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them. I didn't much care for the taste. I had never liked medicine of any
kind, except in a utilitarian way.
Especially since Harry had died.
CHAPTER 16
HARRY DID NOT DIE QUICKLY AND HE DID NOTDIEeasily. He took his own terrible
long time, the first and last selfish thing he had ever done in his life.
Harry died for a year and a half, in little stages, slipping for a few weeks,
fighting back to almost full strength again, keeping us all dizzy with trying
to guess. Would he go now, this time, or had he beaten it altogether? We never
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knew, but because it was Harry it seemed foolish for us to give up. Harry
would do what was right, no matter how hard, but what did that mean in dying?
Was it right to fight and hang on and make the rest of us suffer through an
endless death, when death was coming no matter what Harry did? Or was it right
to slip away gracefully and without fuss?
At nineteen, I certainly didn't know the answer, although I already knew more
about death than most of the other pimple-riddenpuddingheads in my sophomore
class at theUniversityofMiami .
And one fine autumn afternoon after a chemistry class, as I walked across the
campus toward the student union, Deborah appeared beside me.  Deborah, I
called to her, sounding very collegiate, I thought,  comehave a Coke. Harry
had told me to hang out at the union and have Cokes. He'd said it would help
me pass for human, and learn how other humans behaved. And of course, he was
right. In spite of the damage to my teeth, I was learning a great deal about
the unpleasant species.
Deborah, at seventeen, already far too serious, shook her head.  It's Dad,
she said. And very shortly we were driving across town to the hospice where
they had taken Harry. Hospice was not good news. That meant the doctors were
saying that Harry was ready to die, and suggesting that hecooperate .
Harry did not look good when we got there. He looked so green and still
against the sheets that I thought we were too late. He was spindly and gaunt
from his long fight, looking forall the world as though something inside him
was eating its way out. The respirator beside himhissed, a Darth Vader sound
from a living grave. Harry was alive, strictly speaking.  Dad, Deborah said,
taking his hand.  I brought Dexter.
Harry opened his eyes and his head rolled toward us, almost as if some
invisible hand had pushed it from the far side of the pillow. But they were
not Harry's eyes. They were murky blue pits, dull and empty, uninhabited.
Harry's body might be alive, but he was not home.
 It isn't good, the nurse told us.  We're just trying to make him
comfortable now. And she busied herself with a large hypodermic needle from a
tray, filling it and holding it up to squirt out the air bubble.
 Wait . . . It was so faint I thought at first it might be the respirator. I
looked around the room and my eyes finally fell on what was left of Harry.
Behind the dull emptiness of his eyes a small spark was shining.  Wait . . .
, he said again, nodding toward the nurse.
She either didn't hear him or had decided to ignore him. She stepped to his
side and gently lifted his stick arm. She began to swab it with a cotton ball.
 No . . . , Harry gasped gently, almost inaudibly.
I looked at Deborah. She seemed to be standing at attention in a perfect
posture of formal uncertainty. I looked back at Harry. His eyes locked onto
mine.
 No . . . , he said, and there was something very close to horror in his
eyes now.  No . . . shot . . .
I stepped forward and put a restraining hand on the nurse, just before she
plunged the needle into Harry's vein.  Wait, I said. She looked up at me, and
for the tiniest fraction of a second there was something in her eyes. I almost
fell backward in surprise. It was a cold rage, an inhuman, lizard-brain sense
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of I-Want,a belief that the world was her very own game preserve. Just that
one flash, but I was sure. She wanted to ram the needle into my eye for
interrupting her. She wanted to shove it into my chest and twist until my ribs
popped and my heart burst through into her hands and she could squeeze,
twist,rip my life out of me. This was a monster, a hunter, a killer. This was
a predator, a soulless and evil thing.
Just like me.
But her granola smile returned very quickly.  What is it, honey? she said,
ever so sweetly, so perfectly Last Nurse.
My tongue felt much too large for my mouth and it seemed like it took me
several minutes to answer, but I finally managed to say,  He doesn't want the
shot.
She smiled again, a beautiful thing that sat on her face like the blessing of [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]