"Elizabeth Lynn - The White King's Dream" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lynn Elizabeth A)

"They just like babies," Helen said. "They're over ninety, most of them, and they can't hardly talk, but
they can cry. If you watch their eyes you can figure out what it is they wantтАФI can, anyways. You'll get
the hang of it."

I don't give a damn, thought Mark Wald. But he nodded. The odors of feces and ammonia fought in the
halls. He hated the geriatrics homes, but it was the only place he could get work anymore; the hospitals
wouldn't hire him. The best thing about this place is that the lockers are in the basement and I can go
down there to do my drinking in private, the way a man should drink. Unhurried snorts. He would readтАФ
he had the latest paperback thriller in his locker nowтАФand drink, slowly, decently. No one would notice
on the graveyard shift. During the day there were five aides, three orderlies, two RNs on duty.
Graveyard shift there were two orderlies, two aides, one RN, no baths to give or beds to make or people
to feed. Stay up all night riding herd on a bunch of whimpering zombiesтАФthen go home and sleep till
way past noon. Helen was still talking about the patients as if it mattered what they had once done or
been. They were zombies now. This one had been a doctor. This one a lawyer. He pretended to listen as
she stuck her head into every room.

"Honey, what is it?"

The old lady in the bed had a blind, wrinkled face like a sun-struck turtle. She whimpered. "You wet?
No, you not wet. Straps too tight?" She loosened the posey straps that held the thin gawk of a woman in
bed. "This is Louise; she was a teacher in a college." The sounds went on. Helen laid a broad black hand
on the woman's forehead and reached for her pulse with the other. "Your pulse's okay. You cold? I could
put you back in the sun."

The crying stopped.

"That's it, right? Okay, baby, we'll put you in the chair. This is Mark, here, he's a new night shift
worker." She was taking off the cloth restraints as she talked. Mark pulled the wheelchair over to the
bed. Together they let down the high sides of the bed, helped Luisa to a sitting position, picked her up,
and put her in the chair. Her long fingernails scratched lightly against Mark's neck. He shuddered.

I won't get old, he thought. Blind, half-dead, a piece of meat in a bed for others to haul around. I'll die
decently. Pills, or gas, or maybe I'll jump off the bridge. The alcohol will do it for me. He saw himself in
an alcoholic stupor, staggering along the road тАж getting hit by a car and dying instantly, no pain, no
bedpans or tubes up his arms and in his ass and down his throat.

It was an old vision. Usually it waited till he was decently asleep. It was always night or early morning
in the dream, and the car was always a red car. "Excuse me," he said to Helen. He ran downstairs. Let
her think he had to piss. He twirled the dial of the combination lock on his locker, got it wrong, did it
again, got it right, uncapped the bottle, and took a swallow. The bourbon eased down warmlyтАФthat was
better. Sometimes he felt it was the only warm thing in the world. He screwed the cap on the bottle,
locked it up, and sauntered up the stairs. They would know, of course. That Helen would smell it on

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 The White King


him. What the hell, they wouldn't fire him unless he made a mistake. He wouldn't make a mistake.