"Kathe Koja - Queen of angels" - читать интересную книгу автора (Koja Kathe)

shaped like a triangle. She looked at it dry-eyed in the wash of overhead light. It was
not bone; it was not a tooth, or part of one. It was not a gallstone, or kidney stone; it
was not a real pearl. She had an impulse to cut it in half, scrape its surface with a nail
file but in the end did not, left it whole, left it there on the table on a pale paper
napkin and when she slept at last dreamed thinly; not of it or Elliot but of walking
forever on a helix still and dusty, no feeling at all but the silent grind of sand beneath
her feet.
According to his chart, in two shiftsтАЩ time Elliot had not produced anything
other than some unexceptional urine, but the rest of the last shift had been busy:
Hakim Richardson had had another stroke and was sent to the hospital; Mr. Zelinksi
died. Mary Yost had escaped her restraints and ate half an Efferdent before she was
caught. This brought on some reminiscences of a former patient, an AlzheimerтАЩs
who ate soap, slim motel-size bars of Ivory; she would not touch another kind.
тАЬIvory was her brand,тАЭ the day nurse supervisor said, smiling as if at the
antics of a particularly precocious child, or a clever pet.
тАЬMaybe she liked the taste,тАЭ Deborah said. She was irritable with lack of
sleep, her eyes as sticky-dry as the bottoms of her shoes; she had stepped in
something on her way down the hall, back from ElliotтАЩs room. Today he seemed
paler; his closed eyes did not move at all. His hair looked dirty. There was nothing
on the pillow or sheets but she lingered, wanting somehow not to touch but to reach,
to connect.
Screams from down the hall; someone hollered тАЬDeb!тАЭ and she ran,
stethoscope banging back against her chest, pounding dull and painful like a little
metal heart.
By the time she gave report to the midnight shift it was 11:30; there were still
narcotics to count, she had to finish up charting but--stopped, inevitable, before
ElliotтАЩs door, tired now, and ready to concede it as sheer strangeness, to reaffirm her
correct decision not to chart the pearl, any of it--to tell no one.
Inside, a distinct smell, not one she knew.
Her heart felt strange, tight in her body like an overdeveloped muscle and she
approached Elliot as if he might spring up; already she saw his eyes, closed and
restless back and forth and then a soundless string like bubbles, spit bubbles and
there were at least a dozen of them, popping from between his lips to roll on a
snailтАЩs path of drool down to the wet square between pillow and blue shoulder,
thirteen, fifteen; she swept them all into her cupping hand, hot and wet and her hands
were shaking hard enough to be clumsy; she thought she might have dropped one of
the pearls but now he had stopped producing them; nothing there but saliva and
closed lips.
His eyes had stopped moving.
тАЬElliot,тАЭ whispering, the air between her lips warm with that smell, тАЬElliot.тАЭ
Urgent. тАЬWhat do you want?тАЭ
Nothing.
 She had to count the narcotics twice to make them add up correctly, her
hands so awkward the other nurse noticed, asked if she were all right. тАЬFine,тАЭ lying;
what a poor liar she was. тАЬJust tired.тАЭ The pearls made a wet square in her pocket,
visible moisture. Did anyone see? She almost ran a red light going home, stumbled in
the kitchen and scraped her shin against the bare leg of a chair. There were too many
pearls to fit on the napkin so she hunted up a little jar, little glass cosmetic jar long
bare of whatever sweet cream folly it had held, still trapped inside the faint emollient
smell. The pearls lay three deep, nestled in the smell, matte against the glass and she