Doctor Sleep

packs.
    Now she didn’t goggle; she giggled. “Will that help?”
    “Better the dump than your mother’s plates.”
    She cocked her head and fixed him with merry eyes. They were friends again, and that was good. “But those plates were ug- lee. ”
    “Will you try it?”
    “Yes.” And by the look of her, she couldn’t wait.
    “One other thing.”
    She grew solemn, waiting.
    “You don’t have to be anyone’s doormat.”
    “That’s good, isn’t it?”
    “Yes. Just remember how dangerous your anger can be. Keep it—”
    His cell phone rang.
    “You should get that.”
    He raised his eyebrows. “Do you know who it is?”
    “No, but I think it’s important.”
    He took the phone out of his pocket and read the display. RIVINGTON HOUSE.
    “Hello?”
    “It’s Claudette Albertson,Danny. Can you come?”
    He ran a mental inventory of the hospice guests currently on his blackboard. “Amanda Ricker? Or Jeff Kellogg?”
    It turned out to be neither.
    “If you can come, you better do it right away,” Claudette said. “While he’s still conscious.” She hesitated. “He’s asking for you.”
    “I’ll come.” Although if it’s as bad as you say, he’ll probably be gone when I get there . Dan brokethe connection. “I have to go, honey.”
    “Even though he’s not your friend. Even though you don’t even like him.” Abra looked thoughtful.
    “Even though.”
    “What’s his name? I didn’t get that.”
    ( Fred Carling )
    He sent this and then wrapped his arms around her, tight-tight-tight. Abra did the same.
    “I’ll try,” she said. “I’ll try real hard.”
    “I know you will,” he said. “I know you will. Listen,Abra, I love you so much.”
    She said, “I’m glad.”
    3
    Claudette was at the nurses’ station when he came in forty-five minutes later. He asked the question he had asked dozens of times before: “Is he still with us?” As if it were a bus ride.
    “Barely.”
    “Conscious?”
    She waggled a hand. “In and out.”
    “Azzie?”
    “Was there for awhile, but scooted when Dr. Emerson came in. Emerson’s gone now, he’schecking on Amanda Ricker. Azzie went back as soon as he left.”
    “No transport to the hospital?”
    “Can’t. Not yet. There was a four-car pile-up on Route 119 across the border in Castle Rock. Lots of injuries. Four ambos on the way, also LifeFlight. Going to the hospital will make a difference to some of them. As for Fred . . .” She shrugged.
    “What happened?”
    “You know our Fred—junk food junkie.Mickey D’s is his second home. Sometimes he looks when he runs across Cranmore Avenue, sometimes he doesn’t. Just expects people to stop for him.” She wrinkled her nose and stuck out her tongue, looking like a little kid who’s just gotten a mouthful of something bad. Brussels sprouts, maybe. “That attitude .”
    Dan knew Fred’s routine, and he knew the attitude.
    “He was going for his evening cheeseburger,”Claudette said. “The cops took the woman who hit him to jail—chick was so drunk she could hardly stand up, that’s what I heard. They brought Fred here. His face is scrambled eggs, his chest and pelvis are crushed, one leg’s almost severed. If Emerson hadn’t been here doing rounds,Fred would have died right away. We triaged him, stopped the bleeding, but even if he’d been in peak condition . . . which dear old Freddy most definitely ain’t . . .” She shrugged. “Emerson says they will send an ambo after the Castle Rock mess is cleaned up, but he’ll be gone by then. Dr. Emerson wouldn’t commit on that, but I believe Azreel. You better go on down there, if you’re going. I know you never cared for him . . .”
    Dan thought of the fingermarks the orderly had left on poor old Charlie Hayes’sarm. Sorry to hear it —that was what Carling had said when Dan told him the old man was gone. Fred all comfy, rocked back in his favorite chair and eating Junior Mints. But that is what they’re here for, isn’t it?
    And now Fred was in the same room where Charlie had died. Life was a wheel, and it always came back around.
    4
    The door of the Alan Shepard Suite was standing half-open, but Dan knockedanyway, as a courtesy. He could hear the harsh wheeze-and-gurgle of Fred Carling’s breathing even from the hall, but it didn’t seem to bother Azzie, who was curled up at the foot of the bed. Carling was lying on a rubber sheet, wearing nothing but bloodstained boxer shorts and an acre of bandages,