Читать книгу Ashley Bell - Dean Koontz, Dean Koontz - Страница 35

BIBI HAD FOLDED THE PAJAMAS AND THE ROBE into her drawstring bag and had donned the jeans and long-sleeved T-shirt she’d been wearing when Nancy had brought her to the hospital. This was an expression of confidence in her belief that the brain cancer had gone into remission, that the glioma hadn’t merely shrunk but had vanished.

When Dr. Sanjay Chandra entered the room, Bibi was pacing not to work off a bad case of nerves, but with impatience to get back into the world and reclaim her life. He halted at the sight of her, and his expression was so solemn that something caught in her throat, as if she had tried to swallow a large bite of meat without chewing it, though she hadn’t eaten anything.

What appeared to be solemnity, or even distress at the news he had to deliver, proved to be awe. “Nothing in my years of practice, nothing in my life, has prepared me for this. I’m not able to explain it, Bibi. It’s not possible, but you are entirely free of cancer.”

The previous day, Nancy had said that Dr. Chandra reminded her of Cookie, the gingerbread cookie that had come to life in an old children’s book that she had shared when Bibi was five years old. The resemblance owed more to Nancy’s sense of whimsy than to fact, and it certainly wasn’t so pronounced that some snarky magazine would pair Dr. Chandra’s and Cookie’s photographs in a “Separated at Birth” feature. However, everything about the physician—his boyish face, chocolate-drop eyes, musical voice, humility, and charm—made her want to like him. Upon his confirmation of remission, she loved the man. She flew to him like a child into the arms of an adored father.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” she gushed, exhilarated even as she was embarrassed by her exhilaration.

He returned her embrace and then held her at arm’s length, his hands on her shoulders, smiling broadly and shaking his head slowly, as if marveling at her. “The first diagnosis was not mistaken. You did have gliomatosis cerebri.”

“I’m sure I did. I know I did.”

“Other tumors can break down and be absorbed, and the remission can be surprisingly quick. It’s not common, but it does occur. Except with this cancer. Never with this hateful thing. I’ll want to see you for follow-up. Quite a lot of follow-up.”

“Of course.”

“Oncologists specializing in gliomas will want to study you.”

“Study me? I don’t know about that. I don’t think so.”

“What is it about you that made the impossible possible? Is it genetic? A quirk in your body chemistry? A higher-functioning immune system? Studying you might save uncountable lives.”

She felt irresponsible for having shied from the prospect of being studied. “Well, if you put it that way …”

“I do. I put it that way.” He released her shoulders. His happy expression was infused with wonder again. “Yesterday, when I said you had at most a year to live, you said, ‘We’ll see.’ Do you remember?”

“Yes.”

“It’s almost as if you knew then that you’d go home today.”