|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Dr. Mitch Tojian showed up at eleven and presented the family with four tickets to box seats behind the Red Sox's dugout on the first-base line for the next weekend. It would be only the third time Matty had been to Fenway, and the first in a box seat. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Checkout was on the second floor in the business office. Mitch would head down with them; it was moments such as this when the profession felt good, when the dark backroom door faded from view. He handed Terry prescriptions for Matty's medication. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
When his mother and father were a little ahead of them, Matty asked the doctor in a low voice, "Do I still have to take all that?" |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Dr. Tojian put his hand on the boy's shoulder. "Guess you've had it with the medicines, right?" |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
"Yeah," Matty said. "Makes me feel kinda dead." |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Matty shrugged. "I'm weaker, and I don't feel as much." |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
"The way I used to. You know, when I was the other way . . ." |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
For a moment they stopped while his parents moved down the hall. "You liked the way you felt?" |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
"Yes . . ." A darkening in his eyes. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Dr. Tojian could only guess at what lay behind them. Some residue of heightened awareness? Besides his extraordinary strength and agility, his senses had been inordinately acutenight vision, canine olfaction, hearing acuity of a bat. It still boggled the mind how, in the middle of the night, he had managed to find his way home over some thirty miles with a chewed-up hand and foot. Some terrified dogs, they figured, must have attacked him on his way home. They were, of course, closer than they knew, or than Matty could tell them. Police surmised Matty had been taken someplace on the North Shore, since he was first spotted running across Route 1 in Danvers and moving southwest to Carleton. It was easy to trace his route, since all that night police from towns along the way had received frantic calls from people claiming to have seen a gorilla or yeti running through their yards. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
"But you're back to normal again," Mitch said. "Isn't that a lot better?" |
|
|
|
|
|