Читать книгу The Complete Strain Trilogy: The Strain, The Fall, The Night Eternal - Чак Хоган, Гильермо дель Торо, Guillermo Toro del - Страница 59

THE LIMOUSINE took Gabriel Bolivar straight to his personal physician’s office in a building with an underground garage. Dr. Ronald Box was the primary physician for many New York-based celebrities of film, television, and music. He was not a Rock Doc, or a Dr. Feelgood, a pure prescription-writing machine—although he was liberal with his electronic pen. He was a trained internist, and well versed in drug-rehabilitation centers, the treatment of sexually transmitted diseases, hepatitis C, and other fame-related maladies.

Bolivar went up the elevator in a wheelchair, clad only in a black robe, sunk into himself like an old man. His long, silken black hair had gone dry and was falling out in patches. He covered his face with thin, arthritic-like hands so that none would recognize him. His throat was so swollen and raw that he could barely speak.

Dr. Box saw him right away. He was looking through images transferred electronically from the clinic. The images came with a note of apology from the head clinician, who saw only the results and not the patient, promising to repair their machines and suggesting another round of tests in a day or two. But, looking at Bolivar, Dr. Box didn’t think it was their equipment that was corrupt. He went over Bolivar with his stethoscope, listening to his heart, asking him to breathe. He tried to look into Bolivar’s throat, but the patient declined, wordlessly, his black-red eyes glaring in pain.

“How long have you had those contact lenses in?” asked Dr. Box.

Bolivar’s mouth curled into a jagged snarl and he shook his head.

Dr. Box looked at the linebacker standing by the door, wearing a driver’s uniform. Bolivar’s bodyguard, Elijah—six foot six, two hundred and sixty pounds—looked very nervous, and Dr. Box was becoming frightened. He examined the rock star’s hands, which appeared aged and sore yet not at all fragile. He tried to check the lymph nodes under his jaw, but the pain was too great. The temperature reading from the clinic had read 123° F, a human impossibility, and yet, standing near enough to feel the heat coming off Bolivar, Dr. Box believed it.

Dr. Box stood back.

“I don’t really know how to tell you this, Gabriel. Your body, it seems, is riddled with malignant neoplasms. That’s cancer. I’m seeing carcinoma, sarcoma, and lymphoma, and all of it is wildly metastasized. There is no medical precedent for this that I am aware of, although I will insist on involving some experts in the field.”

Bolivar just sat there, listening, a baleful look in his discolored eyes.

“I don’t know what it is, but something has you in its grip. I do mean that literally. As far as I can tell, your heart has ceased beating on its own. It appears that the cancer is … manipulating the organ now. Beating it for you. Your lungs, the same. They are being invaded and … almost absorbed, transformed. As though …” Dr. Box was just realizing this now. “As though you are in the midst of a metamorphosis. Clinically, you could be considered deceased. It appears that the cancer is keeping you alive. I don’t know what else to say to you. Your organs are all failing, but your cancer … well, your cancer is doing great.”

Bolivar sat staring into the middle distance with those frightful eyes. His neck bucked slightly, as though he were trying to formulate speech but could not get his voice past an obstruction.

Dr. Box said, “I want to check you in to Sloan-Kettering right away. We can do so under an assumed name with a dummy social security number. It’s the top cancer hospital in the country. I want Mr. Elijah to drive you there now—”

Bolivar emitted a rumbling chest groan that was an unmistakable no. He placed his hands on the armrests of the wheelchair and Elijah came forward to brace the rear handles as Bolivar rose to his feet. He took a moment regaining his balance, then picked at the belt of his robe with his sore hands, the knot falling open.

Revealed beneath his robe was his limp penis, blackened and shriveled, ready to drop from his groin like a diseased fig from a dying tree.