“ Duncan!” Sara Wetherbee cried. She couldn’t have been more startled. Her hand was poised inches from Duncan ’s door. She had been about to knock when Duncan yanked it open and confronted her. He was clad in nothing but soggy Jockey shorts. “My God!” cried Sara. “What’s happened to you?”

Duncan did not recognize his lover of two and a half years. What he needed was air. The crushing pain in his chest had spread throughout his lungs. It felt as if he were being stabbed over and over again. Blindly he lurched forward, reaching out to sweep Sara from his path.

“ Duncan!” Sara cried again as she took in his near nakedness, the bleeding scratches on his arms, his wild, dilated eyes, and the grimace of pain on his face. Refusing to be thrust aside, she grabbed his shoulders and restrained him. “What’s the matter? Where are you going?”

Duncan hesitated. For a brief moment Sara’s voice penetrated his dementia. His mouth opened as if he were about to speak. But no words came. Instead he uttered a pitiful whine that ended in a gasp as his tremors coalesced into spasmodic jerks and his eyes disappeared up inside his head. Mercifully unconscious, Duncan collapsed into Sara’s arms.

At first Sara struggled vainly to hold Duncan upright. But she was unable to support him, especially since Duncan ’s jerks became progressively more violent. As gently as possible Sara let Duncan ’s writhing body fall across the threshold, half into the hall. Almost the moment he touched the floor, Duncan ’s back arched up and his jerks rapidly coalesced into the rhythmical throes of a grand mal seizure.

“Help!” Sara screamed as she glanced up and down the hall. As she might have expected, no one appeared. Aside from the noise Duncan was making, all she could hear was the percussive thump of a nearby stereo.