Doctor Sleep

filled his face with light and made him young again. “It’s a miracle. Would you say it’s a miracle, Danny?”
    “Yes. I would.”
    Patty came back with a big dish of vanilla pudding—not just one cherry on top but two—and stuck it in frontof Dan. “Eat that. On the house. You’re too thin.”
    “What about me, sweetheart?” Casey asked.
    Patty sniffed. “You’re a horse. I’ll bring you a pine tree float, if you want. That’s a glass of water with a toothpick in it.” Having gotten the last word, she sashayed off.
    “You still hitting that?” Casey asked as Dan began to eat his pudding.
    “Charming,” Dan said. “Very sensitive and New Age.”
    “Thanks. Are you still hitting it?”
    “We had a thing that lasted maybe four months, and that was three years ago, Case. Patty’s engaged to a very nice boy from Grafton.”
    “Grafton,” Casey said dismissively. “Pretty views, shit town. She doesn’t act so engaged when you’re in the house.”
    “Casey—”
    “No, don’t get me wrong. I’d never advise a pidge of mine to stick his nose—or his dick—into an ongoingrelationship. That’s a terrific setup for a drink. But . . . are you seeing anybody ?”
    “Is it your business?”
    “Happens it is.”
    “Not currently. There was a nurse from Rivington House—I told you about her . . .”
    “Sarah something.”
    “Olson. We talked a little about moving in together, then she got a great job down at Mass General. We email sometimes.”
    “No relationships for the first year, that’sthe rule of thumb,” Casey said. “Very few recovering alkies take it seriously. You did. But Danno . . . it’s time you got regular with somebody .”
    “Oh gee, my sponsor just turned into Dr. Phil,” Dan said.
    “Is your life better? Better than it was when you showed up here fresh off the bus with your ass dragging and your eyes bleeding?”
    “You know it is. Better than I ever could have imagined.”
    “Then think about sharing it with somebody. All I’m saying.”
    “I’ll make a note of it. Now can we discuss other things? The Red Sox, maybe?”
    “I need to ask you something else as your sponsor first. Then we can just be friends again, having a coffee.”
    “Okay . . .” Dan looked at him warily.
    “We’ve never talked much about what you do at the hospice. How you help people.”
    “No,” Dan said, “and I’djust as soon keep it that way. You know what they say at the end of every meeting, right? ‘What you saw here, what you heard here, when you leave here, let it stay here.’ That’s how I am about the other part of my life.”
    “How many parts of your life were affected by your drinking?”
    Dan sighed. “You know the answer to that. All of them.”
    “So?” And when Dan said nothing: “The Rivington staffcalls you Doctor Sleep. Word gets around, Danno.”
    Dan was silent. Some of the pudding was left, and Patty would rag him about it if he didn’t eat it, but his appetite had flown. He supposed he’d known this conversation had been coming, and he also knew that, after ten years without a drink (and with a pigeon or two of his own to watch over these days), Casey would respect his boundaries, buthe still didn’t want to have it.
    “You help people to die. Not by putting pillows over their faces, or anything, nobody thinks that, but just by . . . I don’t know. Nobody seems to know.”
    “I sit with them, that’s all. Talk to them a little. If it’s what they want.”
    “Do you work the Steps, Danno?”
    If Dan had believed this was a new conversational tack he would have welcomed it, but he knew itwas not. “You know I do. You’re my sponsor.”
    “Yeah, you ask for help in the morning and say thanks at night. You do it on your knees. So that’s the first three. Four is all that moral inventory shit. How about number five?”
    There were twelve in all. After hearing them read aloud at the beginning of every meeting he’d attended, Dan knew them by heart. “ ‘Admitted to God, ourselves, and anotherhuman being the exact nature of our wrongs.’ ”
    “Yuh.” Casey lifted his coffee cup, sipped, and looked at Dan over the rim. “Have you done that one?”
    “Most of it.” Dan found himself wishing he were somewhere else. Almost anywhere else. Also—for the first time in quite awhile—he found himself wishing for a drink.
    “Let me guess. You’ve told yourself all of your wrongs, and you’ve told the Godof your