Читать книгу The Vultures - Mark Hannon - Страница 17

12.

After a week at Clark Air Force Base Hospital the cycle of Rory’s morphine injections was still every four hours, but the pain dulling effects only lasted half that. Within two hours of an injection, he started sweating, drenching the bedsheets. Then the shakes and the nausea would start, and when he vomited, they would have to suction out his mouth, replace the feeding tube and clean him up. The room would start to rotate, and Rory would grab on to anything, a bed railing, an orderly’s arm, anything, to stop the spinning. The nurses and orderlies never complained, they just held him down until he passed out, and then the nightmares came.

He was getting sent out to play right field in Little League when a left-handed hitter came up in the ninth and they were up 3-2. Mr. Myers was sitting on a lawnmower that looked like a combine at the edge of the field, smoking a cigarette, waiting for the game to end. The left-handed kid went for the first pitch, hitting the ball right over the first baseman’s head. Rory charged it, slipped, but caught it off his chest. He held the ball up to show he had it and everyone charged out and Mr. Meyers started coming forward on the lawnmower.

“Hey! Stop!” Rory shouted, but Mr. Meyers just kept coming forward, and everyone else was celebrating.

“Stop!” he screamed, but he couldn’t get up, he couldn’t get out of the way. The lawnmower kept coming forward, and Mr. Meyers tossed away his cigarette. Rory closed his eyes as the blades started chopping into his arm and leg.

“Can’t anybody hear me?!” he screamed.