"Van Lustbader, Eric - Dark Homecoming(eng)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Van Lustbader Eric)

He kissed her damp forehead. "You're not going to die."
"Because if I am I have to prepare." He kissed her cheeks. "Honey, I told you-" Her hand sought his, gripping it tightly. "Because if I am I have to see Gideon."
"Who's Gideon?"
Rachel's ice blue eyes went wide as she spasmed up off the bed. The monitors were going blooey and Croaker was howling for the duty nurse.
"Uncle Lew, Oh God-!"
For one brief instant, he stared into eyes so filled with terror he felt utterly and irretrievably lost. Her expression, her emotion, flooded through him like shards of broken glass.
He clutched her to him, as if by this act alone he could keep her safe. "Hold on, Rachie! Hold on!" He picked up the spirit-stone, squeezed placed it back on her, then took it inside his fist.
Rachel's eyes rolled up in their sockets and her hand felt like ice. There was no grip left in it.
He was still howling when three nurses and the doctor on call hurried in with a crash cart. One of the nurses had to hold on to Matty, who was trying to shove her way into the crowded cubicle.
"My girl!" she screamed. "What's happening to my little girl?"
The doctor, a dark-skinned Latino, looked up at Croaker and said in a very civil voice given the circumstances, "Would you mind leaving us to it, sir?"
"Dr. Marsh," Croaker said.
"Already been paged." The Latino doctor's hands were filled with a vial and a hypodermic. He barked orders to one of the nurses, then pulled off the syringe's plastic cap with his teeth. He had no more time for anything but his patient, and for that Croaker was profoundly grateful.
Croaker realized he was still gripping his niece's hand. He stared at the monitors, which looked like they were giving readings for an extraterrestrial. Then, he let go, pushed passed doctor and nurses, and, grabbing hold of his sister, carried her bodily out of the cubicle.
Croaker dragged Matty to the lavatory and, spinning open the cold water tap, pressed her head down into the spray. The water wasn't icy-tap water never was in Florida-but the force of it got her attention. She stopped screaming and kicking, but he caught a sharp elbow in the ribs. He grunted and pushed her face farther down into the sink.
He heard her try to say something and bent down. "What?"
Another jumble of words and he let up on the pressure enough so her head could turn sideways.
"I can't breathe, you bastard," she gasped.
"Now there's a familiar epithet." He reached up for a roll of paper towels that stood atop the empty stainless-steel dispenser.
Then he released his grip on her and she came up coughing and sputtering.
He unrolled the towels, handed a wad to her. She stood, staring down at it as if she did not know what it was. Then a moan welled up from her gut and she began to sob.
"Oh, God, Lew! Oh, my dear, sweet God!"
He took her in his arms, holding her tightly, stroking her damp, disheveled hair. He felt the spasms rack her, felt all the strength go out of her, and he thought back to the time he'd felt this before, when, wet with melting sleet and his father's blood, he'd held his mother. Limp with grief and despair, she had clung to him, her lifeline at the moment of life's severing. Donald Duke was gone, but Matty still had her daughter.
Matty began to shiver and shake uncontrollably. She looked up at him, tears streaming down her face, clearly terrified.
"Lew," she whispered hoarsely, "I can't stop." Her teeth rattled together. "What's the matter with me?"
"Shock," Croaker said. "Honey, it's just shock and exhaustion." He passed a hand over her forehead, smoothing away stray wisps of wet hair. "I'm going to take you home now."
Her eyes had the terrified, haunted look of a doe suddenly caught in the beams of a car's headlights. "But my baby ... What about Rachel?"
Her expression told him clearly that if there was bad news she was in no shape now to hear it.
He led her to a toilet, sat her down on it. "Wait here," he said. "I'll be right back."
Critical Care Dialysis, always quiet, seemed preternaturally still. Terror gripped his heart as he hurried past the central nurses's station. He saw Jenny Marsh with a couple of nurses just outside the drawn privacy curtain of Rachel's cubicle. She was deep in conversation and he tried to slow his headlong rush. He paused for a moment at the briefly deserted nurses' station.
"She's okay, for now," Dr. Marsh said as he came up. She was scribbling something on Rachel's chart. "Dr. Cortinez is in with her."
"What the hell happened?"
"I was hoping you'd tell me. You were with her when she woke up, I understand." Her tone held a certain rebuke. She handed the chart to one of the nurses, nodded to her before turning her full attention on him. "You should've called a nurse, Mr. Croaker."
"I wanted to, but Rachel was adamant. She didn't want me to leave her. I'm sorry. I know it was wrong but I didn't see that I had much choice."
Jenny Marsh appraised him coolly. "Rachel emerges from a coma-which, given her condition, I must say defies medical logic. Even so, I doubt very much whether she could be lucid, let alone adamant."
"That's where you're wrong, Doctor. She was perfectly lucid. We had a conversation." He'd made an initial decision not to mention the spirit-stone, and he knew he had to stand by it. Dr. Marsh's training would never allow her to accept such an arcane explanation. Croaker barely knew whether he did; maybe it was just a coincidence. The only problem with that was he didn't believe in coincidence.
Jenny Marsh looked at him as if he'd just grown wings. "My initial prognosis still applies, Mr. Croaker. She needs that kidney. Without it, she won't make it."
He ran a hand through his hair. "Okay. I get it. How'd my tests come out?"
"You're not compatible." She relented and gave him a rueful smile. "I'm sorry."
Croaker sighed. How the hell was he going to find Rachel a kidney when there wasn't one to be had anywhere? He could not help thinking again of the Bonitas who, according to Bennie, harvested human organs in South America, and now possibly here, for the select few who could pay their no doubt exorbitant price. There must be a way. He couldn't give up hope.
"What can I tell my sister about Rachel?" he asked.
"As I said, she appears stable, but I'm afraid she's lapsed back into a coma," Dr. Marsh said. "We're doing tests now to try to determine what happened to her. It'll be a while-the morning at the earliest. Why don't you take your sister home, Mr. Croaker? There's nothing either of you can do. And we'll call the moment there's any news."
Dr. Marsh was about to turn away when he said, "Lew. My name's Lew." His gaze held hers. "Doctor, about that kidney. There must be a source, something I don't know about." Could she know about the Bonitas? Could they really, as Bennie had claimed, be harvesting organs in this country? "Is there?"
She looked at him. "I've made calls, tried to pull strings. I've pleaded and cajoled and, frankly, once or twice, I've made myself look like a fool. There's nothing more I can do."
But she was not quite done and he knew it. He felt rather than saw her hesitation, and he quickly stepped into the breach. "Doctor, if there is another way, I need to know about it. Please." Like his father, he'd seen enough rich men, predators, corruptors, and thieves to recognize when conscience was warring with convention. Not to say that Jenny Marsh was any of these; it was a truism of the street that matters of conscience happened more often to people of good character and kind heart.
Jenny Marsh looked into his eyes for what seemed a very long time. Then she lifted an arm in silent invitation and he followed her across the Dialysis Unit, through a door marked doctor's lounge. It was a medium-size room filled with cast-off furniture, no doubt donated, and a window that overlooked the Intracoastal. It was empty.
Jenny Marsh shook her head. "I must be out of my mind." She jammed her hands into the pockets of her lab coat. "Look, you have to understand something. All of us in the organ transplant area are scrupulous-and I underline that word-about ethics. We will not be caught alive or dead with an unregistered organ. For us, that it's illegal to deal in stolen organs is almost beside the point. It's morally wrong and we'll have none of it."
Like a strange beast happened upon along a forest path, transforming a peaceful stroll into a tense encounter, Croaker knew their conversation had taken on a new and precarious dimension.
"I'm still listening."
Jenny Marsh drew her shoulders square, seeming to steel herself. "From time to time, I've heard that unregistered organs do surface."