The subdued air disappeared, and the voices chirped loudly and happily around him again. All was pleasant, comfortable, secure.
Then one morning his heart beat heavily, awakening him from his nap. His eyelids tore open to a weird sight. Several strange men and woman stood around him. They were dressed in white, and he was in a hospital bed. As he traced a rubber tube from its stand-hung bottle down to his arm, a rush of unpleasant sensations, twinges, pains, stiffnesses swarmed back into him.
Reluctantly he heard the doctor speak and he tried to pay no attention. "The adrenalin did it. He's coming around, I think. No, dammit, he's closing his eyes again. Doesn't seem interested. I thought for a minute...."
Baxter clenched his eyes tightly and tried to ignore the burning emptiness of his emaciated stomach, the harsh roughness of the hospital sheets against his weak, bed-sore calves. The drug was fire in his veins, and his heart threatened to jump out of his breast.
Annie, where are you?
A soft, nonverbal little response touched his wracked brain, inviting him to return. He concentrated, blocking out the muttering voices around him....
"—can't keep a man his size alive indefinitely with intravenous—better phone Mrs. Baxter—call a priest, too."
He made it. He was back in the crib. Rolanda was pulling up the nursery shades terminating his nap. The phone was ringing.
"Be right back, sweetheart," Rolanda said. "Mother has to answer the phone."