"So I came out determined to be the best goddamn doctor in the whole world. And after I got into practice, it was an all-day job to try to be that kind of doctor. But now I'm not any kind of doctor. I'm a tool. I've become some sort of organic healing machine. Maybe it's time to quit." He grunted a laugh. "You know, Tony and I used to say that when the legal jungle got too thick and the politicians made twenty minutes of paperwork necessary for each ten minutes spent with a patient, we'd chuck it all and open a pizzeria."

He finally turned away from the window.

"Speaking of pizza, I'm starved. Got anything to eat, lady?"

Sylvia slipped into her Mae West voice. "Of course, honey. Don't you remember? You were just—"

"Food, lady. Food!"

"Oh, that stuff. Come on."

They groped for their robes and put them on, then she took him by the hand to the kitchen. She was fumbling in a drawer for a flashlight when the lights came on.

"Whatcha got?" Alan said, hanging over her shoulder as she peered into the refrigerator.

The shelves were almost bare. With taking Jeffy into the Foundation, she hadn't got around to shopping today.

"Nothing but hot dogs."

"Oh, my!" Alan said. "What would Dr. Freud say about that?"

"He'd tell you to eat them or go hungry."

"Any port in a storm. Pop them in the microwave and we'll have byproducts-in-a-blanket."

"That sounds awful!"

"Can't be worse than the meatloaf I had last night. Made it myself—all the flavor and consistency of a Duraflame log." He stuck his tongue out in a disgusted grimace. "Blech!"

Sylvia leaned against him and began to laugh. This was a side of Alan she had never known. A little-boy side that she hadn't even dreamed existed. Whoever would have guessed that the handsome and dedicated Dr. Bulmer could be charming and witty and fun? Fun!

She stretched up on tiptoe and kissed him. He returned the kiss. Without separating her lips from his, she tossed the package of hot dogs back into the refrigerator and closed the door. As she put her arms around his neck, he lifted her and carried her back to the library.

Later, as they lay exhausted on the couch, she said, "We've got to try this in a bed sometime."

He lifted his face from between her breasts. "How about now?"

"You've got to be kidding!"

"Maybe I am," he said with a smile. "Maybe I'm not. All I know is I feel like my life has just begun tonight. I feel giddy, high, like I can do anything. And it's because of you."

"Oh, now—"

"It's true! Look at what's happened to me in the past few weeks. None of it matters now that I'm with you. I can't believe it, but touching you, loving you, it shrinks all those troubles to nothing. For the first time in my life I don't know what I'm going to be doing tomorrow and I… don't… care!"

He got up and put Charles' robe on again. Seeing him in the light now, she noticed how thin he was. He couldn't have been eating well at all since his wife walked out on him.

"Maybe you should open that pizzeria on your own. Put some meat on your bones if nothing else."

"Maybe," he said, walking back to the window.

She put on her own robe and followed him.

"Maybe, like hell," she said, snaking her arms around him and snuggling against his back. The storm was completely gone now. Still he stared out at the sky. "You'll never quit medicine and you know it."

"Not voluntarily anyway. But it looks like medicine is quitting me."

"You still have the Touch, don't you?"

He nodded. "It's still there."

She still hadn't one-hundred-percent accepted the existence of the Dat-tay-vao. She believed Alan, and she believed Ba, but she hadn't as yet seen it work, and the idea was so far beyond anything in her experience that the jury was still out for a small part of her mind.

"Maybe you should lay low with it for a while."

She felt him stiffen. "You sound like Ginny. She wanted me to deny it existed and never use it again."

"I didn't say that!" She resented being compared to his wife. "I just think maybe you should back off a bit. Look what's happened to you since you began using it."

"You're probably right. I probably should let things cool down. But, Sylvia…"

She loved to hear him say her name.

"… I don't know how to explain this, but I can feel them out there. All those sick and hurting people. It's as if each one of them is sending out a tiny distress signal, and somewhere in the center of my brain is a little receiver that's picking up every single one of them. They're out there. And they're waiting. I don't know if I could stop—even if I wanted to."

She hugged him tighter. She remembered the day in the diner after they had been to the cemetery when he had first told her about it. It had seemed like such a gift then. Now it seemed like a curse.

He suddenly turned to face her.

"Now that I'm here, don't you think it's about time I used the touch on Jeffy?"

"No, Alan, you can't!"

"Sure! Come on. I want to do this for you as well as him!" he began pulling her toward the stairs. "Let's go take a look at him."

"Alan," she said, her voice quavering with alarm, "he's not here. I told you before—he's at the McCready Foundation until Thursday."

"Oh, yeah," he said quickly. Perhaps too quickly. "Slipped my mind."

He gathered her into his arms.

"Can I stay the night? If I may be permitted to quote Clarence Frogman Henry"—his voice changed to a deep croak—" 'I Ain't Got No Home.' "

"You'd better!" she laughed. But the laugh sounded hollow to her. How could Alan have forgotten about Jeffy being away? She didn't know what it was, but something was wrong with him.

___33.___

Charles

Charles looked up and was shocked to see Sylvia wending her way toward him through the tables of the staff cafeteria. In the bright red and white print dress that hugged her waist and bared her shoulders, she was a breathtaking mirage floating across a wasteland of white lab coats. Her smile was bright, but it didn't seem to be for him alone—it was for the world at large.

"You're early," he said, rising as she reached his table. She hadn't been due for another two hours.

"I know." She pulled out the chair across from him and sat down. Her words came rapid-fire. "But it's been three days and I've missed Jeffy and couldn't wait any longer. Your secretary told me you were here, told me how to get here when I asked her not to page you. What's that you're drinking?"

"Tea. Want one?"

She nodded and made a face in the direction of his cup. "But not hot and milky like that. Iced, if you don't mind. And clear."

He went and got it for her, and a refill of hot for himself, conscious of all the eyes on them, wondering no doubt where Charles Axford had been hiding the lovely bird.

She sipped it appreciatively. "Good." She looked around, a mischievous smile playing about her lips. "Never thought of you as the type for the staff caf."

"Every once in a while," he said with his best deadpan expression, "when I feel the approach of a hint of self-doubt, I find it therapeutic to move among the lesser of my fellow creatures. It restores my faith in myself."

Sylvia favored him with a smile. "How's Jeffy?"

She had asked him that question every day since she'd left him here on Monday and he had managed to put her off. Now it was Thursday and he had to answer. He would lay it out straight for her.

"Not good. He's definitely withdrawing. The clinical evaluations confirm it across the board when compared to his last work-up. We did the works on him—CT, PET, and BEAM scans, MRI, waking and sleeping EEGs, and computer generated spectral analysis of those EEGs. All normal. There's nothing structurally or electrically wrong with his brain."