Read Online Earthquake Weather by Tim Powers - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Tim Powers
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then. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, right?”
Muir walked out of the nurses’ station without answering.
Armentrout looked after him for a moment, then made his way around the cluttered desks to the window and looked out into the TV lounge at the patients, who couldn’t be bothered to answer the telephone. Plumtree and Long John Beach had stayed at the conference table after the foolish self-esteem group had broken up—Armentrout favored the quick “buying the pharm” attitude toward mental illness over the long, tormenting, dangerous routines of psychotherapy—and he saw that Sid Cochran had got over his sulk and rejoined them. They appeared to be playing cards.
You’ve got a busy day tomorrow, he told himself; coordinating the paperwork on the nurse anesthetist and the attending nurses, and then dealing with Plumtree after she recovers from the procedure. A busy day, and you’ll be lucky to get a few hours of sleep tonight. But tomorrow you may very well find out what happened on New Year’s Day, and learn how to make it happen again.
Atropine, Philip—you fool—is used for more than just dilating eye pupils; it also dries up saliva and nasal secretions, which is desirable in the administration of … of what the patients sometimes call “Edison Medicine.”
At first they had tried to play for cigarettes, but after Long John Beach had twice eaten the pot, snatching the Marlboros and shoving them into his mouth and chewing them up, filters and all, Cochran and Plumtree decided to play for imaginary money.
They were playing five-card stud, listlessly. To make up for the tendency of any sort of showing pair to automatically win in this short-handed game, they had declared all queens wild; and then Long John Beach had proposed that the suicide king be taken out of the deck.
“I second that emotion,” Janis had said.
“What’s the suicide king?” Cochran had asked.
The one-armed old man had pawed through the deck, and then flipped toward Cochran the King of Hearts; and Cochran saw that the stylized king was brandishing a sword blade that was certainly meant to be extending behind his head, but, with the token perspective of the stylized line drawing, could plausibly be viewed as being stuck right into his head.
“Sure,” Cochran had said nervously. “Who needs him ?”
Janis had just won a “multi-thousand-dollar” pot with two queens and a king, which according to the rules of this game gave her three kings; Cochran had folded when she was dealt a face-up queen, but Long John Beach idiotically stayed to the end with a pair of fives.
“Hadda keep her honest,” the old man mumbled.
“I almost dropped out when you raised on third street, John,” Janis told him. “I was afraid you’d caught a set of dukes.” Cochran realized that her doubletalk was a charitable pretense of having seen shrewdness in the old man’s haphazard play.
Of course Beach couldn’t shuffle, and Cochran had dealt that hand, so Janis gathered in the cards and shuffled them—expertly, five fast riffles low to the table so as not to flash any cards—and then spun out the three hole cards.
“Have you had your PCH scheduled yet?” she asked Cochran. “That’s probable cause hearing,” she added, “to authorize the hospital to keep you for longer than two weeks.”
“ Longer than two weeks?” said Cochran. “Hell no, not even .” He had an eight down and an eight showing, and decided to keep raising unless a queen showed up. “No, I’m just in on a 51-50, seventy-two hours observation, and that’s up late tomorrow night, which I suppose means they’ll let me go Thursday morning. I don’t know why anybody bothered to have me transferred here from Norwalk. I’ve got a job to get back to, and Armentrout hasn’t even got me on any medications.”
“I bet a thousand smokes,” said Long John Beach, who was showing an ace. The tiny black eyes in his round face didn’t seem to have any sockets to sit in,
Muir walked out of the nurses’ station without answering.
Armentrout looked after him for a moment, then made his way around the cluttered desks to the window and looked out into the TV lounge at the patients, who couldn’t be bothered to answer the telephone. Plumtree and Long John Beach had stayed at the conference table after the foolish self-esteem group had broken up—Armentrout favored the quick “buying the pharm” attitude toward mental illness over the long, tormenting, dangerous routines of psychotherapy—and he saw that Sid Cochran had got over his sulk and rejoined them. They appeared to be playing cards.
You’ve got a busy day tomorrow, he told himself; coordinating the paperwork on the nurse anesthetist and the attending nurses, and then dealing with Plumtree after she recovers from the procedure. A busy day, and you’ll be lucky to get a few hours of sleep tonight. But tomorrow you may very well find out what happened on New Year’s Day, and learn how to make it happen again.
Atropine, Philip—you fool—is used for more than just dilating eye pupils; it also dries up saliva and nasal secretions, which is desirable in the administration of … of what the patients sometimes call “Edison Medicine.”
At first they had tried to play for cigarettes, but after Long John Beach had twice eaten the pot, snatching the Marlboros and shoving them into his mouth and chewing them up, filters and all, Cochran and Plumtree decided to play for imaginary money.
They were playing five-card stud, listlessly. To make up for the tendency of any sort of showing pair to automatically win in this short-handed game, they had declared all queens wild; and then Long John Beach had proposed that the suicide king be taken out of the deck.
“I second that emotion,” Janis had said.
“What’s the suicide king?” Cochran had asked.
The one-armed old man had pawed through the deck, and then flipped toward Cochran the King of Hearts; and Cochran saw that the stylized king was brandishing a sword blade that was certainly meant to be extending behind his head, but, with the token perspective of the stylized line drawing, could plausibly be viewed as being stuck right into his head.
“Sure,” Cochran had said nervously. “Who needs him ?”
Janis had just won a “multi-thousand-dollar” pot with two queens and a king, which according to the rules of this game gave her three kings; Cochran had folded when she was dealt a face-up queen, but Long John Beach idiotically stayed to the end with a pair of fives.
“Hadda keep her honest,” the old man mumbled.
“I almost dropped out when you raised on third street, John,” Janis told him. “I was afraid you’d caught a set of dukes.” Cochran realized that her doubletalk was a charitable pretense of having seen shrewdness in the old man’s haphazard play.
Of course Beach couldn’t shuffle, and Cochran had dealt that hand, so Janis gathered in the cards and shuffled them—expertly, five fast riffles low to the table so as not to flash any cards—and then spun out the three hole cards.
“Have you had your PCH scheduled yet?” she asked Cochran. “That’s probable cause hearing,” she added, “to authorize the hospital to keep you for longer than two weeks.”
“ Longer than two weeks?” said Cochran. “Hell no, not even .” He had an eight down and an eight showing, and decided to keep raising unless a queen showed up. “No, I’m just in on a 51-50, seventy-two hours observation, and that’s up late tomorrow night, which I suppose means they’ll let me go Thursday morning. I don’t know why anybody bothered to have me transferred here from Norwalk. I’ve got a job to get back to, and Armentrout hasn’t even got me on any medications.”
“I bet a thousand smokes,” said Long John Beach, who was showing an ace. The tiny black eyes in his round face didn’t seem to have any sockets to sit in,
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