Читать книгу Impuls - Aster - Страница 2

dress warmer, please, autumn is coming, puddles on the sidewalk, you know the world will overpower you if you lose to yourself.

Emily finds "poor" Avis without any problems – Melissa's metaphor hits the mark: tall and thin, Avis Wood is asleep, laughing with his mouth open, right outside the emergency room. Someone has carefully tucked a thermal blanket under his head and tucked his glasses into his pocket.

Emily shakes him lightly on the shoulder, and Avis jumps up like a stung man.

– Huh?!

– I'm from Melissa," Emily explains patiently. – We've been referred to neurology.

– Ahhhh…

He smooths his disheveled hair and somehow slips on his glasses-the thin metal frames make his already gray eyes almost colorless.

– I'm sorry. – He rises. – I've been on twenty-four hours, and now they've thrown a day job on top of it. – Wood yawns, but moves with confidence, unlike Emily, who doesn't know where to go – in six months of work, she's never been to the neurology ward: it's the opposite block.

– On a 24-hour shift? – She follows him on his heels. – Aren't you studying?

– Yeah. – Avis nods, pulling her robe up tighter. – I'm studying at Warwick, we're on vacation.

– Still? – Emily wonders.

– Everyone's on vacation until October. – He holds the door open. – Didn't you know that?

– No, I…" She's lost. – I just went to a different system, I guess.

Emily bites her tongue: twenty years ago it was cool to go to St. George's University; now it's just for people who have nowhere else to go: there's a gray building on the side of the huge hospital, a lecture hall, proudly known as a university. In fact, her magnetic pass said she was a student in the MBBS4 program, a four-year course in medicine, which allowed her to advance no further than the level of a senior nurse.

She was still lucky – it was rare to find a good job after such poor training; and money for another qualification was scarce, and dreams of promotion were safely and far hidden.

So she lowers her gaze to the floor, but Wood no longer pays attention to her; he doesn't seem to care at all-he didn't even ask her name, and he certainly doesn't care what she does.

The neurology department seems times larger than her usual orthopedics or waiting room: behind the giant glass doors is a wide light-beige corridor with many branches; here, wrapped in ebony frames, are the service aisles to the operating rooms and laboratories.

Wood and lofty, brick-and-white finishes are everywhere; by every ivory door are signs: neurologist, neurosurgeon, nephrologist, senior resident, room for junior staff. The biggest door, of course, is by the department head's office: Professor Donald Ray's waiting room, the gilded sign reads.

– I'm going to go find James. Will you wait or come with me? – Wood doesn't even turn around, talking to the wall.

Emily shrugs uncertainly; Avis snorts and, contrary to her expectations, turns down a small corridor on her way to the operating rooms. They put their badge to the lock and push open a barely visible gray door, and enter the lounge of the operating room's junior staff.

Johnson gazes enviously at the huge, airy, light-filled room: upholstered couches, a television, a small kitchen with a red coffee machine humming, a large cooler by the book stacks; another door leads to locker rooms and showers.

On the dark blue couch, a dark-haired man lazily flips through the pages of a reference book. He would seem overly brutal – broad shoulders, three-day stubble, a tattoo above his elbow – but tiny round glasses give his face a strange, almost childlike expression.

– Dr. Harmon? – Avis clears his throat, drawing attention.

– Ah, Wood! – The man pulls back from his book and squints, as if the dioptres in his glasses weren't enough to see them both. – God bless your Mel! We've got four people who didn't make it out today, and all of them are Mary's! So we need new hands, ha ha, that's right, hands. – He laughs. – Here I've asked her, so she can help me out by sending one of her own; maybe we can manage that at least. – Harmon speaks so fast that Emily can hardly perceive the flow of words. – So, hee-hee, get your feet in your hands and go, hee-hee, put our vegetables on shelves, thank God, not the morgue, just the ward shelves, yes, the ward shelves…

He stands up, and Emily involuntarily takes a step back: only now does she notice that James has a large burn scar on the right side of his cheek, the way the burning skin charred and torn like paper. It's as if Harmon is reading her mind – touching the burnt skin with his fingertips, muttering: "Stop staring," and looks her down from above: he's two heads taller than Jones and much broader in the shoulders, making her feel like a real giant; and in the doctor's round glasses she sees her frightened face.

Avis pokes her in the side with a sharp elbow, and Emily looks down ashamed.

– Patients, uh, yes, patients … There's one with a history of stroke, and he wants general anesthesia, what a fool, yes, with a stroke – to general, well, the fool, well," mutters James, after a moment forgetting about the incident. – So if you see something like that, you'd better let me know, you're not stupid, are you? With a stroke – under the general," he keeps repeating, leaving the room.

Emily sighs: she never worked in neurology, but she had to prepare for surgery and take to the procedure, and more than once. A strand of unruly brown hair comes loose, and she tries to tuck it back in, looking in the large wall mirror.

– Are you going to keep your hair like that? – Evis's abrupt voice makes her turn around.

– No, I… uh…" The hairpin slid into the bundle somehow, scratching her skin. – I'm sorry," she adds for some reason.

Wood stares at her, and Emily's knees shake for some reason.

* * *

The wards in the neurology ward at Royal London Hospital are like rooms in an expensive hotel: beds with high, soft mattresses, staff call buttons at the headboard, drawer drawers by each bed; wide, light-colored cabinets along the walls; and water coolers. Almost every room has four patients with similar diagnoses; probably to make it less boring to spend time, or perhaps to make it a little easier for the attending physician. There are no televisions, but there are miniature folding tables hidden at the base of each bed; through the tinted glass of the doors, Emily sees that some of them have laptops on them.

When she first moved to London, she was fascinated by the British way of hanging curtains – thin, arched cotton in pastel shades, gathered in two places, so that the middle is longer than the sides. There's no such thing here-the panoramic windows can't be curtained; but by pressing the mechanism, the blinds can be fully opened and let the pale sun into the rooms.

This was Emily's first time in Block F: her practice was limited to the orthopedic ward, where she had been assigned to work initially, and, very occasionally, to the emergency room. There, the emergency room was the most interesting place to work; but unfortunately, Melissa quickly gave the position to another nurse, older and more experienced.

Emily turns her head, looking around like a child in a new place.

Neurology occupies the entire sixth floor of the building; only Oncology is higher, taking over two areas at once. According to the signpost, the fifth floor is occupied by hematology and endocrinology; the fourth floor is the giant immunology department and everything related to it; the third floor leads to the physiotherapy center and other healing procedures; the second floor is occupied by rheumatology with its many patients and the vascularization center – a glass corridor leads to the next building.

There were other floors, other centers, and detailed plans of each, hanging on the walls and in the elevators, but Emily never paid much attention to that. For her, even part of the main medical block was a veritable maze she would never climb into without a guide.

A giant anthill.

– Stop standing there," Avis says suddenly angrily, almost throwing the file at her. – Take it. Gather some more anamnesis and take it to Moss. Good luck with that.

Emily doesn't have time to say anything: Wood runs away, holding a stack of cards; and she herself is picked up by a maelstrom of white coats and carried to the wards.

Neurology is noisy and large; not as noisy as the emergency room – another circle of life's chaos – but there is a lot of staff, and Emily doesn't understand: how is it that only four people didn't leave, that they weren't replaced? And why did Wood get so worked up in the first place?

Thoughts bounce: too much emotion for one day; usually in her gray life everything is measured and scheduled, here a drip, there a shot, and here to help the orderlies in surgery; but today it's as if all her stability crumbles.

Brick by brick.

Here and there the yellow badges of the operating room nurses flickered, voices buzzed, the metal handrails of the wheelchairs rattled; the whole space was filled with sounds and conversations. Trying to concentrate, Emily leans against a cool wall in a nook and opens a folder.

Unnamed girl, she reads, admission overnight; under "diagnosis," cortical blindness, followed by the tests performed: visometry, CT scan of the head. In small handwriting, barely legible, along the bottom edge of the sheet are sprawling letters: retrograde. Emily clears her throat: How do you find the room of a man with no name among hundreds of other patients? The smart guy who filled out the chart wrote nothing else, and she quickly got the feeling that the girl who was admitted had simply been forgotten about.

She wandered through dozens of doors, searching for her patient, until suddenly she found her in the farthest room: three of the four beds were empty, and the fourth was hidden from view by a wide screen. Johnson wouldn't even have noticed if her palm wasn't clearly visible through the taut fabric.

Duty:

– Hi, I'm Emily. I'll be working with you.

And she comes closer.

She has a snow-white bandage over her eyes; the same bandage wraps around her head, visibly thickening at the back, as if after a recent operation. She is gaunt and skinny, as if she had been malnourished for years; and her skinny arms, covered with a network of scratches, move nonstop over and around the bedspread – groping the screen, clinging to the corners of the handrail, twisting the wires.

– Dr. Higgins has already worked with you-" she looks at the chart, "-Higgins. He prescribed some treatments for you. Do you remember that?

The nameless girl nods briefly:

– Will you tell me what's wrong with me?

Her voice is so calm that Emily is momentarily lost: Is she really completely blind?

– Dr. Higgins thinks it's some kind of acquired blindness. – Emily adjusts her pillow. – But the diagnosis hasn't been confirmed yet. You also have partial amnesia, but you've probably been told that. It's not so bad, because right now you can still remember events; but it will take time to get an accurate diagnosis. – She pulls out a blank, blank sheet and enters readings from the screens. – I'll take you for an echo and an electroencephalography today. Now we need to rule out arteriovenous malformation… – She stammers. – It's, uh, when your veins and arteries are tied together so tightly that they interfere with the flow of blood in them. You see…? – Waiting for a nod, Emily continues, "So you and I will stop by the angiography on the way; they will look at your vessels again. She sits down in the easy chair and irritably tucks a newly dislodged strand behind her ear.

– There is one "but. – The girl turns her head at the sound. – I don't remember anything.

– We'll remember together. – Emily prepares to take notes. – Imagine you're putting together a mosaic. Do you think you like mosaics? – Nod again. – Great. I don't need to know that much, but you try anyway. Okay…? Let's start simple then…

The scant information I've gathered is enough to fill in the blanks and find out how she got here: yellow street lights, neon signs on Stepney, screeching tires, and the lights of the paramedics' car. She, says the patient, had red hair – the one that found me. I remembered that because I feel like I had red, too. Scarlet. Like blood.

And confusedly, defenselessly she adds:

– You know, I wasn't sick with anything. Nothing. I am sure of it.

The scant information I've gathered is enough to fill in the blanks and find out how she got here: yellow streetlights, neon signs on Stepney, screeching tires, and the lights of the paramedics' car. She, says the patient, had red hair – the one that found me. I remembered that because I feel like I had red, too. Scarlet. Like blood.

And confusedly, defenselessly she adds:

– You know, I wasn't sick with anything. Nothing. I am sure of it.

She has no pain, only dizziness; and the screen shows elevated blood pressure. Emily frowns her eyebrows, putting it on the chart-she's never seen anything like it before.

She pulls her robe up again – the cheap, non-stretchy cotton sits after every wash – and rises from her chair, trying to stretch her stiff back.

– I'm taking the chart to the doctor now," Emily informs me, "and I'll be back to take you to the procedure.

"I'll ask someone which one, too," she adds to herself.

Johnson leaves the room, closing the glass door behind her, and carefully places the patient sheet in a special transparent folder – now anyone who decides to find out what kind of person is here can do so simply by reading the information on the form.

Emily returns to Neurology through the main passageway – she doesn't remember the way through the service corridors, so she just has to follow the signs – and enters from the side of the nephrologist's office. After wandering between doors, she finds the right one.

But instead of Andrew Moss, she finds Powell in his office, the same one Rebecca has been following. Eric smiles amiably, offers tea and, answering Emily's question, tells her that Mr. Moss can be found at Clark's. Where to look for Clark, he doesn't know, but he hopes it's somewhere nearby.

Because without Clark, they'll have half the department extinct, he jokes, and the sky reflects in his gray eyes.

But Emily gets lucky, a couple of doors down from Moss' office, she sees a sign: Dr. L. Clarke, neurosurgeon – and, breathing in more air, she knocks.

A low, guttural "Come in" answers her door.

Two male figures, leaning over a wide black table, discuss photographs strewn across the glossy surface of the wood: an old man in a business suit and an unbuttoned jacket, and a young, dark-haired doctor whose white coat hangs from the back of a leather chair.

An expensive white robe, Emily notes from the corner of her mind: she has dreamed of good form so many times that she can easily tell the difference between plain cheap fabric and snow-white cotton and polyester.

Both men lift their heads in sync and look at her so intently that Johnson is momentarily lost.

– I was told to take the chart to Dr. Moss. Mr. Powell advised me to find you at Dr. Clark's. – Which one is which, Emily still doesn't understand, but she hopes she can make out the nametags. – So there you go.

– Oh, is that the one, Andrew? – The one in the business suit reaches for the folder and opens it. – The one with no memory and a piece of brain?

– Absolutely right. – The dark-haired man lazily straightens up. – Another man from the street… I see the information has already been gathered. – He turns his gaze to Emily. – Already something. What a strange anamnesis. What makes you think she wasn't sick? – The look in her dark brown eyes pierces Johnson.

– She said so herself. – Emily shrugs her shoulders.

– She doesn't remember anything, Miss-" she squinted, "Johnson. So what makes you think you can believe her?

I wish I had glasses too, Emily thought, I could see which one was Moss.

– Intuitive memory is hard to fool. It's more reliable than reflex memory.

– You did a good job. – The older man smiles at Emily, and her cheeks flush. – Come here and tell us how you managed to get her to talk. We're all very interested, aren't we, Dr. Moss? – He almost winks at Andrew.

Emily takes a step forward:

– I'm sorry to rush you, Dr. Clark, but I really need directions to…

– I'm not Clark, Miss Johnson," the doctor laughs.

– I'm Clark," comes a voice from behind her.