His next actions might seem heroic, he imagined, if someone looked at just the actions without seeing inside his mind. In immense pain he rolled the wheelchair over to the door. He slid down in the chair so that his hands could touch the floor. This caused him so much pain that he fainted for a few minutes. When he woke up he remembered what he was trying to do. He looked at the floor and saw the hairpins which he had noticed earlier. They had fallen out of Annie's hair when she had rushed at him. Slowly, painfully, he managed to pick them up. There were three of them. Sitting up again in the chair brought fresh waves of pain. While writing Past Cuts he had taught himself to open locks with things like hairpins. It had helped him write abour a carthief. It was surprisingly easy. Now he was going to open the door and go out into the house. What made him overcome all his pain and do this? Was it because he was a hero? No, it was because he needed some Novril tablets and was afraid that Annie would not return for hours or would not give them to him when she did return. And he felt he needed an extra supply, to help him during those periods when she was too angry with him to give them to him. It was an old, heavy lock. One pin sprang out of his hands, skated across the wooden floor and disappeared under the bed. The second one broke - but as it broke, the door opened. 20 Thank you, God,' he whispered. A bad moment followed - no, not a bad moment, an awful moment - when it seemed as if the wheelchair would not fit through the door. She must have brought it into the room folded up, he realized. In the end he had to hold on to the frame of the door and pull himself through it. The wheels rubbed against the frame and for one terrible moment he thought the chair was going to stick there. But then he was suddenly through the door. After that he fainted again. When he woke up, the light in the corridor was different. Quite some time had passed. How long did he have before she returned? Fifty hours, like the last time, or five minutes? He could see the bathroom through an open door down the corridor. Surely she would keep the medicine there. He rolled down the corridor and stopped at the bathroom door. At least this door was a little wider. He turned himself round so that he could go into the bathroom backwards, ready for a quick escape if necessary. Inside the bathroom there was a bath, an open cupboard for storing towels and blankets, a basin - and a medicine cupboard on the wall over the basin! But how could he reach it from his wheelchair? It was too high up the wall. And even if he could reach it with a stick or something, he would only make things fall out of it and break in the basin. And then what would he tell her? That Misery had done it while looking for some medicine to bring her back to life? Tears of anger - and of shame at his need for the medicine - began to flow down his cheeks. He almost gave in and started to think about returning to his room. Then his eye saw something in the towel cupboard. Previously his eye had only quickly noticed the towels and blankets on the shelves. But there on the floor, underneath all the shelves, were two or three boxes. He rolled himself over to the cupboard. Now he could see some words printed on one of the boxes: MEDICAL SUPPLIES. His heart leapt. 21 He reached in and pulled one of the boxes but. There were many kinds of drugs inside the box - drugs for all sorts of diseases - but no Novril. He just managed to reach a second box. Again he was faced with an astonishing collection of medicines. She must have taken them from hospitals day after day. Most of the drugs were in small quantities. She had been careful: she hadn't taken a lot at once because they would have caught her. He searched through the box. There at the bottom were a great many packets of Novril tablets; each packet contained eight tablets. He chewed three tablets straight away, hardly noticing the bitter taste. How many packets could he take without her realizing that he had found the store? He took five packets and placed them down the front of his trousers, to leave his hands tree for pushing the wheels. He looked at the drugs in the box. They had not been in any particular order before he searched the box and he hoped that Annie would not notice any difference. Then, to his honor, he heard the noise of a car. He straightened in the chair, eyes wide. If it was Annie he was dead. He couldn't get back to the bedroom and lock the door in time, and be had no doubt that she would be too angry to stop herself killing him immediately. She would forget that she didn't want to kill him before he had written Misery's Return. She would not be able to control herself. The sound of the car grew ... and then faded into the distance on the road outside. OK, you've had your warning, he thought. Now it's time to return to your room. The next ear really could be hers. He rolled out of the bathroom, checking to make sure that he had left no tracks on the floor. How wide open had the bathroom door been? He closed it a little way. It looked right now. The drug was beginning to take effect, so there was less pain now. His immediate need was satisfied. He was starting to turn 22 the wheelchair, so that he could roll back to his room, when he realized that he was pointing towards the sitting-room. An idea burst into his mind like a light. He could almost see the telephone; he could imagine the conversation with the police station. Would they be surprised to learn that crazy Annie Wilkes had kidnapped him? But he remembered that he had never heard the phone ring. He knew it was unlikely that there even was a phone in the house. But the picture of the phone in his mind drove him on; he could feel the cool plastic in his hand, hear the sound of the phone in the police station. He rolled himself into the sittingroom. He looked around. The room smelled stale and was filled with ugly furniture. On a shelf was a large photograph, in a gold frame, of a woman who could only be Annie's mother. He rolled further into the room. The left side of the wheelchair hit a table which had dozens of small figures on it. One of the figures - a flying bird of some kind - fell off the edge of the table. Without thinking, Paul put out his hand and caught it - and then realized what he had done. If he had thought about it he would not have been able to do it. It was pure instinct. If the figure had landed on the floor it would have broken. He put it back on the table. On a small table on the other side of the room stood a phone. Paul carefully made his way past the chairs and sofa. He picked up the phone. Before he put it to his ear he had an odd feeling of failure. And yes - there was no sound. The phone was not working. Everything looked all right - it was important for Annie to have things looking all right - but she had disconnected the phone. Why had she done it? He guessed that when she had arrived in Sidewinder she had been afraid. She thought that people would find out about whatever had happened in Denver and would ring her up. You did it, Annie! We know you did. They let you go, but you're not innocent, are you, Annie Wilkes? They were 23 all against her - the Roydmans, everyone. No one liked her. The world was a dark place full of people looking at her with suspicion and hatred. So it was best to silence the phone for ever - just as she would silence him if she discovered that he had been in this room. Fear suddenly overcame him and he turned the wheelchair around in order to leave the room. At that moment he heard the sound of another car, and he knew that this time it was Annie.