“You want to go for a walk with me?”

“Yeah,” he said.

She picked his coat up from the floor, put it on him and guided him around the walkway toward the front of the build-ng. Through the trees, she could see the hospital up on the lill. He must have seen this round building often from up .here. The security cruiser had returned. It was parked in the ot below, doors open, no one inside.

“You want to go sit in the car with me? Let’s get out of the *ain.”

He hung back.

“It’s okay. It’s Security. Clyde Barnhart is driving. You get ilong okay with him. You like him, don’t you?”

Danny nodded and started into the back seat, but when he ;aw the wire protection frame that made the back look like a iage, he drew away, trembling.

“Okay,” Wanda said, understanding what was bothering lim. “We can both sit up front and wait for Clyde to come and Irive us.”

He slipped inside and sat. quietly beside her, looking dazed it his wet trousers and muddy shoes.

Wanda left the doors open, but reached over to turn the headlights on as a signal. A short while later Clyde came down the ramp of the Convocation Center with Norma Dishong.

“I went back to the hospital and got her,” Clyde Barnhart explained. “We were inside looking for you and Bill.”

Wanda said, “This is Danny. He’s all right now.”

(2)

On Tuesday, September 25, Nurse Pat Perry watched Billy talk to Gus Holston in the lounge. Holston had been admitted a few weeks earlier; he and Billy knew each other from Lebanon. Lori and Marsha walked by, flirting with the two young men. Lori, who had never made any attempt to hide her attraction for Billy, now pretended to be interested in Holston to make Billy jealous. Nurse Perry, who was Loris case manager, knew the girl had been all over Billy from the time he’d come to Athens. A pretty, not too bright young woman, she followed him around, leaving him notes and telling the staff of the things she and Billy were going to do someday. She had even spread the rumor that she and Billy were eventually going to be married.

Billy, for his part, never really paid much attention to her. His grandest gesture had been to give both Lori and Marsha fifty dollars earlier in the week when they told him they were broke. In exchange for the money, they picked up his hug your child today bumper stickers from the printer and passed them out downtown.

Eileen McClellan, Billy’s afternoon case manager, was off that day, and her case buddy, Katherine Gillott, looked after him. Shortly after the grandmotherly Gillott came on duty, Billy asked her if he could go for a walk.

“We’ll have to include Dr. Caul on this decision,” she said, “because I’m not going to make it.”

Billy waited in the TV room while she consulted with Dr. Caul, who decided to talk to Billy. After a few questions about his mood, they both agreed he could go out for a walk with Gus Holston.