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file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Stephen%20King%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20Pet%20Sematary.htmwould have left her a junkie if she had lived. But of course everyone knew she wasn’t going to live. Iguess that’s whyshe’s such a. . secret to all of us. Because we wanted her to die, Louis, we wished for her to die, and itwasn’t just so she wouldn’t feel any more pain, it was so we wouldn’t feel any more pain, it was becauseshe was starting to look like a monster, and she was starting to be a monster . . . oh Christ I know howawful that must sound. . .“She put her face in her hands.Louis touched her gently. “Rachel, it doesn’t sound awful at all.”“It does!” she cried. “It does!”“It just sounds true,” he said. “Victims of long illnesses often become demanding, unpleasant monsters.The idea of the saintlike, long-suffering patient is a big romantic fiction. By the time the first set of sorescrops up on a bed-bound patient’s butt, he— or she—has started to snipe and cut and spread the misery.They can’t help it, but that doesn’t help the people in the situation.”She looked at him, amazed . . . almost hopeful. Then distrust stole back into her face. “You’re makingthat up.”He smiled grimly. “Want me to show you the textbooks? How about the suicide statistics? Want to seethose? In families where a terminal patient has been nursed at home, the suicide statistics spike right upinto the stratosphere in the six months following the patient’s death.”“Suicide!”“They swallow pills, or sniff a pipe, or blow their brains out. Their hate . . . their weariness . . . theirdisgust. . . their sorrow . . .“ He shrugged and brought his closed fists gently together. “The survivorsstart feeling as if they’d committed murder. So they step out.”A crazy, wounded kind of relief had crept into Rachel’s puffy face. “She was demanding. . . hateful.Sometimes she’d piss in her bed deliberately. My mother would ask her if she wanted help getting to thebathroom . . . and later, when she couldn’t get up anymore, if she wanted the bedpan. . . and Zelda wouldsay no . . . and then she’d piss the bed so my mother or my mother and I would have to change thesheets. . . and she’d say it was an accident, but you could see the smile in her eyes, Louis. You could seeit. The room always smelled of piss and her drugsshe had bottles of some dope that smelled like Smith Brothers’ Wild Cherry cough drops and that smellwas alwaysfile:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20St...20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20Pet%20Sematary.htm (162 of 333)7/28/2005 9:21:49 PM