"Who told you?"

"The doctors."

"What doctors?"

"Those doctors in Phoenix. Big fancy hospital, all that shiny equipment and all those shiny white uniforms. Real fancy hospital. I wouldn't have gone there, except for my sister. She insisted. She lives in Phoenix, you know, with that husband of hers, George. Stupid ninny. I didn't want no fancy hospital, I just wanted to rest up, is all. But she insisted, so I went."

"When was this?"

"Last year. June it was, or July."

"Why did you go to the hospital?"

"Why does anybody go to the hospital? I was sick, dammit."

"What was your problem?"

"This damn stomach of mine, same as always."

"Bleeding?"

"Hell, bleeding. Every time I hiccoughed I came up with blood. Never knew a body had so much blood in it."

"Bleeding in your stomach?"

"Yeah. Like I said, I had it before. All these needles stuck in you—" he nodded to the intravenous lines—"and all the blood going into you. Phoenix last year, and then Tucson the year before that. Now, Tucson was a right nice place. Right nice. Had me a pretty little nurse and all." Abruptly, he closed his mouth. "How old are you, son, anyhow? You don't seem old enough to be a doctor.

"I'm a surgeon," Hall said.

"Surgeon! Oh no you don't. They kept trying to get me to do it, and I kept saying, Not on your sweet life. No indeedy. Not taking it out of me."

"You've had an ulcer for two years?"

"A bit more. The pains started out of the clear blue. Thought I had a touch of indigestion, you know, until the bleeding started up."

A two-year history, Hall thought. Definitely ulcer, not cancer.

"And you went to the hospital?"

"Yep. Fixed me up fine. Warned me off spicy foods and hard stuff and cigarettes. And I tried, sonny, I sure did. But it wasn't no good. A man gets used to his pleasures.

"So in a year, you were back in the hospital."

"Yeah. Big old place in Phoenix, with that stupid ninny George and my sister visiting me every day. He's a book-learning fool, you know. Lawyer. Talks real big, but he hasn't got the sense God gave a grasshopper's behind."

"And they wanted to operate in Phoenix?"

"Sure they did. No offense, sonny, but any doctor'll operate on you, give him half a chance. It's the way they think. I just told them I'd gone this far with my old stomach, and I reckoned Id finish the stretch with it."

"When did you leave the hospital?"

"Must have been early August sometime. First week, or thereabouts."

"And when did you start smoking and drinking and eating the wrong foods?"

"Now don't lecture me, sonny," Jackson said. "I've been living for sixty-nine years, eating all the wrong foods and doing all the wrong things. I like it that way, and if I can't keep it up, well then the hell with it."

"But you must have had pain," Hall said, frowning.