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"Wanna view my body?" she asked him. "I'm not kidding," she added, when she saw how lost he was, and frightened. Melony had an instinct for pressing any advantage, but she relented when her adversary was too easy. She saw that the stationmaster's assistant would go on standing in the road until he dropped from fatigue, and so she stepped aside for him, and said, "I was kidding."
He stumbled ahead, blushing, and had almost turned the corner by the boys' division when she called after him, "You'd have to shave before I'd let you!" He staggered slightly, causing Melony to marvel at her power; then he turned the corner and felt himself uplifted by the gleaming Cadillac--by what he mistook for the white hearse. If, at that moment, a choir had erupted into heavenly voice, the assistant would have fallen to his knees, the catalogues spilling around him. The same light that blessed the Cadillac seemed to shine forth from the blond hair of the powerful-looking young man: the driver of the hearse. Now there was a responsibility that awed the stationmaster's assistant!
He approached Wally carefully. Wally was leaning on the Cadillac, smoking a cigarette and intently visualizing an apple orchard in St. Cloud's. The stationmaster's assistant, who looked like a mortician's ghoulish lackey, surprised Wally.
"I've come to view the body," the assistant said.
"The body?" Wally said. "What body?"
A fear of embarrassing himself almost paralyzed the stationmaster's assistant. The world, he imagined, was brimming with etiquette beyond his grasp; obviously, it had been tactless to mention the body of the deceased to the very man who was responsible for safely driving the dead away.
"A thousand pardons!" the assistant blurted; it had been something he'd read.
"A thousand what?" Wally said, growing alarmed.
"How thoughtless of me," said the stationmaster's assistant, bowing unctuously and sliding toward the hospital entrance.
"Has someone died?" Wally asked anxiously, but the assistant managed to slip inside the hospital entrance, where he quickly hid himself in a corner of the wall and wondered what to do next. Clearly, he'd upset the high-strung and fine-tuned feelings of the hearse driver. This is a delicate business, the assistant thought, trying to calm himself. What mistake will I make next? He cowered in the corner of the hall, where he could smell ether wafting from the nearby dispensary; he had no idea that the body he wished to "view" was less than fifteen feet from him. He thought he could smell babies, too--he heard one bawling. He thought that babies were born while women had their legs straight up, the soles of their feet facing the ceiling; this vision pinned him to the corner of the hall. I smell blood! he imagined, struggling to control his panic. He clung to the wall like so much plaster--so much so that Wally failed to notice him when he came in the hospital entrance, worried about who had died. Wally entered the dispensary, as if drawn to the ether--although he quickly felt his nausea returning. He apologized to the feet of the stationmaster.
"Oh, excuse me," Wally whispered, reeling back into the hall.
He heard Nurse Angela talking to Candy, who was already able to sit up. Wally barged in on them, but the look of relief on his face--to see that Candy was not the person rumored to be dead--was so touching to Nurse Angela that she wasn't even cross with him for intruding.
"Please come in," she said to Wally, in her best hospital voice, which was first-person plural. "We're feeling much better now," Nurse Angela said. "We're not quite ready to jump around, but we're sitting up nicely--aren't we?" she asked Candy, who smiled. Candy was so clearly glad to see Wally that Nurse Angela felt she should leave them alone. St. Cloud's did not have a great and tender history regarding the presence of couples in that operating room, and Nurse Angela was both surprised and happy to see a man and a woman who loved each other. I can clean up later, she thought--or I'll ask Homer to do it.
Homer and Dr. Larch were talking. Nurse Edna had taken the Damariscotta woman back to her bed in the maternity ward, and Dr. Larch was examining the baby Homer Wells had delivered--young Steerforth (a name Larch had already criticized; there was some villainy in the character of Steerforth--or had Homer forgotten that part?--and there was also a death by drowning; it was more of a brand than a name, in Dr. Larch's opinion). But they weren't talking anymore about Steerforth.
"Wally said it would take just a couple of days," Homer Wells was saying. "We'll have to load a truck, I g
uess. There's going to be forty trees. And I'd like to see the coast."
"Of course, you should go, Homer--it's a great opportunity," Dr. Larch said. He poked Steerforth in the belly with a finger; then he tempted Steerforth into gripping one of his other fingers; then he shone a little light in Steerforth's eyes.
"I'd be gone just two days," Homer Wells said.
Wilbur Larch shook his head; at first Homer thought there was something wrong with Steerforth. "Maybe just two days, Homer," Dr. Larch said. "You should be prepared to take advantage of the situation, you should not let an opportunity pass you by--in just two days."
Homer stared at Dr. Larch, but Larch was peering into Steerforth's ears. "If this young couple likes you, Homer, and if you like them . . . well," Larch said, "I think you'll be meeting their parents, too, and if their parents like you . . . well," said Dr. Larch, "I think you should try to make their parents like you."
He would not look at Homer, who was staring at him; Dr. Larch examined the tied end of the umbilical while Steerforth cried and cried.
"I think we both know it would do you good to get away for more than two days, Homer," Dr. Larch said. "You understand, I'm not talking about an adoption, I'm talking about the possibility of a summer job--for a start. Someone might offer you the means to stay away for more than two days--that's all I'm saying--if that's an attractive prospect." Dr. Larch looked at Homer; they stared at each other.
"Right," Homer finally said.
"Of course, you might want to come back in two days!" Larch said heartily--but they looked away from each other, as they chose to look away from the likelihood of that. "In which case," Larch said, washing his hands, "you know you're always welcome here." He left the room, and Homer with the baby--too quickly, again, for Homer to say how much he loved him. The cowering stationmaster's assistant watched Wilbur Larch take Nurse Angela and Nurse Edna into the dispensary.
Perhaps, despite the stationmaster's presence, the etherized atmosphere of the dispensary was comforting to Wilbur Larch, and helped him say to his loyal nurses what he needed to say.
"I want to pool our resources," said Wilbur Larch. "I want the boy to have as much money as we can scrounge together, and whatever there is in the way of clothing that looks halfway decent."
"Just for two days, Wilbur?" Nurse Edna asked.
"How much money does the boy need for two days?" Nurse Angela asked.
"It's an opportunity for him, don't you see?" Dr. Larch asked. "I don't think he'll be back here in two days. I hope he doesn't come back--at least, not that soon," said Wilbur Larch, whose breaking heart reminded him of what he'd forgotten: the story of Homer's "weak" heart. How could he tell him? Where and when?
He crossed the hall to see how Candy was coming along. He knew that she and Wally wanted to leave as soon as possible; they had a long drive ahead of them. And if Homer Wells is leaving me, thought Wilbur Larch, he'd better leave me in a hurry--although twenty years, Dr. Larch knew, wasn't what most would have called a hurried departure. Homer had to leave in a hurry, now, because Dr. Larch needed to see if he would ever get over it.
