Doctor Sleep

  A playmate?

  A protector, even?

  If so, it was a job Tony had done before. But did she need protection? Certainly there had been anguish

  (they are killing the baseball boy)

  in her message, but anguish went naturally with the shining, as Dan had found out long ago. Mere children were not meant to know and see so much. He could seek her out, maybe try to discover more, but what would he say to the parents? Hi, you don't know me, but I know your daughter, she visits my room sometimes and we've gotten to be pretty good pals?

  Dan didn't think they'd sic the county sheriff on him, but he wouldn't blame them if they did, and given his checkered past, he had no urge to find out. Better to let Tony be her long-distance friend, if that was what was really going on. Tony might be invisible, but at least he was more or less age-appropriate.

  Later, he could replace the names and room numbers that belonged on his blackboard. For now he picked the stub of chalk out of the ledge and wrote: Tony and I wish you a happy summer day, Abra! Your OTHER friend, Dan.

  He studied this for a moment, nodded, and went to the window. A beautiful late summer afternoon, and still his day off. He decided to go for a walk and try to get the troubling conversation with Casey out of his mind. Yes, he supposed Deenie's apartment in Wilmington had been his bottom, but if keeping to himself what had happened there hadn't stopped him from piling up ten years of sobriety, he didn't see why keeping it to himself should stop him from getting another ten. Or twenty. And why think about years anyway, when the AA motto was one day at a time?

  Wilmington was a long time ago. That part of his life was done.

  He locked his room when he left, as he always did, but a lock wouldn't keep the mysterious Abra out if she wanted to visit. When he came back, there might be another message from her on the blackboard.

  Maybe we can become pen pals.

  Sure, and maybe a cabal of Victoria's Secret lingerie models would crack the secret of hydrogen fusion.

  Grinning, Dan went out.

  5

  The Anniston Public Library was having its annual summer book sale, and when Abra asked to go, Lucy was delighted to put aside her afternoon chores and walk down to Main Street with her daughter. Card tables loaded with various donated volumes had been set up on the lawn, and while Lucy browsed the paperback table ($1 EACH, 6 FOR $5, YOU PICK 'EM), looking for Jodi Picoults she hadn't read, Abra checked out the selections on the tables marked YOUNG ADULTS. She was still a long way from adulthood of even the youngest sort, but she was a voracious (and precocious) reader with a particular love of fantasy and science fiction. Her favorite t-shirt had a huge, complicated machine on the front above the declaration STEAMPUNK RULES.

  Just as Lucy was deciding she'd have to settle for an old Dean Koontz and a slightly newer Lisa Gardner, Abra came running over to her. She was smiling. "Mom! Mommy! His name is Dan!"

  "Whose name is Dan, sweetheart?"

  "Tony's father! He told me to have a happy summer day!"

  Lucy looked around, almost expecting to see a strange man with a boy Abra's age in tow. There were plenty of strangers--it was summer, after all--but no pairs like that.

  Abra saw what she was doing and giggled. "Oh, he's not here."

  "Then where is he?"

  "I don't know, exactly. But close."

  "Well . . . I guess that's good, hon."

  Lucy had just enough time to tousle her daughter's hair before Abra ran back to renew her hunt for rocketeers, time travelers, and sorcerers. Lucy stood watching her, her own choices hanging forgotten in her hand. Tell David about this when he called from Boston, or not? She thought not.

  Weird radio, that was all.

  Better to let it pass.

  6

  Dan decided to pop into Java Express, buy a couple of coffees, and take one to Billy Freeman over in Teenytown. Although Dan's employment by the Frazier Municipal Department had been extremely short, the two men had remained friendly over the last ten years. Part of that was having Casey in common--Billy's boss, Dan's sponsor--but mostly it was simple liking. Dan enjoyed Billy's no-bullshit attitude.

  He also enjoyed driving The Helen Rivington. Probably that inner-child thing again; he was sure a psychiatrist would say so. Billy was usually willing to turn over the controls, and during the summer season he often did so with relief. Between the Fourth of July and Labor Day, the Riv made the ten-mile loop out to Cloud Gap and back ten times a day, and Billy wasn't getting any younger.

  As he crossed the lawn to Cranmore Avenue, Dan spied Fred Carling sitting on a shady bench in the walkway between Rivington House proper and Rivington Two. The orderly who had once left a set of fingermarks on poor old Charlie Hayes still worked the night shift, and was as lazy and ill-tempered as ever, but he had at least learned to stay clear of Doctor Sleep. That was fine with Dan.

  Carling, soon to go on shift, had a grease-spotted McDonald's bag on his lap and was munching a Big Mac. The two men locked eyes for a moment. Neither said hello. Dan thought Fred Carling was a lazy bastard with a sadistic streak and Carling thought Dan was a holier-than-thou meddler, so that balanced. As long as they stayed out of each other's way, all would be well and all would be well and all manner of things would be well.

  Dan got the coffees (Billy's with four sugars), then crossed to the common, which was busy in the golden early-evening light. Frisbees soared. Mothers and dads pushed toddlers on swings or caught them as they flew off the slides. A game was in progress on the softball field, kids from the Frazier YMCA against a team with ANNISTON REC DEPARTMENT on their orange shirts. He spied Billy in the train station, standing on a stool and polishing the Riv's chrome. It all looked good. It looked like home.

  If it isn't, Dan thought, it's as close as I'm ever going to get. All I need now is a wife named Sally, a kid named Pete, and a dog named Rover.

  He strolled up the Teenytown version of Cranmore Avenue and into the shade of Teenytown Station. "Hey Billy, I brought you some of that coffee-flavored sugar you like."

  At the sound of his voice, the first person to offer Dan a friendly word in the town of Frazier turned around. "Why, ain't you the neighborly one. I was just thinking I could use--oh shitsky, there it goes."

  The cardboard tray had dropped from Danny's hands. He felt warmth as hot coffee splattered his tennis shoes, but it seemed faraway, unimportant.

  There were flies crawling on Billy Freeman's face.

  7

  Billy didn't want to go see Casey Kingsley the following morning, didn't want to take the day off, and certainly didn't want to go see no doctor. He kept telling Dan he felt fine, in the pink, absolutely tip-top. He'd even missed the summer cold that usually hit him in June or July.

  Dan, however, had lain sleepless most of the previous night, and wouldn't take no for an answer. He might have if he'd been convinced it was too late, but he didn't think it was. He had seen the flies before, and had learned to gauge their meaning. A swarm of them--enough to obscure the person's features behind a veil of nasty, jostling bodies--and you knew there was no hope. A dozen or so meant something might be done. Only a few, and there was time. There had only been three or four on Billy's face.

  He never saw any at all on the faces of the terminal patients in the hospice.

  Dan remembered visiting his mother nine months before her death, on a day when she had also claimed to feel fine, in the pink, absolutely tickety-boo. What are you looking at, Danny? Wendy Torrance had asked. Have I got a smudge? She had swiped comically at the tip of her nose, her fingers passing right through the hundreds of deathflies that were covering her from chin to hairline, like a caul.

  8

  Casey was used to mediating. Fond of irony, he liked to tell people it was why he made that enormous six-figure annual salary.

  First he listened to Dan. Then he listened to Billy's protests about how there was no way he could leave, not at the height of the season with people already lining up to ride the Riv on i
ts 8 a.m. run. Besides, no doctor would see him on such short notice. It was the height of the season for them, too.

  "When's the last time you had a checkup?" Casey asked once Billy finally ran down. Dan and Billy were standing in front of his desk. Casey was rocked back in his office chair, head resting in its accustomed place just below the cross on the wall, fingers laced together across his belly.

  Billy looked defensive. "I guess back in oh-six. But I was fine then, Case. Doc said my blood pressure was ten points lower'n his."

  Casey's eyes shifted to Dan. They held speculation and curiosity but no disbelief. AA members mostly kept their lips zipped during their various interactions with the wider world, but inside the groups, people talked--and sometimes gossiped--quite freely. Casey therefore knew that Dan Torrance's talent for helping terminal patients die easily was not his only talent. According to the grapevine, Dan T. had certain helpful insights from time to time. The kind that can't exactly be explained.

  "You're tight with Johnny Dalton, aren't you?" he asked Dan now. "The pediatrician?"

  "Yes. I see him most Thursday nights, in North Conway."

  "Got his number?"

  "As a matter of fact, I do." Dan had a whole list of AA contact numbers in the back of the little notebook Casey had given him, which he still carried.

  "Call him. Tell him it's important this yobbo here sees someone right away. Don't suppose you know what kind of a doctor it is he needs, do you? Sure as hell isn't a pediatrician at his age."

  "Casey--" Billy began.

  "Hush," Casey said, and returned his attention to Dan. "I think you do know, by God. Is it his lungs? That seems the most likely, the way he smokes."

  Dan decided he had come too far to turn back now. He sighed and said, "No, I think it's something in his guts."

  "Except for a little indigestion, my guts are--"

  "Hush I said." Then, turning back to Dan: "A gut doctor, then. Tell Johnny D. it's important." He paused. "Will he believe you?"

  This was a question Dan was glad to hear. He had helped several AAs during his time in New Hampshire, and although he asked them all not to talk, he knew perfectly well that some had, and still did. He was happy to know John Dalton hadn't been one of them.

  "I think so."

  "Okay." Casey pointed at Billy. "You got the day off, and with pay. Medical leave."

  "The Riv--"

  "There's a dozen people in this town that can drive the Riv. I'll make some calls, then take the first two runs myself."

  "Your bad hip--"

  "Balls to my bad hip. Do me good to get out of this office."

  "But Casey, I feel f--"

  "I don't care if you feel good enough to run a footrace all the way to Lake Winnipesaukee. You're going to see the doctor and that's the end of it."

  Billy looked resentfully at Dan. "See the trouble you got me in? I didn't even get my morning coffee."

  The flies were gone this morning--except they were still there. Dan knew that if he concentrated, he could see them again if he wanted to . . . but who in Christ's name would want to?

  "I know," Dan said. "There is no gravity, life just sucks. Can I use your phone, Casey?"

  "Be my guest." Casey stood up. "Guess I'll toddle on over to the train station and punch a few tickets. You got an engineer's cap that'll fit me, Billy?"

  "No."

  "Mine will," Dan said.

  9

  For an organization that didn't advertise its presence, sold no goods, and supported itself with crumpled dollar bills thrown into passed baskets or baseball caps, Alcoholics Anonymous exerted a quietly powerful influence that stretched far beyond the doors of the various rented halls and church basements where it did its business. It wasn't the old boys' network, Dan thought, but the old drunks' network.

  He called John Dalton, and John called an internal medicine specialist named Greg Fellerton. Fellerton wasn't in the Program, but he owed Johnny D. a favor. Dan didn't know why, and didn't care. All that mattered was that later that day, Billy Freeman was on the examining table in Fellerton's Lewiston office. Said office was a seventy-mile drive from Frazier, and Billy bitched the whole way.

  "Are you sure indigestion's all that's been bothering you?" Dan asked as they pulled into Fellerton's little parking area on Pine Street.

  "Yuh," Billy said. Then he reluctantly added, "It's been a little worse lately, but nothin that keeps me up at night."

  Liar, Dan thought, but let it pass. He'd gotten the contrary old sonofabitch here, and that was the hard part.

  Dan was sitting in the waiting room, leafing through a copy of OK! with Prince William and his pretty but skinny new bride on the cover, when he heard a lusty cry of pain from down the hall. Ten minutes later, Fellerton came out and sat down beside Dan. He looked at the cover of OK! and said, "That guy may be heir to the British throne, but he's still going to be as bald as a nine ball by the time he's forty."

  "You're probably right."

  "Of course I'm right. In human affairs, the only real king is genetics. I'm sending your friend up to Central Maine General for a CT scan. I'm pretty sure what it'll show. If I'm right, I'll schedule Mr. Freeman to see a vascular surgeon for a little cut-and-splice early tomorrow morning."

  "What's wrong with him?"

  Billy was walking up the hall, buckling his belt. His tanned face was now sallow and wet with sweat. "He says there's a bulge in my aorta. Like a bubble on a car tire. Only car tires don't yell when you poke em."

  "An aneurysm," Fellerton said. "Oh, there's a chance it's a tumor, but I don't think so. In any case, time's of the essence. Damn thing's the size of a Ping-Pong ball. It's good you got him in for a look-see. If it had burst without a hospital nearby . . ." Fellerton shook his head.

  10

  The CT scan confirmed Fellerton's aneurysm diagnosis, and by six that evening, Billy was in a hospital bed, where he looked considerably diminished. Dan sat beside him.

  "I'd kill for a cigarette," Billy said wistfully.

  "Can't help you there."

  Billy sighed. "High time I quit, anyway. Won't they be missin you at Rivington House?"

  "Day off."

  "And ain't this one hell of a way to spend it. Tell you what, if they don't murder me with their knives and forks tomorrow morning, I guess I'm going to owe you my life. I don't know how you knew, but if there's anything I can ever do for you--I mean anything at all--you just have to ask."

  Dan thought of how he'd descended the steps of an interstate bus ten years ago, stepping into a snow flurry as fine as wedding lace. He thought of his delight when he had spotted the bright red locomotive that pulled The Helen Rivington. Also of how this man had asked him if he liked the little train instead of telling him to get the fuck away from what he had no business touching. Just a small kindness, but it had opened the door to all he had now.

  "Billy-boy, I'm the one who owes you, and more than I could ever repay."

  11

  He had noticed an odd fact during his years of sobriety. When things in his life weren't going so well--the morning in 2008 when he had discovered someone had smashed in the rear window of his car with a rock came to mind--he rarely thought of a drink. When they were going well, however, the old dry thirst had a way of coming back on him. That night after saying goodbye to Billy, on the way home from Lewiston with everything okey-doke, he spied a roadhouse bar called the Cowboy Boot and felt a nearly insurmountable urge to go in. To buy a pitcher of beer and get enough quarters to fill the jukebox for at least an hour. To sit there listening to Jennings and Jackson and Haggard, not talking to anyone, not causing any trouble, just getting high. Feeling the weight of sobriety--sometimes it was like wearing lead shoes--fall away. When he got down to his last five quarters, he'd play "Whiskey Bent and Hell Bound" six times straight.

  He passed the roadhouse, turned in at the gigantic Walmart parking lot just beyond, and opened his phone. He let his finger hover over Casey's number, then remembered their difficult
conversation in the cafe. Casey might want to revisit that discussion, especially the subject of whatever Dan might be holding back. That was a nonstarter.

  Feeling like a man having an out-of-body experience, he returned to the roadhouse and parked in the back of the dirt lot. He felt good about this. He also felt like a man who has just picked up a loaded gun and put it to his temple. His window was open and he could hear a live band playing an old Derailers tune: "Lover's Lie." They didn't sound too bad, and with a few drinks in him, they would sound great. There would be ladies in there who would want to dance. Ladies with curls, ladies with pearls, ladies in skirts, ladies in cowboy shirts. There always were. He wondered what kind of whiskey they had in the well, and God, God, great God, he was so thirsty. He opened the car door, put one foot out on the ground, then sat there with his head lowered.

  Ten years. Ten good years, and he could toss them away in the next ten minutes. It would be easy enough to do. Like honey to the bee.

  We all have a bottom. Someday you're going to have to tell somebody about yours. If you don't, somewhere down the line, you're going to find yourself in a bar with a drink in your hand.

  And I can blame you, Casey, he thought coldly. I can say you put the idea in my head while we were having coffee in the Sunspot.

  There was a flashing red arrow over the door, and a sign reading PITCHERS $2 UNTIL 9 PM MILLER LITE COME ON IN.

  Dan closed the car door, opened his phone again, and called John Dalton.

  "Is your buddy okay?" John asked.

  "Tucked up and ready to go tomorrow morning at seven a.m. John, I feel like drinking."

  "Oh, nooo!" John cried in a trembling falsetto. "Not booooze!"