There Are Doors

“I’m sorry,” he told her. “I didn’t know.”

“I really should take it and lock it up. But you’re going to be discharged today anyhow, so it’s really not worth all the trouble. Just don’t let anybody else see it.”

“I’ll hide,” Tina promised.

“What would you like to drink? We’ve got coffee, tea, and milk.”

He asked whether he could have both tea and milk, and she nodded and brought them in, managing to get a cup, a little hot-water pot, and the glass of milk all on his tray.

“The tea’s for you,” he told Tina when the nurse had gone. He put the teabag into the pot and sprinkled salt from an old-fashioned glass saltcellar into the cup.

“Goody!”

He held the cup for her while she drank. “You don’t need any food? Just this?”

“This is all,” Tina said. “And this was plenty. Eat your egg so you’ll grow up strong.”

With a napkin to protect his fingers, he unscrewed the top of the white porcelain dish.

“Don’t you have to go to school today?”

“I don’t think so,” he said. There was a soft roll on his tray as well. He tore it in small pieces and mixed the pieces with the egg, adding pepper and the pat of butter. “Somebody’s coming for me, but I don’t think it’s to take me to school.”

“Where are they going to take you?”

“I don’t know,” he said. After a moment he added, “I’m not sure I’ll even go.”

About an hour after the nurse took his tray, she returned with a wheelchair. “I’m afraid you’ve got to ride in this,” she said. “Regulations.”

He looked around for Tina.

“It’s under the sheet. You’ll be back in an hour or so.”

He hesitated, then said, “All right. Where are we going?”

“To see the dentist.”

He stared curiously as she wheeled him to the elevator; the hospital seemed merely a hospital like any other, a little less modern than the ones he recalled seeing on TV. Perhaps they all were.

The dentist was a large woman who gave the impression of disliking him and the nurse equally. “Open wide,” she told him, and when he complied leaned so close it seemed she was trying to thrust her head into his mouth. “One came out clean, and one left a piece of root.” She turned to the nurse. “This will be a local. You can go if you want.”

The nurse shook her head.

The dentist shot something into his gum, after which he and the nurse spent a quarter of an hour in the outer office waiting for it to take effect. “If I’d gone,” the nurse said, “she’d have had you out like a candle.” He nodded, wishing she had; he had never liked having his teeth worked on and saw nothing wrong with being out like a light.

There was a stack of magazines. As he leafed through one, it struck him that he had read almost nothing here. Tina would rebuke him if she knew; thinking of it made him feel guilty, and he studied the magazine with more care. It seemed very similar to those of his own world up until page forty, which showed Lara sitting with a pink drink in a tropical garden. Lara’s hair was gold, her skin bronze. “Marcella Masters relaxes at home before beginning work on Atlantis,” read the caption.

He tore the page out, folded it, and put it in the pocket of his pajama shirt. The nurse seemed scandalized but did not protest. After that he flipped through magazines energetically until the dentist summoned him back to her chair, but he found nothing more.

Fanny was waiting for them when they returned to his room. She showed the nurse her badge and a letter, at which the nurse appeared impressed. “He’s all yours, Sergeant, if you want him.”

Fanny grinned at him. “I do.”

The nurse opened his locker and glanced inside. “I’ll have to get his laundry. It shouldn’t take long.”

“Okay,” Fanny told her. To him she said, “You look pretty damned awful with all that tape on your face.”

He told her he felt all right.

The nurse said, “He’s lost a couple of teeth too, Sergeant. In a week or so he should see a dentist about getting a bridge. In two or three days a doctor should check his nose. You can take him to Dr. Pille’s office or bring him here. Dr. Pille set his nose last night.”

Fanny said, “Okay.”

When the nurse had gone, Fanny said, “You went back to wherever it is you come from, didn’t you? That time in the restaurant.”

He nodded. “I didn’t mean to, but I did, and I couldn’t get back. Well, once I did, but it only lasted a few minutes. Then I found Lara again and followed her—I think she let me—and here I am.”

“I hope you stay here,” Fanny told him. “I’m responsible for you now, and I’ll catch hell if I lose you. Do you have to sit in that thing?”

“No,” he said. He stood to show her, then sat beside her on the bed. That reminded him of Tina; he reached beneath the sheet and pulled her out.

She said, “Hey! They’re not supposed to see me here.”