"Quantum Leap - Prelude" - читать интересную книгу автора (McCollum Michael)
"What, you're trying to clone yourself a Nobel Prizewinner? the anesthesiologist smirked after a moment.
"I don't know," Weasel said, trying to work an apology into his tone of voice. He didn't know. He wasn't even sure what RPMI was. It was as if someone else had spoken through hi mouth, asking for something he'd last heard of in media school. He was a neurosurgeon, not a pathologist. His concern was the brain.
"One more 'I don't know' and we'll get ourselves another neurosurgeon." Zelda's hand hovered over the instrument laid out in a shining row on the sterile white towel. The instrument cart was a little less than elbow height, so as not to be hit accidentally and yet have everything accessible. "Poor baby. I guess maybe he won't get any more Nobel Prizes after this, will he?"
"I told you I hated doing the famous ones," Weasel said. "But this oneЧ" he teased a bit of tissue away, looked up at the monitors and allowed himself a sigh of reliefЧ"this one has somebody looking after him. Doesn't look too bad. Not at all."
Zelda slid a glass tube with a screw top, half filled with viscous pink liquid, onto the instrument table beside him. Weasel glanced at it, confused. The pink stuff, that was culture medium. The stuff you grew cells in. Brain cells? You couldn't grow brain cells in culture. Weasel looked again at the brain exposed beneath his knife, the glistening gray matter that controlled breath and movement and life and maybe even that disputable entity called a "mind," and had the kind of flash he always hated having in the middle of an operation: Who was this man? Did he have a wife? Children? Did he love music? Did he have thoughts he was ashamed of, or did he create beautiful things?
That was the problem with the famous ones. You knew the answers.
He knew that if his knife slipped, the sum of human knowledge could be reduced perhaps irreparably. The left temporal lobe controlled speech, the voice. He could suffer seizures for the rest of his lifeЧchronic temporal lobe epilepsy.
Or nothing might happen at all. Nothing noticeable, anyway. Some of the lobe was . . . well, no one quite knew what it was for. You could excise it and never see a difference in the way the patient acted, talked, responded.
No one could really be sure about how they thought, of course.
Light. A tunnel. Wasn't there supposed to be a tunnel, with God or Fate or something at the end of it? There was no direction where he was now. He had no perspective. No way to tell where he was, what he was, who he was. . . .
He reached out, and Zelda slapped the opened tube into his palm.
He teased away a fragment of bone lying across the tear in the dura mater. The fragment was dull with cells.
Cells. Tiny scraps of life.
The scrap of bone dropped into the tube. "Seal that," he said, and held it out, knowing there would be someone to to take it.
There was something about the cells, glossy in the pink fluid sloshing gently in the glass tube lying on the towel-something he needed to do with cells. He needed cells. Any cells would do, but theseЧthese would work best of all
He couldn't remember what he wanted them for.
The hotel room had cable. The mugging of Dr. Samuel Beckett noted scientist, Nobel Prizewinner, the man widely regarded the most intelligent in the world, rated news flashes on all the networks and fifteen minutes on CNN, most of which was take up by a review of his academic and scientific accomplishments Al Calavicci tuned in on the last three minutes of the CNN report. He was on the telephone thirty seconds later.
He reached the hospital receptionist, was unable to get status on a patient in surgery, hung up and tried a flank attack. Years of experience in dealing with the nozzles in Washington bureaucracy came to his aid; two hours and several pulled strings later, a call back told him that Sam was out of surgery and in the recovery room. All his cajoling couldn't get the status of the patient, though.
That was fine. Sometimes a flank attack worked, and some-times a direct approach was best. Al's next call was to the local air base to find out when the next space-available flight was to Washington.
CHAPTER
FIVE
Having an arm in a supported sling turned out to be the perfect disguise for a hospital. Al couldn't quite bring himself to dress in a hospital gown, however, and he was stopped halfway down the surgical ward. To add insult to injury, he was busted by a nurse six feet tall with a thick, ragged reddish mustache.
"I'm looking for Sam Beckett."
"Yes, sir. Dr. Beckett isn't receiving visitors yet. UnlessЧ" the nurse looked Al up and down, doubt clear on his faceЧ "you're a family member?"
"Sam Beckett would say so."
The nurse nibbled at the hair over his lip. "I'd ask him, but he isn't in shape to answer just yet."
Al's eyes narrowed. "Just what does that mean?" he said quietly, in a tone of voice that he didn't have to use often. When he did, it sent chills across flight decks throughout the Sixth Fleet.
"He's in Intensive Care, sir," the nurse responded. "He isn't really up to talking."
"I don't have to talk to him. I just want to see him." They moved aside to allow a patient dragging an IV pole to move past them. Family members hovered after.
"Sir, he's getting the very best care, really. He's worked with the doctors here. We all know him." But we don't know you, the sentence concluded, unspoken.
Something deep inside Al flinched at the reminder that he really hadn't known Sam all his life; it only seemed that way. Sam had friends and acquaintances in whole other universes. Of course the doctors would know him. Sam was a doctor, too. And a classicist. And a physicist. He'd know people in all those fields, from studying with them, reading their research, and having his read by them. Maybe it was presumptuous for Al to claim to be as close to him as a member of his family.
Though come to think of it, Sam wasn't all that close to his family in the first place. His mother lived with his sister and her family in Hawaii; there was affection there, but some kind of awkwardness, too. Al wasn't sure about the details. He knew Sam's sister Katie was married to a Navy man, a Lt. Jim Bonnick, and had a couple of kids. Sam rarely spoke of them, giving Al the impression there had been some philosophical conflicts with Bonnick along the way. And Sam had told him once that he'd missed his own father's funeral because of work on a projectЧnot that he was proud of it, he wasn't, but it had happened, and he seemed in some way bewildered and hurt that things hadn't worked in such a way that he could have been in two places at once.
That was all right. There was quite a bit Sam didn't know about Al, either. It didn't matter; they were friends. The details were just history. Sam was as close to family as Al had, and he knew Sam felt the same way about him. Yeah, there were some people who might consider that presumptuous.
But Al Calavicci had been presumptuous all his life, and he wasn't about to stop now. "Let me in for just a couple of minutes. I won't disturb him. Hell, I've been a patient myselfЧ" he nodded toward the support splint on his armЧ "I know what it's like to want peace and quiet. This is for me, not for him."
"Okay," the nurse said at last. "This way.
"We've had to keep the reporters out," he went on as he led Al down the hall. "It's as much as my job is worth, you know."
"That's okay," Al reassured him. "I'm not going to tell the world." They entered a small private room toward the end of the hall.
Like most other hospital rooms, the predominant theme was white. White curtains half-open over the picture window. White walls, white sheets, white metal furniture, white privacy drapes to pull around the bed. Al had eyes for none of it; he was focused on the white bandage covering most of Sam Beckett's head.
"We're keeping a really close eye on him," the nurse whispered, as if the man on the bed would awaken. "He's doing fine, really."
He didn't look fine. He looked as if a vampire had been at him, draining every drop of color from his face, except for shadows like bruises under his eyes. He looked shrunken and vulnerable. One hand lay lax outside the sheet, an IV needle taped into place, a spot of blood on the skin where someone had had to probe twice to hit the vein. Tubes hung from an IV tree, dripping clear liquids into his system. More tubes entered his nostrils, and a larger one entered his mouth, causing a line of spittle to dry on his chin. His lips were dry and cracked.
Wires came from beneath the bandages, from metal disks taped to his head, and led to a strip recorder on a table beside the bed. A cardiac monitor beeped steadily over his head, the spikes and daggers in an ever-repeating pattern of bright green lines on a gray screen. Al had to drag his eyes away from the hypnotic repetitions, as if the sound and pattern were the cause instead of the effect of Sam's still being alive.
"Oh, Sam," Al breathed. "What the hell have you gotten yourself into now?"
He moved awkwardly past the visitor's chair to the side of the bed. The nurse made a protesting noise and subsided. Al looked down at his friend, unable to think of anything more to say or do. He felt almost as helpless as Sam looked, unable to do anything except talk, unable to do anything to affect events. All he could do was watch. Sam lay still, remote.
"They can hear people while they're unconscious, some times," the nurse offered. "If you want to tell him you're here."
Al seized on the suggestion gratefully. "Sam?" he said quietly, as if still afraid he'd wake the patient up. "It's Al, buddy. I came back after all. Looks like you can't keep out of trouble without me, kid. You need somebody to look after I you."
A muscle in Sam's face twitched.
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