My heart leapt when I saw Danny walking slowly down the road and I ran out to greet him. He said the trip to the sun and back had been easy, but the waiting with other sufferers in a corridor among potted trees and cheerful nurses, views of endless roofs, water courses, golf hills, speeding highways, long evenings in the hotel room and forced marches through the city had weakened his spirits.
He was pale and irritable and still had cancer.
“I’ve been amazed by horses all my life,” he said. “I mistook them for humans. I was not wrong. How is Emma?”
“Her arm’s better, but she still can’t lift anything.”
“She fell off Paraclete, Charles. That’s a long fall. I’m going home to lie down.”