"Replica04 - Perfect Girls - Kaye, Marilyn" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kaye Marilyn)

"I don't know, she just fainted," Mrs. Morgan said worriedly.
The doctor knelt down beside Amy. "Does she have any allergies?"
"No," Tasha told her. "None."
"Has she ever fainted before?"
Tasha shook her head fiercely. "No, she's never sick!"
The doctor took Amy's wrist. "Her pulse is very rapid. We need to get her to a hospital."
"I'll call nine-one-one," Mr. Morgan said.
"Is she going to be okay?" Eric asked.
"It's probably just nerves," Jeanine said.
Competition officials had joined them now, and the doctor was busily trying to shoo everyone away. Tasha was pushed to the side. She looked at her brother and thought she'd never seen him so pale before. He looked almost as scared as she felt.
Then paramedics arrived and lifted Amy onto a stretcher. "I want to go with her," Tasha cried out.
"I'm coming, too," Eric declared.
But Mrs. Morgan took over. "No, you all stay here; I'll go with her," she instructed them in a rush. To Mr. Morgan she said, "Call Amy's mother; the number's in my suitcase." All over the ballroom, people were standing to get a look at the commotion.
Eric and Jeanine followed the stretcher out of the room, and Mr. Morgan hurried off to find a telephone. Tasha didn't move. She was in a state of shock, paralyzed with fear and disbelief.
Mr. Drexel put his hand on her shoulder. "Don't worry, dear," he said comfortingly. "People get very tense at these occasions, more than they realize. This isn't the first time a participant has passed out. I'm sure your friend will be fine."
But of course, he didn't understand. Other people fainted, not Amy.
Amy was invincible.


5

Amy lay flat on her back. She could hear a faint, rhythmic drumbeat within the thick glass that surrounded her. From beyond the glass, she saw streaks of red orange. They were accompanied by a crackling sound, and she was starting to feel warm, too warm. . . . It was a fire! She was trapped in a fire!
She woke with a gasp. There was no glass, no fire—it had just been her old, familiar dream. The same dream that had haunted her since she was a child and that had recently been explained. The glass was Amy's incubator in the lab, and the fire was the lab explosion. Amy had been the last baby taken out, but not before the explosion went off earlier than planned. She had almost died. Still, she hadn't had the dream in quite a while. What could have brought it on now?
She realized she was gazing up at a white ceiling, and she was confused. The ceiling of her bedroom was blue . . . memories edged their way into her consciousness. New York, the essay competition, the fancy hotel . . .
But this wasn't a fancy hotel room. It was a room she'd never seen before, and yet it was familiar. Everything was white, and it had a smell . . . not a bad smell, a very clean smell. Antiseptic. Like a hospital.
Then she was truly awake, and her immediate memory flooded back. Dinner, the ballroom, falling . . . She sat up. She felt a little dizzy, but not terrible. She wriggled her toes and tentatively lifted each leg. Nothing seemed to be broken. There were no tubes attached to her arms, and all body parts seemed to be functioning. Gingerly she felt her head. No bandages, no wounds.
There was a light rap on the door, and then it opened. A young, bright-eyed woman in a white pantsuit, with a stethoscope around her neck, bounced in. When she saw Amy sitting up, she smiled.
"Welcome back to the land of the living! How are you feeling?"
"Okay, I guess," Amy said. "What happened? How did I get here?"
"By ambulance," the woman told her. "You fainted at dinner last night."
Amy was incredulous. "I fainted"? That's impossible, I've never fainted in my life."
"Well, you fainted last night," the woman repeated firmly. "If you don't believe me, you can ask Mrs. Morgan. She came with you in the ambulance."
"Where is she?"
"Actually, she left just a few minutes ago. She was exhausted after sitting by your bed all night. I'm sure she'll be back later. Now, let's see how you're doing."
As the woman bent over her with the stethoscope, Amy read her name tag. TAMMY RENFROE, R.N. She looked like a Tammy, Amy thought. Blond and perky. Back in Los Angeles, when her mother had been in the hospital and Amy had visited daily, the nurses had all been upbeat too. She wondered if nurses had to take classes in cheerfulness.
Tammy popped a thermometer into Amy's mouth and then checked her pulse and her blood pressure.
"How am I?" Amy mumbled.
"Everything looks just fine," Tammy told her with another bright smile. She removed the thermometer and studied it. "Normal," she said.
"Can I leave now?" Amy asked hopefully.
"The doctor needs to take a look at you first."
Amy didn't even know what time it was. She raised a hand to look at her watch, but it was gone. "Where's my watch?"
"It's locked up, for safekeeping, at the nurses' station," Tammy assured her. "We always do that with patients' valuables." She looked at her own watch. "It's eight in the morning. You didn't eat any dinner last night. You must be starving!"
"Not really," Amy said. "Well, maybe I'm a little hungry."
"Someone will be bringing your breakfast around in a moment. Now, rest quietly, okay?" With another perky smile and a wink, the nurse left the room.
Amy sank back on the bed and tried to collect her thoughts. What could have made her faint? A person fainted when she was sick, and she was never sick. True, she wasn't Superman. If a bus hit her, she'd go down, not the bus. She wasn't indestructible. But her immune system was extraordinary. She thought back to the previous evening. She'd been eating soup just before . . . could she have gotten food poisoning? No. If that had been the case and something had been wrong with the soup, more people would have been sick. The way Eric had been slurping it down, he should be dead.
Well, whatever it was, Amy felt fine. And she wanted to leave. She wanted to get out of there before the doctor came.
She'd never been to a doctor in her life. There was never any medical reason for her to go. As for her birth certificate, her vaccinations, the general checkup that was required for school registration—all those had been forged by Dr. Jaleski. He had to do that for her. As her mother had once told her, Amy could never go to see a regular doctor. Any close examination might reveal her special nature.
Amy's hands went to her throat. She fingered the crescent moon hanging from her necklace and was glad the nurses hadn't taken that away with her watch. What would Dr. Jaleski advise her to do now? She knew she couldn't allow the doctor here to do any tests.
It occurred to her that the nurse hadn't noticed anything unusual about her heart or her blood pressure. Apparently, she wasn't any different from normal people in that respect. Which was very interesting . . .
There was a knock on the door, but it wasn't the doctor. This time it was a girl in a pink smock, with Amy's breakfast. She didn't say a word, just placed the tray on the table by Amy's bed and left.