He didn't say anything for a long moment. Then quietly, he said, "Look at me."

When it had begun, he was a six-footer. Now he looked straight across into his wife's eyes; and his wife was five feet, eight inches tall.

Hopelessly he dropped the fork on his plate. "How can we?" he asked. "The cost Lou, the cost. It'll take at least a month's hospitalization; Branson said so. A month away from work. Marty's already upset as it is. How can I expect him to go on paying me my salary when I don't even-"

"Honey, your health comes first," she said in a nerve flaring voice. "Marty knows that. You know it."

He lowered his head, teeth clenched behind drawn lips. Every bill was a chain that weighed him down. He could almost feel the heavy links forged around his limbs.

"And what do we-" he began, stopping as he noticed Beth staring at him, her supper forgotten.

"Eat your food," Lou told her. Beth started a little, then dug her fork into a mound of gravy-topped potatoes.

"How do we pay for it?" Scott asked. "There's no medical insurance. I owe Marty five hundred dollars for the tests I've already taken." He exhaled heavily. "And the GI loan may not even go through."

"You're going," she said.

"Easily said," he answered.

"All right, what would you rather do?" she snapped with the temper of fear in her voice. "Forget it? Accept what the doctor said? Just sit back and-" A sob swallowed her words.

The hand he put over hers was not a comforting one. It was as cold and almost as shaky as hers.

"All right," he murmured. "All right, Lou."

Later, while she was putting Beth to bed, he stood in the darkened living room watching the cars drive by on the street below. Except for the murmuring voices in the back bedroom, there was no sound in the apartment. The cars swished and hummed past the building, their headlights probing ahead at the dark pavement.

He was thinking about his application for life insurance. It had been part of the plan in coming East. First working for his brother, then applying for a GI loan with the idea of becoming a partner in Marty's business. Acquiring life and medical insurance, a bank account, a decent car, clothes, eventually a house. Building a structure of security around himself and his family.

Now this, disrupting the plan. Threatening to destroy it altogether.

He didn't know at what precise second the question came to him. But suddenly it was terribly there and he was staring fixedly at his upheld, spread-fingered hands, his heart throbbing and swollen in an icy trap.

How long could he go on shrinking?

Chapter Three