"Pike, Christopher - Whisper Of Death.(1991)TXT" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pike Christopher)

of life or death. It was only then I wondered if an
abortion could be dangerous. I remembered one of
the forms I signed had said something about not
holding the clinic responsible in the event I croaked.

He gave me the shots. They hurt like hell. My eyes
were wet when he finished. Then he started an I.V.
into my wrist and patted my arm and told me he
would be back in fifteen minutes. I could hear a girl in
the adjacent room undressing. It did not make me feel
any less lonely.

The gown was drafty and the doctor had left the
door open. I tried to pass the time by singing softly.
People told me I had an incredible voice, but I didn't
believe them. I always just sounded like myself. I
quickly had to give up on the ploy. No one had written
a getting-ready-for-my-abortion song.

Time crept by. Deep inside I felt things going numb.
The doctor finally returned and poked at me with
glove-covered fingers. I told him I couldn't feel a thing
and this made him happy. He was ready to begin the
procedure. He picked up a long sharp silver instru-
ment that glinted in the harsh overhead light. I closed
my eyes.

He poked me again and then suddenly muttered
something under his breath and left the room in a
hurry. I kept my eyes closed. My guts felt strange, as if
they were made of liquid, and were flowing around
inside me. My thoughts began to float inside my head,
too, like colored pictures projected on puffy white
clouds caught in a gentle updraft. I thought mainly of
Salem, where I had grown up, and how bright the stars
had been the night Pepper had first kissed me.

But the thought of Betty Sue McCormick also
flashed inside, her face spread across my imaginary
black sky. It was odd that Betty Sue should come to
mind. I had hardly known her. Hers was a sad tale.
She had doused herself with gasoline in an abandoned
gas station at the edge of town, and then she dropped a
flaming match at her feet. The whole place had gone
up, and there hadn't been much left of Betty Sue to
bury. No one knew why she had done it.

Just the thought of Betty Sue, though, and how she
had thrown away her life, got me thinking about my
baby, and what I was doing to it. My inner resolve to