"I'll bet!" he said. He was beginning to feel better. "Well, go ahead."
Pheola went over to his side, carefully pulled the blanket down, and with help from the nurse, drew his gown down from over his hairy chest. She laid hands on him and stood there for many minutes with her eyes closed.
"I'm doing it," she said at last. "I have sort of peeled off the top, and I can shred it away, a little at a time."
"How long will this take?" Maragon grumbled, already beginning to sound more like his old self.
"A couple hours," she said. "And hush!"
At Doc Swartz's suggestion I stayed there with Pheola. "She depends on you, Lefty," he whispered.
Toward the end of the two hours they were giving Pete anti-coagulant injections. "No sense letting another clot form just as soon as Pheola breaks up this one," Swartz said. "This way we have a good chance that the open wound will form some scar tissue. Sure, the artery will have lost some flexibility, but the danger of another coronary will be past."
They consider the first six days the danger time. At the end of that period Pheola confirmed that the open sore was gone and that both areas of clotting had been repaired by Maragon's body's own restorative processes. They let him out of the hospital at the end of another week.
I went to see him with Pheola the first day that he spent back at his desk. He didn't seem in any way changed by his ordeal. I suppose, when you live as close to all the manifestations of Psi as Pete does, that very little can surprise you.