He stared at their smooth young faces; so familiar, living memories every one of them, like walking through his own past, seeing his aged and aging cousins rejuvenated, but rejuvenated with something missing. Familiar and alien, known and unknowable. Behind H-3 the swinging door opened and W-1 came out, still in surgical gown and mask, now down about his throat.
“I’ll come now,” he said, and the small group opened for him. He didn’t look again at David after dismissing him with one glance.
David followed him to the emergency room and watched his deft hands as he felt Clarence’s body, tested for reflexes, probed confidently along the spinal column. “I’ll operate,” he said, and that same confidence came through with the words. He motioned for S-l and W-2 to bring Clarence, and left once more.
At the arrival of W-l, Sarah had moved back out of the way, and now she slowly turned and stripped off the gloves that she had put on in preparing to stitch up Clarence’s wound. Warren watched the two young people cover Clarence and strap him securely, then wheel him out the door and down the hall. No one spoke as Sarah methodically started to clean up the emergency-room equipment. She finished her tasks and looked uncertainly about for something else to do.
“Will you take Margaret home and put her to bed?” David asked, and she looked at him gratefully and nodded. When she was gone David turned to Warren. “Someone has to see to the bodies, clean them up, prepare them for burial.”
“Sure, David,” Warren said in a heavy voice. “I’ll get Avery and Sam. We’ll take care of it. I’ll just go get them now and we’ll take care of it. I’ll . . . David, what have we done?” And his voice that had been too heavy, too dead, became almost shrill. “What are they?”
“What do you mean?”
“When the accident happened, I was down to the mill. Having a bite with Avery. He was just finishing up down there. Section of the floor caved in, you know that old part where we should have put in a new floor last year, or year before. It gave way somehow. And suddenly there they were, the kids. Out of nowhere. No one had time to go get them, to yell for them to come running. Nothing, but there they were. They got their own two out of there and up to the hospital like fire was on their tails, David. Out of nowhere.”
He looked at David with a fearful expression, and when David simply shrugged, he shook his head and left the emergency room, looking down the hall first, a quick, involuntary glance, as if to make sure that they would permit him to leave.
Several of the elders were still in the waiting room when David went there. Lucy and Vernon were sitting near the window, staring out at the black night. Since Clarence’s wife died, he and Lucy had lived together, not as man and wife, but for companionship, because as children they had been as close as brother and sister, and now each needed someone to cling to. Sometimes sister, sometimes mother, sometimes daughter, Lucy had fussed over him, sewed for him, fetched and carried for him, and now, if he died, what would she do? David went to her and took her cold hand. She was very thin, with dark hair that hadn’t started to gray, and deep blue eyes that used to twinkle with merriment, a long, long time ago.
“Go on home, Lucy. I’ll wait, and as soon as there is anything to tell you, I promise I’ll come.”
She continued to stare at him. David turned toward Vernon helplessly. Vernon’s brother had been killed in the accident, but there was nothing to say to him, no way to help him.
“Let her be,” Vernon said. “She has to wait.”
David sat down, still holding Lucy’s hand. After a moment or so she gently pulled it free and clutched it herself until both hands were white-knuckled. None of the young people came near the waiting room. David wondered where they were waiting to hear about the condition of their own. Or maybe they didn’t have to wait anywhere, maybe they would just know. He pushed the thought aside angrily, not believing it, not able to be rid of it. A long time later W-1 entered and said to no one in particular, “He’s resting. He’ll sleep until tomorrow afternoon. Go on home now.”
Lucy stood up. “Let me stay with him. In case he needs something, or there’s a change.”
“He won’t be left alone,” W-l said. He turned toward the door, paused and glanced back, and said to Vernon, “I’m sorry about your brother.” Then he left.
Lucy stood undecided until Vernon took her arm. “I’ll see you home,” he said, and she nodded. David watched them leave together. He turned off the light in the waiting room and walked slowly down the hall, not planning anything, not thinking about going home, or anywhere else. He found himself outside the office that W-l used, and he knocked softly. W-1 opened the door. He looked tired, David thought, and wasn’t sure that his surprise was warranted. Of course, he should be tired. Three operations. He looked like a young, tired Walt, too keyed up to go to sleep immediately, too fatigued to walk off the tension.
“Can I come in?” David asked hesitantly. W-l nodded and moved aside, and David entered. He never had been inside this office.
“Clarence will not live,” W-l said suddenly, and his voice, behind David, because he had not yet moved from the door, was so like Walt’s that David felt a thrill of something that might have been fear or more likely, he told himself, just surprise again. “I did what I could,” W-l said. He walked around his desk and sat down.
W-l sat quietly, with none of the nervous mannerisms that Walt exhibited, none of the finger tapping that was as much a part of Walt’s conversation as his words. No pulling his ears or rubbing his nose. A Walt with something missing, a dead area. Now, with fatigue drawing his face, W-1 sat unmoving, waiting patiently for David to begin, much the same way an adult might wait for a hesitant child to initiate a conversation.
“How did your people know about the accident?” David asked. “No one else knew.”
W-l shrugged. A time-consumer question, he seemed to imply. “We just knew.”
“What are you doing in the lab now?” David asked, and heard a strained note in his ............