Last Gasp полностью

"Christ, I hope not," said MeGowan with feeling. "Look, Ruth, I know the work is important and that somebody ought to be doing it, but why you? It isn't as if you were getting paid to do it."

"It isn't a question of money; it's what I want to do. What I must do."

"I didn't mean to imply--"

"You didn't imply anything, Grant." Ruth smiled at him. "I'm just thankful--really and truly--that you're around to talk to. Valentine thinks the diagnostic work I did in Denver isn't worth shit. At least you recognize it's worthwhile."

She arched back in the chair, massaging the nape of her neck with her fingertips. Pale and tired as she was, MeGowan couldn't bring to mind many women as sexually attractive and good-looking. Short, dark, naturally curly hair framed an oval face in which her full lips and vibrant dark eyes would have inspired a Goya. Gypsy eyes. There was something of the same passion and intensity in her personality, too. . . .

With a guilty start he swiveled around to look at the clock, then hurriedly finished off his tea. "Better get along before they start without me. See you tomorrow." He strode to the door and paused there. "And listen, Dr. Patton, get a good night's rest. Forget Manhattan Emergency even exists."

"Yes, sir, Dr. MeGowan." Ruth wrinkled her nose at him as he went out. Easier to forget you had a raging toothache.

She got up and went to the window and gazed down into the tunnel of smog that was East Sixty-eighth Street. She recalled her first visit to New York as a teen-ager, the thrill and excitement of the electric city. Just to stroll down Fifth Avenue was in itself a magical experience. The tall buildings gleaming in the sunlight, the haute couture shops and bustling department stores, the vendors on every street corner assailing the senses with mouth-watering smells--all the crazy mad whirl of big-city life that was like a shot of pure adrenaline into the bloodstream.

And the people!

Elegant women who had stepped straight out of a Vogue fashion plate, slender-hipped black dudes in soft wide hats and dazzling striped suits lounging behind the tinted windows of long limousines; old bags in threadbare fur wraps; goggled-eyed tourists trying not to look battered and bewildered; poets, prophets and cretins addressing the passing parade from the gutters.

The smile of fond remembrance faded. Nobody strolled down Fifth Avenue anymore. If you tried it without a respirator you could manage maybe fifty paces before collapsing facedown on the sidewalk and coughing up shreds of pink lung tissue. She'd seen that happen, and more than once. From the safety of a sealed car she'd observed a couple of down-and-outs, a man and a woman, slumped against the granite base of Rockefeller Center. Gray exhausted faces. Eyes blood-red and streaming from the photochemical irritants in the air. Lips drawn back in a ghastly snarl of abortive inhalation.

That had been during her first week in New York, almost three years ago.

Her friends and colleagues back in the wide clear spaces and mountains of Colorado had thought her deranged. What in heaven's name had possessed her to exchange a responsible well-paid research job in a decent part of the country for a thankless and disgusting last-ditch stand in the foul canyons of New York City? She wasn't cut out to be a Florence Nightingale. What a criminal waste of talent and brains. Stay in Denver, they had urged her, where you can live a decent life and make a real contribution.

Sometimes she thought they were right and wished she had. What exactly did she think she was achieving here? Saving one old guy because he happened to remind her of her grandfather? When hundreds --thousands--were rotting outside? And she wasn't even saving Fred Walsh, Ruth reminded herself brutally. Only passing him on to a special clinic where they would test another new batch of drugs on him in the hope that one of them would work a minor miracle.

Every day now, several times a day, she searched her thirty-five-year-old face in the mirror for a hint of the ravages to come. Inevitably they would. Everyone who' stayed in the city was affected, sooner or later.

Emphysema. Anoxia. Pollution.