I gave her shoulder a squeeze. "I do want you, Lucy. More than I can tell you now. After all this is over, there's something more I want to say. But right now--" I clapped her arm--"there's a job to be done." "Yes, Kevin," she said, glaring at me for some reason I didn't have time to investigate or interpret at the moment. My patients were waiting for me. They gave me everything else I could possibly need, except enough sleep, and I myself didn't want that. I wanted to heal. I wanted to show my fellow human beings that, though I couldn't receive or transmit thoughts or foretell the future or move things with my mind, all those powers were useless without life, and that was what I could give. I took pride in my work. It was good to stop pain and ugliness, to know that, if it weren't for me, these people would be dead or permanently disfigured. In a sense, they were--well, my children; I felt a warm glow of affection toward them. They felt the same way toward me. I knew because the secret of the hospital soon leaked out--during all those years of peace, the government had lost whatever facility it had for keeping secrets--and people used to come in droves, hoping for a glimpse of me. * * * * * The government pointed out that such crowds outside the building might attract the enemy's attention. I was the most important individual on Earth, they told my followers, and my safety couldn't be risked. The human race at this stage was pretty docile. The crowds went away. And it was right that they should; I didn't want to be risked any more than they wanted to risk me. Plenty of people did come to see me officially--the President, generals, all kinds of big wheels, bringing citations, medals and other obsolete honors they'd revived primarily for me. It was wonderful. I began to love everybody. "Don't you think you're putting too much of yourself into this, Kev?" Lucy asked me one day. I gave her an incredulous glance. "You mean I shouldn't help people?" "Of course you should help them. I didn't mean anything like that. Just ... well, you're getting too bound up in your work." "Why shouldn't I be?" Then the truth, as I thought, dawned on me. "Are you jealous, Lucy?" She lowered her eyes. "Not only that, but the war's bound to come to an end, you know, and--" It was the first part of her sentence that interested me. "Why, do you mean--" And just then a fresh batch of casualties arrived and I had to tend to them. For the next few days, I was so busy, I didn't get the chance to have the long talk with Lucy I'd wanted....