He heard shouting from up front and went to investigate. A number of people from the parking lot had pushed their way into the waiting room. When they saw him they started shouting, pleading, begging for him to see them.
Alan raised a hand in the air and held it there, saying nothing until they finally quieted down.
"I'll say this once and once only. I know you're all sick and hurting. I promise I will see every one of you and do everything I can for you, but my power lasts only one hour a day, no more. I have no control over that. Just one hour a day. Understand? That hour is over and done for today. I'll be back tomorrow for another hour at five p.m."
There was some rumbling from the rear.
"That's all I have to say. I'll be back tomorrow, I promise."
"That's what you said two weeks ago and we never saw you again until today!" a voice called out. "Don't play games with us!"
"Maybe we'll just stay in here until you do come back!" said another.
"If you're going to threaten me, I won't be back at all."
There was sudden silence.
"I'll see you here tomorrow at five."
He watched as they reluctantly shuffled out. Connie leaned her plump frame against the door after she locked it and sighed with relief.
"I don't like this bunch, Doctor. I tell you, there's something mean and ugly about them. They frighten me."
"They're all right one on one."
"Maybe, but not all together. As each cured patient walked out, the rest got meaner and meaner, the bigger and stronger ones pushing the smaller and weaker ones out of the way."
"A lot of them have waited a long time, and they're sick of being sick. They're tired of hurting. When relief is in sight, another night can seem like a year."
Connie shook her head. "I guess you're right. Oh, Dr. Bulmer," she said as he turned to go, "my mother suffers something terrible from arthritis in her hips. I was wondering if…"
"Of course," he said. "Bring her with you tomorrow."
They closed up and Alan walked her out to her car and made sure she was on her way before he got into his own. The crowd had gathered at a decent distance and stood there staring at him like a starving horde watching the owner of a fully stocked supermarket.
But their hunger was of a different sort, and he knew he would have nothing in his cupboard for them until tomorrow.
He drove away feeling tense and uneasy. He wondered if they had believed him.
___29.___
Sylvia
She hated the idea of leaving Jeffy here for one night, let alone three, but Charles insisted it was the best and quickest way to have him evaluated.
"We'll scan him head to foot," he said from behind his desk. "We'll monitor and record him awake and asleep, collect twenty-four-hour urines, and you can have him back in seventy-two hours. By then we'll know everything there is to know about him. Otherwise it will take forever on a piecemeal basis."
"I know," she said, sitting with Jeffy on her lap, her arms tight around him. "It's just that it's been years since he's been away overnight. What if he needs me?"
"Sylvia, dear," Charles said, and she resented the touch of condescension in his voice, "if he calls for you in the night, I will personally send the Foundation helicopter to pick you up and bring you here. It will be an unprecedented breakthrough."
Sylvia said nothing. Charles was right. Jeffy interacted with no one now. Not even the pets; not even himself. She wondered if he would even know she was gone.
"What else is wrong?" Charles said. She looked up to see him watching her face. "I've never seen you so blue."
"Oh, it's a bunch of things. Little things, big things—from my favorite bonsai getting root rot to Alan having his hospital privileges suspended, and very possibly about to lose his license. Everything was going so well for so long; now everything seems to be going sour at once."
"Bulmer's problems aren't yours."
"I know." She hadn't seen much of Charles since the party, so he couldn't know how her feelings for Alan had intensified.
"It's not as if you're bloody married to him." Was there a trace of jealousy in Charles' voice? "And from what I've heard, most of his troubles are his own doing. Sounds to me as if he's come to believe what the yellow press has been saying about him."
"According to Alan, the stories are true. And Ba told me he saw something similar in Vietnam when he was a boy."
Charles snorted in contempt. "Then Bulmer's license should be revoked for practicing medicine without a mind!"
Sylvia resented that and instantly came to Alan's defense.
"He's a good, kind, decent man who's being crucified!" But her anger cooled quickly, for what Charles had said reflected the tiny doubts that had been clawing at the walls of her mind for weeks now. "You met him. Did he seem unbalanced to you?"
"Paranoids have a knack for appearing perfectly normal until you tread on their forbidden ground. Then they can be bloody dangerous."
"But Ba—"
"With all due respect to your houseman, Sylvia, he is an uneducated fisherman from a culture that worships its ancestors." He came out from behind the desk and leaned against it, looking down at her, his arms folded in front of him. "Tell me: Have you ever seen him perform one of these miraculous cures?"
"No."
"Have you ever personally known someone incurably ill who has returned in perfect health from seeing him?"
"No, but—"
"Then "watch out for him! If something breaks all the known rules, and can't be seen or heard or touched, then it isn't there! It only exists in someone's head. And that someone has broken with reality and is potentially dangerous!"
She didn't want to hear this. She couldn't conceive of Alan being dangerous to anyone. Charles was simply lashing out at someone he was coming to see as a rival.
And yet what if he were right?
___30.___
Alan
Alan poured himself a scotch as soon as he entered the house. It was scotch he liked, wasn't it? He sipped and decided he liked the taste. He flopped onto the couch and let his head fall back.
The ride had been an ordeal. If he hadn't had the presence of mind to write down the directions from his home to his office and back again before leaving here earlier, he'd still be driving around. His memory was shot. He couldn't think! Even in the office, when that fellow with the bamboo spine had come in, he'd had to go look it up in a textbook to find the name—Strümpell-Marie disease, also known as ankylosing spondylitis.
God, what was happening to him? Why couldn't he remember everyday things anymore? Was it related to the Dat-tay-vao, or was he getting senile? There was a name for the condition but he couldn't think of it at the moment. At least he didn't have a brain tumor—he had proof of that in black type on yellow paper from the radiology department at University Hospital.
He closed his eyes. He was tired.
When he opened them again, it was dark. He jerked upright. He couldn't have dozed off that long. A glance at his watch revealed that barely an hour and a half had passed. Then he heard a rumble of thunder and understood: A summer storm was brewing.
The front doorbell rang. Was that what had awakened him? Alan turned on the lights, then opened the door and found a man standing there. He was short and thin, wearing a Miami Dolphins jacket; he was nervously twisting a baseball cap in his hands as he looked up at Alan.
"Dr. Bulmer, could I speak to you a minute?"