I swung on Jim. “Go pound on the door! Tell them to let you out! Get Ren! Tell Ren to bring a doctor, someone to help us!”
“He’s . . . dead?”
“No! Unconscious. He may be dying. Get help.”
They believed that Dr. Weatherby was dying. He lay in a room off our main apartment now, still unconscious, lying with closed eyes, motionless save for the tiny stirring of his breath.
It was, by earthly standards of day and night, now late afternoon, a soft, pale daylight. After another time of sleep the long night would be upon us.
They could not say how long Dr. Weatherby would live. There seemed nothing to do for him. The shock of his joy over Dolores, the let-down of the tension under which he had been laboring, had brought a collapse.
In hushed tones, with the awe of death upon us, we sat talking. We were on the upper half-story of the apartment off which the small bedrooms opened. I heard the sound of the door downstairs, and heard Ren’s voice. “How is he?”
I leaned over the balcony. “There is no change. Come up, Ren.”
He mounted the incline stairs. With him was a young girl. He introduced her gravely.