When Ken awakened about eight o’clock the next morning, he felt as though he were ascending slowly out of a dark pit Mercifully, the mocking voices and hideous images seemed more memory than reality and faded away as the room in which he found himself came steadily into clearer focus. The sun was slanting in through a large window to his left. Its welcome rays were glinting from a metallic apparatus standing just to the right of his bed. He had difficulty turning
his head far enough to see it clearly, but the realization slowly dawned that it was an intravenous pump—and that it was connected to him.