"James L. Halperin - The First Immortal" - читать интересную книгу автора (Halperin James L)

June 2, 1988

Echoes tumbled through the ambulance. Squeals, rattles, and torsion-bar sways came at him in waves,
magnified and omi-nous. The attendants standing over him seemed blurry, even extraneous. What
mattered was the beeping monitor and all--too-familiar stench of emergency medicine. And every single
sensation blended with the mundane smell of the rain-soaked streets beneath him.
Benjamin Franklin Smith, my great-grandfather, knew he was about to die.
The morning had delivered BenтАЩs third heart attack in six years-worse than either of its predecessors.
This time his chest felt vise-tight, more constricted than heтАЩd imagined pos-sible. His oxygen-starved
muscles sagged like spent rubber, so weak he could barely feel them twitch, while a cold Novocain--like
river prickled his left arm from shoulder blade to fingertips: numb but so heavy.
Oh, Christ! he thought, remembering his first symptoms on that flight to Phoenix in 1982. He should
have known better. If he hadnтАЩt stayed on the damn airplane, they couldтАЩve given him treatment;
minimized the damage.
Now he was dying. Him, of all people. Ben snorted. Absent his pain and fear, it might have been a
laugh. Well, why in hell not him? He was sixty-three years old.
God, just sixty-three? Is that all I get? Please, Jesus, spare me this. Not yet ...
 Two ambulance attendants wheeled Ben through the hospital emergency entrance, past check-in and
dozens of less critical cases, sprinting straight for intensive care. All ignored them ex-cept one nurse who,
recognizing the too-familiar patient, merely gaped. One of the attendants whispered to her, тАЬLooks like
myocardial infarction. Probably massive.тАЭ
Still half conscious, Ben wondered if they realized he could hear them, or if they cared. He wondered
whether these profes-sionals tasted the same empathy for him that he had so often ex-perienced with his
own dying patients.
He also questioned his rationality.
His preparations over the previous half decade had included an oath to himself that he would betray
no ambivalence about the unusual instructions heтАЩd left. This despite understanding that his chances of
staving off death remained slight.
And that if he succeeded, he might end up envying the dead.
Before surrendering consciousness, Dr. Benjamin Smith managed to whisper: тАЬCall Toby Fiske.тАЭ
These words would set in motion all his plansтАФirrevocably changing the nature of his death.
Then, as the rush of unreality gathered speed and his aware-ness faded, his subconscious mind began
to play back the most important moments of life, as if by giving these experiences a new orderliness, he
might somehow absolve himself of, or at least comprehend, his mistakes.
Images assaulted him of his parents, his children, and the first time he ever made love to his wife
Marge. She was just a teenager then. How fiery and resilient she was. They were. Then he remembered
sitting at her bedside when she was dying. For six weeks he had fed and bathed her, consoled her with
stories and recollections, held her hand, and watched helplessly as the cancer consumed her body and
mind.
Now would he finally rejoin her?
Ben Smith also knew the world would keep turning without him. So at the end of things, he pleaded to
his God, praying that once he was dead, his only son might finally forgive him.

My great-grandfather was an only child. And despite his birth into near-poverty, his genetics and early
environment favored him with certain critical advantages. But timing was not among these: He was born
in 1925.
His attempt to become immortal is a tale of character, luck, and daring. Benjamin Franklin SmithтАЩs
story might have be-fallen any person of his timeтАФthat era when death seemed in-evitable to every
human being on earth. Inevitable, and drawing ever closer.
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