"Kristine Kathryn Rusch - The Questing Mind" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rusch Kristine Kathryn)

He leans against the frame, exhaustion making his limbs shudder. The television
blares menacing music that leads to another set of commercials. The show will
end soon. He has to get back to his bed before the nurses find him.

As he makes his way back, hand pressed against the wall, he wishes for a cane.
Something to lean on to make his passage easier. It isn't until he reaches the
Sahara carpet that he thinks to wonder at the lock itself: who was he trying to
keep out of his study? Until he became ill, he lived alone.

He demands to see the doctors, and the nurses drive him to cold sterile offices:
the first on Rodeo Drive near all the exclusive shops. This child with bright
red hair, the nurse tells Brasher, is his personal doctor, the person who has
treated him for the last sixteen years.

Brasher doesn't recognize him.

Nor does he recognize the waiting room: Empty except for him, filled with blue
chairs that matched the blue carpet and the white walls. No magazines lie on the
table. Instead someone has installed a television set in front of each seat, and
thoughtfully provided the viewer with a remote.

The examining room is even colder than the waiting room. He sits on the gumey
with his clothes on, feeling naked nonetheless, wishing he could lie down, but
knowing that he shouldn't. The doctor treats him like a baby, and speaks in that
sing-song voice reserved for children, the mentally unstable, and those who
don't speak English.

"Sometimes," the doctor says, "the mind leaves before the body does. I'm sorry,
Reed. I know this is hard for you, but you have enough money. You have lived a
full life. Lie back for your remaining years and relax."

The advice of the young. Brasher asks a few more questions, all about the
progression of the doctor's version of Brasher's disease, and learns that it
matches his memories of himself: the quick onset (rare, the doctor says), the
rapid deterioration (tragic, the doctor says, but understandable, given the loss
of your wife). The doctor-child's eyes have no understanding, however, and
Brasher wants to demand how the doctor would feel if it were his mind, his life,
being eroded away bit by tiny bit.

But he does not. He did not come for compassion. He came for answers. He has
received neither.

The second doctor's office is in a clinic on the revitalized section of
Hollywood Boulevard. The clinic has a large sign over the door which announces a
specialty in geriatric services. The waiting room is designed for people his
daughter's age: Elvis Presley blares on the speakers, books line the walls, and
photographs of Hollywood in the fifties and sixties rest beneath the glass on
the coffee table. He does not feel old here: he feels ancient, as if he should
have died years ago.