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file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Stephen%20King%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20Pet%20Sematary.htmwho was deeply tanned and well-muscled-—perhaps from a summer working on a roadcrewsomewhere, or painting houses, or giving tennis lessons—and dressed now only in red gym shorts withwhite piping, was going to die no matter what they did. He would be just as dead even if theirambulance had been parked out front with the motor idling when the patient was brought in.Incredibly, the dying man was moving. His eyes fluttered and opened. Blue eyes, the irises ringed withblood. They stared vacantly around, seeing nothing. He tried to move hishead, and Louis exerted pressure to keep him from doing so, mindful of the broken neck. The cranialtrauma did not preclude the possibility of pain.The hole in his head, oh Christ, the hole in his head.“What happened to him?” he asked Steve, aware that it was, under the circumstances, a stupid andpointless question. The question of a bystander. But the hole in the man’s head confirmed his status; abystander was all he was. “Did the police bring him?”“Some students brought him in a blanket sling. I don’t know what the circumstances were.”There was what happened next to be thought of. That was his responsibility too. “Go out and find them,”Louis said. “Take them around to the other door. I want them handy, but I don’t want them to see anymore of this than they already have.”Masterton, looking relieved to be away from what was happening in here, went to the door and openedit, letting in a babble of excited, curious, confused conversation. Louis could also hear the warble of apolice siren. Campus Security was here then. Louis felt a kind of miserable relief.The dying man was making a gurgling sound in his throat. He tried to speak. Louis heard syllables—phonetics, at least— but the words themselves were slurred and unclear.Louis leaned over him and said, “You’re going to be all right, fella.” He thought of Rachel and Ellie ashe said it, and his stomach gave a great, unlovely lurch. He put a hand over his mouth and stifled a burp.“Caaa,” the young man said. “Gaaaaaa—”Louis looked around and saw that he was momentarily alone with the dying man. Dimly he could hearJoan Charlton yelling at the candy-stripers that the hard stretcher was in the supply closet off RoomTwo. Louis doubted if they knew Room Two from a frog’s gonads; it was, after all, their first day on thejob. They had gotten a hell of an introduction to the world of medicine. The green wall-to-wall carpetwas now soaked a muddy purple in an expanding circle around the young man’s ruined head; theleakage of intercranial fluid had, mercifully, stopped.file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Ste...%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20Pet%20Sematary.htm (52 of 333)7/28/2005 9:21:49 PM