after a second or two he found it : there 's something almost cosmically funny about them giving it to me , you know ... and earlier bobbi had said : the batteries kept falling over and they were wild , just wild ... his cheeks felt hotly flushed , as if with fever , but his forehead felt as cold as an icepack c even the steady pulse of pain from above his left eye seemed cold ... shallow stabs hitting with metronomelike regularity .