Dean Koontz - Lightning

After receiving editorial suggestions, Laura undertook an easy revision of Shadrach, delivering the final version of the script in mid-December 1979, and Simon & Schuster scheduled the book for publication in September 1980.

It was such a busy year for Laura and Danny that she was only peripherally aware of the Iranian hostage crisis and presidential campaign, and even more vaguely cognizant of the countless fires, plane crashes, toxic spills, mass murders, floods, earthquakes, and other tragedies that constituted the news. That was the year the rabbit died. That was the year she and Danny bought their first house — a four-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bath, Spanish model in Orange Park Acres — and moved out of the apartment in Tustin. She started her third novel, The Golden Eagle, and one day when Danny asked her how it was going, she said, "Mule puke," and he said, "That's great!" The first of September, upon receipt of a substantial check for the film rights to Shadrach, which had sold to MGM, Danny quit his job at the brokerage house and became her full-time financial manager. On Sunday, September 21, three weeks after it arrived in the stores, Shadrach appeared on the New York Times bestseller list at number twelve. On October 5, 1980, when Laura gave birth to Christopher Robert Packard, Shadrach was in a third printing, sitting comfortably at number eight on the Times, and received what Spencer Keene called a "thunderously good" review on page five of that same book section.

The boy entered the world at 2:23 P.M. in a greater rush of blood than that which usually carried babies out of their prenatal darkness. Pain-racked and hemorrhaging, Laura required three pints during the afternoon and evening. She spent a better night than expected, however, and by morning she was sore, weary, but well out of danger.

The following day during visiting hours, Thelma Ackerson came to see the baby and the new mother. Still dressed punkish and ahead of her time — hair long on the left side of her head, with a white streak like the bride of Frankenstein, and short on the right side, with no streak — she breezed into Laura's private room, went straight to Danny, threw her arms around him, hugged him hard, and said, "God, you're big. You're a mutant. Admit it, Packard, your mother might have been human, but your father was a grisly bear." She came to the bed where Laura was propped up against three pillows, kissed her on the forehead and then on the cheek. "I went to the nursery before I came here, had a peek at Christopher Robert through the glass, and he's adorable. But I think you're going to need all the millions you can make from your books, kiddo, because that boy is going to take after his father, and your food bill's going to run thirty thousand a month. Until you get him housebroken, he'll be eating your furniture." Laura said, "I'm glad you came, Thelma." "Would I miss it? Maybe if I was playing a Mafia-owned club in Bayonne, New Jersey, and had to cancel out part of a date to fly back, maybe then I'd miss it because if you break a contract with those guys they cut off your thumbs and make you use them as suppositories. But I was west of the Mississippi when I got the news last night, and only nuclear war or a date with Paul McCartney could keep me away."

Almost two years ago Thelma had finally gotten time on the stage at the Improv, and she'd been a hit. She landed an agent and began to get paid bookings in sleazy, third-rate — and eventually second-rate — clubs across the country. Laura and Danny had driven into Los Angeles twice to see her perform, and she had been hilarious; she wrote her own material and delivered it with the comic timing she had possessed since childhood but had honed in the intervening years. Her act had one unusual aspect that would either make her a national phenomenon or ensure her obscurity: Woven through the jokes was a strong thread of melancholy, a sense of the tragedy of life that existed simultaneously with the wonder and humor of it. In fact it was similar to the tone of Laura's novels, but what appealed to book readers was less likely to appeal to audiences who had paid for belly laughs.

Now Thelma leaned across the bed railing, peered closely at Laura and said, "Hey, you look pale. And those rings around your eyes…"

"Thelma, dear, I hate to shatter your illusions, but a baby isn't really brought by the stork. The mother has to expel it from her own womb, and it's a tight fit."

Thelma stared hard at her, then directed an equally hard stare at Danny, who had come around the other side of the bed to hold Laura's hand. "What's wrong here?"

Laura sighed and, wincing with discomfort, shifted her position slightly. To Danny, she said, "See? I told you she's a bloodhound."

"It wasn't an easy pregnancy, was it?" Thelma demanded. "The pregnancy was easy enough," Laura said. "It was the delivery that was the problem."

"You didn't. almost die or anything, Shane?" "No, no, no," Laura said, and Danny's hand tightened on hers. "Nothing that dramatic. We knew from the start there were going to be some difficulties along the way, but we found the best doctor, and he kept a close watch. It's just… I won't be able to have any more. Christopher will be our last."

Thelma looked at Danny, at Laura, and said quietly, "I'm sorry."

"It's all right," Laura said, forcing a smile. "We have little Chris, and he's beautiful."

They endured an awkward silence, and then Danny said, "I haven't had lunch yet, and I'm starved. I'm going to slip down to the coffee shop for a half hour or so."

When Danny left, Thelma said, "He's not really hungry, is he? He just knew we wanted a girl-to-girl talk." Laura smiled. "He's a lovely man."

Thelma put down the railing on one side of the bed and said, "If I hop up here and sit beside you, I won't shake up your insides, will I? You won't suddenly bleed all over me, will you, Shane?" "I'll try not to."

Thelma eased up onto the high hospital bed. She took one of Laura's hands in both of hers. "Listen, I read Shadrach, and it's damned good. It's what all writers try to do and seldom achieve." "You're sweet."

"I'm a tough, cynical, hard-nosed broad. Listen, I'm serious about the book. It's brilliant. And I saw Bovine Bowmaine in there, and Tammy. And Boone, the child-welfare psychologist. Different names but I saw them. You've captured them perfectly, Shane. God, there were times you brought it all back, times when chills ran up and down my back so bad I had to put down the book and go for a walk in the sun. And there were times when I laughed like a loon."

Laura ached in every muscle, in every joint. She did not have the strength to lean away from the pillows and put her arms around her friend. She just said, "I love you, Thelma."

"The Eel wasn't there, of course."

"I'm saving him for another book."

"And me, damn it. I'm not in the book, though I'm the most colorful character you've ever known!"

"I'm saving you for a book all your own," Laura said.

"You mean it, don't you?"

"Yes. Not the one I'm working on now but the one after it."

"Listen, Shane, you better make me gorgeous, or I'll sue your ass off. You hear me?"

"I hear you."

Thelma chewed her lip, then said, "Will you—"

"Yes. I'm going to put Ruthie in it too."

They were silent a while, just holding hands.

Unshed tears clouded Laura's vision, but she saw that Thelma was blinking back tears too. "Don't. It'll streak all that elaborate punk eye makeup."

Thelma raised one of her feet. "Are these boots freaky or what? Black leather, pointy toes, stud-ringed heels. Makes me look like a damned dominatrix, doesn't it?"

"When you walked in, the first thing I wondered was how many men you've whipped lately."

Thelma sighed and sniffed hard to clear her nose. "Shane, listen and listen good. This talent of yours is maybe more precious than you think. You're able to capture people's lives on the page, and when the people are gone, the page is still there, the life is still there. You can put feelings on the page, and anyone, anywhere, can pick up that book and feel those same feelings, you can touch the heart, you can remind us what it means to be human in a world that's increasingly bent on forgetting. That's a talent and a reason to live that's more than most people ever have. So… well, I know how much you want to have a family. three or four kids, you've said… so I know how bad you must be hurting right now. But you've got Danny and Christopher and this amazing talent, and that's so very much to have."