"Dan Simmons - Joe Kurtz 03 - Hard As Nails" - читать интересную книгу автора (Simmons Dan)

black.
"Back!" shouted Kurtz, pointing toward the door from which they'd just
emerged.
Looking at him as if he were crazy, but not visibly afraid, Peg O'Toole put her
hand in her purse and started to pull the Sig Pro.
The shooting started.




CHAPTER TWO


┬л^┬╗
When Kurtz awoke in the hospital, he knew at once that he'd been shot, but he
couldn't remember when or where it happened, or who did it He had the feeling that
someone had been with him but he couldn't bring back any details and any attempt
to do so hammered barbed spikes through his brain.
Kurtz knew the varieties and vintages of pain the way some men knew wines, but
this pain in his head was already beyond the judging stage and well into the realm
where screaming was the only sane response. But he didn't scream. It would hurt too
much.
The hospital room was mostly dark but even the dim light from the bedside table
hurt his eyes. Everything had a nimbus around it and when he attempted to focus his
eyes, nausea rose up through the pain like a shark fin cutting through oily water. He
solved that by closing his eyes. Now there were only the inevitable, ambient hospital
sounds from beyond the closed doorтАФintercom announcements, the squeak of
rubber soles on tile, inaudible conversations in that muffled tone heard only in
hospitals and betting parlorsтАФbut each and every one of these sounds, including the
rasp of his own breathing, was too loud for Joe Kurtz.
He started to raise his hand to rub the right side of his headтАФthe epicenter of this
universe of painтАФbut his hand jarred to a halt next to the metal bedrail.
It took Kurtz two more tries and several groggy seconds of mental effort and the
pain of opening his eyes again before he realized why his right arm wouldn't work; he
was handcuffed to the metal frame of the hospital bed.
It took him another minute or two before he realized that his left hand and arm
were free. Slowly, laboriously, Kurtz reached that hand across his faceтАФeyes
squinted to keep the nausea at bayтАФand touched the right side of his head, just
above his ear, where the pain was broadcasting like the concentric radio-wave
ripples in the beginning of one of those old RKO films.
He could feel that the right side of his head was a mass of bandages and tape.
But when he saw that there were only two IV's visible punched into his body and
only one monitoring machine beeping a few feet away, and no doctors or nurses
huddled around with their resuscitation crash cart, he figured he wasn't on the verge
of checking out yet. Either that, or they'd already given up on him, issued a Do Not
Resuscitate order, and gone off for coffee to leave him to die here in the dark.
"Fuck it," said Kurtz and winced as the pain went from 7.8 to 8.6 on his own
private Agony Richter Scale. He was used to pain, but this wasтАж silly.
He dropped his hand on his chest, closed his eyes, and allowed himself to float
out of the line of fire.