Chapter 8

The medical team had now put Ray Pinsky out of the healing business for the duration. That is, for the duration of whatever was eating away at his own strength and health.

The constant tests continued, although now most of them were focused more on Ray's failing health than on detecting what there was about the young man that had given him the power to heal the sick.

It was a classic case of "Physician, heal thyself," although Ray was no physician, and the physicians that were working overtime on his problem weren't succeeding in healing him either.

He wasn't bedridden. Not yet, anyway. Ray remained ambulatory and reasonably capable. The problem was, he had recently observed his twenty-ninth birthday, and he was acting like and showing the essential medical profile of a man of — oh, perhaps seventy-five years.

The doctors were distressed. Carolyn Maxwell was in a near-panic, although she usually hid it well behind a cheerful façade.

Things weren't so good for Carolyn, either. The couple's sex life had slowly declined into near nothingness. It had been almost two weeks since Ray had shown any interest in sex whatsoever.

Carolyn was too concerned about Ray's condition to initiate any sexual contact herself. And while she hadn't expressed it in so many words, when the couple did have sex, it was no longer the mind-blowing experience for her that it had once been.

Ray, of course, could tell. His healing abilities were in disuse and whatever residual or related abilities they had provided him in the realm of sexuality - well, those talents also were in obvious decline.

Ray frequently questioned the doctors concerning whether his physical decline meant that he would lose, or perhaps already had lost, the power to heal.

The researchers simply didn't know. But they did know that they were not about to present him with any new opportunities to attempt to heal patients. The one thing they had by now learned for a certainty was that every healing effort Ray engaged in was exacting an extraordinarily high personal cost.

What was most distressing was that, despite having gone for more than a full month between efforts to heal others, Ray's own strength and health were not improving.

The decline was far more gradual now, with his program of near-constant rest, a heavily supervised diet, and just enough carefully monitored exercise to ward off complete muscular decline.

One day in mid-October, Carolyn came back to their suite of rooms, her face a mask of half-concealed agony. Ray could read her well enough to know that somebody — most likely Dr. Lincoln — had delivered more bad news about his prospects.

He had noticed that the medical people were treating Carolyn and Albert Cosgrove as Ray's joint keepers. The doctors were sharing with the two of them news that was, evidently, regarded as too somber for Ray's own delicate sensibilities.

"Okay, Carolyn," he said. "I can tell that something's up. Spit it out."

"What? No. There's nothing. How are you feeling?"

"News flash," Ray said, the sarcasm betraying the hostility he was beginning to feel toward everyone — even his loyal, wonderful Carolyn. "News flash: I'm feeling punk. That's capital-P Punk."

He feebly sang it out, in a self-mocking tone, to the tune of the song from West Side Story:

Hearing that, Carolyn just started bawling.

"I know you have information," Ray said, "and I'm entitled to know whatever they're telling you or Albert, so let's hear it."

Carolyn let it all out, almost without taking a breath. "Dr. Lincoln said you're losing ground, despite your not having done anything — any healing - for a month. She says you're not even holding your own. There's some continuing degradation in your condition, and they haven't been able to do anything about it."

Ray wasn't surprised. "Okay, my numbers are all going to hell. We knew that already. Like I said, I feel shitty."

He didn't sing it, this time.

Carolyn was still crying. "She says this could just — kill you! That if they don't find a way out of it, you'll just keep on losing ground."

"How about that Gatorade stuff?" Ray asked. "I hear that's a marvelous source of quick energy."

"Don't joke about this, Ray. Humor was never your strong suit, even when you were hale and hearty."

"Maybe I'll improve in that area," he said. "They say that tragedy is the fundamental wellspring of humor, you know. Just ask any professional comic. He'll tell you."

"Dr. Hempstead has an extensive supply of whole blood they took from you several weeks ago, when they were still using it for experimentation with transfer subjects," Carolyn said. "He wants to give you back some of your own blood, and see if it provides some positive bounce in your energy levels."

"Even if it does," Ray said, "it's a pretty temporary solution. He can't have all that much of my whole blood available. I mean, a while back, I thought they might be draining me dry, but it wasn't really all that much that they took. And most of what they did take, they've probably used."

"Let them try anything, Ray. Whatever they suggest, let's cooperate. We've got to find your way back. I can't lose you now. We've got to get back what we had."

"It would be awful nice, Babe, if we could. I don't see it happening, though."

Three months and one week after the start of the planned six-month research program at the Cosgrove house, Dr. Hempstead and his small group of assistants suspended their work on the premises.

They would continue off-site, working sporadically on experiments designed to discover a means of transmitting Ray's healing powers to others. But without new people who could be cured by his touch, and without the prospect of there being other such people in the future, there was little call for Hempstead's people to continue doing their work on the Cosgrove premises.

Dr. Lincoln and her two assistants remained and continued to search for ways to restore Ray to good health - or at least to save him from what now appeared, eventually, to be a slow but steady journey toward the end of the road.

It was close to Thanksgiving and the weather in Northern Illinois had turned quite chilly.

Carolyn crawled into bed with Ray and snuggled close. Despite the complete cessation of their sexual contacts now dating back several weeks, she still insisted on remaining close to him and warming his frail body throughout the night.

Ray's weight was dropping steadily, and he didn't look like much anymore. His circulation was poor, and it made him feel cold most of the time.

But Carolyn Maxwell was demonstrating, every day and every night, that when she'd left her old life to join Ray in his, it hadn't just been the good sex that had motivated her.

She was still a professional nurse, although now she had only one full-time, non-paying patient in her charge. Happily, her medical professionalism didn't prevent her from warming Ray's wasting body with her own, every single night. It must have seemed the equivalent of sleeping with her sickly old grandfather, but she kept at it, holding his flaccid penis gently in her hand like an injured bird, sometimes taking it tenderly into her mouth and doing what she could to bring him an echo of their past exquisite sexual pleasures.

Ray no longer could demonstrate his love for her, but he hoped that his eyes were communicating the fact that he had never loved her more.

"Are you awake?" she asked him on one late November night, gently aligning her warm nakedness against him from head to toe.

"Ummm."

"I have some news," she said.

"Ummm."

"You're listening, right?" she said.

"Yeah," Ray mumbled.

"You're going to be a daddy," she said.

"Huh?"

"Wake up, Ray!" she stuck out her tongue and jabbed him with it sharply inside his ear. "You're gonna be a daddy! ... I'm pregnant!"

He woke up, all right. He sat up in bed so quickly that it brought on a spell of dizziness from what had been, for him, strenuous sudden movement.

"How in Hell did that happen?" he said, confounded and shocked by the news.

She giggled. "Usual way, I think," Carolyn said.

"We haven't had sex for ... a long time," Ray said.

"I'm some over two months along," she said.

"I thought you were on the pill."

"I was. Until all this started. This program. When we got here, to Albert's house, I went off the pill, right away."