Midnight

bed, propped up a bit with pillows, and Dr. Jim Worthy was sitting in a chair that he had moved to her side, He was the youngest of Moonlight Cove's three doctors, thirty-eight, an earnest man with a neatly trimmed mustache, wire-rimmed glasses, and a proclivity for bow ties.
    The physician's bag was on the floor at his feet. A stethoscope hung around his neck. He was filling an unusually large syringe from a six-ounce bottle of golden fluid.
    Worthy turned to look at Loman, and their eyes met, and they did not need to say anything.
    Either having heard Loman's soft footsteps or having sensed him by some subtler means, Nella Valdoski opened her eyes, which were red and swollen from crying. She was still a lovely woman with flaxen hair and features that seemed too delicate to be the work of nature, more like the finely honed art of a master sculptor. Her mouth softened and trembled when she spoke his name "Oh, Loman."
    He went around the bed, to the side opposite Dr. Worthy, and took hold of the hand that Nella held out to him. It was clammy, cold, and trembling.
    "I'm giving her a tranquilizer," Worthy said.
    "She needs to relax, even sleep if she can."
    "I don't want to sleep," Nella said. "I can't sleep. Not after … not after this … not ever again after this."
    "Easy," Loman said, gently rubbing her hand. He sat on the edge of the bed.
    "Just let Dr. Worthy take care of you. This is for the best, Nella."
    For half his life, Loman had loved this woman, his best friend's wife, though he had never acted upon his feelings. He had always told himself that it was a strictly platonic attraction. Looking at her now, however, he knew passion had been a part of it.
    The disturbing thing was … well, though he knew what he had felt for her all these years, though he remembered it, he could not feel it any longer. His love, his passion, his pleasant yet melancholy longing had faded as had most of his other emotional responses; he was still aware of his previous feelings for her, but they were like another aspect of him that had split off and drifted away like a ghost departing a corpse.
    Worthy set the filled syringe on the nightstand. He unbuttoned and pushed up the loose sleeve on Nelia's blouse, then tied a length of rubber tubing around her arm, tight enough to make a vein more evident.
    As the physician swabbed Nella's arm with an alcohol-soaked cottonball, she said, "Loman, what are we going to do?"
    "Everything will be fine," he said, stroking her hand.
    "No. How can you say that? Eddie's dead. He was so sweet, so small and sweet, and now he's gone. Nothing will be fine again."
    "Very soon you'll feel better," Loman assured her. "Before you know it the hurt will be gone. It won't matter as much as it does now. I promise it won't."
    She blinked and stared at him as if he were talking nonsense, but then she did not know what was about to happen to her. Worthy slipped the needle into her arm.
    She twitched.
    The golden fluid flowed out of the syringe, into her bloodstream.
    She closed her eyes and began to cry softly again, not at the pain of the needle but at the loss of her son.
    Maybe it is better not to care so much, not to love so much, Loman thought.
    The syringe was empty.
    Worthy withdrew the needle from her vein.
    Again Loman met the doctor's gaze.
    Nella shuddered.
    The Change would require two more injections, and someone would have to stay with Nella for the next four or five hours, not only to administer the drugs but to make sure that she did not hurt herself during the conversion. Becoming a New Person was not a painless process.
    Nella shuddered again.
    Worthy tilted his head, and the lamplight struck his wirerimmed glasses at a new angle, transforming the lenses into mirrors that for a moment hid his eyes, giving him an uncharacteristically menacing appearance.
    Shudders, more violent and protracted this time, swept through Nella.
    From the doorway George Valdoski said, "What's going on here?"
    Loman had been so focused on Nella that he had not heard George coming. He got up at once and let go of Nella's hand. "The doctor thought she needed—"
    "What's that horse needle for?" George said, referring to the huge syringe. The needle itself was no larger than an ordinary hypodermic.
    "Tranquilizer," Dr. Worthy said. "She needs to—"
    "Tranquilizer?" George interrupted. "Looks like you gave her enough to knock down a bull."
    Loman said, "Now, George, the doctor knows what he's—"
    On the bed Nella fell