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AUTOPSY ROOM FOUR by Stephen KingIT'S SO DARK THAT FOR A WHILE - JUST HOW LONG I DON'T know - I think I'm stillunconscious. Then, slowly, it comes to me that unconscious people don't have asensation of movement through the dark, accompanied by a faint, rhythmic soundthat can only be a squeaky wheel. And I can feel contact, from the top of myhead to the balls of my heels. I can smell something that might be rubber orvinyl. This is not unconsciousness, and there is something too ... too what? Toorational about these sensations for it to be a dream.Then what is it?Who am I?And what's happening to me?The squeaky wheel quits its stupid rhythm and I stop moving. There is a cracklearound me from the rubbersmelling stuff.A voice: "Which one did they say?"A pause.Second voice: "Four, I think. Yeah, four."We start to move again, but more slowly. I can hear the faint scuff of feet now,probably in soft-soled shoes, maybe sneakers. The owners of the voices are theowners of the shoes. They stop me again. There's a thump followed by a faintwhoosh. It is, I think, the sound of a door with a pneumatic hinge being opened.What's going on here? I yell, but the yell is only in my head. My lips don'tmove. I can feel them-and my tongue, lying on the floor of my mouth like astunned mole-but I can't move them.The thing I'm on starts rolling again. A moving bed? Yes. A gurney, in otherwords. I've had some experience with them, a long time ago, in Lyndon Johnson'sshitty little Asian adventure. It comes to me that I'm in a hospital, thatsomething bad has happened to me, something like the explosion that almostneutered me twenty-three years ago, and that I'm going to be operated on. Thereare a lot of answers in that idea, sensible ones, for the most part, but I don'thurt anywhere. Except for the minor matter of being scared out of my wits, Ifeel fine. And if these are orderlies wheeling me into an operating room, whycan't I see? Why can't I talk?A third voice: "Over here, boys."My rolling bed is pushed in a new direction, and the question drumming in myhead is What kind of a mess have I gotten myself into?Doesn't that depend on who you are? I ask myself, but that's one thing, atleast, I find I do know. I'm Howard Cottrell. I'm a stock broker known to someof my colleagues as Howard the Conqueror.Second voice (from just above my head): "You're looking very pretty today, Doc."Fourth voice (female, and cool): 'It's always nice to be validated by you,Rusty. Could you hurry up a little? The baby-sitter expects me back by seven.She's committed to dinner with her parents."Back by seven, back by seven. It's still the afternoon, maybe, or early evening,but black in here, black as your hat, black as a woodchucks asshole, black asmidnight in Persia, and what's going on? Where have I been? What have I beendoing? Why haven't I been manning the phones?Because it's Saturday, a voice from far down murmurs. You were ... were ...A sound: WHOCK! A sound I love. A sound I more or less live for. The sound of... what? The head of a golf club, of course. Hitting a ball off the tee. Istand, watching it fly off into the blue ...I'm grabbed, shoulders and calves, and lifted. It startles me terribly, and Itry to scream. No sound comes out ... or perhaps one does, a tiny squeak, muchtinier than the one produced by the wheel below me. Probably not even that.Probably it's just my imagination.I'm swung through the air in an envelope of blacknessHey, don't drop me, I'vegot a bad back! I try to say, and again there's no movement of the lips orteeth; my tongue goes on lying on the floor of my mouth, the mole maybe not juststunned but dead, and now I have a terrible thought, one that spikes fright adegree closer to panic: What if they put me down the wrong way and my tongueslides backward and blocks my windpipe? I won't be able to breathe! That's whatpeople mean when they say someone swallowed his tongue, isn't it?Second voice (Rusty): "You'll like this one, Doc, he looks like Michael Bolton."Female doc: "Who's that?"Third voice-sounds like a young man, not much more than a teenager: "He's thiswhite lounge singer who wants to be black. I don't think this is him."There's laughter at that, the female voice joining in (a little doubtfully), andas I am set down on what feels like a padded table, Rusty starts some newcrack-he's got a whole standup routine, it seems. I lose this bit of hilarity ina burst of sudden horror. I won't be able to breathe if my tongue blocks mywindpipe, that's the thought that has just gone through my mind, but what if I'mnot breathing now?What if I'm dead? What if this is what death is like?It fits. It fits everything with a horrid prophylactic snugness. The dark. Therubbery smell. Nowadays I am Howard the Conqueror, stock broker extraordinaire,terror of Derry Municipal Country Club, frequent habitue` of what is known atgolf courses all over the world as the Nineteenth Hole, but in '71 I was part ofa medical assistance team in the Mekong Delta, a scared kid who sometimes wokeup wet-eyed from dreams of the family dog, and all at once I know this feel,this smell.Dear God, I'm in a body bag.First voice: "Want to sign this, Doc? Remember to bear down hard-it's threecopies."Sound of a pen, scraping away on paper. I imagine the owner of the first voiceholding out a clipboard to the woman doctor.Oh dear Jesus let me not be dead! I try to scream, and nothing comes out.I'm breathing, though ... aren't I? I mean, I can't feel myself doing it, but mylungs seem okay, they're not throbbing or yelling for air the way they do whenyou've swum too far underwater, so I must be okay, right?Except if you're dead, the deep voice murmurs, they wouldn't be crying out forair, would they? No-because dead lungs don't need to breathe. Dead lungs canjust kind of... take it easy.Rusty: "What are you doing next Saturday night, Doc?"But if I'm dead, how can I feel? How can I smell the bag I'm in? How can I hearthese voices, the Doc now saying that next Saturday night she's going to beshampooing her dog, which is named Rusty, what a coincidence, and all of themlaughing? If I'm dead, why aren't I either gone or in the white light they'realways -talking about on Oprah?There's a harsh ripping sound and all at once I am in white light; it isblinding, like the sun breaking through a scrim of clouds on a winter day. I tryto squint my eyes shut against it, but nothing happens. My eyelids are likeblinds on broken rollers.A face bends over me, blocking off part of the glare, which comes not from somedazzling astral plane but from a bank of overhead fluorescents. The face belongsto a young, conventionally handsome man of about twenty-five; he looks like oneof those beach beefcakes on Baywatch or Melrose Place. Marginally smarter,though. He's got a lot of black hair under a carelessly worn surgical greenscap. He's wearing the tunic, too. His eyes are cobalt blue, the sort of eyesgirls reputedly die for. There are dusty arcs of freckles high up on hischeekbones."Hey, gosh," he says. It's the third voice. "This guy does look like MichaelBolton! A little long in the old tootharoo, maybe . . ." He leans closer. One ofthe flat tie-ribbons at the neck of his green tunic tickles against my forehead."But yeah. I see it. Hey, Michael, sing something."Help me! is what I'm trying to sing, but I can only look up into his dark blueeyes with my frozen dead man's stare; I can only wonder if I am a dead man, ifthis is how it happens, if this is what everyone goes through after the pumpquits. If I'm still alive, how come he hasn't seen my pupils contract when thelight hit them? But I know the answer to that ... or I think I do. They didn'tcontract. That's why the glare from the fluorescents is so painful.The tie, tickling across my forehead like a feather.Help me! I scream up at the Baywatch beefcake, who is probably an intern ormaybe just a med school brat. Help me, please!My lips don't even quiver.The face moves back, the tie stops tickling, and all that white light streamsthrough my helpless-to-look-away eyes and into my brain. It's a hellish feeling,a kind of rape. I'll go blind if I have to stare into it for long, I think, andblindness will be a relief.WHOCK! The sound of the driver hitting the ball, but a little flat this time,and the feeling in the hands is bad. The ball's up ... but veering ... veeringoff ... veering toward ...Shit.I'm in the rough.Now another face bends into my field of vision. A white tunic instead of a greenone below it, a great untidy mop of orange hair above it. Distress-sale IQ is myfirst impression. It can only be Rusty. He's wearing a big dumb grin that Ithink of as a high-school grin, the grin of a kid who should have a tattooreading "Born to Snap Bra Straps" on one wasted bicep."Michael!" Rusty exclaims. "Jeez, ya lookin' gooood! This'z an honor! Sing forus, big boy! Sing your deadassoff!"From somewhere behind me comes the doc's voice, cool, no longer even pretendingto be amused by these antics. "Quit it, Rusty." Then, in a slightly newdirection: "What's the story, Mike?'Mike's voice is the first voice-Rusty's partner. He sounds slightly embarrassedto be working with a guy who wants to be Bobcat Goldthwait when he grows up."Found him on the fourteenth hole at Derry Muni. Off the course, actually, inthe rough. If he hadn't just played through the foursome behind him, and if theyhadn't seen one of his legs stickin' out of the puckerbrush, he'd... [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |
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