"Richard Preston - The Hot Zone2" - читать интересную книгу автора (Preston Richard)

He found Monet lying on the gurney. He has no idea what was wrong with
the man, except that he was obviously having some kind of massive
hemorrhage. There was no time to try to figure out what has caused it.
He was having difficulty breathing-and then his breathing stopped. He had
inhaled blood and had a breathing arrest.
Dr. Musoke felt for a pulse. It was weak and sluggish. A nurse ran
and fetched a laryngoscope, a tube that can be used to open a person's
airway. Dr. Musoke ripped open Monet's shirt so that he could observe any
rise and fall of the chest, and he stood at the head of the gurney and
bent over Monet's face until he was looking directly into his eyes, upside
down.
Monet stared redly at Dr. Musoke, but there was no movement in the
eyeballs, and the pupils were dilated. Brain damage: nobody home. His
nose was bloody and his mouth was bloody. Dr. Musoke tilted the patient's
head back to open the airway so that he could insert the laryngoscope. He
was not wearing rubber gloves. He ran his finger around the patient's
tongue to clear the mouth of debris, sweeping out mucus and blood. His
hands became greasy with black curd. The patient smelled of vomit and
blood, but this was nothing new to Dr. Musoke, and he concentrated on his
work. He leaned down until his face was a few inches away from Monet's
face, and he looked into Monet's mouth in order to judge the position of
the scope. Then he slid the scope over Monet's tongue and pushed the
tongue out of the way so that he could see down the airway past the
epiglottis, a dark hole leading inward to the lungs. He pushed the scope
into the hole, peering into the instrument. Monet suddenly jerked and
thrashed.
Monet vomited.
The black vomit blew up around the scope and out of Monet's mouth.
Black-and-red fluid spewed into the air, showering down over Dr. Musoke.
It struck him in the eyes. It splattered over his white coat and down his
chest, marking him with strings of red slime dappled with dark flecks. It
landed in his mouth.
He repositioned his patient's head and swept the blood out of the
patient's mouth with his fingers. The blood had covered Dr. Musoke's
hands, wrists and forearms. It had gone everywhere-all over the gurney,
all over Dr. Musoke, all over the floor. The nurses in the intensive care
unit couldn't believe their eyes, and they hovered in the background, not
knowing quite what to do. Dr. Musoke peered down into the airway and
pushed the scope deeper into the lungs. He saw that the airways were
bloody.
Air rasped into the man's lungs. The patient had began to breathe
again.
The patient was apparently in shock from loss of blood. He had lost so


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much blood that he was becoming dehydrated. The blood had come out of
practically every opening in his body. There wasn't enough blood left to