"Kate Wilhelm - Strangers When We Meet" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wilhelm Kate)

psychiatrist, depending on which hat she happened to be wearing. Now she
had her own graduate students toiling away at her behest. She doubted
they would ever hold her in the same kind of near reverence she felt for
Cal.

He handed her a menu. “Let’s order when they get around to bringing
our coffees,” he said. “Then they’ll leave us alone for a time.”

She had suspected that he had something on his mind other than
getting together with an old friend, but she knew there was no point in trying
to get to it before he was ready. She consulted the menu.

After a waiter brought the coffee and took their order, Cal said, “I read
your piece in the APA Review. Very good work. It got a buzz, didn’t it?”

Before she could respond, he continued in a thoughtful way,
“Mapping the brain. Not a new idea, of course, but a new approach. Like
peeling an onion and mapping each segment as you come to it. No one’s
done that adequately before. How’s it coming?”

“Slowly,” she admitted. “Perhaps an impossible task, ambitious but
not doable. The problem with student subjects is that the little wretches’
brains are all different, and just when I think I’m getting ahead, the brat gets
terminally bored, or else leaves.”

Cal laughed softly. “The joys of brain research.” He sipped his
coffee.

“Drop in at the lab some day and have a look at the model I’m
constructing. It’s pretty awesome.”

Their food arrived and they chatted about the unseasonable May
weather, the worsening traffic day by day in Portland, things
inconsequential. Abruptly, Cal pushed his plate back with most of his crab
cakes remaining, and he leaned forward.

“Keep eating,” he said, “while I tell you a story. Let me tell it all and
then we can talk about it.” He didn’t wait for her nod. “Two weeks ago,” he
said, “there was an accident on the Interstate—a propane tanker
overturned, exploded, and killed several people. You may recall it from the
news. It turned out that a family of three was involved. Donna Hardesty, her
son Travis, and her twenty-five-year-old daughter Rebecca. Mrs. Hardesty
and Travis were killed. Rebecca escaped with a head injury, a concussion,
and some abrasions and bruises. She was brought to the hospital
unconscious, treated and held overnight for evaluation. The following day
when she woke up, the doctor on duty examined her and told her that her
mother and brother had both died. She became hysterical and had to be
quieted with a tranquilizer, but she spent the rest of the day and evening in a
state of shock. Typical post-traumatic shock reaction. They kept her a
second night, and on the following day she was told a second time about