"Dan Simmons - Metastasis" - читать интересную книгу автора (Simmons Dan)

coma from a fractured skull and a severe concussion. He was unconscious for nine
days. When he awoke he was told that a minute sliver of bone had actually
penetrated the left frontal lobe of his brain. He remained hospitalized for eighteen
more daysтАФnot even in the same hospital as his motherтАФand when he left it was
with a headache worse than anything he had ever imagined, blurred vision, word
from the doctors that there was a serious chance that some brain damage had been
suffered, and news from his sister that their mother's cancer was terminal and in its
final stages.
The worst had not yet begun.
It was three more days before Louis was able to visit his mother. His headaches
remained and his vision re-tained a slightly blurred qualityтАФas with a television
channel poorly tunedтАФbut the bouts of blinding pain and uncontrolled vomiting had
passed. His sister Lee drove and his fiancee Debbie accompanied him on the twenty
mile ride from Boulder to Denver General Hospital.
"She sleeps most of the time but it's mostly the drugs," said Lee. "They keep her
heavily sedated. She probably won't recognize you even if she is awake."
"I understand," said Louis.
"The doctors say that she must have felt the lump ... understood what the pain meant
... for at least a year. If she had only ... It would have meant losing her breast even
then, probably both of them, but they might have been able to..." Lee took a deep
breath. "I was with her all morning. I just can't ... can't go back up there again today,
Louis. I hope you understand."
"Yes," said Louis.
"Do you want me to go in with you?" asked Debbie.
"No," said Louis.

Louis sat holding his mother's hand for almost an hour. It seemed to him that the
sleeping woman on the bed was a stranger. Even through the slight blurring of his
sight, he knew that she looked twenty years older than the person he had known; her
skin was gray and sallow, her hands were heavily veined and bruised from IVs, her
arms lacked any muscle tone, and her body under the hospital gown looked
shrunken and concave. A bad smell sur-rounded her. Louis stayed thirty minutes
beyond the end of visiting hours and left only when his headaches threatened to
return in full force. His mother remained asleep. Louis squeezed the rough hand,
kissed her on the forehead, and rose to go.
He was almost out of the room when he glanced at the mirror and saw movement.
His mother continued to sleep but someone was sitting in the chair Louis had just
va-cated. He wheeled around.
The chair was empty.
Louis's headache flared like the thrust of a heated wire behind his left eye. He turned
back to the mirror, moving his head slowly so as not to exacerbate the pain and
ver-tigo. The image in the mirror was more clear than his vi-sion had been for days.
Something was sitting in the chair he had just vacated.
Louis blinked and moved closer to the wall mirror, squinting slightly to resolve the
image. The figure on the chair was somewhat misty, slightly diffuse against a more
focused background, but there was no denying the reality and solidity of it. At first
Louis thought it was a childтАФthe form was small and frail, the size of an emaciated
ten-year-oldтАФbut then he leaned closer to the mirror, squinted through the haze of
his headache, and all thoughts of chil-dren fled.
The small figure leaning over his mother had a large, shaven head perched on a thin