“As you wish.
You may leave by the outside stairway—to avoid disturbing the sisters.”
“To avoid being touched, you mean!”
“No one will touch you.”
Paul finished dressing in silence.
The reversal of attitudes disturbed him.
He resented the seeming “tolerance” that was being extended him.
It was like asylum inmates being “tolerant” of the psychiatrist.
“I’m ready!” he growled.
Mendelhaus led him down the corridor and out onto a sunlit balcony.
They descended a stone stairway while the priest talked over his shoulder.
“She’s still not fully rational, and there’s some fever.
It wouldn’t be anything to worry about two years ago, but now we’re out of most of the latest drugs.
If sulfa won’t hold the infection, we’ll have to amputate, of course.
We should know in two or three days.”
He paused and looked back at Paul, who had stopped on the stairway.
“Coming?”
“Where is she?” Paul asked weakly. “I’ll see her.”
The priest frowned.
“You don’t have to, son.
I’m sorry if I implied any obligation on your hart.
Really, you’ve done enough.
I gather that you saved her life.
Very few nonhypers would do a thing like that.
I—”
“Where is she?” he snapped angrily.
The priest nodded.
“Downstairs.
Come on.”
As they re-entered the building on the ground floor, the priest cupped his hands to his mouth and called out,
“Nonhyper coming!
Plug your noses, or get out of the way!
Avoid circumstances of temptation!”
When they moved along the corridor, it was Paul who felt like the leper.
Mendelhaus led him into the third room.
Willie saw him enter and hid her gray hands beneath the sheet.
She smiled faintly, tried to sit up, and failed.
Williamson and a nun—nurse who had both been standing by the bedside turned to leave the room.
Mendelhaus followed them out and closed the door.
There was a long, painful pause.
Willie tried to grin.
He shuffled his feet.
“They’ve got me in a cast,” she said conversationally.
“You’ll be all right,” he said hastily. “It won’t be long before you’ll be up.
Galveston’s a good place for you.
They’re all dermies here.”
She clenched her eyes tightly shut.
“God!
God!
I hope I never hear that word again.