"George R. R. Martin - WC 8 - One Eyed Jacks" - читать интересную книгу автора (Martin George R R)

"How bad was it?"
She met Tachyon's gaze. "Backfire caught a joker team, tore 'em up pretty badly.
I was running the aid station inside Yellowstone. Seven came in still alive. All
critical, badly burned, but they had a chance. We bundled 'em all into a Huey
and sent it to our main receiving hospital. They turned 'em away. Said they had
no bed space. Bullshit, of course, we'd transferred half their patients
precisely so there would be room for our casualties. But they were adamant, no
admittance. Three other hospitals on our list, got the same response from each.
Pilot had to bring 'em back. I was running an aid station-the whole point of our
existence was to get our injured into the air and out to a proper full-care
facility as fast as humanly possible. I didn't have the staff, I didn't have the
equipment, to cope with anything more. Took 'em two days to die. For one, in the
end, drugs didn't help. He was screaming, like a baby-this high-pitched shriek,
somehow he made himself heard even over the roar of the fire-I found myself once
looking around for an ax or shovel, cursing myself for not having my gun handy.
I wanted to smash that poor creature's head in, just to shut him up. I lost it,
totally, I think by then I was more than a little crazy myself. I found a
network crew, gave 'em a live interview on morning television."
"I saw that. You were quite impassioned."
"Lot of good it did me. Hospitals had covered themselves perfectly. They hit
back with loads of righteous indignation. By the time they were through, they'd
made a plausible case it was my fault. All things considered, it wasn't the best
of times to take a stand for joker rights. I'd grown up there." A softness had
crept into her voice, an eerie echo of what she'd heard earlier in Tachyon's, as
though neither could still quite believe what had happened to them. "I'd made
that place my home, it was where I raised my son-and five minutes on the Today
show burned it up as completely as the North Fork fire did the Gallatin Range.
Forest Service"-she made a face-"shipped me out on the next chopper. Got home,
discovered my attending privileges at the local hospitals had been revoked.
Within a week, I started losing patients. Within a month ..."
"Sent out job applications, word got passed back that I'd been blackballed. I
was a troublemaker, nobody wanted a thing to do with me."
"No one stood by you?"
"You don't know how afraid people are" of your damned virus, she finished
silently.
There was a twist to his eyes, a small, sad smile, a flash of pain desperately
masked that told Cody he knew far more than he dared let on.
"So," he said softly, finally, "you're here. . ." She filled in the rest:



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because you have no choice.
"I'm a doctor, this is a hospital. And I need the job."
"I have doctors, Cody, I don't need a doctor. I need my right arm." He made a
small gesture with it, and didn't bother hiding the flash of pain in his eyes.
There was a tentativeness now to his voice and manner that seemed to Cody like
nothing so much as shame.