He was just about to put the receiver back into the cradle when he heard her pick up on the other end, and then the sound of her voice, not talking to him but to somebody with her in the apartment.
“I got flour. It’s in that bag with Tibor’s Pizza Rolls in it,” she said.
Suddenly everything Gregor had wanted to say disappeared from his head. There was something about politics, but he couldn’t remember what. There was all the news about Mark DeAvecca. He could remember that, but he couldn’t think of the words he needed to explain it.
“Hello,” she said, in that flat, unconsciously upper-class voice he’d found so off-putting when they’d first met and hardly ever noticed anymore.
He took a deep breath, trying to give himself time to think, but he couldn’t think. He was frozen solid. He had a terrible intuition that his breath was very heavy though, that he sounded like one of those men who call phone numbers at random until they get a female voice they can talk dirty to.
“Hello?” she said again.
He tried to cough. He couldn’t do it. He tried to speak. He couldn’t do that either. Everything was wrong. He couldn’timagine his life without her. He couldn’t imagine what he was supposed to say to make it all right between them. He couldn’t imagine what he’d done that had been so damned awful that it had led to this, so that she hadn’t called him even once since he’d been out of town and hadn’t seen him off when he left Philadelphia.
“Christ,” she said, her voice turned away from the receiver again, “I’ve got a breather.”
“Wait,” Gregor started to say, remembering at the last moment the whistle he’d given her for just such occasions as she thought this was.
Fortunately or unfortunately, she didn’t use it. She just hung up.
Gregor sat staring at the phone in his hand, wondering what the hell was the matter with him. He’d never been this awkward with a girl, not even in high school. He’d never been this scared in his life.
2
By the time Gregor got to the nurses’ station on Two West at ten minutes before two, he was thoroughly disgusted with himself and in no mood to put up with anybody else’s nonsense. He came out of the elevator with his mind still on Bennis, and for the first few moments as he walked ahead toward the big curved wooden desk, he didn’t realize that he knew at least half the people standing in front of it, arguing. The other half were doctors, a tall, angular young man with too much hair and a nose that could have served as a hood ornament, and a slight, middle-aged woman who exuded tension the way the Cookie Monster ate cookies. She was, Gregor thought, the single most defensively hostile person he had ever seen in his life. Then he realized that she was standing next to Liz Toliver, and that he was about to have to deal with her.
It wasn’t the most promising situation he had ever walked into in his life. The small woman might be angry and aggressive, but Liz was in that unnatural calm that Gregor had learned to associate with the prelude to one of her nuke attacks. Both Jimmy Card and the male doctor were standing just a little away from the two women, as if both of them knew that something was about to blow.
“It is my professional opinion that this course of action is very inadvisable,” the small woman was saying. “Very inadvisable. I haven’t even had a chance to go over these results. I don’t know how accurate they are—”
“I don’t see why you should go over these results at all,” Liz said. Very calm, Gregor thought. She was very calm. He winced. “You are not Mark’s doctor, and you are not Mark’s mother. I’m that.”
“I’m the doctor for the school,” the small woman said, “and you signed an agreement when Mark came to Windsor that he would be treated by me—”
“In the event that he got sick up here and the school had to make arrangements for his care,” Liz said. “Yes. But the school doesn’t have to make arrangements for his care now. I’m here.”
“You’re risking his health and his recovery by delivering information to him that is very disturbing and that, as far as we know, is completely inaccurate. I’m sure Dr. Copeland is very talented, but he’s still a resident and he does not have the experience—”
“Excuse me,” the young male doctor said.
“This entire idea is ludicrous,” the small woman said. “I must be concerned first and foremost with Mark’s well-being. He’s still a child, and he’s not able to interpret—”
“Jesus Christ,” Liz said.
“Adults often have to insist that children do what is best for them because they will not always know what is best for them themselves,” the woman plowed on.