whoever he was, that there was someone here he might be awfully interested to meet …SINCE THAT FIRST TIME IN JANUARY, unbeknownst to anyone, or even almost to himself, Keith Lamplighter had been returning at least once a month to the plastic chair next to the hospital bed. He’d slip in first thing in the morning, before work, anxious to avoid being spotted; his habit of signing in under a fake name indicated what a terrible idea this was. Not coming, though, was not an option. It wasn’t that he still expected Samantha to wake up, or that he even felt close to her anymore, but she was his responsibility, somehow, and these lonely vigils reached something in him that church wasn’t able to: the very thing the old kook with the shopping cart had pressed on with an ectoplasmic finger.
Now he hunched forward and clasped his hands together and tried to locate the transformation he’d felt dawning in himself after that encounter—like a back door opening in a dream. Déjala ir: Go to her? Go from her? Was he supposed to say goodbye to Samantha before he could get Regan back? Just tell me what to do, he thought. No, wait. Maybe that was the problem, right there. For as long as he could remember, his first thought had been only for himself. He would try putting someone else first and see what happened. He scrunched his eyes and bore down on the still-inchoate thing inside him. Show me how to help, he was thinking, or murmuring—Make me an instrument of your will—when he heard the rattle of loose change behind the privacy curtain, where the bed, every previous visit, had been empty.
He feared Samantha’s new roommate was having some kind of episode back there, but the emergency that greeted him when he pulled aside the curtain was a zitty kid in street-clothes, kicking off the sheets with his combat boots, some kind of implement in hand.
“Hey,” Keith said.
The kid didn’t have a bad face; beneath those pimples and the home-cut hair were features that posted feelings like a billboard. In this case, panic. He rolled off the bed, waved the thing in his hand around as if fending off demons, and darted toward the door. Keith, whose blocking reflexes had never really faded, moved to cut him off. Somewhat less pronounced were his skills as a wrestler, and so when he caught hold of an arm, sending the implement skittering across the floor, it was all he could do to keep the kid from going for it. “Hey! Calm down! Where’s the fire?”
“What fire?” The kid wouldn’t look at him.
“I’m saying, what’s the big rush?”
“If you don’t let go of me, I’ll scream for security.”
The kid squirmed free, but Keith reached the thing on the floor first. It was a switchblade handle, not even out of its sheath, black with a silver button. “Why should I worry about security? I’m not the one with a knife.”
The kid went a shade paler. “It’s for self-defense. I’m a friend of the patient’s.”
“Yeah? Me, too.”
“So how come I never heard of you?”
“Or acquaintance, is maybe the better word.” Now it was Keith’s turn to squirm a little. “You know what? I was just going to get food, so why don’t you stay here and visit? I insist.”
Hanging on to the kid’s weapon made this an easier sell than it might otherwise have been. He barricaded the door with his body until the kid had slunk back to the plastic visitor’s chair by Samantha’s bed. But something wasn’t right here—not least what happened when he tested the button on the blade. Keeping one eye on the room to make sure the kid didn’t leave, Keith stole over to the nurse’s station, temporarily vacant, and picked up the phone. There was no reason, really, for him to be carrying around the battered business card the reporter had pressed on him in February—to use it would be to acknowledge the role he’d played in Samantha’s life. But maybe he’d just been waiting for the right moment to give himself up. For now he dialed the printed number and prayed someone would answer, so that he could inform whoever he was, that there was someone here he might be awfully interested to meet …