Читать книгу Reborn - Vin Ph.D. Jackson - Страница 14

Time dragged slowly in casualty. For the patients in agony who thought they'd been forgotten. For those accompanying them who were sure of it. Especially for the medical staff not yet half-way through a double-shift who were doing their best and were convinced everyone else reckoned it wasn't good enough.

For Doctor Glen Holder who had already used up his second wind and was working on his third, time was no longer an issue. The elliptical orbit he followed had become a rut worn between cubicles five and nine. His sense of perspective had gone. Sometimes he wasn't sure which patient he was treating, the symptoms were so similar.

Just moments after the girl had been resuscitated, Holder was called away again: now the man, Olsen, had gone into cardiac arrest. And who should have been passing his cubicle at the time? None other than Paulo Agostini! Deja-vu had never been this cruel before.

A divine conspiracy couldn't be ruled out. Maybe he'd been a bad lad in a former life, or walked on someone's grave. If Nurse O'Brien suddenly burst in and announced she'd missed her period he'd know his run of bad luck wasn't mere coincidence. When both patients went into convulsions within minutes of one another, he had to let his paranoia run riot because he was too busy catapulting between cubicles to argue logic.

It was during a break - unsweetened decaf and a blueberry Danish with a million calories - that he tried dropping a little closer to Earth. Among his reflections on this pig-of-a-day were three words which both the man and the girl had spoken. Void - they'd kept on about "the void". And the other words were as baffling: "nova" and something that sounded like "longfay". They'd said more, but it was either inaudible or garbage. These three words, however, had seemed clear enough and had been repeated too frequently to be misheard. As to meanings, they were as unknown to Holder as he had been led to believe the patients were to one another. Apart from being victims in the same accident, they apparently had nothing in common, were total strangers.

Before he could resolve the puzzle, Holder was back in the thick of it. Olsen had 'developed' a lesion. That was the message, anyway. He stormed out of the rec room, cursing under his breath. Sheer carelessness, he was thinking. Patients didn't develop lesions: someone inflicted them. And that someone's head was going to roll. As well as his, no doubt, when Agostini got to find out.

The problem was a fresh wound on the man's upper arm, a deep cut which had bled all over the sheet. In a low growl that couldn't be heard beyond the screens, Holder ripped shit out of the male nurse on duty at the time. Rightly so, he thought: only someone who came down in the last shower would believe the cut had 'just appeared'.

It wasn't until he was examining the wound and actually witnessed a graze forming on Olsen's elbow before his very eyes that he began to re-evaluate. He jerked back with a start and muttered: "Jesus!" After that his mind went temporarily off-line. Like it always did at the sight of a naked Nurse O'Brien advancing on him in his one-room dog kennel. Perhaps the cramped conditions tended to accentuate their enormity, but, apart from Mary's size eighteen breasts, this incredible appearing graze was the only other miracle he'd seen.

As the second wonder of his world, however, being able to watch the skin kind-of disappearing from Olsen's elbow and blood rising through the subcutaneous tissue, was far less appealing than having to fight for breath with his face buried between a pair of gorgeous knockers. One thing was for sure - he didn't fancy having to explain either to anyone. Least of all, a board of sceptical Agostinis.

"Very strange," said Jackovitz, the male nurse, condescendingly. He was due an apology which he was unlikely to get, so he proceeded to rub it in: "If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes...."

White noise filled Holder's head: the deafening roar of blood pounding in his ears. A female voice was calling to him beyond the cacophony. The faint words eventually crept through: "Doctor Holder! Quickly!"

Holder's brow was knit in a tight painful frown. "What now?" He gazed in the direction of the voice, noticed a head poking around the curtain, couldn't make the face.

"Cubicle five." Sister Emery was breathless and concerned.

"What about it?" Holder didn't need this. Surely someone else could handle it? Where was Agostini when he was actually needed?

"I can't explain." Emery was growing pedantic. "You should see for yourself."

A huge lump rose up and lodged itself in Holder's throat. No sounds would pass.

"I can attend to Mr Olsen for you if you wish, Doctor." Jackovitz was already pulling on a pair of surgical gloves. The smile had mutated to a leer. "Nurse Calloway can assist."

Holder went blank. Then he nodded and pushed his way out of cubicle nine to stumble after the Sister in a daze.

There was blood on the pillow-case of cubicle five also. This, from a slash across the girl's cheek. And at the very instant Holder entered, a red stain spread through the sheet where it dipped between the patient's thighs.

He frowned at Sister Emery. "What the hell is happening here?"

The Sister was staring at the sheet. She turned wearing a dumb look and merely blinked at the Doctor.