Rabbit has always been squeamish about things being put into him ? dental drills, tongue depressors, little long knives to clean out earwax, suppositories, the doctor's finger when once a year he sizes up your prostate gland1. So the idea of a catheter being inserted at the top of his right leg, and being pushed along steered2 with a little flexible tip like some eyeless worm you find wriggling3 out of an apple where you just bit, is deeply repugnant to him, though not as much so as being frozen half to death and sawed open and your blood run through some complicated machine while they sew a slippery warm piece of your leg vein4 to the surface of your trembling poor cowering5 heart.
In the hospital in Deleon they gave him some articles to try to read and even showed him a little video: the heart sits in a protective sac, the pericardium, which has to be cut open, snipped6 the video said cheerfully like it was giving a sewing lesson. It showed it happening: cold narrow scalpels attack the shapeless bloody7 blob as it lies there in your chest like a live thing in a hot puddle8, a cauldron of tangled9 juicy stew10, convulsing, shuddering11 with a periodic sob12, trying to dodge13 the knives, undressed of the sanitary14 pod God or whoever never meant human hands to touch. Then when the blood has been detoured15 to the gleaming pumping machine just like those in those horrible old Frankenstein movies with Boris Karloff the heart stops beating. You see it happen: your heart lies there dead in its soupy puddle. You, the natural you, are technically16 dead. A machine is living for you while the surgeons' hands in their condomlike latex gloves fiddle17 and slice and knit away. Harry18 has trouble believing how his life is tied to all this mechanics ? that the me that talks inside him all the time scuttles19 like a waterstriding bug20 above this pond of body fluids and their slippery conduits. How could the flame of him ever have ignited out of such wet straw?
The angioplasty seemed far less deep a violation21 than the coronary bypass. It was scheduled for a Friday. Youngish?old Dr. Breit, with his painfully fair skin and his plastic?rimmed22 glasses too big for his button nose, explained the operation ? the procedure, he preferred to call it ? in the lulling23 voice of a nightclub singer who has done the same lyrics24 so often her mind is free to wander as she sings. The cardiologist's real preference was the bypass, Harry could tell. The angioplasty to Breit was just a sop25, kid stuff, until the knives could descend26. "The rate of restenosis is thirty per cent in three months' time," he warned Harry, there in his office with the framed color photos of a little pale woman who resembled him as one hamster resembles another and of little children arranged in front of their parents like a small stepladder, all with curly fair hair and squints27 and those tiny pink noses, "and twenty per cent of PTCA patients wind up having a CABG eventually anyway. Sorry ?that's percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty versus28 coronary artery29 bypass graft30."
"I guessed," Harry said. "Still, let's do the balloon first, and save the knives for later." A lot later, he thinks to himself.
"Fair enough," said Dr. Breit, semi?singingly, his tone clipped and grim and even?tempered and resigned. Like a golfer: you lose this match but you'll play again next week. "You think the way ninety per cent of all heart patients do. They love the idea of the PTCA, and no heart specialist can talk them out of it. It's irrational31, but so's the human species. Tell you what, Harold." No one had told him Harry was never called Harold, though that was his legal name. Rabbit let it go; it made him feel a child again. His mother used to call him Hassy. "We'll give you a treat. You can watch the whole procedure on TV. You'll be under local anesthetic32, it'll help you pass the time."
"Do I have to?"
Dr. Breit seemed momentarily bothered. For so fair a man, he sweated a great deal, his upper lip always dewy. "We screen off the monitor usually, for the patients we think are too excitable or frail33. There's always a slight chance of a coronary occlusion and that wouldn't be too good, to be watching it happen. But you, you're not frail. You're no nervous nelly. I've sized you up as a pretty tough?minded guy, Harold, with a fair amount of intellectual curiosity. Was I wrong?"
It was like a ten?dollar press, when you're already thirty dollars down. You can't refuse. "No," he told the young doctor. "That's me all right."
Dr. Breit actually does not perform the procedure: it needs a specialist, a burly menacing man with thick brown forearms, Dr. Raymond. But Breit is there, his face peeping like a moon ? big specs glinting, upper lip dewy with nervous perspiration34 ? over the mountainous lime?green shoulders of Dr. Raymond and the surgical35 caps of the nurses. The operation takes two attending nurses; this is no little "procedure"; Harry's been sandbagged. And it takes two rooms of the hospital, the room where it happens and a monitoring room with several TV screens that translate him into jerking bright lines, vital signs: the Rabbit Angstrom Show, with a fluctuating audience as the circulating nurse and Dr. Breit and some others never named to him, lime?green extras, come and watch a while and leave again. There is even, he has been casually36 told, a surgical team standing37 by just in case he needs immediate38 bypass surgery.
Another double?cross: they shave him, down beside his privates, without warning, where the catheter will go in. They give him a pill to make him light in the head and then when he's helpless on the operating table under all these lights they scrape away at the right half of his groin area and pubic bush; he's never had much body hair and wonders if at his age it will ever grow back. The needle that comes next feels bigger and meaner than the Novocain needle the dentist uses; its "pinch" ? Dr. Raymond murmurs40, "Now you'll feel a pinch" ? doesn't let go as quickly. But then there's no pain, just an agony of mounting urinary pressure as the dyes build up in his system, injected repeatedly with a hot surge like his chest is being cooked in a microwave. Jesus. He closes his eyes a few times to pray but it feels like a wrong occasion, there is too much crowding in, of the actual material world. No old wispy41 Biblical God would dare interfere42. The one religious consolation43 he clings to through his three?and?a?half?hour ordeal44 is a belief that Dr. Raymond, with his desert tan and long melancholy45 nose and bearish46 pack of fat across his shoulders, is Jewish: Harry has this gentile prejudice that Jews do everything a little better than other people, something about all those generations crouched48 over the Torah and watch?repair tables, they aren't as distracted as other persuasions49, they don't expect to have as much fun. They stay off booze and dope and have a weakness only (if that history of Hollywood he once read can be trusted) for broads.
The doctors and their satellites murmurously crouch47 over Harry's sheeted, strategically exposed body, under a sharp light, in a room whose tiles are the color of Russian salad dressing50, on the fourth floor of St. Joseph's Hospital, where decades ago his two children were born ? Nelson, who lived, and Rebecca, who died. In those years nuns51 ran the place, with their black and white and cupcake frills around their pasty faces, but now nuns have blended into everybody else or else faded away. Vocations52 drying up, nobody wants to be selfless any more, everybody wants their fun. No more nuns, no more rabbis. No more good people, waiting to have their fun in the afterlife. The thing about the afterlife, it kept this life within bounds somehow, like the Russians. Now there's just Japan, and technology, and the profit motive53, and getting all you can while you can.
Turning his head to the left, Rabbit can see, over the shoulders that crowd around his body like green cotton tummocks, the shadow of his heart on an X?ray monitor screen, a twitching54 palegray ghost dimly webbed by its chambered structure and darkened in snaky streaks55 and bulbous oblongs by injections of the opacifying dye. The thin wire tip of the catheter, inquisitive56 in obedience57 to Dr. Raymond's finger on the trigger, noses forward and then slowly eels39, in little cautious jerking stabs, diagonally down into a milky58 speckled passageway, a river or tentacle59 within him, organic and tentative in shape where the catheter is black and positive, hard?edged as a gun. Harry watches to see if his heart will gag and try to disgorge the intruder. Like a finger down his throat, he thinks, feeling a wave of nausea60 and yet a test pilot's detachment from this picture on the screen, blanched61 and hard to read like a. section of aerial map, and these conferring voices around him. "We're home," Dr. Breit murmurs, as if not to awaken62 something. "That's your LAD, your left anterior63 descending64. The widow?maker65, they call it. By far the most common site oflesions. See how stenotic those walls are? How thickened with plaque66? Those little agglutinated specks67 ? that's plaque. I'd say your luminal narrowing is close to eighty?five per cent."
"Rice Krispies," Harry tries to say, but his mouth is too dry, his voice cracks. All he wanted was to acknowledge that yes, he sees it all, he sees his tangled shadowy self laid out like a diagram, he sees the offending plaque, like X?rayed Rice Krispies. He nods a little, feeling even more gingerly than when getting a haircut or having his prostate explored. Too vigorous a nod, and his heart might start to gag. He wonders, is this what having a baby is like, having Dr. Raymond inside you? How do women stand it, for nine months? Not to mention being screwed in the first place? Can they really like it? Or queers being buggered? It's something you never see really discussed, even on Oprah.
"Now comes the tricky68 part," Dr. Breit breathes, like a golf commentator69 into the mike as a crucial putt is addressed. Harry feels and then sees on the monitor his heart beat faster, twist as if to escape, twist in that convulsive spiral motion Dr. Olman in Florida demonstrated with his fist; the shadowy fist is angry, again and again, seventy times a minute; the anger is his life, his soul, mind over matter, electricity over muscle. The mechanically precise dark ghost of the catheter is the worm of death within him. Godless technology is fucking the pulsing wet tubes we inherited from the squid, the boneless sea?cunts. He feels again that feathery touch of nausea. Can he possibly throw up? It would jar and jam the works, disrupt the concentrating green tummocks he is buried beneath. He mustn't. He must be still.
He sees, on the monitor, behind the inquisitive tip, a segment of the worm thicken and swell70, pressing the pallid71 Rice Krispies together against the outlines of the filmy crimped river descending down his heart, and stay inflated72, pressing, filling; it has been explained to him that if the LAD has not developed any collateral73 arteries74 the blood flow will cease and another heart attack begin, right on camera. You are there.
"Thirty seconds," Dr. Breit breathes, and Dr. Raymond deflates the balloon. "Looking good, Ray." Harry feels no pain beyond the knifelike sweet pressure in his bladder and a soreness in the far back of his throat as if from swallowing all that saltwater out on the Gulf75. "Once more, Harold, and we'll call it a day."
"How're ya doing?" Dr. Raymond asks him, in one of those marbles?in?the?mouth voices muscular men sometimes have, Pennsylvanians especially.
"Still here," Harry says, in a brave voice that sounds high in his ears, as if out of a woman's throat.
The tense insufflation repeats, and so do the images on the TV screen, silent like the bumping of molecules76 under the microscope on a nature program, or like computer graphics77 in an insurance commercial, where fragments flickeringly form the logo. It seems as remote from his body as the records of his sins that angels are keeping. Were his heart to stop, it would be mere78 shadowplay. He sees, when the catheter's bulge79 subsides80 a second time, that the Rice Krispies have been pushed to the sides of his LAD. He feels blood flowing more freely into his heart, rich in combustible81 oxygen; his head in gratitude82 and ecstasy83 grows faint.
"Looking good," Dr. Breit says, sounding nervous.
"Whaddya mean?" Dr. Raymond responds ? "looking great," like those voices on television that argue about the virtues84 of Miller85 Lite.
收听单词发音 |
1
gland
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| n.腺体，(机)密封压盖，填料盖 | |
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steered
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| v.驾驶( steer的过去式和过去分词 )；操纵；控制；引导 | |
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wriggling
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| v.扭动，蠕动，蜿蜒行进( wriggle的现在分词 )；（使身体某一部位）扭动；耍滑不做，逃避（应做的事等）；蠕蠕 | |
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vein
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| n.血管，静脉；叶脉，纹理；情绪；vt.使成脉络 | |
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cowering
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| v.畏缩，抖缩( cower的现在分词 ) | |
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snipped
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| v.剪( snip的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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bloody
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| adj.非常的的；流血的；残忍的；adv.很；vt.血染 | |
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puddle
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| n.(雨)水坑，泥潭 | |
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tangled
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| adj. 纠缠的，紊乱的 动词tangle的过去式和过去分词 | |
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stew
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| n.炖汤，焖，烦恼；v.炖汤，焖，忧虑 | |
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shuddering
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| v.战栗( shudder的现在分词 )；发抖；（机器、车辆等）突然震动；颤动 | |
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sob
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| n.空间轨道的轰炸机；呜咽，哭泣 | |
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dodge
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| v.闪开，躲开，避开；n.妙计，诡计 | |
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sanitary
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| adj.卫生方面的，卫生的，清洁的，卫生的 | |
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detoured
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| 绕道( detour的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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technically
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| adv.专门地，技术上地 | |
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fiddle
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| n.小提琴；vi.拉提琴；不停拨弄，乱动 | |
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harry
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| vt.掠夺，蹂躏，使苦恼 | |
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scuttles
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| n.天窗( scuttle的名词复数 )v.使船沉没( scuttle的第三人称单数 )；快跑，急走 | |
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bug
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| n.虫子；故障；窃听器；vt.纠缠；装窃听器 | |
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violation
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| n.违反(行为)，违背(行为)，侵犯 | |
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rimmed
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| adj.有边缘的，有框的v.沿…边缘滚动；给…镶边 | |
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lulling
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| vt.使镇静，使安静（lull的现在分词形式） | |
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lyrics
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| n.歌词 | |
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sop
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| n.湿透的东西，懦夫；v.浸，泡，浸湿 | |
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descend
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| vt./vi.传下来，下来，下降 | |
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squints
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| 斜视症( squint的名词复数 )； 瞥 | |
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versus
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| prep.以…为对手，对；与…相比之下 | |
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artery
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| n.干线，要道；动脉 | |
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graft
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| n.移植，嫁接，艰苦工作，贪污；v.移植，嫁接 | |
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irrational
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| adj.无理性的，失去理性的 | |
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anesthetic
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| n.麻醉剂，麻药；adj.麻醉的，失去知觉的 | |
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frail
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| adj.身体虚弱的；易损坏的 | |
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perspiration
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| n.汗水；出汗 | |
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surgical
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| adj.外科的，外科医生的，手术上的 | |
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casually
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| adv.漠不关心地，无动于衷地，不负责任地 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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eels
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| abbr. 电子发射器定位系统（=electronic emitter location system） | |
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murmurs
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| n.低沉、连续而不清的声音( murmur的名词复数 )；低语声；怨言；嘀咕 | |
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wispy
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| adj.模糊的；纤细的 | |
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interfere
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| v.(in)干涉，干预；(with)妨碍，打扰 | |
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consolation
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| n.安慰，慰问 | |
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ordeal
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| n.苦难经历，（尤指对品格、耐力的）严峻考验 | |
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melancholy
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| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
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bearish
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| adj.(行情)看跌的，卖空的 | |
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47
crouch
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| v.蹲伏，蜷缩，低头弯腰；n.蹲伏 | |
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48
crouched
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| v.屈膝，蹲伏( crouch的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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49
persuasions
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| n.劝说，说服（力）( persuasion的名词复数 )；信仰 | |
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50
dressing
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| n.(食物)调料；包扎伤口的用品，敷料 | |
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51
nuns
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| n.（通常指基督教的）修女， （佛教的）尼姑( nun的名词复数 ) | |
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52
vocations
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| n.（认为特别适合自己的）职业( vocation的名词复数 )；使命；神召；（认为某种工作或生活方式特别适合自己的）信心 | |
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53
motive
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| n.动机，目的；adv.发动的，运动的 | |
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54
twitching
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| n.颤搐 | |
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55
streaks
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| n.（与周围有所不同的）条纹( streak的名词复数 )；（通常指不好的）特征（倾向）；（不断经历成功或失败的）一段时期v.快速移动( streak的第三人称单数 )；使布满条纹 | |
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56
inquisitive
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| adj.求知欲强的，好奇的，好寻根究底的 | |
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obedience
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| n.服从，顺从 | |
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58
milky
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| adj.牛奶的，多奶的；乳白色的 | |
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59
tentacle
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| n.触角，触须，触手 | |
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60
nausea
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| n.作呕，恶心；极端的憎恶(或厌恶) | |
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61
blanched
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| v.使变白( blanch的过去式 )；使（植物）不见阳光而变白；酸洗（金属）使有光泽；用沸水烫（杏仁等）以便去皮 | |
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62
awaken
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| vi.醒，觉醒；vt.唤醒，使觉醒，唤起，激起 | |
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anterior
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| adj.较早的；在前的 | |
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descending
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| n. 下行 adj. 下降的 | |
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maker
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| n.制造者，制造商 | |
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plaque
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| n.饰板，匾，(医)血小板 | |
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67
specks
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| n.眼镜；斑点，微粒，污点( speck的名词复数 ) | |
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68
tricky
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| adj.狡猾的，奸诈的；(工作等)棘手的，微妙的 | |
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commentator
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| n.注释者，解说者；实况广播评论员 | |
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70
swell
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| vi.膨胀，肿胀；增长，增强 | |
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71
pallid
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| adj.苍白的，呆板的 | |
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72
inflated
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| adj.（价格）飞涨的；（通货）膨胀的；言过其实的；充了气的v.使充气（于轮胎、气球等）( inflate的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）膨胀；（使）通货膨胀；物价上涨 | |
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73
collateral
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| adj.平行的；旁系的；n.担保品 | |
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74
arteries
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| n.动脉( artery的名词复数 )；干线，要道 | |
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gulf
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| n.海湾；深渊，鸿沟；分歧，隔阂 | |
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molecules
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| 分子( molecule的名词复数 ) | |
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graphics
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| n.制图法，制图学；图形显示 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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79
bulge
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| n.突出，膨胀，激增；vt.突出，膨胀 | |
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80
subsides
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| v.（土地）下陷（因在地下采矿）( subside的第三人称单数 )；减弱；下降至较低或正常水平；一下子坐在椅子等上 | |
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81
combustible
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| a. 易燃的,可燃的; n. 易燃物,可燃物 | |
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82
gratitude
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| adj.感激，感谢 | |
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83
ecstasy
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| n.狂喜，心醉神怡，入迷 | |
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84
virtues
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| 美德( virtue的名词复数 )； 德行； 优点； 长处 | |
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85
miller
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| n.磨坊主 | |
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