Читать книгу Undying - Michel Faber - Страница 11
Оглавление[indecipherable] kappa
The best doctor in our area
went into the woods one day
and blew his head off.
We were never told
why he did it; his funeral
was in a church, and the papers
were discreet.
A ginger-haired bear of a man,
all Scottish brawn and whiskers,
he liked you. He liked you a lot.
I think he was a little in love with you,
as so many men were.
There was a twinkle in his eye
when he’d bare your thigh
for the pethidine shot
in those halcyon days when migraine
was your big disease.
I wish his rendezvous with you
had pleased him even more.
I wish his ardour had been more profound.
I wish he’d stuck around to be the one
who diagnosed you.
I somehow doubt he would have sent
you home from the local clinic
clutching a scrap of paper scrawled with
[indecipherable] kappa,
immunoglobin [spelling error],
and a tip to go to Google and explore
what ‘multiple myeloma’ meant.
We followed that prescription
to the letter, sick with terror.
The words, as far as we could tell,
meant death, in agony, and soon.
Which just goes to show
it matters who one’s doctor is
on a given afternoon,
and that the best doctor in our area
should perhaps have been on better
medication.
