Lost Boys

by Orson Scott Card

  Sometimes God is merciful and lets them come home without going through this vale of tears."

  It was at that moment that Step came into the ICU. "Oh, good," he said. "I hoped you'd still be here."

  "Is Mary Anne still with the children?" DeAnne asked.

  "When I got home, her husband was there and he offered to come up and help me give Zap a blessing."

  She saw now that Harv Lowe was walking with awe among the incubators. "These must be some tough kids," said Harv, "if they had to stick 'em with all these needles just to keep 'em quiet."

  Dana laughed. "Oh, they're the toughest."

  Step asked the nurse, "Do we have to use these gloves with Zap? He's not got a contagious disease or anything, and he's a fullweight baby. We don't absolutely have to touch him with our hands, but it would be better."

  "You'll have to clear this with Dr. Torwaldson if you're going to break open the box," said Dana.

  At that moment Dr. Greenwald came back with, apparently, Dr. Yont, who immediately started giving orders and working on the baby whose needle had come loose. It seemed that more than a loose needle was going wrong, and all the medical people were quite intense about what they were doing. DeAnne was content to wait. There was no emergency for Jeremy, and that was good.

  A few moments later, Dr. Torwaldson came in, and at that point Dr. Greenwald withdrew and came over to the Fletchers. "Not my baby," he said, "and I'm not a neonate, so I'm one pair of hands too many, now that Toes here."

  "Is she going to be all right?" asked Vette. "The little one?"

  "Doesn't look like it to me," said Dr. Greenwald. "But sometimes they surprise you. Sometimes they really want to live."

  "Do you think they really have desires? When they're so small?"

  "It all depends," said Dr. Greenwald, "on whether you think of them as having a soul or not. I happen to think they do, and so I think that yes, that soul can have desires even if the body isn't yet ready to put them into words. I've seen babies hold on to life with all their might, and I've seen others just give up and slip away. They don't talk about it, but that's how it feels to me."

  "And is that what Jeremy is doing? Slipping away?"

  "Why don't we wait to answer that," said Dr. Greenwald, "until we see what he's like when he's conscious?"

  "Dr. Greenwald," said Step. "I think you'll understand-we want to give a blessing to my son, and we'd like to be able to lay our hands directly on him. We also anoint him with a single drop of pure olive oil, on the brow or the crown of his head. Would that be all right?"

  Greenwald glanced over at Torwaldson. "Oh, I can't see why not. Zap is really a husky little kid. Compared to these others, he's a regular Larry Holmes."

  Dr. Greenwald opened the incubator, and Harv took the oil, anointed Jeremy's forehead with a drop of it, and then said the short prayer that went with it. DeAnne noticed that Dr. Greenwald watched, bowing his head respectfully. Then both Step and Harv touched the baby gently, and Step sealed the anointing, which was the longer prayer, the one that changed according to the needs of the person receiving the blessing, and according to what Step felt impressed to say.

  Only a couple of mont hs ago, thought DeAnne, Step was confirming Stevie, and now he's giving his newest son a different kind of blessing. It felt good to know that her husband was able to do this, was able to call on the powers of heaven on her children's behalf. I can give him milk from my body I nurtured him inside me for nine months, and Step couldn't really share in any of that. But he can give this to our baby.

  The blessing felt powerful to DeAnne as it was going on, and yet when it was done she realized that Step had said nothing about healing. He only blessed Jeremy that the doctors would recognize their own limitations and make no mistakes with him, and that he would soon be home with his mother and father and sister and brothers.

  Dr. Greenwald shook Step's hand after he had sealed up the incubator. "Are you a minister?" he asked.

  "No," said Step. "I'm a computer programmer. Harv's an accountant."

  "Well," said Greenwald. "It still felt good, to see a father do that with his own child. Never seen that before."

  From the other incubator, where the other doctors were gathered, they heard a voice, a soft one, but clear.

  "She's gone." And a moment later, the doctors started moving away. DeAnne heard Dr. Yont murmur, "I'll call the parents."

  DeAnne put her arm around her mother, who seemed quite shaken by this. She noticed, too, that Dr.

  Greenwald took out a handkerchief and wiped his glasses, after which he also brushed at his eyes with the cloth.

  "I never get used to it," he said. "Even when they're not one of mine. Don't like to lose 'em." Then he visibly straightened himself. "Why don't we step on out of the ICU. We don't need to be part of what's going on in there now."

  As he ushered them into the corridor, Dr. Greenwald reassured them. "Your little boy doesn't seem to be in any danger right now, and as for that lethargy, well, I'll have a talk with Tor this afternoon. You'll see some improvement, I promise, once we get the dosage right for his system. Nice to meet you, Mr. Fletcher. Mrs. ..."

  "Brown," said Vette.

  "Nice to meet you," said Harv, shaking his hand. And Greenwald was gone.

  "I feel good about Zap being in his care," said Step. "It has to help, that he really loves these babies. And that he ... you know. That he takes us seriously."

  "Thanks for coming," DeAnne said to Harv.

  "I have an idea," said Vette. Her tone was suddenly bright, leaving behind the somberness of the ICU. It was a gift she had, to know the right moment to turn the mood of a group of people, to get them moving again.

  "I'll have Harv drive me back to the house and you two ride home together in the other car."

  "Fine," said Harv.

  "Thanks," said Step. "I need to talk to DeAnne anyway."

  "One condition," said Vette. "I get the Renault. Air conditioning, you know."

  "We'll open the windows on the Datsun," said Step. "We'll still be just as hot, but our sweat will help water the lawns on either side of the road."

  Once they were alone in the Datsun, DeAnne asked first about the blessing. "Couldn't you have blessed him to be healed?"

  "You think I didn't want to?" asked Step. "You think that wasn't what I planned to do?"

  "You were so fatalistic about him the other day," said DeAnne. "Yesterday I mean. Was that only yesterday? I thought maybe you'd given up on him."

  "I tried to talk about Zap getting better and having a perfectly normal healthy body and I just couldn't say it.

  Maybe it's a lack of faith on my part, or maybe I was being told not to bless him that way. Either way, what could I do? I said what I was able to say." Then he gave one short, derisive laugh. "My atypical dissociative disorder apparently isn't as efficient at providing me with appropriate hallucinations as Stevie's is."

  "So," said DeAnne. "How did it go with Dr. Weeks?"

  "First tell me how you are," said Step. "Pain still bad?"

  "I had a little bleeding, too. I need to lie down more."

  "So now I've got you in this rattly car, vibrating you six ways from Tuesday."

  "It's all the going back and forth to the hospital."

  "So you're saying you should have stayed."

  "I'm not dying, Step, I just hurt and I bleed a little. Tell me about Dr. Weeks, Step. Did you quarrel?"

  "Just listen to the tape," said Step. He pulled the microcassette recorder out of his pocket and pressed the play button.

  For the first while, listening to the conversation in Dr. Weeks's office, DeAnne wanted to shout at him to stop it, he was doing it all wrong, he was deliberately provoking the doctor. But then she realized that for Step, he was actually being quite controlled. And Dr. Weeks really was resisting talking to him. So the fact that he got her to tell her speculative diagnoses was probably quite an accomplishment, as was the way he sat still and listened, so that Dr. Weeks finally did exp
lain adjustment disorder. It sounded exactly like what was going on with Stevie.

  "I can do that," said DeAnne. "Write to friends in Indiana. The school can give me the addresses of the parents, or forward my letters to them, anyway"

  Step pressed stop. "That's not the diagnosis she believes in," he said. "And that's not the condition she intends to treat." Then he pressed play again.

  She listened to the rest of the tape without comment, until it was over. "Well, Step," she said, "I can hardly believe you didn't say anything snotty to her at all as you left."

  "I didn't want to sour anything, in case you wanted to continue the treatment."

  DeAnne was startled. "You mean you think we should?"

  "I didn't know what you'd think," said Step.

  "Yes you did," said DeAnne. "You knew perfectly well what I'd think. Here she is declaring that anybody who believes in a religion is marginally or totally insane-I mean, that's most of human society through most of history"

  "Yes," said Step. "But maybe true sanity didn't exist until people like her emerged."

  "From under a rock, you mean," said DeAnne. "We know a lot of Mormons, Step. But not many hysterical ones, and not many crazy ones, either."

  "Well, there's Sister LeSueur."

  "She's conniving, not crazy," said DeAnne. "The only really crazy Mormon I've known recently is Dr.

  Weeks's own son, and she can't blame that on us."

  "Give her time," said Step.

  "It makes me so mad that she would dismiss what we believe as if it wasn't even worthy of consideration."

  "Well, she believes in a competing religion," said Step. "If ours is true, then hers is kind of silly."

  "Well, ours is true, you know," she said.

  "And hers is kind of silly."

  "As you said all along."

  Step shrugged. "This isn't about I-told-you-so. It's about Stevie. We can try another psychiatrist later. But I don't think he should continue going to a psychiatrist who firmly believes that the only way to help Stevie is to cure us of our religious delusions. Even if she could succeed, it certainly wouldn't help Stevie, since that's not his problem."

  "I agree," said DeAnne.

  "So Dr. Weeks is toast, right?"

  "Right."

  "Only for Lee's sake we tell her that we're going to hold off on continuing treatment for a few months, while we watch Stevie to see if he improves by himself."

  "Excellent," said DeAnne.

  The radio wasn't on very loud, but it happened to start playing "Every Breath You Take" during a momentary pause, and they both noticed it. "They're playing our song," said DeAnne.

  "Weird stuff is happening to us all the time," said Step. "Makes me feel special."

  "Jeremy's problems sure put things in perspective, though, don't they?" said DeAnne. "I mean, it's hard to get excited about Sister LeSueur's silliness when you've seen your baby in a glass box like that. And that anonymous record-"

  "Still bothers me," said Step.

  "Me too," said DeAnne. Then she reached out and put her hand on Step's leg, feeling the muscles flex and move as he moved his foot from the brake to the accelerator. "Step," she said, "thanks for seeing Dr. Weeks. I don't know if I would have been able to get her to come forward with her diagnoses. It was obvious she was trying to keep us from finding out what exactly it was that she was doing to Stevie. If you hadn't kept pushing, we wouldn't have known."

  "I only did it because I knew you were with me on it."

  She squeezed his leg. "I love you, Step."

  "I love you too," he said. "I'd love you even more if you'd remember that I'm very ticklish on my leg and when you squeeze just above the knee like that I'm likely to have a fit and lose control of the car."

  She squeezed his leg again, repeatedly, but even though he was very ticklish there, he had learned how to relax his stomach muscles and resist laughing-a technique that had allowed him to sur vive childhood with an older brother who was a merciless tickler. "You're no fun," she said.

  "Try it again when you're in shape to do some serious tickling."

  "I hope it's soon," she said.

  "So do L"

  When they got home, they found Stevie in the family room sit ting on the couch, and told him the news right away: He wouldn't be going back to Dr. Weeks.

  "Oh, OK," he said. "She was kind of stupid anyway."

  "Oh?" asked DeAnne.

  "She said that Jesus was just like Santa Claus," said Stevie. "Only everybody knows that Santa Claus is just a story."

  "Well," said Step, "she believes that Jesus is just a story, too."

  "That's only because she doesn't listen when he talks to her," said Stevie.

  "I guess not," said Step. He glanced at DeAnne, caught her eye. "Clearly dissociative," he said, grinning.

  She shook her head at him. He shouldn't try to joke like that around Stevie- he was likely to catch the drift of what he was saying.

  "Does this mean I can still play with my friends?" asked Stevie.

  DeAnne sighed. It was one thing to realize that Dr. Weeks was simply playing out her own prejudices, and quite another to sup pose, just because Weeks was no help, that Stevie didn't still need help.

  "I'd rather you played with your brother and sister," said DeAnne.

  "But when I'm not playing with them, I can play with Jack and Scotty and those guys? Cause we got a new kid."

  DeAnne wordlessly got to her feet and left the room. Stevie watched her go in silence.

  "Do what you need to," said Step. "Do what you think is right." Then he, too, left, following DeAnne into the bedroom, where she clung to him in silence for a long while.

  They brought Zap home from the hospital after two weeks in intensive care, with a bill for more than eighteen thousand dollars and no diagnosis. It had finally come down to a day when Step and DeAnne were standing there listening to a doctor who had come in from Chapel Hill. He was describing several procedures and drugs they could try "in case" Zap's condition was caused by this or that, until Step said, "I don't think I want my son being treated for an undiagnosed condition." The Chapel Hill specialist looked at him in surprise; his whole demeanor changed; he was more respectful, almost apologetic for his early tone. "Oh, I didn't realize you were a doctor," he said. There was not a trace of irony in his tone, and so Step realized that this specialist really was proposing things that he might not have so confidently proposed if he had thought Step and DeAnne actually knew anything. That was enough for them.

  The hospital was very good about things. They accepted two thousand dollars and a promise to pay at least half the balance as soon as Step got his option money from Agamemnon-or else the completion money for the

  64 version of Hacker Snack, whichever came first.

  Then they brought Zap home and began the slow process of discovering just exactly how much was wrong with him, and how little they could do about it.

  The only really good thing that had come out of Zap's long hospital stay was that they realized how much they could depend on people in the 1 st Ward who they had thought were merely acquaintances, and now discovered were true friends. Vette remarked on it, too. You have a good ward, she said. They really care about you.

  If only there were something about Stevie's condition that could evoke the same community response that Zap's had brought forth, thought DeAnne. If only they could rally around Stevie, and fast and pray for him.

  Maybe they should tell people about what Stevie was going through, and give them a chance to help him. But no. There was too great a chance that in the case of a mental illness and not a physical one they'd shy away, they'd shun the boy and make his isolation even worse, his descent into madness steeper and faster than ever.

  And could we really blame them? thought DeAnne. If I were a mother of a normal child and I heard that a little boy of his age was seeing hallucinations of imaginary friends, would I really be willing to let them play together? Would I feel so much compassion for someone e
lse's child that I would put my own child at risk of being hurt in some outburst of madness? No, the hurts of the mind were too strange, too invisible, too magical to hope for the same kind of tolerance and help from even the best of people.

  It frightens me, thought DeAnne. Why should I expect others to be better than I am?

  So Stevie's problem remained a matter for their family alone. Until a newspaper article forced them to see things another way.

  12: Friends

  This is the headline on the front page of the Steuben Times-Journal on the morning of Sunday, 21 August

  1983: SERIAL KILLER IN STEUBEH? The headline brought fear to the hearts of parents all over the city, for this was not a tabloid, and the story was not irresponsible shock journalism. The chief of police had formed a task force that included the county sheriffs office and had close liaison with the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation. They were also bringing in outside experts on serial killers, especially those who specialized in the kidnapping and murder of young boys.

  For several months, the police had been deeply concerned about the number of unexplained disappearances of young boys in the Steuben area, cases in which no body was ever found and no motive could be guessed at for the child to have run away, even after the most heartless questioning of the distraught parents. And there was also a rhythm to the disappearances. Not a definite pattern, not a disappearance on a certain day of each month or anything showy like that. Just a space of a couple of months or maybe three between disappearances.

  And for the first time anywhere, the names of all the boys believed to be possible victims of the supposed serial killer were listed together. Their pictures appeared above the fold on the front page. There were seven of them; all of them had disappeared since May of 1982; and the disappearances were becoming steadily more frequent, with less and less time between them.

  This was the lead article; in fact, there were no other article s on the front page except a sidebar on the head of the investigation in Steuben, a detective named Doug Douglas, who had been a rather colorful figure during the civil rights disturbances of the sixties, when he vowed that anyone violating city ordinances would be arrested and taken to the Steuben city jail, but that by God everyone who went into that jail would come out in exactly the same condition they were in when they entered it. Some in those days said that this would let the niggers think they had free reign to do what they wanted in Steuben, but in fact the most important result was that the racial disturbances ended very quickly and were replaced by talk and compromise. Douglas had been chief of police then, the youngest one in Steuben's history. Years later, the mayor who was elected in the Reagan sweep of 1980 demoted him to chief of detectives, and some said it was a long-awaited payback for Douglas's racial evenhandedness in the sixties. But instead of resigning or even complaining, Douglas just kept right on doing his job. The story was designed to reassure the city that one of Steuben's finest was on the case. It was also designed to reassure the black community that even though all the victims were white boys, the investigation would not take on racial overtones, and blacks would not be singled out for harassment.