Orson Card - Lost Boys

"Is she going to be all right?" asked Vette. "The little one?"

"Doesn't look like it to me," said Dr. Greenwald. "But sometimes they surprise you. Sometimes they really want to live."

"Do you think they really have desires? When they're so small?"

"It all depends," said Dr. Greenwald, "on whether you think of them as having a soul or not. I happen to think they do, and so I think that yes, that soul can have desires even if the body isn't yet ready to put them into words. I've seen babies hold on to life with all their might, and I've seen others just give up and slip away. They don't talk about it, but that's how it feels to me."

"And is that what Jeremy is doing? Slipping away?"

"Why don't we wait to answer that," said Dr. Greenwald, "until we see what he's like when he's conscious?"

"Dr. Greenwald," said Step. "I think you'll understand-we want to give a blessing to my son, and we'd like to be able to lay our hands directly on him. We also anoint him with a single drop of pure olive oil, on the brow or the crown of his head. Would that be all right?"

Greenwald glanced over at Torwaldson. "Oh, I can't see why not. Zap is really a husky little kid. Compared to these others, he's a regular Larry Holmes."

Dr. Greenwald opened the incubator, and Harv took the oil, anointed Jeremy's forehead with a drop of it, and then said the short prayer that went with it. DeAnne noticed that Dr. Greenwald watched, bowing his head respectfully. Then both Step and Harv touched the baby gently, and Step sealed the anointing, which was the longer prayer, the one that changed according to the needs of the person receiving the blessing, and according to what Step felt impressed to say.

Only a couple of mont hs ago, thought DeAnne, Step was confirming Stevie, and now he's giving his newest son a different kind of blessing. It felt good to know that her husband was able to do this, was able to call on the powers of heaven on her children's behalf. I can give him milk from my body I nurtured him inside me for nine months, and Step couldn't really share in any of that. But he can give this to our baby.

The blessing felt powerful to DeAnne as it was going on, and yet when it was done she realized that Step had said nothing about healing. He only blessed Jeremy that the doctors would recognize their own limitations and make no mistakes with him, and that he would soon be home with his mother and father and sister and brothers.

Dr. Greenwald shook Step's hand after he had sealed up the incubator. "Are you a minister?" he asked.

"No," said Step. "I'm a computer programmer. Harv's an accountant."

"Well," said Greenwald. "It still felt good, to see a father do that with his own child. Never seen that before."

From the other incubator, where the other doctors were gathered, they heard a voice, a soft one, but clear.

"She's gone." And a moment later, the doctors started moving away. DeAnne heard Dr. Yont murmur, "I'll call the parents."

DeAnne put her arm around her mother, who seemed quite shaken by this. She noticed, too, that Dr.

Greenwald took out a handkerchief and wiped his glasses, after which he also brushed at his eyes with the cloth.

"I never get used to it," he said. "Even when they're not one of mine. Don't like to lose 'em." Then he visibly straightened himself. "Why don't we step on out of the ICU. We don't need to be part of what's going on in there now."

As he ushered them into the corridor, Dr. Greenwald reassured them. "Your little boy doesn't seem to be in any danger right now, and as for that lethargy, well, I'll have a talk with Tor this afternoon. You'll see some improvement, I promise, once we get the dosage right for his system. Nice to meet you, Mr. Fletcher. Mrs. ..."

"Brown," said Vette.

"Nice to meet you," said Harv, shaking his hand. And Greenwald was gone.

"I feel good about Zap being in his care," said Step. "It has to help, that he really loves these babies. And that he ... you know. That he takes us seriously."

"Thanks for coming," DeAnne said to Harv.

"I have an idea," said Vette. Her tone was suddenly bright, leaving behind the somberness of the ICU. It was a gift she had, to know the right moment to turn the mood of a group of people, to get them moving again.

"I'll have Harv drive me back to the house and you two ride home together in the other car."

"Fine," said Harv.

"Thanks," said Step. "I need to talk to DeAnne anyway."

"One condition," said Vette. "I get the Renault. Air conditioning, you know."

"We'll open the windows on the Datsun," said Step. "We'll still be just as hot, but our sweat will help water the lawns on either side of the road."

Once they were alone in the Datsun, DeAnne asked first about the blessing. "Couldn't you have blessed him to be healed?"

"You think I didn't want to?" asked Step. "You think that wasn't what I planned to do?"

"You were so fatalistic about him the other day," said DeAnne. "Yesterday I mean. Was that only yesterday? I thought maybe you'd given up on him."

"I tried to talk about Zap getting better and having a perfectly normal healthy body and I just couldn't say it.

Maybe it's a lack of faith on my part, or maybe I was being told not to bless him that way. Either way, what could I do? I said what I was able to say." Then he gave one short, derisive laugh. "My atypical dissociative disorder apparently isn't as efficient at providing me with appropriate hallucinations as Stevie's is."

"So," said DeAnne. "How did it go with Dr. Weeks?"

"First tell me how you are," said Step. "Pain still bad?"

"I had a little bleeding, too. I need to lie down more."

"So now I've got you in this rattly car, vibrating you six ways from Tuesday."

"It's all the going back and forth to the hospital."

"So you're saying you should have stayed."

"I'm not dying, Step, I just hurt and I bleed a little. Tell me about Dr. Weeks, Step. Did you quarrel?"

"Just listen to the tape," said Step. He pulled the microcassette recorder out of his pocket and pressed the play button.

For the first while, listening to the conversation in Dr. Weeks's office, DeAnne wanted to shout at him to stop it, he was doing it all wrong, he was deliberately provoking the doctor. But then she realized that for Step, he was actually being quite controlled. And Dr. Weeks really was resisting talking to him. So the fact that he got her to tell her speculative diagnoses was probably quite an accomplishment, as was the way he sat still and listened, so that Dr. Weeks finally did explain adjustment disorder. It sounded exactly like what was going on with Stevie.

"I can do that," said DeAnne. "Write to friends in Indiana. The school can give me the addresses of the parents, or forward my letters to them, anyway"

Step pressed stop. "That's not the diagnosis she believes in," he said. "And that's not the condition she intends to treat." Then he pressed play again.

She listened to the rest of the tape without comment, until it was over. "Well, Step," she said, "I can hardly believe you didn't say anything snotty to her at all as you left."

"I didn't want to sour anything, in case you wanted to continue the treatment."

DeAnne was startled. "You mean you think we should?"

"I didn't know what you'd think," said Step.

"Yes you did," said DeAnne. "You knew perfectly well what I'd think. Here she is declaring that anybody who believes in a religion is marginally or totally insane-I mean, that's most of human society through most of history"

"Yes," said Step. "But maybe true sanity didn't exist until people like her emerged."

"From under a rock, you mean," said DeAnne. "We know a lot of Mormons, Step. But not many hysterical ones, and not many crazy ones, either."

"Well, there's Sister LeSueur."