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Show 294 and made for the bathroom, slamming the door, and a series of terrible sounds issued out to Lorin, who watched helplessly as Sorenson, his face white and clammy, emerged and crawled back into bed to moan and twist some more. Toward morning the sounds of all the flushing summoned Mrs. Green, who came to their room in bathrobe and hair curlers and ordered Lorin to the living room to try to catch an hour or so of sleep on the couch while she took his place at Sorenson's hedside, equipped with a bottle of Kaopectate and a large spoon. Lorin slept fitfully, wakened several times by the sound of the teenage children coming and going and asking their father why he was there on the couch and where was Mom and so forth, but he managed to drift into an approximate sleep until the house was silent again, everyone having left for work or school, at which point he got up to see what was what. Mrs. Green was in the kitchen drinking coffee and doing the crossword puzzle while a cigarette burned in the ash tray by her saucer. Lorin thanked her for spelling him and went back to the bedroom to find both beds neatly made and his companion gone. He hurried back to the kitchen and stood for a moment by the breakfast table, watching her make an erasure and lightly pencil in an alternative. "Urn," he said. They had taken Sorenson, it seemed, to the hospital. She was surprised at his surprise. "Don't you remember?" she said. "We even talked about it." He didn't remember, but of course it was possible. The conversation would have been shuffled into the series of dreams he had had on the couch and been forgotten with them. He got the name of the hospital, and after shaving and dressing drove Sorenson's car to the hospital and found his companion, weak and exhausted, in a room whose other occupant pretended to read an old copy of Field and Stream. |
