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Show 152 door and windows to the sea. No one was in the room, no figure; still, there was an even more insistant light - and a sense of wind, considerable sea-breeze, hardened into something almost as clear and permanent as glass. A more experienced nurse, an Irish woman, came in and drew the arterial blood sample. Hunt stood and wandered to the window, looked out flatly through the film. He felt like his father. Snow was melting. Slices of a cool sun floated out on The Charles. The rows of drive and parkside trees all looked now strangely vascular, sketching appropriate lines, but unconductive, just, somehow too dark, too thick - something. Cars clogged traffic lanes. Would the lanes move easily, Hunt wondered, when enough light warmed the air and enough breeze loosened the moss? Would lovers stroll on Fruit and Blossom Streets, free, smiling, spilling quick laughter up against planes like this, through them, through the hospital walls? Jesus, Jesus: He was being a madman again, trying to inspire something that might finally save the world of his mother, hold it. "She's a soldier," the nurse said, nicely, behind him, at her bed. Hunt turned. "She's a nurse," he said. He expected to see his mother asleep, but she was watching, listening. "Ex-nurse," she added. And Hunt could feel her smile. "Nurse," he said. "Nurse. Present tense." "And a nice lady," the Irish woman said, bundling her instruments. "Very nice lady," Hunt agreed. He looked down. He saw the fresh, new spreading bruise on his mother's wrist, where the needle had been. He saw her head droop, wanted to take it, gently, in his hands set it, somehow, with proper dignity. "Tired?" he asked. |
