"Steven Gould - Jumper 02 - Reflex" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gould Stephen Jay)

"How did they try to treat it, the dyskinesia?"

"They wanted to up my dosage of Haldol."

Millie shuddered. Taking more of a neuroleptic drug would probably stop the symptoms
temporarilyтАФuntil they returned even worse.
 Sojee saw Millie shake. "Oh. Do you have TD, too?"

"No. Has going off of your meds caused your, uh, symptoms to increase?"

Sojee smacked her lips several times in succession and then her lower jaw jerked to the right.
"Do you mean: am I crazy again? They come and they go."

Despite herself, Millie had to smile. "You don't mince words, do you, Sojee? What do you mean
by 'they?' "

"Angels. Angels and demons. I hear them both. And sometimes I see them."

Millie nodded. "What do they want you to do?"

"The usual. The angels tell me I'm the chosen one. I'm their human champion in the angel/demon
war here on Earth. The demons talk about my ex-husband and tell me to kill myself. I hear them all
the time really, but there are days where I believe them."

Millie couldn't help herself. "And today?"

"Oh, this is a good day. They're just chattering at the back of the bus. I'm not letting them drive."

It was surreal, this discussion of mental illness, yet also liberating. Here was a person whose
personal travails far eclipsed Millie's. One way or another, Millie would get past this crisis. Barring a
miracle, Sojee would be stuck with schizophrenia and tardive dyskinesia as long as she lived.

Millie sighed and showed Sojee the picture. "I don't suppose you've seenтАФ" She was expecting
another negative, but she couldn't help holding onto a faint hopeтАФa hope driven by the homeless
men's assertion that "Retarded Kaneesha saw everything." What she wasn't expecting was for Sojee's
eyes to roll back in her head and her knees to buckle.

Millie swore and lunged forward, dropping the stack of flyers and the stapler as she tried to
break Sojee's fall. The woman was both taller and heavier than Millie, but Millie just managed to keep
her head from hitting the asphalt.

What on earth caused that? She stared down at the woman's face, which was suddenly
different. The tardive dyskinesia had ceased with unconsciousness, and, relaxed, her face went from
some caricature of madness to normalcy. She's beautiful. Millie wanted to weep, suddenly.

Millie snagged a discarded cardboard box from beside the recycling bin and dropped her knee
on it, bursting it, then folding it one-handed. She slid it under Sojee's head.

The woman was stirring already. Her eyelids fluttered and she was moaning slightly. There were
a hundred different possible causes for Sojee's blackout but Millie swore it looked like an