Ted found their discussion increasingly difficult to follow, a fact that should have bothered him a lot more than it did. His world was inundated with gauzy cotton balls that blurred his vision, blocked his hearing, and sapped his energy. Minutes before, he had been wide awake. Now he wanted only to lie down.

“Can you tell us how you’re feeling, Mr. Molloy?” The male nurse’s eyes were filled with anxiety. Ted’s anxiety spiked again.

“Is she okay?” Ted asked. He had some trouble putting the question into words.

“What did he say?” A woman’s voice.

“I didn’t get it. What’s his heart rate now?”

“Soaring.” Another nurse’s voice.

“Jesus, he’s sweating buckets. Where’s Dr. Cox?”

“On her way.”

Ted couldn’t keep the voices straight. He felt as if he had dropped off to sleep for a moment and couldn’t remember or understand anything that was being said—only it kept happening, over and over. Each second was a newly erased blackboard, and the squiggles and lines that appeared made no sense.

“Whoa. Hold him. What is he doing?”

Ted realized he was lying down. Had he just been standing? Why were they all yelling? Faces swirled above him, blurred and indistinct, then suddenly hyperfocused and enlarged as though seen through a glass bubble.

“He’s going into shock. Hey! Mr. Molloy! Stay with me!” It was the male nurse speaking. Yelling, actually.

“It’s a stroke,” another voice said, the speaker quite sure of her instant diagnosis.

One more voice chimed in. “Hypoglycemic shock. Is he diabetic? He needs sugar. Anything sweet.”

Ted’s field of vision was shrinking—or the kindly face of the male nurse was expanding dramatically.

“Drink this. Come on.”

The man gently lifted Ted’s head and forced a plastic cup to his mouth. Warm, watery apple juice. Ted spat it out in an explosive spray of pale gold liquid.

“Goddammit.” The kind-faced man had been replaced by a stern woman. “What’s that?” She tore the Mountain Dew out of his pocket and twisted the cap. Another spray—florescent green this time. Ted wasn’t sure he wanted any right then, but the nurse had become very insistent. It was easier to go along than to fight her off.

And he was surprised at how thirsty he had become. He gulped down the cupful of soda. Someone poured him another. He didn’t really like Mountain Dew. Did they have a . . . ? What was it called? The brown one.

“Root beer,” he said.

“What’d he say?”

“God knows. ‘Super,’ maybe?”

“Good. Keep feeding him the soda. Somebody get another.”

“Where the hell is the doctor?” a particularly upset voice screeched.

“On her way,” a new voice replied from very far away.