"Lisa Goldstein - The Narcissus Plague" - читать интересную книгу автора (Goldstein Lisa)

sign a release form." She waved her hand, nearly knocking over the glass
of champagne she had set down. "They all agreed that if they got the
plague I could administer the drug. Our receptionist Debra was one of
people who manifested symptoms."
Debra nodded. "So she gave me a pill --"
"You're the one who did the answering machine message!" I said,
recognizing her voice.
"Oh my God!" Debra said, and ran down the hallway.
"You see, you don't remember what happened to you when you've been ill,"
Dr. Clark said. "After you recover it seems a blur to you, as if it
happened to someone else."
"How soon will your drug come on the market?" I asked.
"Not as soon as I'd like, unfortunately. Because of the crisis the Food
and Drug Administration is moving as quickly as possible, but even at
their quickest they're not very fast. And a good many of them are out with
the plague. Have you ever tried dealing with a bureaucrat with the
plague?"
I nodded sympathetically.
"At the soonest we'll get FDA approval in six months, maybe a year." She
took a bottle of pills off her desk. "Here they are."
The pills -- red and yellow capsules -- caught the light and shone like
jewels. "How long does the cure take?"
"A week. The pills should be taken twice a day. But the results are
immediate, within a few minutes of taking the first pill."
"And are there side effects?"
"None that we know of."
I cleared my throat. "My -- uh, my boyfriend Mark --"
Dr. Clark shook her head. "I'm sorry -- I can't prescribe anything to
anyone who hasn't signed a release form. I don't want to jeopardize our
standing with the FDA."
She set the bottle back on its shelf. Just fourteen of them, and Mark
would be the person he had been before. If I could distract her somehow
... But there were at least a dozen people crowded into the doctor's
office. There was no way I could get a pill.
I got some background information from Dr. Clark -- where she was born,
where she went to school -- and made my way back to the office.
My editor Thomas stopped me before I got to my cubicle. "Amy," he said.
There was an edge of excitement in his voice I had never heard before.
Because of the plague I never know what to expect from the paper. Some
days the printers run whole sections of autobiography, some days they
catch it in time and leave huge parts of the paper blank. "What is it?" I
asked.
"Gary got the plague," he said. "You've got to come see this."
"Gary? How can you tell?"
"Come on," he said.
Gary seems to have always had the plague -- that is, Gary has never paid
attention to anyone else in his life. Unlike the victims of the plague,
though, he's always been very sneaky about it, managing to turn the
conversation toward himself with all the subtlety and dexterity of a
master chess player. Intrigued, I followed Thomas down the hall.