"Robert A. Heinlein - Waldo" - читать интересную книгу автора (Heinlein Robert A)

тАШWho else?тАЩ
тАШYou misunderstand me. He has no normal contacts. I am
simply the only person who dares to
be rude to him.тАЩ
тАШBut I thought- Never mind. DтАЩyou know, this is an
inconvenient setup? Waldo is the man weтАЩve got to have.
Why should it come about that a genius of his calibre
should be so unapproachable, so immune to ordinary social
demands? Oh, I know his disease has a lot to do with it, but
why should this man have this disease? ItтАЩs an improbable
coincidence.тАЩ
тАШItтАЩs not a matter of his infirmity,тАЩ Grimes told him. тАШOr, rather,
not in the way you put it. His weakness is his genius, in a way-тАЩ
тАШHuh?тАЩ
тАШWell-тАЩ Grimes turned his sight inward, let his mind roam back
over his long association, lifelong, for Waldo, with this
particular patient. He remembered his subliminal misgivings
when he delivered the child. The infant had been sound
enough, superficially, except for a slight blueness. But then
lots of babies were somewhat cyanotic in the delivery room.
Nevertheless, he had felt a slight reluctance to give it the tunk
on the bottom, the slap which would shock it into taking its
first lungful of air.
But he had squelched his own feelings, performed the necessary
тАШlaying on of handsтАЩ, and the freshly born human had declared its
independence with a satisfactory squall. There was nothing else
he could have done; he was a young GP then, who took his
Hippocratic oath seriously. He still took it seriously, he supposed,
even though he sometimes referred to it as the тАШhypocriticalтАЩ oath.
Still, he had been right in his feelings; there had been something
rotten about that child, something that was not entirely myasthenia
gravis.He had felt sorry for the child at first, as well as having an
irrational feeling of responsibility for its condition. Pathological
muscular weakness is an almost totally crippling condition, since
the patient has no unaffected limbs to retrain into substitutes.
There the victim must lie, all organs, limbs, and functions present,
yet so pitifully, completely weak as to be unable to perform any
normal action. He must spend his life in a condition of exhausted
collapse, such as you or I might reach at the finish line of a
gruelling cross-country run. No help for him, and no relief.
During WaldoтАЩs childhood he had hoped constantly that the child
would die, since he was so obviously destined for tragic
uselessness, while simultaneously, as a physician, doing
everything within his own skill and the skills of numberless
consulting specialists to keep the child alive and cure it.
Naturally, Waldo could not attend school; Grimes ferreted out
sympathetic tutors. He could indulge in no normal play; Grimes
invented sickbed games which would not only stimulate WaldoтАЩs
imagination but encourage him to use his flabby muscles to the full,
weak extent of which he was capable.