The one who wants to survive / Stephen King
Although this is not related to IT, I hope you will treat this story with dignity.
Stephen King's "Survivor Type"
')
Sooner or later, each medical student has a question: what degree of shock can a patient endure? Different teachers answer this question in different ways, but in essence all the answers boil down to a new question: “How much does the patient want to survive?”
JANUARY 26
Two days, like a storm threw me here. And this morning I measured the island with my steps. Yeah, an island! 190 steps wide at its widest point and 267 steps long from tip to tip.
As far as I can tell, nothing edible.
My name is Richard Pine. And this is my diary. If they find me (when!), I can easily destroy him. There is no shortage of matches. In matches and in heroin. The one and the other is abundant here. And both are not worth a broken cent, ha ha. So I will write. All the same occupation.
If you tell the whole truth (and why not? Something, and I have plenty of time!), I was born like that by Richard Pincetti in New York's Little Italy. My father was Italian old-fashioned. I wanted to be a surgeon. My father laughed, called me crazy and told me to pour him another glass of wine. He died of cancer at the age of forty. I was happy.
In high school, I played football and was, damn it, the best player in the history of the school. Defender! For the past two years I have been playing in the city team I hated football. But if you are a dirty little Italian from a poor quarter, and you want to go to college, then sport is your only hope. So I played - and I got the desired sports scholarship.
In college, I continued to drive the ball only until my grades gave me the right to a full academic scholarship. First courses. My father died a month and a half before graduation. Just think! Or do you think that I really wanted to go through the stage to get a diploma, and look in the hall, and see this Italian face there? Ask something more interesting. And I was accepted into fraternity. Not the most elitist - where already with such a name as Pincetti! But fraternity is always fraternity.
Why am I writing this? Almost funny. No, I take "almost" back. Funny, funny, funny. The famous Dr. Pine sits on a stone in his pajama pants and an open-necked shirt, sits on an island so small that it can be almost outdone, he sits and writes the story of his life. And I want to eat! No matter. So I will write the story of my damn life, if I so want. In any case, it will allow me to distract from the demands of my stomach. More or less.
I changed my last name to Pine before entering the medical school. Mother said I broke her heart. What is heart? My father had not had time to cool down in the grave, as she had already hung on a Jewish grocer in the next quarter. If she really loved her last name, so why hurry to change it to Steinbrunner?
Surgery is what attracted me. Since high school. Even then I bandaged my hands before each game, and then kept them in warm water. If you want to be a surgeon, take care of your hands. The guys made fun of me, called out chicken shit. But I have never fought with anyone. I had enough risk on the field. But there are other ways. Most of all, I was harassed by Howie Plock, a brutish Polish girl with no brain drops in his head, and the whole face in furuncles. I then distributed newspapers and bargained with numbers. Well, I also worked on trifles. You recognize people, you listen, you make connections. When you work on the streets, it is impossible otherwise. How to die, every fool knows. Well, I paid the first strongman of the school, Ricky Brazzi, ten bucks. So that he disfigured the mouth of Howe Plock. Disfigure him to fall, I said, and get a dollar for each tooth that you bring to me. Rico brought me three teeth wrapped in a paper towel. Working off his dollars, he sprained two fingers, so you see what I could plunge into.
In college, while the idiot broke ridges (unintentional sharpness, haha!), Serving tables, or selling ties, or rubbing floors, I did something else. Football betting, basketball betting, then yes. And all my years of study went smoothly.
With the spread I touched during the internship. I interned in one of the largest hospitals in New York. At first, only recipe forms. I sold a pack of one hundred forms to one type in the neighborhood, and he forged the signatures of forty to fifty doctors on specimens that I sold him. And then he sold them on the street from ten to twenty dollars for the form. Fans of stimulants and tranquilizers, it suited as well as possible. Well, and then I found out what chaos was happening in the hospital pharmacy. No one knew what was coming and what was being issued. Some brought out good handfuls. Not me. I have always been careful. And I never had any troubles until I was unconcerned ... well, and in addition I was not lucky. But still, I will come out dry. So it always was.
I can't write more yet. The brush ached, and the pencil blunted. And I do not know why I started it. Surely someone will soon find me here.
JANUARY 27
The boat was carried away last night, and it sank at a depth of about ten feet off the northern coast of the islet. Yes, do not care. The bottom still looked like Swiss cheese, after being dragged along the reef. And I took everything from her that was worth taking. Four gallons of water. Sewing kit. First Aid Kit. And I write this in the so-called inspection log of this boat. Just laugh. Who ever heard of a lifeboat without a stock of PROVISION? The last entry in it is from August 8, 1970. Oh yes! Two knives, and one quite sharp, one folding spoon-fork. They'll come in handy when I have dinner today. Roasted pebbles. Haha Well, in any case, I sharpened a pencil.
When I get out of this clouded guano cliff, I will shake the hell out of Paradise Lines Incorporated so much that the devils gasp. For the sake of this alone is worth living. And I intend to live a long time. I'll get out. And do not think. I'll get out.
(later)
Making a list, I missed something. Two kilos of the purest heroin, worth three hundred and fifty thousand dollars at prices of New York streets. Here it is zero squared. Funny, huh? Haha
28 JANUARY
Well, I ate, if you can call it food. On a pile of stones in the center of the island fell a seagull. These stones are piled up in the form of a mini-pyramid and are all spotted with bird's crap. I took a stone that fell on my arm, climbed as close as possible to her, and she sits to herself and looks at me with shiny black eyes. I still wonder how the rumbling in my stomach did not scare her.
I threw a stone with all my might and landed right in her side. She croaked loudly and tried to fly away. But the stone broke her right wing. I began to clamber over to her, and she jumped away. The bitchucker forced to chase her, although I saw blood begin to spread on her white feathers. On the other side of the pyramid, I put my foot in the gap between two stones and almost broke my ankle.
Finally she got tired, and I grabbed her on the east side of the island. I wanted to get to the water. I grabbed her tail, she turned around and pecked at me. Then, with one hand, I squeezed my legs over the devil and with the other I twisted her neck. The crunch of the vertebrae gave me great pleasure. Food is served, you know. Ha! Ha!
I took it to my “camp”, but before plucking it and gutting it, I smeared the wound left by its beak with iodine. Birds carry a bunch of microorganisms on themselves, and now I don’t need to get sick.
The operation with the seagull went smoothly. Alas, I could not boil it or fry it. There are no blades of grass on the island, the sea did not bother to throw a fin on the banks, and the boat went to the bottom. So I ate it with raw materials. My stomach wanted to burst it immediately, but with all my sympathy for him I could not allow it and began to count from hundred to one until the nausea subsided. This tool does not work rarely.
No, can you imagine that the bird almost broke my ankle, and in addition also pecked? If I catch another one tomorrow, I will torture her. This one got off too easily. Here I am writing, and I see her severed head on the sand. Even glazed in death, her black eyes seem to laugh at me.
Do brain seagulls have enough?
And is it edible?
JANUARY 29
Yum-yum today did not have to. One gull sank to the top of the pyramid, but flew away before I got to her so quickly to send the ball into her goal, ha ha! Began to let go of the beard. Itchy damn. If the seagull returns and I catch her, I will first cut her eyes out and then finish off.
I damn know what kind of surgeon, as it seems, I managed to mention. They kicked me under the drum beat. In essence, funny; they themselves are engaged in this, and when someone is caught, such unbridled indignation! I put on you, Jack, I got mine. The second Oath of Hippocrates and Khanzha.
During my adventures as a trainee and hospital doctor (according to the Oath of Khanzha, this was equivalent to an “officer and gentleman”, but don’t even think about it) to open the reception room on Park Avenue. A great achievement for me. After all, I did not have a rich daddy or a cartridge patronizing me, like many of my "colleagues." By the time I hung my tablet on the door, my father had spent nine years in his impoverished grave. My mother died a year before they took my permission to practice medicine.
Society of mutual services. I arranged with half a dozen pharmacists on the East Side, with two pharmaceutical companies and at least twenty other doctors. The patients were referred to me, and I referred the patients to others. I did the surgery and prescribed proper postoperative medication. Not all operations were necessary, but I never operated without patient consent. And never a single patient looked at the completed prescription and said: “I don’t want to accept this.” Listen up In 1956, they removed the uterus or part of the thyroid gland, but they take painkillers in five and ten years, if they are allowed. And I sometimes allowed, and I'm not alone, you know. They had this habit to afford. And sometimes the patient after a small surgical intervention began to suffer from insomnia. Or he had problems how to get diet pills or a tranquilizer. All this can be arranged. Ha! Yes! If they had not received them from me, they would have received from someone else.
Then the people from the tax office reached Lowenthal. Until this ram. They waved a five-year term under his nose, and he laid out half a dozen names. Among them was mine. For some time I was being watched, and by the time we went out into the open, I was pulling a lot more than five years. There were some other deals, including forms of recipes, with which I finally did not finish. Strange: I no longer needed this at all, but the habit remains a habit. It is difficult to abandon the extra "green"
Well, I know someone. I pulled some strings. And threw a couple of people to the wolves to be devoured. However, not one of those I liked. Everyone I gave out to the federal authorities was a desperate son of a bitch.
Damn, I want to eat like that!
JANUARY 30
Today there are no gulls. Reminds me of the banner boards that street vendors sometimes hang on their carts in my old quarter. "TODAY'S TOMATOES NO." I entered the water to the waist, holding a sharp knife in my hand. And he stood in complete immobility at this place under the scorching sun for four hours. Twice it seemed to me that I was losing consciousness, but I counted from a hundred back until the sensation was over. But I have not seen a single fish. Not a single one.
JANUARY 31
Killed another seagull, quite the same as the first. But I was so hungry that I did not torture her, although I promised myself that. Gutted and eaten. Squeezed the guts and ate them too. It is strange how you feel the return of your vital energy. And I already began to give in to fright. I lay in the shadow of the central pile of stones, and it began to seem to me that I could hear voices. Father Mothers My ex-wife. And worst of all - the giant-kitaezy, who sold me heroin in Saigon. He whispered, perhaps because of a partially split palate.
- Come on! - His voice came out of nowhere. - Let's smell the syutochku. Do not knead hunger. So horoso ... - But I have never resorted to narcotic drugs. Even to sleeping pills.
Loventhal killed himself, didn’t I tell you? This ram. He hanged himself in his former reception room. And he has served the world, I look at it this way.
I wanted my tablet back. Someone with whom I spoke said that it was possible to arrange it - but it would take a lot of money. Such a lubricant, which I could not imagine. I kept forty thousand dollars in a bank safe. I decided to take a chance and try to scroll through them. Double or triple.
Well, I went to Ronnie Hanelli. I played football with Ronnie when we were students, and when his younger brother decided to become a therapist, I helped him get a place in the hospital. Ronnie himself was on legal - funny, no? In the quarter when we were boys, we called him Ronnie Forced because he was the judge in all games. If you didn’t like his decisions, then the choice was small: either keep your mouth shut or get your teeth. Puerto Ricans called him Ronnitaleshka. In one word - Ronnitaleshka. It only amused him. So, this type went to college, and then to the law faculty and passed the final exams from the very first call, and then opened a shop in our old quarter, right above the Aquarium bar. I close my eyes and see him rolling along the street in this white Ford Continental. The largest horseradish moneylender in the city.
I knew that Ronnie would have something for me.
“It's a dangerous thing,” he said. “But you always knew how to take care of yourself.” And if you can bring this potion, I will introduce you to a couple of the right people. One of them is a member of the State Legislature.
And then he called me two names. One was a Chinese giant Henry Lee-Zhu. And the second is the Vietnamese Saul Ngo. Chemist. For a fee, he will check the goods of kitaezy. It was known that that from time to time does not hesitate to "joke." “Jokes” are plastic bags of talcum powder, with powder for cleaning baths, and starch. Ronnie said that because of his jokes, Lee-Zhu will be killed sooner or later.
1ST OF FEBRUARY
Flew the plane. Right above the island. I tried to climb on the pyramid and horn. My foot fell into the gap. That damn crack in which she got stuck that day when I killed the first gull. Of course, the same. And I broke my ankle. Like a gun shot. The pain was unthinkable. I screamed, lost my balance, waving my arms like a madman, and yet I fell down, hit my head, and everything turned black. I came to myself at dusk. From the broken head leaked order of blood. A leg below the knee slipped away like a car camera, and I earned a nasty sunburn. I think if the sun went down an hour later, my skin would go blistering.
Somehow I got here, shivered all night in a chill and wept from impotence. He treated the wound on his head - just above the temporal lobe - and bandaged it as best he could. Practically, an abrasion plus a slight concussion seems to me, but here's a leg ... a serious fracture, double, if not triple.
How do I hunt birds now?
The plane was probably looking for survivors from Callas. During the night in a storm, the boat could carry many miles from the place where the ship went to the bottom. Rescuers may not return here.
FEBRUARY 2
I laid out the signal on the white pebble beach on the southern side of the island, where the boat took out. It took me all day with breaks to rest in the shade. And still, I lost consciousness twice. In my opinion, I lost 25 pounds in weight, mainly due to dehydration. But now, from the place where I am sitting, I see the letters that the day has gone to me: dark stones on a white background shout: “HELP”, and there are four feet in each letter. The next plane will notice me.
If there is a next plane.
There is continuous, throbbing pain in the leg. The edema did not sleep, and an ominous cyanosis appeared over a double fracture, and it seemed to be increasing. I firmly bandaged my leg with my shirt, and this somewhat soothed the pain, but still it is so strong that I do not sleep so much as fall into oblivion.
I'm starting to think whether I will not have to amputate the leg.
FEBRUARY 3RD
Edema and cyanosis worsen. I'll wait till tomorrow. If the operation becomes inevitable, I think I can do it. For sterilization, I have matches, a sharp knife; I have a needle and thread to sew, from the sewing kit. And a shirt for bandages.
I even have two kilos of “painkiller”, although not of the type that I prescribed to my patients. But they would take it as much as they could if they could get it. These old ladies with their hair blue would have sniffed at least with an air freshener if they thought he would cheer them up. Can you believe me!
FEBRUARY 4
I decided to amputate the foot. Four days without food. If you still pull, then I risk losing consciousness from shock and hunger together during the operation, and then I am bleeding to death. But I still want to live, no matter how bad I feel. I have in my memory what Mockridge used to repeat in a lecture on the basics of anatomy. Old Moki, we called it. Sooner or later, each medical student has a question: what degree of shock can a patient endure? Then he tapped with a pointer on the diagram of the human body, pointing to the liver, kidneys, heart, spleen, intestines. Essentially, gentlemen, he said, the answer boils down to a new question: “How much does the patient want to survive?”
I think I can take it.
No, really.
Probably, I am writing this to postpone the inevitable, but it really occurred to me that I didn’t tell how I ended up here.Perhaps I should do this and tie up all the ends in case the operation fails. It will take a few minutes, and I have no doubt that there will still be enough light to operate. After all, if you believe my "pulsar", now only ten minutes past nine in the morning. Ha!
I went to Saigon as a tourist. Thousands of people fly there every year, despite the Nixon war. There are also people who turn off the road to gaze at the scene of a car accident and attend cockfighting.
My Chinese friend had a product. I took him to Ngo, and he guaranteed his high quality. He told me that Li-Zhu played his joke four months ago, so that his wife was blown up when she turned the ignition key on her Opel. Since then, jokes have stopped.
I have been in Saigon for three weeks; in San Francisco, I decided to return on the Callas tourist boat. Cabin first class. To climb aboard with the goods was not difficult - for the corresponding fee. Ngo arranged that the two customs officers, after a cursory examination of my suitcases, waved me to pass. The product was in the air bag, which they did not even look.
“It will be more difficult to go through customs inspection in the US,” Ngo told me. - But this is your job.
I was not going to carry goods through US customs. Ronnie found a scuba diver ready to do some pretty risky work for $ 3,000. I was supposed to meet him (two days ago, as I now realized) in the San Francisco doss-house, called the Hotel “St. Remigius. According to the plan, I had to put the goods in a sealed container with a timer and a bag of red paint attached to it. Before we get to the pier, the container will be thrown overboard, but I will, of course, not me.
I still looked after a coca or steward who would not refuse to earn extra money and would be smart enough (or stupid) to keep his mouth shut when Callas sank.
How and why, I do not know. Storm, but the ship seemed not to even notice. About eight o'clock in the evening of the twenty-third, somewhere near the decks there was an explosion. At that moment I was in the cabin, and the Callas almost immediately began to roll. Right ... or is it called "to starboard"?
People shouted, rushed. Bottles fell from the rack and broke. A man climbed up the ladder from below, his shirt burned, his skin was charred. The speaker began to send people to the boats, to which they were distributed during a training alert at the beginning of the voyage. Passengers immediately began to rush even more. Few of them bother to take part in anxiety. I didn’t just accept it, but I came early - you know, I wanted to stand in the front row to see everything. I am always very attentive when it comes to my skin.
Now I went down to my cabin, took the bags of heroin and scattered them across my breast pocket. Then I went to lifeboat number 8. While I was climbing the ramp, two more explosions sounded, and the ship tilted even steeper.
On the upper deck there was complete confusion. A woman with a baby in her arms ran screaming past me, running faster and faster along the slippery skewed deck, hit my thigh against the gunwale and flew over it. I saw her turn over twice in the air, and on the third turn disappeared from my sight. An old man was sitting in the center of the shuffleboard and tearing his hair. Another man in a white dressing gown with a terribly burned face and tassels wandered aimlessly in a circle, stumbled and shouted: “HELP ME! I'm a blind one! HELP ME! I am a blind one! ”
The panic was almost universal, from passengers it spread to the team, as if it were a moronic ulcer. Do not forget that between the first explosion and the moment when the Callas plunged into the waves, only about twenty minutes passed. Some boats besieged crowds of screaming passengers, and there was an absolute emptiness near the others. Like near mine on the lurking board of the ship. Besides me, there was only a sailor with a pimply whitened face.
“Let's put this old whore into the water,” he said, and his eyes darted madly in their sockets. - Damn trough goes to the bottom!
It is not difficult to lower the boat, but in a nervous rush he managed to confuse the hoists on his side. The boat sank six feet down and swirled in the air. Her nose was two feet lower than the stern.
I went to help him, and then he screamed. He unraveled Tali, but he didn’t have time to release the brush in time - the cable that slid down with a hiss burned his palm, skinned, and was thrown overboard. I threw the rope ladder down, hurried down the ramp and unhooked the hoist from the boat. Then I grabbed the oars and started rowing - sometimes I went boating for fun when I was visiting friends in country houses in the summer. But now I was fucking saving my life. I knew that if I didn’t have time to sail a decent distance from the sinking “Callas,” then the whirlpool, when it goes to the bottom, will suck the boat along with me.
Five minutes later, Callas disappeared into the waves. And the boat grabbed the outer edge of the whirlpool - I had to row quite wildly, only to keep myself in place. He went under the water very quickly. People still clung to the gunshire and shouted. They were like monkeys.
The storm raged even more. I lost one paddle, but managed to hold the second. I spent the night as if in a dream - then scooped up water, then grabbed the oar to turn the bow of the boat to meet the next frothy shaft.
Before dawn on the twenty-fourth wave behind me, they began to rise higher. The boat rushed forward. It was scary, but also intoxicating. Suddenly, most of the boards were pulled out from under my feet, but the boat did not have time to sink, as it was thrown onto this pile of stones, forgotten by God. I don't even know where I am. I just have no idea. Navigator business has never been my fad, haha.
But I know what I have to do. Perhaps this is the last entry, but for some reason I think that everything will cost. So it always happened to me, right? And modern prosthetics work wonders. And I will do well with one foot.
Well, it's time to see if I am a good surgeon, as I believe. Good luck!
FEBRUARY 5TH
Made by
Most of all I was worried about the pain. I am quite capable of withstanding pain, but I thought that in my weakened state, a fusion of hunger and incredible pain can cause fainting, before I finish.
But heroin perfectly solved this problem.
I opened one packet and drew a decent dose from a flat stone into each nostril — first to the right, then to the left. The sensation was as if you were breathing in wonderful freezing ice, and it penetrates your brain from the bottom up. I breathed heroin right away, as I finished writing in my diary yesterday - it was at 9:45. The next time I looked at the clock, the shadows shifted, and I was partially in the sun, and the time was 12:41. I dozed off. It never crossed my mind how beautiful it was; I could not understand why I was so dismissive in the past. Pain, horror, melancholy ... all this disappeared, and only the serene euphoria remained.
In this state, I had an operation.
The pain, however, was severe, especially at the beginning of the operation. But the pain seemed to detach from me. She annoyed me, but nevertheless was very interesting. Can you understand this? If you had to take medicine in which morphine is the main ingredient, you might understand. And he not only relieves pain. He creates a certain mood of consciousness. Quiet serenity. I can understand why people sit on the needle, although this expression seems to me to be exaggerated, and more often it is used, of course, by those who have not tried drugs.
In about half of the operation, the pain became more personal. Waves of weakness rolled over me. I was eagerly looking at the bag of white powder, but forced myself to look away. If I am again overwhelmed by a nap, I am bleeding in the same way as if I had lost consciousness. Instead, I counted back from a hundred.
The most critical point was blood loss. As a surgeon, I understood that perfectly. Not a drop spilled in vain. If a patient begins to bleed during an operation in a hospital, he can be bleed. But I had no blood left. Spilled - and by the end the sand around it darkened from it - disappeared irrevocably, and I had to wait until my internal production did not compensate for the loss. I had no clamps, no other styptic, or suture.
I started the operation at exactly 12:25. He finished at 1:50 and immediately stunned himself with heroin, increasing the dose. I plunged into a gray, pain-free world and stayed there for almost five hours. When I escaped from the dope, the sun was drooping towards the sunset, stretching the golden path across the blue Pacific Ocean directly to me. I have never seen anything more beautiful ... this one moment completely paid for all the pain. An hour later, I rested a little more to fully enjoy the sunset and pay tribute to him.
Soon after it got dark, I ...
I…
Wait a minuteDidn't I tell you that I did not eat FOUR DAYS? And that only my own body was in my possession to replenish the weakening vital forces? And most importantly, did I not repeat to you again and again that survival depends on consciousness? Mighty consciousness? I will not justify myself by saying that you would do the same. Start with the fact that you are unlikely to be a surgeon. Even if you knew about how your feet were amputated, you would do such a thing that you would bleed to death. And even if you would have survived the operation and postoperative shock, your thought would have crept into your head full of prejudices. Oh, no matter! Nobody needs to know about it. The last thing I do before leaving the island, is the destruction of the diary.
I was very careful.
I washed it thoroughly before I eat it.
FEBRUARY 7
The stump was desperately sick - at times unbearable. But, in my opinion, the deep itch that arose when the healing process began was even worse. This afternoon, I remembered all the patients who endlessly complained to me that they could not bear this terrible healing itch - after all, it wasn’t even possible to get to him to scratch. And I smiled and told them that tomorrow they would feel much better, and thought to themselves what kind of whiners they were, what kind of weak-willed underpants, what ungrateful little children. But now I understand. Several times I was ready to tear off the shirt strips from the stump and scratch it, scratch it, scratch the soft nude muscles with my nails, tearing out the rough seams - and let the blood rush to the sand. Anything, anything, just to get rid of this terrible, frenzy itch.
At such moments, I count back from a hundred and smell heroin.
I have no idea how much I introduced him into my body, but I know that I was in a dope almost continuously after the operation. He suppresses hunger, you know. I almost do not realize that I am hungry. Easy sucking feeling in abdomen, that's all. And it is easy to ignore. But it is impossible. Heroin caloric content is zero. I checked myself, crawled from place to place, measuring my energy. It decreases.
Lord, Lord! I hope not, but ... you may need another operation.
(later)
Another plane flew by. So high that I could not be of any use; and I saw only a widening white trail trailing behind him across the sky. Still waving his hands. Mahal and yelled at him. When he was out of sight, I wept.
It's getting dark, it's hard to see. Food. What kind of food did I not think about? My mother's homemade sausages. Bread with garlic. Snails Lobster. Fried meat on the ribs. Ice cream with fruit and whipped cream. London steak. Huge triangular pieces of cake with homemade vanilla ice cream, served at Mother Crunch on First Avenue. Hot pretzels baked salmon ice cream baked meringue baked ham with pineapple slices. Circles of onions. Fried onion with potato chips iced sip ice tea with French fingers.
100, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94
Lord, Lord, Lord,
FEBRUARY 8
In the morning today, another seagull sat on the top of the pyramid. Huge, fat. I sat in the shade under my boulder, who mentally christened my camp, putting the bandaged stump up higher. As soon as the seagull appeared, my salivation began. Just like Pavlovsky dogs. Drool flowed like a baby. Like a baby.
I picked up the stone on the arm and crawled to it. Pintzetti, get ready to otpasovat (Pine, I want to say. Pine). I had no doubt that she would fly away. But he could not try. If I had harvested it, such a fattened and impudent bird, the second operation could have been postponed indefinitely. I crawled over to her, the stump hit the stones from time to time, and the firework of pain flashed all over my body, and I waited for it to fly away.
But she did not fly away, but merely wandered along, sticking her meaty chest, like some bird general inspecting troops. Sometimes she glanced at me with small nasty black eyes, and I froze and began to count back from the hundred, until she began to pace again. Whenever she turned her wings, my stomach filled with ice. And I kept drooling. I could not help myself. I drooled like a baby.
I do not know how long I sneaked up to her. Hour?Two? And the closer I got, the more desperate my heart was pounding, the more appetizing the gull looked. And she seemed to tease me on purpose, and I had no doubt that she would fly away, as soon as I got to the distance of the throw. My hands and legs began to tremble. My mouth was dry. The stump desperately ached.
I think now that I was breaking. But so soon? I took it less than a week!
No matter.I need it. There are still many. Lots of.If later, after returning to the States, I have to undergo a rehabilitation course, I will choose the best clinic in California and go there with a smile. Anyway, as long as it's not a problem, right?
When I was at a distance of a throw, I didn’t have the heart to throw a stone. I was overwhelmed by the insane belief that I would miss. And not by inches, but by feet. No, you need to get closer. And I continued to crawl onto the stone pile, with my head thrown back, my head thrown back, and the sweat was rolling in my exhausted garden scarecrow. My teeth began to rot, I did not tell you? If I were superstitious, I would have decided that this was because I ate ...
Ha!We know this is nonsense, right?
I froze again. I was much closer to her than to the first two gulls. And yet I did not dare. I squeezed the stone so that my fingers ached, and yet I could not throw it. Because I knew exactly what would happen if I missed.
I do not care if I will izvedu all goods! I have half the ass! Until the end of life I will not know worries. MY LONG, LONG LIFE!
I think I would crawl right up to her, and throwing a stone if she had not finally taken off. I would crawl up to her and twisted her neck. But she spread her wings and took off. I screamed at her, jerked to my knees and threw my stone that is urine. And got into it!
The bird snuffled and fell on the other side of the pyramid. Muttering and laughing, not thinking that the stump was beating on the stones and the wound was about to open, I crawled over the top and moved down. He knocked his head, but did not even notice this — that is, then — although he stuffed a decent lump. I was able to think only about the seagull and how I got into it - fantastic luck! - already in flight! Got in the air!
She hobbled at them to the shore, dragging her wing, and her belly reddened with blood. I crawled as fast as I could, but she hobbled even faster. The competition is crippled! Ha! Ha!I could grab it - the distance between us began to shrink all the same - if it were not for my hands. I must protect my hands very much - I may need them in the future. But as I did not take care of them, my palms were all scratched by the time we reached the pebble beach and I smashed the dial of my “Pulsar” on a sharp stone.
The seagull plopped down into the water, croaking disgustingly, and grabbed it. By the tail. I had a bunch of feathers in my fist. Then I fell face down in the water, swallowed it. Sniffle, spit.
And crawled on. He even tried to swim for her. The bandage slid off the stump. I started to sink. And he barely managed to return to the shore, shuddering from fatigue, torn by pain, crying, screaming, cursing the seagull. And she swam there for a long time, all moving away and moving away. In my opinion, there was a moment when I begged her to return. But when she moved through the reef, in my opinion, she was already dead.
Not fair.
It took me almost an hour to crawl to the camp. He drew a large dose of heroin with his nose, but I still hate this gull. If I was not destined to get her, so why did she need to tease me? Why didn't she fly away right away?
FEBRUARY 9: I
amputated my left foot and wrapped it in my pants. Strange.During the operation, I continuously drooled. Drooling. As while looking at the seagull. Launched and let. But I forced myself to wait for the dark. Just counted from a hundred years ago ... twenty, maybe thirty times! Ha! Ha!
And then ...
I say to myself. Cold beef. Cold beef. Cold beef.
11 (?) FEBRUARY
The last two days it is raining. And the wind raged. I managed to pull out so many stones from the pyramid that it turned out to be a cave, and I crawled into it. Found a spider. Squeezed in his fingers, before he managed to crawl away, and ate. Delicious.Juicy. I thought that the stones above me could collapse and bury me alive. Spit.
He waited for the storm in full thrill. Maybe it rained for three days, not two. Or one. But, in my opinion, darkened twice. I like the buzz. No pain then, no itching. I know that I will survive. It can not be that a person suffered like nothing.
When I was a boy, a snotty kid, in the Church of the Holy Family, the priest loved to spread about hell and mortal sins. It was his horse. Mortal sin is indestructible - he held that view. Last night he dreamed of me. Father Haley in his black bathrobe, with the crimson nose of a drunkard, threatened me with a finger and said: "Shame on you, Richard Pincetti ... mortal sin ... is guilty to hell, small ... is guilty to hell ..."
I laughed in his face. If this is not hell, so what is this place?
Half the time I am delirious, and everything else my stump is itchy, and in addition I feel unbearable from dampness.
But I will not give up. I swear Not for nothing. No wonder all this.
FEBRUARY 12 The
sun shines again. Wonderful day. I hope in the neighborhood they freeze their asses.
The day turned out to be successful for me - as far as the days are successful on this island. The temperature, which, apparently, was with me during a storm, as if it had become normal. When I crawled out of my hole, I was exhausted from weakness and chills, but after lying for two or three hours on the hot sand, I again felt almost human.
I crawled to the south coast and found some fin thrown on stones by yesterday’s storm - including boards from my boat. On some boards were algae. I ate them.The taste is terrible. Like chewing vinyl shower curtain. But this afternoon, I feel strong.
He pulled out the whole tree as best he could, so that it dried up. I still have a full waterproof match case. Derevyashki go to the signal fire, if soon someone comes. And no, so on the kitchen fire. And now I pull it up.
FEBRUARY 13
Found a crab. He killed and roasted on a small fire. This evening I am almost ready to believe in God again.
14 FEB
Stephen King's "Survivor Type"
')
Sooner or later, each medical student has a question: what degree of shock can a patient endure? Different teachers answer this question in different ways, but in essence all the answers boil down to a new question: “How much does the patient want to survive?”
JANUARY 26
Two days, like a storm threw me here. And this morning I measured the island with my steps. Yeah, an island! 190 steps wide at its widest point and 267 steps long from tip to tip.
As far as I can tell, nothing edible.
My name is Richard Pine. And this is my diary. If they find me (when!), I can easily destroy him. There is no shortage of matches. In matches and in heroin. The one and the other is abundant here. And both are not worth a broken cent, ha ha. So I will write. All the same occupation.
If you tell the whole truth (and why not? Something, and I have plenty of time!), I was born like that by Richard Pincetti in New York's Little Italy. My father was Italian old-fashioned. I wanted to be a surgeon. My father laughed, called me crazy and told me to pour him another glass of wine. He died of cancer at the age of forty. I was happy.
In high school, I played football and was, damn it, the best player in the history of the school. Defender! For the past two years I have been playing in the city team I hated football. But if you are a dirty little Italian from a poor quarter, and you want to go to college, then sport is your only hope. So I played - and I got the desired sports scholarship.
In college, I continued to drive the ball only until my grades gave me the right to a full academic scholarship. First courses. My father died a month and a half before graduation. Just think! Or do you think that I really wanted to go through the stage to get a diploma, and look in the hall, and see this Italian face there? Ask something more interesting. And I was accepted into fraternity. Not the most elitist - where already with such a name as Pincetti! But fraternity is always fraternity.
Why am I writing this? Almost funny. No, I take "almost" back. Funny, funny, funny. The famous Dr. Pine sits on a stone in his pajama pants and an open-necked shirt, sits on an island so small that it can be almost outdone, he sits and writes the story of his life. And I want to eat! No matter. So I will write the story of my damn life, if I so want. In any case, it will allow me to distract from the demands of my stomach. More or less.
I changed my last name to Pine before entering the medical school. Mother said I broke her heart. What is heart? My father had not had time to cool down in the grave, as she had already hung on a Jewish grocer in the next quarter. If she really loved her last name, so why hurry to change it to Steinbrunner?
Surgery is what attracted me. Since high school. Even then I bandaged my hands before each game, and then kept them in warm water. If you want to be a surgeon, take care of your hands. The guys made fun of me, called out chicken shit. But I have never fought with anyone. I had enough risk on the field. But there are other ways. Most of all, I was harassed by Howie Plock, a brutish Polish girl with no brain drops in his head, and the whole face in furuncles. I then distributed newspapers and bargained with numbers. Well, I also worked on trifles. You recognize people, you listen, you make connections. When you work on the streets, it is impossible otherwise. How to die, every fool knows. Well, I paid the first strongman of the school, Ricky Brazzi, ten bucks. So that he disfigured the mouth of Howe Plock. Disfigure him to fall, I said, and get a dollar for each tooth that you bring to me. Rico brought me three teeth wrapped in a paper towel. Working off his dollars, he sprained two fingers, so you see what I could plunge into.
In college, while the idiot broke ridges (unintentional sharpness, haha!), Serving tables, or selling ties, or rubbing floors, I did something else. Football betting, basketball betting, then yes. And all my years of study went smoothly.
With the spread I touched during the internship. I interned in one of the largest hospitals in New York. At first, only recipe forms. I sold a pack of one hundred forms to one type in the neighborhood, and he forged the signatures of forty to fifty doctors on specimens that I sold him. And then he sold them on the street from ten to twenty dollars for the form. Fans of stimulants and tranquilizers, it suited as well as possible. Well, and then I found out what chaos was happening in the hospital pharmacy. No one knew what was coming and what was being issued. Some brought out good handfuls. Not me. I have always been careful. And I never had any troubles until I was unconcerned ... well, and in addition I was not lucky. But still, I will come out dry. So it always was.
I can't write more yet. The brush ached, and the pencil blunted. And I do not know why I started it. Surely someone will soon find me here.
JANUARY 27
The boat was carried away last night, and it sank at a depth of about ten feet off the northern coast of the islet. Yes, do not care. The bottom still looked like Swiss cheese, after being dragged along the reef. And I took everything from her that was worth taking. Four gallons of water. Sewing kit. First Aid Kit. And I write this in the so-called inspection log of this boat. Just laugh. Who ever heard of a lifeboat without a stock of PROVISION? The last entry in it is from August 8, 1970. Oh yes! Two knives, and one quite sharp, one folding spoon-fork. They'll come in handy when I have dinner today. Roasted pebbles. Haha Well, in any case, I sharpened a pencil.
When I get out of this clouded guano cliff, I will shake the hell out of Paradise Lines Incorporated so much that the devils gasp. For the sake of this alone is worth living. And I intend to live a long time. I'll get out. And do not think. I'll get out.
(later)
Making a list, I missed something. Two kilos of the purest heroin, worth three hundred and fifty thousand dollars at prices of New York streets. Here it is zero squared. Funny, huh? Haha
28 JANUARY
Well, I ate, if you can call it food. On a pile of stones in the center of the island fell a seagull. These stones are piled up in the form of a mini-pyramid and are all spotted with bird's crap. I took a stone that fell on my arm, climbed as close as possible to her, and she sits to herself and looks at me with shiny black eyes. I still wonder how the rumbling in my stomach did not scare her.
I threw a stone with all my might and landed right in her side. She croaked loudly and tried to fly away. But the stone broke her right wing. I began to clamber over to her, and she jumped away. The bitchucker forced to chase her, although I saw blood begin to spread on her white feathers. On the other side of the pyramid, I put my foot in the gap between two stones and almost broke my ankle.
Finally she got tired, and I grabbed her on the east side of the island. I wanted to get to the water. I grabbed her tail, she turned around and pecked at me. Then, with one hand, I squeezed my legs over the devil and with the other I twisted her neck. The crunch of the vertebrae gave me great pleasure. Food is served, you know. Ha! Ha!
I took it to my “camp”, but before plucking it and gutting it, I smeared the wound left by its beak with iodine. Birds carry a bunch of microorganisms on themselves, and now I don’t need to get sick.
The operation with the seagull went smoothly. Alas, I could not boil it or fry it. There are no blades of grass on the island, the sea did not bother to throw a fin on the banks, and the boat went to the bottom. So I ate it with raw materials. My stomach wanted to burst it immediately, but with all my sympathy for him I could not allow it and began to count from hundred to one until the nausea subsided. This tool does not work rarely.
No, can you imagine that the bird almost broke my ankle, and in addition also pecked? If I catch another one tomorrow, I will torture her. This one got off too easily. Here I am writing, and I see her severed head on the sand. Even glazed in death, her black eyes seem to laugh at me.
Do brain seagulls have enough?
And is it edible?
JANUARY 29
Yum-yum today did not have to. One gull sank to the top of the pyramid, but flew away before I got to her so quickly to send the ball into her goal, ha ha! Began to let go of the beard. Itchy damn. If the seagull returns and I catch her, I will first cut her eyes out and then finish off.
I damn know what kind of surgeon, as it seems, I managed to mention. They kicked me under the drum beat. In essence, funny; they themselves are engaged in this, and when someone is caught, such unbridled indignation! I put on you, Jack, I got mine. The second Oath of Hippocrates and Khanzha.
During my adventures as a trainee and hospital doctor (according to the Oath of Khanzha, this was equivalent to an “officer and gentleman”, but don’t even think about it) to open the reception room on Park Avenue. A great achievement for me. After all, I did not have a rich daddy or a cartridge patronizing me, like many of my "colleagues." By the time I hung my tablet on the door, my father had spent nine years in his impoverished grave. My mother died a year before they took my permission to practice medicine.
Society of mutual services. I arranged with half a dozen pharmacists on the East Side, with two pharmaceutical companies and at least twenty other doctors. The patients were referred to me, and I referred the patients to others. I did the surgery and prescribed proper postoperative medication. Not all operations were necessary, but I never operated without patient consent. And never a single patient looked at the completed prescription and said: “I don’t want to accept this.” Listen up In 1956, they removed the uterus or part of the thyroid gland, but they take painkillers in five and ten years, if they are allowed. And I sometimes allowed, and I'm not alone, you know. They had this habit to afford. And sometimes the patient after a small surgical intervention began to suffer from insomnia. Or he had problems how to get diet pills or a tranquilizer. All this can be arranged. Ha! Yes! If they had not received them from me, they would have received from someone else.
Then the people from the tax office reached Lowenthal. Until this ram. They waved a five-year term under his nose, and he laid out half a dozen names. Among them was mine. For some time I was being watched, and by the time we went out into the open, I was pulling a lot more than five years. There were some other deals, including forms of recipes, with which I finally did not finish. Strange: I no longer needed this at all, but the habit remains a habit. It is difficult to abandon the extra "green"
Well, I know someone. I pulled some strings. And threw a couple of people to the wolves to be devoured. However, not one of those I liked. Everyone I gave out to the federal authorities was a desperate son of a bitch.
Damn, I want to eat like that!
JANUARY 30
Today there are no gulls. Reminds me of the banner boards that street vendors sometimes hang on their carts in my old quarter. "TODAY'S TOMATOES NO." I entered the water to the waist, holding a sharp knife in my hand. And he stood in complete immobility at this place under the scorching sun for four hours. Twice it seemed to me that I was losing consciousness, but I counted from a hundred back until the sensation was over. But I have not seen a single fish. Not a single one.
JANUARY 31
Killed another seagull, quite the same as the first. But I was so hungry that I did not torture her, although I promised myself that. Gutted and eaten. Squeezed the guts and ate them too. It is strange how you feel the return of your vital energy. And I already began to give in to fright. I lay in the shadow of the central pile of stones, and it began to seem to me that I could hear voices. Father Mothers My ex-wife. And worst of all - the giant-kitaezy, who sold me heroin in Saigon. He whispered, perhaps because of a partially split palate.
- Come on! - His voice came out of nowhere. - Let's smell the syutochku. Do not knead hunger. So horoso ... - But I have never resorted to narcotic drugs. Even to sleeping pills.
Loventhal killed himself, didn’t I tell you? This ram. He hanged himself in his former reception room. And he has served the world, I look at it this way.
I wanted my tablet back. Someone with whom I spoke said that it was possible to arrange it - but it would take a lot of money. Such a lubricant, which I could not imagine. I kept forty thousand dollars in a bank safe. I decided to take a chance and try to scroll through them. Double or triple.
Well, I went to Ronnie Hanelli. I played football with Ronnie when we were students, and when his younger brother decided to become a therapist, I helped him get a place in the hospital. Ronnie himself was on legal - funny, no? In the quarter when we were boys, we called him Ronnie Forced because he was the judge in all games. If you didn’t like his decisions, then the choice was small: either keep your mouth shut or get your teeth. Puerto Ricans called him Ronnitaleshka. In one word - Ronnitaleshka. It only amused him. So, this type went to college, and then to the law faculty and passed the final exams from the very first call, and then opened a shop in our old quarter, right above the Aquarium bar. I close my eyes and see him rolling along the street in this white Ford Continental. The largest horseradish moneylender in the city.
I knew that Ronnie would have something for me.
“It's a dangerous thing,” he said. “But you always knew how to take care of yourself.” And if you can bring this potion, I will introduce you to a couple of the right people. One of them is a member of the State Legislature.
And then he called me two names. One was a Chinese giant Henry Lee-Zhu. And the second is the Vietnamese Saul Ngo. Chemist. For a fee, he will check the goods of kitaezy. It was known that that from time to time does not hesitate to "joke." “Jokes” are plastic bags of talcum powder, with powder for cleaning baths, and starch. Ronnie said that because of his jokes, Lee-Zhu will be killed sooner or later.
1ST OF FEBRUARY
Flew the plane. Right above the island. I tried to climb on the pyramid and horn. My foot fell into the gap. That damn crack in which she got stuck that day when I killed the first gull. Of course, the same. And I broke my ankle. Like a gun shot. The pain was unthinkable. I screamed, lost my balance, waving my arms like a madman, and yet I fell down, hit my head, and everything turned black. I came to myself at dusk. From the broken head leaked order of blood. A leg below the knee slipped away like a car camera, and I earned a nasty sunburn. I think if the sun went down an hour later, my skin would go blistering.
Somehow I got here, shivered all night in a chill and wept from impotence. He treated the wound on his head - just above the temporal lobe - and bandaged it as best he could. Practically, an abrasion plus a slight concussion seems to me, but here's a leg ... a serious fracture, double, if not triple.
How do I hunt birds now?
The plane was probably looking for survivors from Callas. During the night in a storm, the boat could carry many miles from the place where the ship went to the bottom. Rescuers may not return here.
FEBRUARY 2
I laid out the signal on the white pebble beach on the southern side of the island, where the boat took out. It took me all day with breaks to rest in the shade. And still, I lost consciousness twice. In my opinion, I lost 25 pounds in weight, mainly due to dehydration. But now, from the place where I am sitting, I see the letters that the day has gone to me: dark stones on a white background shout: “HELP”, and there are four feet in each letter. The next plane will notice me.
If there is a next plane.
There is continuous, throbbing pain in the leg. The edema did not sleep, and an ominous cyanosis appeared over a double fracture, and it seemed to be increasing. I firmly bandaged my leg with my shirt, and this somewhat soothed the pain, but still it is so strong that I do not sleep so much as fall into oblivion.
I'm starting to think whether I will not have to amputate the leg.
FEBRUARY 3RD
Edema and cyanosis worsen. I'll wait till tomorrow. If the operation becomes inevitable, I think I can do it. For sterilization, I have matches, a sharp knife; I have a needle and thread to sew, from the sewing kit. And a shirt for bandages.
I even have two kilos of “painkiller”, although not of the type that I prescribed to my patients. But they would take it as much as they could if they could get it. These old ladies with their hair blue would have sniffed at least with an air freshener if they thought he would cheer them up. Can you believe me!
FEBRUARY 4
I decided to amputate the foot. Four days without food. If you still pull, then I risk losing consciousness from shock and hunger together during the operation, and then I am bleeding to death. But I still want to live, no matter how bad I feel. I have in my memory what Mockridge used to repeat in a lecture on the basics of anatomy. Old Moki, we called it. Sooner or later, each medical student has a question: what degree of shock can a patient endure? Then he tapped with a pointer on the diagram of the human body, pointing to the liver, kidneys, heart, spleen, intestines. Essentially, gentlemen, he said, the answer boils down to a new question: “How much does the patient want to survive?”
I think I can take it.
No, really.
Probably, I am writing this to postpone the inevitable, but it really occurred to me that I didn’t tell how I ended up here.Perhaps I should do this and tie up all the ends in case the operation fails. It will take a few minutes, and I have no doubt that there will still be enough light to operate. After all, if you believe my "pulsar", now only ten minutes past nine in the morning. Ha!
I went to Saigon as a tourist. Thousands of people fly there every year, despite the Nixon war. There are also people who turn off the road to gaze at the scene of a car accident and attend cockfighting.
My Chinese friend had a product. I took him to Ngo, and he guaranteed his high quality. He told me that Li-Zhu played his joke four months ago, so that his wife was blown up when she turned the ignition key on her Opel. Since then, jokes have stopped.
I have been in Saigon for three weeks; in San Francisco, I decided to return on the Callas tourist boat. Cabin first class. To climb aboard with the goods was not difficult - for the corresponding fee. Ngo arranged that the two customs officers, after a cursory examination of my suitcases, waved me to pass. The product was in the air bag, which they did not even look.
“It will be more difficult to go through customs inspection in the US,” Ngo told me. - But this is your job.
I was not going to carry goods through US customs. Ronnie found a scuba diver ready to do some pretty risky work for $ 3,000. I was supposed to meet him (two days ago, as I now realized) in the San Francisco doss-house, called the Hotel “St. Remigius. According to the plan, I had to put the goods in a sealed container with a timer and a bag of red paint attached to it. Before we get to the pier, the container will be thrown overboard, but I will, of course, not me.
I still looked after a coca or steward who would not refuse to earn extra money and would be smart enough (or stupid) to keep his mouth shut when Callas sank.
How and why, I do not know. Storm, but the ship seemed not to even notice. About eight o'clock in the evening of the twenty-third, somewhere near the decks there was an explosion. At that moment I was in the cabin, and the Callas almost immediately began to roll. Right ... or is it called "to starboard"?
People shouted, rushed. Bottles fell from the rack and broke. A man climbed up the ladder from below, his shirt burned, his skin was charred. The speaker began to send people to the boats, to which they were distributed during a training alert at the beginning of the voyage. Passengers immediately began to rush even more. Few of them bother to take part in anxiety. I didn’t just accept it, but I came early - you know, I wanted to stand in the front row to see everything. I am always very attentive when it comes to my skin.
Now I went down to my cabin, took the bags of heroin and scattered them across my breast pocket. Then I went to lifeboat number 8. While I was climbing the ramp, two more explosions sounded, and the ship tilted even steeper.
On the upper deck there was complete confusion. A woman with a baby in her arms ran screaming past me, running faster and faster along the slippery skewed deck, hit my thigh against the gunwale and flew over it. I saw her turn over twice in the air, and on the third turn disappeared from my sight. An old man was sitting in the center of the shuffleboard and tearing his hair. Another man in a white dressing gown with a terribly burned face and tassels wandered aimlessly in a circle, stumbled and shouted: “HELP ME! I'm a blind one! HELP ME! I am a blind one! ”
The panic was almost universal, from passengers it spread to the team, as if it were a moronic ulcer. Do not forget that between the first explosion and the moment when the Callas plunged into the waves, only about twenty minutes passed. Some boats besieged crowds of screaming passengers, and there was an absolute emptiness near the others. Like near mine on the lurking board of the ship. Besides me, there was only a sailor with a pimply whitened face.
“Let's put this old whore into the water,” he said, and his eyes darted madly in their sockets. - Damn trough goes to the bottom!
It is not difficult to lower the boat, but in a nervous rush he managed to confuse the hoists on his side. The boat sank six feet down and swirled in the air. Her nose was two feet lower than the stern.
I went to help him, and then he screamed. He unraveled Tali, but he didn’t have time to release the brush in time - the cable that slid down with a hiss burned his palm, skinned, and was thrown overboard. I threw the rope ladder down, hurried down the ramp and unhooked the hoist from the boat. Then I grabbed the oars and started rowing - sometimes I went boating for fun when I was visiting friends in country houses in the summer. But now I was fucking saving my life. I knew that if I didn’t have time to sail a decent distance from the sinking “Callas,” then the whirlpool, when it goes to the bottom, will suck the boat along with me.
Five minutes later, Callas disappeared into the waves. And the boat grabbed the outer edge of the whirlpool - I had to row quite wildly, only to keep myself in place. He went under the water very quickly. People still clung to the gunshire and shouted. They were like monkeys.
The storm raged even more. I lost one paddle, but managed to hold the second. I spent the night as if in a dream - then scooped up water, then grabbed the oar to turn the bow of the boat to meet the next frothy shaft.
Before dawn on the twenty-fourth wave behind me, they began to rise higher. The boat rushed forward. It was scary, but also intoxicating. Suddenly, most of the boards were pulled out from under my feet, but the boat did not have time to sink, as it was thrown onto this pile of stones, forgotten by God. I don't even know where I am. I just have no idea. Navigator business has never been my fad, haha.
But I know what I have to do. Perhaps this is the last entry, but for some reason I think that everything will cost. So it always happened to me, right? And modern prosthetics work wonders. And I will do well with one foot.
Well, it's time to see if I am a good surgeon, as I believe. Good luck!
FEBRUARY 5TH
Made by
Most of all I was worried about the pain. I am quite capable of withstanding pain, but I thought that in my weakened state, a fusion of hunger and incredible pain can cause fainting, before I finish.
But heroin perfectly solved this problem.
I opened one packet and drew a decent dose from a flat stone into each nostril — first to the right, then to the left. The sensation was as if you were breathing in wonderful freezing ice, and it penetrates your brain from the bottom up. I breathed heroin right away, as I finished writing in my diary yesterday - it was at 9:45. The next time I looked at the clock, the shadows shifted, and I was partially in the sun, and the time was 12:41. I dozed off. It never crossed my mind how beautiful it was; I could not understand why I was so dismissive in the past. Pain, horror, melancholy ... all this disappeared, and only the serene euphoria remained.
In this state, I had an operation.
The pain, however, was severe, especially at the beginning of the operation. But the pain seemed to detach from me. She annoyed me, but nevertheless was very interesting. Can you understand this? If you had to take medicine in which morphine is the main ingredient, you might understand. And he not only relieves pain. He creates a certain mood of consciousness. Quiet serenity. I can understand why people sit on the needle, although this expression seems to me to be exaggerated, and more often it is used, of course, by those who have not tried drugs.
In about half of the operation, the pain became more personal. Waves of weakness rolled over me. I was eagerly looking at the bag of white powder, but forced myself to look away. If I am again overwhelmed by a nap, I am bleeding in the same way as if I had lost consciousness. Instead, I counted back from a hundred.
The most critical point was blood loss. As a surgeon, I understood that perfectly. Not a drop spilled in vain. If a patient begins to bleed during an operation in a hospital, he can be bleed. But I had no blood left. Spilled - and by the end the sand around it darkened from it - disappeared irrevocably, and I had to wait until my internal production did not compensate for the loss. I had no clamps, no other styptic, or suture.
I started the operation at exactly 12:25. He finished at 1:50 and immediately stunned himself with heroin, increasing the dose. I plunged into a gray, pain-free world and stayed there for almost five hours. When I escaped from the dope, the sun was drooping towards the sunset, stretching the golden path across the blue Pacific Ocean directly to me. I have never seen anything more beautiful ... this one moment completely paid for all the pain. An hour later, I rested a little more to fully enjoy the sunset and pay tribute to him.
Soon after it got dark, I ...
I…
Wait a minuteDidn't I tell you that I did not eat FOUR DAYS? And that only my own body was in my possession to replenish the weakening vital forces? And most importantly, did I not repeat to you again and again that survival depends on consciousness? Mighty consciousness? I will not justify myself by saying that you would do the same. Start with the fact that you are unlikely to be a surgeon. Even if you knew about how your feet were amputated, you would do such a thing that you would bleed to death. And even if you would have survived the operation and postoperative shock, your thought would have crept into your head full of prejudices. Oh, no matter! Nobody needs to know about it. The last thing I do before leaving the island, is the destruction of the diary.
I was very careful.
I washed it thoroughly before I eat it.
FEBRUARY 7
The stump was desperately sick - at times unbearable. But, in my opinion, the deep itch that arose when the healing process began was even worse. This afternoon, I remembered all the patients who endlessly complained to me that they could not bear this terrible healing itch - after all, it wasn’t even possible to get to him to scratch. And I smiled and told them that tomorrow they would feel much better, and thought to themselves what kind of whiners they were, what kind of weak-willed underpants, what ungrateful little children. But now I understand. Several times I was ready to tear off the shirt strips from the stump and scratch it, scratch it, scratch the soft nude muscles with my nails, tearing out the rough seams - and let the blood rush to the sand. Anything, anything, just to get rid of this terrible, frenzy itch.
At such moments, I count back from a hundred and smell heroin.
I have no idea how much I introduced him into my body, but I know that I was in a dope almost continuously after the operation. He suppresses hunger, you know. I almost do not realize that I am hungry. Easy sucking feeling in abdomen, that's all. And it is easy to ignore. But it is impossible. Heroin caloric content is zero. I checked myself, crawled from place to place, measuring my energy. It decreases.
Lord, Lord! I hope not, but ... you may need another operation.
(later)
Another plane flew by. So high that I could not be of any use; and I saw only a widening white trail trailing behind him across the sky. Still waving his hands. Mahal and yelled at him. When he was out of sight, I wept.
It's getting dark, it's hard to see. Food. What kind of food did I not think about? My mother's homemade sausages. Bread with garlic. Snails Lobster. Fried meat on the ribs. Ice cream with fruit and whipped cream. London steak. Huge triangular pieces of cake with homemade vanilla ice cream, served at Mother Crunch on First Avenue. Hot pretzels baked salmon ice cream baked meringue baked ham with pineapple slices. Circles of onions. Fried onion with potato chips iced sip ice tea with French fingers.
100, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94
Lord, Lord, Lord,
FEBRUARY 8
In the morning today, another seagull sat on the top of the pyramid. Huge, fat. I sat in the shade under my boulder, who mentally christened my camp, putting the bandaged stump up higher. As soon as the seagull appeared, my salivation began. Just like Pavlovsky dogs. Drool flowed like a baby. Like a baby.
I picked up the stone on the arm and crawled to it. Pintzetti, get ready to otpasovat (Pine, I want to say. Pine). I had no doubt that she would fly away. But he could not try. If I had harvested it, such a fattened and impudent bird, the second operation could have been postponed indefinitely. I crawled over to her, the stump hit the stones from time to time, and the firework of pain flashed all over my body, and I waited for it to fly away.
But she did not fly away, but merely wandered along, sticking her meaty chest, like some bird general inspecting troops. Sometimes she glanced at me with small nasty black eyes, and I froze and began to count back from the hundred, until she began to pace again. Whenever she turned her wings, my stomach filled with ice. And I kept drooling. I could not help myself. I drooled like a baby.
I do not know how long I sneaked up to her. Hour?Two? And the closer I got, the more desperate my heart was pounding, the more appetizing the gull looked. And she seemed to tease me on purpose, and I had no doubt that she would fly away, as soon as I got to the distance of the throw. My hands and legs began to tremble. My mouth was dry. The stump desperately ached.
I think now that I was breaking. But so soon? I took it less than a week!
No matter.I need it. There are still many. Lots of.If later, after returning to the States, I have to undergo a rehabilitation course, I will choose the best clinic in California and go there with a smile. Anyway, as long as it's not a problem, right?
When I was at a distance of a throw, I didn’t have the heart to throw a stone. I was overwhelmed by the insane belief that I would miss. And not by inches, but by feet. No, you need to get closer. And I continued to crawl onto the stone pile, with my head thrown back, my head thrown back, and the sweat was rolling in my exhausted garden scarecrow. My teeth began to rot, I did not tell you? If I were superstitious, I would have decided that this was because I ate ...
Ha!We know this is nonsense, right?
I froze again. I was much closer to her than to the first two gulls. And yet I did not dare. I squeezed the stone so that my fingers ached, and yet I could not throw it. Because I knew exactly what would happen if I missed.
I do not care if I will izvedu all goods! I have half the ass! Until the end of life I will not know worries. MY LONG, LONG LIFE!
I think I would crawl right up to her, and throwing a stone if she had not finally taken off. I would crawl up to her and twisted her neck. But she spread her wings and took off. I screamed at her, jerked to my knees and threw my stone that is urine. And got into it!
The bird snuffled and fell on the other side of the pyramid. Muttering and laughing, not thinking that the stump was beating on the stones and the wound was about to open, I crawled over the top and moved down. He knocked his head, but did not even notice this — that is, then — although he stuffed a decent lump. I was able to think only about the seagull and how I got into it - fantastic luck! - already in flight! Got in the air!
She hobbled at them to the shore, dragging her wing, and her belly reddened with blood. I crawled as fast as I could, but she hobbled even faster. The competition is crippled! Ha! Ha!I could grab it - the distance between us began to shrink all the same - if it were not for my hands. I must protect my hands very much - I may need them in the future. But as I did not take care of them, my palms were all scratched by the time we reached the pebble beach and I smashed the dial of my “Pulsar” on a sharp stone.
The seagull plopped down into the water, croaking disgustingly, and grabbed it. By the tail. I had a bunch of feathers in my fist. Then I fell face down in the water, swallowed it. Sniffle, spit.
And crawled on. He even tried to swim for her. The bandage slid off the stump. I started to sink. And he barely managed to return to the shore, shuddering from fatigue, torn by pain, crying, screaming, cursing the seagull. And she swam there for a long time, all moving away and moving away. In my opinion, there was a moment when I begged her to return. But when she moved through the reef, in my opinion, she was already dead.
Not fair.
It took me almost an hour to crawl to the camp. He drew a large dose of heroin with his nose, but I still hate this gull. If I was not destined to get her, so why did she need to tease me? Why didn't she fly away right away?
FEBRUARY 9: I
amputated my left foot and wrapped it in my pants. Strange.During the operation, I continuously drooled. Drooling. As while looking at the seagull. Launched and let. But I forced myself to wait for the dark. Just counted from a hundred years ago ... twenty, maybe thirty times! Ha! Ha!
And then ...
I say to myself. Cold beef. Cold beef. Cold beef.
11 (?) FEBRUARY
The last two days it is raining. And the wind raged. I managed to pull out so many stones from the pyramid that it turned out to be a cave, and I crawled into it. Found a spider. Squeezed in his fingers, before he managed to crawl away, and ate. Delicious.Juicy. I thought that the stones above me could collapse and bury me alive. Spit.
He waited for the storm in full thrill. Maybe it rained for three days, not two. Or one. But, in my opinion, darkened twice. I like the buzz. No pain then, no itching. I know that I will survive. It can not be that a person suffered like nothing.
When I was a boy, a snotty kid, in the Church of the Holy Family, the priest loved to spread about hell and mortal sins. It was his horse. Mortal sin is indestructible - he held that view. Last night he dreamed of me. Father Haley in his black bathrobe, with the crimson nose of a drunkard, threatened me with a finger and said: "Shame on you, Richard Pincetti ... mortal sin ... is guilty to hell, small ... is guilty to hell ..."
I laughed in his face. If this is not hell, so what is this place?
Half the time I am delirious, and everything else my stump is itchy, and in addition I feel unbearable from dampness.
But I will not give up. I swear Not for nothing. No wonder all this.
FEBRUARY 12 The
sun shines again. Wonderful day. I hope in the neighborhood they freeze their asses.
The day turned out to be successful for me - as far as the days are successful on this island. The temperature, which, apparently, was with me during a storm, as if it had become normal. When I crawled out of my hole, I was exhausted from weakness and chills, but after lying for two or three hours on the hot sand, I again felt almost human.
I crawled to the south coast and found some fin thrown on stones by yesterday’s storm - including boards from my boat. On some boards were algae. I ate them.The taste is terrible. Like chewing vinyl shower curtain. But this afternoon, I feel strong.
He pulled out the whole tree as best he could, so that it dried up. I still have a full waterproof match case. Derevyashki go to the signal fire, if soon someone comes. And no, so on the kitchen fire. And now I pull it up.
FEBRUARY 13
Found a crab. He killed and roasted on a small fire. This evening I am almost ready to believe in God again.
14 FEB
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/7466/
All Articles