Doctor Sleep

most of them already seeping blood. His face was disfigured, his body twisted in at least three differentdirections.
    “Fred? It’s Dan Torrance. Can you hear me?”
    The one remaining eye opened. The breathing hitched. There was a brief rasp that might have been yes .
    Dan went into the bathroom, wetted a cloth with warm water, wrung it out. These were things he had done many times before. When he returned to Carling’s bedside, Azzie got to his feet, stretched in that luxurious, bowed-back way cats have,and jumped to the floor. A moment later he was gone, to resume his evening’s patrol. He limped a little now. He was a very old cat.
    Dan sat on the side of the bed and gently rubbed the cloth over the part of Fred Carling’s face that was still relatively whole.
    “How bad’s the pain?”
    That rasp again. Carling’s left hand was a twisted snarl of broken fingers, so Dan took the right one. “You don’tneed to talk, just tell me.”
    ( not so bad now )
    Dan nodded. “Good. That’s good.”
    ( but I’m scared )
    “There’s nothing to be scared of.”
    He saw Fred at the age of six, swimming in the Saco with his brother, Fred always snatching at the back of his suit to keep it from falling off because it was too big, it was a hand-me-down like practically everything else he owned. He saw him at fifteen, kissinga girl at the Bridgton Drive-In and smelling her perfume as he touched her breast and wished this night would never end. He saw him at twenty-five, riding down to Hampton Beach with the Road Saints, sitting astride a Harley FXB, the Sturgis model, so fine, he’s full of bennies and red wine and the day is like a hammer, everybody looking as the Saints tear by in a long and glittering caravan offuck-you noise; life is exploding like fireworks. And he sees the apartment where Carling lives—lived—with his little dog, whose name is Brownie. Brownie ain’t much, just a mutt, but he’s smart. Sometimes he jumps up in the orderly’s lap and they watch TV together. Brownie troubles Fred’s mind because he will be waiting for Fred to come home, take him for a little walk, then fill up his bowl withGravy Train.
    “Don’t worry about Brownie,” Dan said. “I know a girl who’d be glad to take care of him. She’s my niece, and it’s her birthday.”
    Carling looked up at him with his one functioning eye. The rattle of his breath was very loud now; he sounded like an engine with dirt in it.
    ( can you help me   please doc   can you help me )
    Yes. He could help. It was his sacrament, what he was madefor. It was quiet now in Rivington House, very quiet indeed. Somewhereclose, a door was swinging open. They had come to the border. Fred Carling looked up him, asking what . Asking how . But it was so simple.
    “You only need to sleep.”
    ( don’t leave me )
    “No,” Dan said. “I’m here. I’ll stay here until you sleep.”
    Now he clasped Carling’s hand in both of his. And smiled.
    “Until you sleep,” hesaid.
    May 1, 2011–July 17, 2012

AUTHOR’S NOTE
    My first book with Scribner was Bag of Bones, in 1998. Anxious to please my new partners, I went out on tour for that novel. At one of the autographing sessions, some guy asked, “Hey, any idea what happened to the kid from The Shining ?”
    This was a question I’d often asked myself about that old book—along with another: What would have happened to Danny’s troubled father if he hadfound Alcoholics Anonymous instead of trying to get by with what people in AA call “white-knuckle sobriety”?
    As with Under the Dome and 11/22/63, this was an idea that never quite left my mind. Every now and then—while taking a shower, watching a TV show, or making a long turnpike drive—I would find myself calculating Danny Torrance’s age, and wondering where he was. Not to mention his mother,one more basically good human being left in Jack Torrance’s destructive wake. Wendy and Danny were, in the current parlance, codependents, people bound by ties of love and responsibility to an addicted family member. At some point in 2009, one of my recovering alcoholic friends told me a one-liner that goes like this: “When a codependent is drowning, somebody else’s life flashes before his eyes.”That struck me as too true to be funny, and I think it was at that point that Doctor Sleep became inevitable. I had to know.
    Did I approach the book with trepidation? You better believe it. The Shining is one of those novels people always