Читать книгу Ashley Bell - Dean Koontz, Dean Koontz - Страница 24

BIBI WAS SITTING ON THE EDGE OF HER BED, making a list in the spiral-bound notebook, when her parents arrived with the intention of lifting her spirits as best they could, although they did not succeed in this. The moment that they walked through the door, the stricken look in their eyes was poorly synchronized with their smiles.

They didn’t fail her; they never could. Only she could keep her spirits up. Anyway, she wasn’t depressed, certainly not despairing. She didn’t have time for that. Or the inclination. Even as grim as it sounded, her prognosis was a challenge, and the only reasonable way to respond to a challenge was to rise to it.

She was still the girl whose mind was always spinning, and now it spun out tasks for her mother, which she added to the list in the notebook. “They’re keeping me here until tomorrow, maybe even till the day after. Dr. Chandra needs to do a few more tests to plan a course of chemo and radiation. The choice is mine, and I’m going to fight. I need you to go to my apartment, bring my laptop. I’m going to research the crap out of this. I need changes of underwear. And socks. My feet get cold. Some of my nice soft towels. The ones here are scratchy. And all my vitamins. My iPod with the headphones. I’ll have to use headphones in here.” Because she maintained a post-office box, she needed her mail to be collected and brought to her. She described a few other errands as she appended them to the list, and then she tore off two pages and handed them to her mother.

Grateful to have something to do other than dwell on his daughter’s situation, Murphy said, “We’ll split up the work, Nancy. You take the apartment stuff. I’ll do the other running around.”

Bibi said, “No, Dad. Let Mom take care of it. You get back to business.”

He looked perplexed, as if he had forgotten that he was anything other than her father. “What business?”

“The one Pogo is this very minute running into the ground.”

He shook his head. “But I can’t—”

“You can. You must. If I’m going to devote all my time to this battle, I won’t be writing. My income will dry up. Mom’s commissions will probably go to hell while we’re fighting this. You’ll have to support me as if I were ten years old again. You have to, Daddy.”

Hugs and kisses. Declarations of love. Clumsily expressed covenants to face the future together with resolution, to win in spite of the terrible odds. And then her parents were gone.

After using the bathroom, while washing her hands at the sink, Bibi studied her reflection in the mirror—until her vision blurred and one face became two, smeary and distorted. Vision problems were a symptom of gliomatosis cerebri. She gripped the sink with both hands, taking slow deep breaths, wondering if she would go blind. Not yet. Her vision cleared.