Billy calls for help from Richie, who sends a mob doctor to treat Billy's hand and then arrives in person to terrorize the Gypsy camp. After Richie finishes with the Gypsies, Lemke agrees to meet with Billy. Lemke brings a strawberry pie with him and adds blood from Billy's wounded hand to it. The weight loss will stop for a short time, but then resume unless Billy passes the curse to someone else by getting them to eat the pie. Lemke implores Billy to eat the pie himself so that he may die with dignity. After finding Richie's severed hand in his car and learning that Richie has been murdered, Billy returns home and intends to give the pie to Heidi, whom he has come to blame for his predicament. The next morning, though, he finds that both she and their daughter Linda have eaten from the pie. Realizing that they are both doomed, he cuts a slice for himself so that he can join them in death. "Thinner" is partly based on an episode in Stephen King's own life. He weighed and was warned by his doctor that he needed to lose weight and stop smoking. Although he did in fact lose the weight, he was angered by the fact that the decision to lose weight was not really his own, but, he felt, had been forced on him by his doctor. He began to contemplate what would happen if someone were to lose weight and then be unable to stop losing weight—and the idea for "Thinner" began to germinate in his mind.