“You’ve always been the Judas goat. Why should tonight be any different? Dr. Walker has business with Frank Snow. He knew you’d be too drunk to stop him.”

“What business?”

“What business? What business is there?” She grinned, lips splitting so Calhoun could count all her remaining teeth, two on the top, three on the bottom, and Calhoun realized that this wasn’t his mother at all. It was a cruel imposter generated by this place, the hospital itself, product of the unholy union of tonight’s events. When she spoke again, her voice was thick and suety. “The business between a man and a woman, the business between God and the devil, the business between the tree and the ax. Glork!”

Calhoun could only stare at her. It was what he’d been reduced to.

“It’s okay, honey. You don’t have to understand. Here.” She slipped her hand into the pocket of her gown, brought out a flat unlabeled pint of something brown and translucent, and pressed it in his hand. “Mama make it all better.”

“Put that away.”

“Too good for it now?” She picked up the flashlight and shined it through the bottle. “Look closer.”

Calhoun found himself staring helplessly into the brown liquid. At first he saw nothing. Then something shimmered inside its depths, coalesced, and took shape, utterly convincing in its verisimilitude, a tall man in a white coat.

Walker.

He had Calhoun’s keys in one hand and a flashlight in the other. He was in the ER, locking the door. His mother was right. It had been Walker all along.

You know that can’t be right, it was Snow, he—

That voice, urgent but still rational, was overwhelmed by a hot, sunburned feeling that crawled across his scalp, a feeling he was unaccustomed to managing, rage, yes, and a newfound sense of purpose.

He brought the bottle to his lips and took a long, burning drink.

35.

Flashlight balanced behind him, Mike pushed aside a stack of X-rays and lab reports and found a yellowed newspaper clipping in the bottom of the jacket.

He read the headline: “Miracle Boy” Comes Out of Coma.

He skimmed the first few paragraphs. After recapping the accident that had landed Snow in Pediatric ICU, the article told how the Pediatric ICU team had “heroically” brought the boy from “the very brink of death.” The local reporter’s efforts at journalistic objectivity hadn’t lasted much longer than his opening sentences.

“We got lucky with this one,” one doctor, who spoke under conditions of anonymity, told this reporter yesterday. “Everyone here knew that the prognosis for this boy was not at all good. But this is a reminder that every once in a while, you win one.”

And, farther down:

The modesty of the Tanglewood staff hardly fits the facts of what happened to Franklin Snow. Other clinicians concur that, due to the horrific trauma of the accident, the boy’s body had already ceased to function, and his odds of surviving, let alone staging this kind of dramatic recovery, were virtually zero. Already there is talk in medical circles of the ICU team’s “miracle-worker” approach….