Ralph looked from Clotho (who took a step backward, losing what was left of his smile) to Lachesis.

“Your friend says you’re not angels. So here are they -?

Playing poker six or eight floors farther up? And I suppose God’s in the penthouse and the devil’s stoking coal in the boiler-room. “I No reply. Clotho and Lachesis glanced doubtfully at each other.

Lois plucked at Ralph’s sleeve, but he ignored her.

[“So what are we supposed to do, guys? Track down your little bald version of Hannibal Lecter and take his scalpel away? Well, fuck you.”

] Ralph would have turned on his heel and walked out then (he had seen a lot of movies, and he knew a good exit-line when he heard one), but Lois burst into shocked, frightened tears, and that held him where he was. The look of bewildered reproach in her eyes made him regret his outburst at least a little. He slipped his arm back around Lois’s shoulders, and looked at the two bald men defiantly.

They exchanged another glance and something-some communication just above his and Lois’s ability to hear or understandpassed between them. When Lachesis turned to them again, he was smiling… but his eyes were grave.

[I hear your anger, Ralph, but it is not justified. You do not believe that now, but perhaps you may. For the time being, we must set your questions and our answers-such answers as we may give-aside.] [“Why?” I [Because the time of severing has come for this man, Watch closely, that you may learn and know.] Clotho stepped to the left side of the bed. Lachesis approached from the right, walking through Faye Chapin as he went. Faye bent over, afflicted with a sudden coughing-fit, and then opened his book of chess problems again as it eased.

[“Ralph, I can’t watch this I can’t watch them do it.f"I But Ralph thought she would. He thought they both would. He held her tighter as Clotho and Lachesis bent over Jimmy V.

Their faces were lit with love and caring and gentleness; they made Ralph think of the faces he had once seen in a Rembrandt painting-the Night Watch, he thought it had been called. Their auras mingled and overlapped above jimmy’s chest, and suddenly the man in the bed opened his eyes. He looked through the two little bald doctors at the ceiling for a moment, his expression vague and puzzled, and then his gaze shifted toward the door and he smiled.

“Hey! Look who’s here!” Jimmy V. exclaimed. His voice was rusty and choked, but Ralph could still hear his South Boston wiseguy accent, where here came out heah. Faye jumped. The hook of chess problems tumbled out of his lap and fell on the floor. He leaned over and took jimmy’s hand, but jimmy ignored him and kept looking across the room at Ralph and Lois. “It’s Ralph Roberts!

And Paul Chasse’s wife widdim! Say, Ralphie, do you remember the day we tried to get into that tent revival so we could hear em sing ’Amazing Grace’?”

[“I remember, jimmy,”] Jimmy appeared to smile, and then his eyes slipped closed again.

Lachesis placed his hands against the dying man’s cheeks and moved his head a bit, like a barber getting ready to shave a customer. At the same moment Clotho leaned even closer, opened his scissors, and slid them forward so that the long blades held jimmy V."s black balloon-string. As Clotho closed the scissors, Lachesis leaned forward and kissed jimmy’s forehead.

[Go in peace, friend.] There was a small, unimportant snick!

sound. The segment of the balloon-string above the scissors drifted up toward the ceiling and disappeared. The deathbag in which Jimmy V. lay turned a momciitary bright white, then winked out of existence just as Rosalie’s had done earlier that evening. jimmy opened his eyes again and looked at Faye. fie started to smile, Ralph thought, and then his gaze turned fixed and distant. The dimples which had begun to form at the corners of his mouth smoothed out.

“Jimmy?” Faye shook jimmy V."s shoulder, running his hand through

Lachesis’s side to do it. “You all right, jimmy?… Oh shit.”

Faye got up and left the room, not quite running.

Clotho: [Do you see and understand that what we do, we do with love an respect? That we are, in fact, the physicians of last resort?

It is vital to our dealings with you, Ralph and Lois, that you understand that”]. [“Yes.”] [“Yes.”] Ralph hadn’t intended to agree with anything either one of them said, but that phrase-the physicians of last resort-sliced cleanly and effortlessly through his anger. It felt true. They had freed jimmy V. from a world where there was nothing left for him but pain.

Yes, they had undoubtedly stood in Room 317 with Ralph on a sleety afternoon some seven months ago and given Carolyn the same release.

And yes, they went about their work with love and respect-any doubts he might have had on that score had been laid to rest when Lachesis kissed jimmy V."s forehead. But did love and respect give them the right to put him-and Lois, too-through hell and then send them after a supernatural being that had gone off the rails Did it give them the right to even dream that two ordinary people, neither of them young anymore, could deal with such a creature?

Lachesis: [Let us move on from this place. It’s going to fill up with people, and we need to talk.]

[“Do we have any choice?”]

[There is always a choice.”] came back quickly, colored with overtones Of surprise.

Their answers [)’es, of colirve.”

Clotho and Lachesis walked toward the door; Ralph and Lois shrank back to let them pass. The auras of the little bald doctors swept over them for a moment, however, and Ralph registered the taste and texture: the taste of sweet apples, the texture of light bark.

As they left, side by side, speaking gravely and respectfully to each other, Faye came back in, now accompanied by a pair of nurses.

These newcomers passed through Lachesis and Clotho, then through Ralph and Lois, without slowing or seeming to notice anything untoward.

In the hall outside, life went on at its usual muted pace. No buzzers went off, no lights flashed, no orderlies came sprinting down the hallway, pushing the crash-wagon ahead of them, No one cried “Stat!” over the loudspeaker. Death was too common a visitor here for such things. Ralph guessed that it was not welcome, even under such circumstances as these, but it was familiar and accepted. He also guessed that jimmy V. would have been happy enough with his exit from the third floor of Derry Home-he had done it with no fuss or bother, and he hadn’t had to show anyone either his driver’s license or his Blue Cross Major Medical card. He had died with the dignity that simple, expected things often hold. One or two moments of consciousness, accompanied by a slightly wider perception of what was going on around him, and then poof. Pack up all my care and woe, blackbird, bye-bye.

They joined the bald docs in the hallway outside Bob Polhurst’s room.

Through the open door, they could see the deathwatch continuing around the old teacher’s bed.

Lois: [“The man closest to the bed is Bill McGover, a friciil o. ours. There’s something wrong withe him. Something awful. If we do what you want, could you-?”] But Lachesis and Clotho were shaking their heads in unison.

Clotho: [Nothing can be changed.] Yes, Ralph thought. Dorrance knew: done-bun-can’the-undone.

Lois: [“When will it happen?”] Clotho: [your friend belongs to the other, to the third. To the one Ralph has already named Atropos. But Atropos could tell you the exact hour of the man’s death no more than we could. He cannot even tell whom he will take next. Atropos is an agent of the Random.] This phrase sent a chill through Ralph’s heart.

Lachesis: [But this is no place for us to talk. Come.] Lachesis took one of Clotho’s hands, then held out his free hand to Ralph. At the same time, Clotho reached toward Lois. She hesitated, then looked at Ralph.