the panic that surged through him— he could barely breathe in the crush.

This bunch was noticeably different from previous crowds. These were the diehards, the most determined of the pilgrims, the ones who had stayed on despite news of the suspension of Alan's hospital privileges and rumors that he either had lost his power or had been proven a fake after all. As a group they were scruffier, dirtier than any others Alan could remember. All the women seemed to have ratty hair, all the men seemed to have a two-day growth of beard. They appeared much worse for the wear, much poorer for their illnesses. But most striking was the look of utter desperation in their eyes.

Alan shouted for them to let him through, but no one seemed to hear. They kept reaching, touching, calling his name…

He managed to crawl up on the roof of his car, where he cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted. Eventually they quieted down enough to hear him.

"You've got to back away and let me into the office," he told them. "I'll see you one at a time inside and do what I can for you. Those I don't see today, I'll see tomorrow, and so on. But all of you will be seen eventually. Don't fight, don't push and shove. I know you've all been waiting here a long time. Just be patient a little longer and I'll see you all. I promise."

They parted and let him through. Connie was already inside, having sneaked by while the crowd's attention was on him. She opened the door and quickly locked it behind him.

"I don't like this," she told him. "There's something ugly about this group."

"They've been waiting a long time. You'd be disheveled and short-fused too if you'd been living in a parking lot for two weeks."

She smiled uncertainly. "I guess so. Still…"

"If they make you nervous, here's what we'll do. We'll let them in two at a time. While I'm seeing one, you can be filling out a file on the next. That way we'll keep a good flow going."

Because I'm only going to have an hour or so to do what these people came for.

It began on a sour note, with a surge of pushing and shoving and scuffling to get in when Alan first opened the door. He had to shout and threaten to see no one unless there was order. They quieted. A middle-aged man and a mother with her child were admitted. Both man and child were limping.

Five minutes or so later, Connie brought the mother and child back to the examining room. As Alan stepped into the room, the mother—dressed in a stained housecoat, with dark blue socks piled around her ankles—tugged at the child's hair and it came off. A wig. She was completely bald. Alan noted her pallor and sunken cheeks. She looked to be no more than ten.

"Chemotherapy?''

The mother nodded. "She got leukemia. Least that's what the doctors tell us. Don't matter what they give her, Laurie keeps wastin' away."

The accent was definitely southern, but he couldn't place it. "Where are you from?"

"West Virginny."

"And you came all the way—?"

"Read aboutcha in The Light. Nothin' else's worked. Figure I got nothin' to lose."

Alan turned to the child. Her huge blue eyes shone brightly from deep in their sockets. "How are you feeling, Laurie?"

"Okay, I guess," she said in a small voice.

"She always says that!" the mother said. "But I hear her crying at night. She hurts every hour of the day, but she don't say nothin'. She's the bravest little thing you ever saw. Tell the man the truth, Laurie. Where does it hurt?"

Laurie shrugged. "Everywhere." She pressed her hands over her painfully thin thighs. " 'Specially in my bones. They hurt somethin' awful."

Bone pain, Alan thought. Typical of leukemia. He noticed the scars on her scalp where she had been given intrathecal chemotherapy. She'd been the route, that was for sure.

"Let's take a look at you, Laurie."

He placed a hand on either side of her head and willed all those rotten little malignant centers in her bone marrow to shrivel up and die.

Nothing happened. Alan felt nothing, and neither, apparently, did Laurie.

Alan experienced an instant of panic. Had he miscalculated again?

"Excuse me," he said to the mother, and stepped into his adjoining office. He checked his figures. All the calculations seemed right. The Hour of Power should have started at 4:00 p.m. and here it was 4:05 already. Where had he gone wrong? Or had he? He had never been able to chart the power to the exact minute. It had never failed to appear, but his calculations had been off by as much as fifteen minutes in the past. Hoping the failure a moment ago was due to the quirky margin of error in his charts, he returned to the examining room. Again he placed his hands on Laurie's head.

The charge of ecstasy came, and with it, Laurie's cry of surprise.

"What's the matter, Honeybunch?" the mother said, at her child's side in a flash, pulling her away from Alan.

"Nothin', Ma. Just felt a shock is all. And…" She ran her hands over her legs. "And my bones don't hurt no more!"

"Is that true?" The mother's eyes were wide. "Is that true?

Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord!" She turned to Alan. "But is her leukemia cured? How can we tell?"

"Take her back to her hematologist and get a blood count. That will tell you for sure."

Laurie was looking at him with wonder in her eyes. "It doesn't hurt anymore!"