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file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Stephen%20King%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20Pet%20Sematary.htmshunt operation, designed to drain excess fluid, had not looked very minor to him. But he kept his mouthshut, telling himself just to be grateful the operation existed at all.“Of course,” Tardiff went on, “there’s still a large possibility that your kid just has a real big head for anine-month-old. I think a CAT-scan is the best place to start. Do you agree?”Louis had agreed.Gage spent a night in Our Sisters of Charity Hospital and underwent general anesthesia. His sleepinghead was stuck into a gadget that looked like a giant clothes dryer. Rachel and Louis waited downstairswhile Ellie spent the day at Grandma and Grandda’s, watching “Sesame Street” nonstop on Grandda’snew video recorder. For Louis, those had been long, gray hours in which he found himself totting upsums of varying ugliness and comparing results. Death under general anesthesia, death during a shuntoperation, mild retardation as a result of hydrocephalus, cataclysmic retardation as a result of same,epilepsy, blindness. . . oh, there were all sorts of possibilities. For really complete disaster maps, Louisremembered thinking, see your local doctor.Tardiff had come into the waiting room around five o’clock. He had three cigars. He plugged one intoLouis’s mouth, one into Rachel’s (she was too flabbergasted to protest), and one into his own.“The kid is fine. No hydrocephalus.”“Light this thing,” Rachel had said, weeping and laughing at the same time. “I’m going to smoke it till Ipuke.”Grinning, Tardiff lit their cigars.God was saving him for Route 15, Dr. Tardiff, Louis thought now.“Rachel, if he had been hydrocephalic, and if the shunt hadn’t worked. . . could you have still lovedhim?”“What a weird question, Louis!”“Could you?”“Yes, of course. I would have loved Gage no matter what.”“Even if he was retarded?”“Yes.”file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20St...20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20Pet%20Sematary.htm (242 of 333)7/28/2005 9:21:50 PM
file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Stephen%20King%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20Pet%20Sematary.htm“Would you have wanted him institutionalized?”“No, I don’t think so,” she said slowly. “I suppose, with the money you’re making now, we could affordthat . . . a really good place, I mean. . . but I think I’d want him with us if we could. . . Louis, why doyou ask?”“Why, I suppose I was still thinking of your sister Zelda,” he said. He was still astonished at this eerieglibness. “Wondering if you could have gone through that again.”“It wouldn’t have been the same,” she said, sounding almost amused. “Gage was . . . well, Gage wasGage. He was our son. That would have made all the difference. It would have been hard, I guess, but. . .would you have wanted him in an institution? A place like Pineland?”“Let’s go to sleep.”“That’s a good idea.”“I feel like I can sleep now,” she said. “I want to put this day behind me.”“Amen to that,” Louis said.A long time later she said drowsily, “You’re right, Louis . . just dreams and vapors. . .““Sure,” he said, and kissed her earlobe. “Now sleep.”It seemed to me to have a quality of prophecy.He did not sleep for a long time, and before he did, the curved bone of the moon looked in the windowat him.43The following day was overcast but very warm, and Louis was sweating heavily by the time he hadchecked Rachel’s and Ellie’s baggage through and gotten their tickets out of the computer. He supposedjust being able to keep busy was something of a gift, and he felt only a small, aching comparison to thelast time he had put his family on a plane to Chicago, at Thanksgiving. Ellie seemed distant and a trifleodd. Several times that morning Louis had looked up and seen an expression of peculiar speculation onher face.Conspirator’s complex working overtime, boyo, he told himself. She said nothing when told they wereall going to Chicago, she and Mommy first, perhaps for the whole summer, and only went on eating herfile:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20St...20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20Pet%20Sematary.htm (243 of 333)7/28/2005 9:21:50 PM
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