"William Mark Simmons - Undead 1 - One Foot in the Grave" - читать интересную книгу автора (Simmons William Mark)

The population sign boasts 30,000, but the downtown area is condensed into a couple of miles of
main street that fronts about eighty percent of the city's shops and stores. The old façades reflect the
central European culture from the boomtown coal mining days of nearly a century ago. Today, aside from
some manufacturing and a dog track north of town, most of the local economy is tied to agriculture and
Pittsburg State University. The mines have long since played out.
The main drag runs north and south. Homes sprawl for miles in all directions but, once you've gone
more than four blocks, either east or west, the houses disperse like boxy children in a wide-ranging game
of rural hide-and-seek.
So getting from one end of the town proper to the other is relatively quick and simple. Especially
after eight p.m. when they roll up the sidewalks.
 This particular night, however, the trip to the hospital seemed interminable. Marsh's voice on my
answering machine had promised "some answers," but his tone sounded just as bewildered as when he
had run the first batch of tests nearly three months ago.
I glanced over at the three books stacked beside me on the passenger seat: Whitman's Leaves of
Grass, Tuchman's A Distant Mirror, and Jung's Man and His Symbols.
How much time, Doc?
Maybe I should have picked up something from the Reader's Digest Book Club, instead.
I checked my watch in the Mount Horeb Hospital parking lot: close to an hour before I was due at
the radio station. Time enough for "some answers."
But enough time for the answer I dreaded most? And the one that loomed right behind it: will my
insurance cover the treatments?
Tough call.
Total your car and your insurance agent consults the Blue Book like it was holy writ. Not so simple
when you total a seven-year-old girl and her mother. Some asshole behind a desk at the home office
wanted to dither over revised actuarial tables and adjust the compensatory payout schedule. Did he think
I was going to cut a special deal with the coroner? Maybe fake a funeral while I took them down to
some arcane body shop and got them up and running, again? Jesus.
So what kind of investment are they going to see in spending tens of thousands of dollars on
dead-end treatments for moi that would probably just delay the inevitable for a few more months?
I walked across the parking lot, empty and empty-handed; nothing left to throw.
The emergency room was as silent as a tomb.
Whoa, scratch that allusion. . . .
Besides, there was a faint whisper of background noise, muffled sounds that put one in mind of a
high-tech fish tank. Aging fluorescents added to the aquarium effect, but the waiting room was empty, as
if some giant ichthyologist had netted it out preemptory to a water change. The lone receptionist surfaced
from her computer terminal just long enough to direct me down the corridor with a desultory wave, then
submerged again without a single word being spoken. I walked the length of the corridor, feeling my feet
drag as if encased in a deep-sea diver's leaden boots.
Dr. Donald Marsh, third-year resident, was waiting for me at the second treatment station. Fair of
skin, the only contrast to his green-bleached-to-white surgical scrubs was his buzz-cut orange hair and a
dusting of freckles. Picture the Pillsbury Doughboy sprinkled with cinnamon.
I didn't recognize the short, broad-faced woman standing on the other side of the treatment table.
Her white lab coat was a sharper contrast to her nut-brown face and hands. Her black hair was braided,
curving around and dropping down across her right shoulder like spun obsidian.
Don smiled as I approached. The woman didn't, glanced down at a clipboard. Looked back up at
me.
"Chris . . ." Marsh's firm hand enveloped mine, didn't squeeze. " . . . how're you feeling?"
"Like I've got one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel," I said, trying for the light touch.
It almost came off.
Marsh looked uncomfortable. With each examination I had watched that look move across his