George shook Stu's hand and said, "I'll see you by tomorrow afternoon at the latest, hum? Just tell Laurie when would be the most convenient time for you."
"What for?"
"The leg," George said. "It's bad, isn't it?"
"Not too bad."
"Stu?" Frannie said, sitting up. "What's wrong with your leg?"
"Broken, badly set, overtaxed," George said. "Nasty. But it can be fixed."
"Well..." Stu said.
"Well, nothing! Let me see it, Stuart!" The I-want line was back.
"Later," Stu said.
George got up. "See Laurie, all right?"
"He will," Frannie said.
Stu grinned. "I will. Boss lady says so."
"It's very good to have you back," George said. A thousand questions seemed to stop just behind his lips. He shook his head slightly and then left, closing the door firmly behind him.
"Let me see you walk," Frannie said. The I-want line still creased her brow.
"Hey, Frannie - "
"Come on, let me see you walk."
He walked for her. It was a little like watching a sailor make his way across a pitching foredeck. When he turned back to her, she was crying.
"Oh, Frannie, don't do that, honey."
"I have to," she said, and put her hands over her face.
He sat beside her and took her hands away. "No. No, you don't."
She looked at him nakedly, her tears still flowing. "So many people dead... Harold, Nick, Susan... and what about Larry? What about Glen and Ralph?"
"I don't know."
"And what's Lucy going to say? She'll be here in an hour. She comes every day, and she's four months pregnant herself. Stu, when she asks you..."
"They died over there," Stu said, speaking more to himself than to her. "That's what I think. What I know, in my heart."
"Don't say it that way," Fran begged. "Not when Lucy gets here. It will break her heart if you do."
"I think they were the sacrifice. God always asks for a sacrifice. His hands are bloody with it. Why? I can't say. I'm not a very smart man. P'raps we brought it on ourselves. All I know for sure is that the bomb went off over there instead of over here and we're safe for a while. For a little while."
"Is Flagg gone? Really gone?"
"I don't know. I think... we'll have to stand a watch for him. And in time, someone will have to find the place where they made the germs like Captain Trips and fill that place up with dirt and seed the ground with salt and then pray over it. Pray for all of us."
Much later that evening, not long before midnight, Stu pushed her down the silent hospital corridor in a wheelchair. Laurie Constable walked with them, and Fran had seen to it that Stu had made his appointment.
"You look like you're the one that should be in that wheelchair, Stu Redman," Laurie said.
"Right now it doesn't bother me at all," Stu said.
They came to a large glass window that looked in on a room done in blues and pinks. A large mobile hung from the ceiling. Only one crib was occupied, in the front row.
Stu stared in, fascinated.
GOLDSMITH-REDMAN, PETER, the card at the front of the crib read. BOY. B.W. 6 LB 9 OZ. M. FRANCES GOLDSMITH, RM. 209 F. JESSE RIDER (D.)
Peter was crying.
His small hands were balled into fists. His face was red. There was an amazing swatch of dark black hair on his head. His eyes were blue and they seemed to look directly into Stu's eyes, as if accusing him of being the author of all his misery.
His forehead was creased with a deep vertical slash... an I-want line.
Frannie was crying again.
"Frannie, what's wrong?"
"All those empty cribs," she said, and her voice became a sob. "That's what's wrong. He's all alone in there. No wonder he's crying, Stu, he's all alone. All those empty cribs, my God - "
"He won't be alone for very long," Stu said, and put an arm around her shoulders. "And he looks to me as if he's going to bear up just fine. Don't you think so, Laurie?"
But Laurie had left the two of them alone in front of the nursery window.
Wincing at the pain in his leg, Stu knelt beside Frannie and hugged her clumsily, and they looked in at Peter in mutual wonder, as if the child were the first that had ever been gotten upon the earth. After a bit Peter fell asleep, small hands clenched together on his chest, and still they watched him... and wondered that he should be there at all.
BOOK III THE STAND Chapter 78
Mayday
They had finally put the winter behind them.