Цитаты из произведения The End Is Only a Beginning

“You wait. Some people are asymptomatic, but if you start to show symptoms— fever, chills, a cough—call me right away.” “And then?” “Then we get you to the hospital. A.S.A.P.”

The infection, if that was what it was, was viral, so antibiotics had no effect, which meant that there was no treatment beyond the cold medications, syrups, and lozenges that anybody could get over the counter. It began with sniffles and developed into a cough, and what you read in the paper or saw on the nightly news…

“Listen,” she said, “I just wanted to tell you that they’re saying on the news to be careful. This virus is really beginning to cause problems in Italy and France, too, and you know how you always get sick when you travel.”

There was the deep working odor of the river and the wet streets, the romance of the lights springing to life up and down both banks, the women who were perfect effigies of themselves, and all of them, even the ones linking arms with their dates, gazing over their shoulders at him.It was great, it was glorious, but . . .…

Tom took hold of his hand—everybody seemed to want his hand all of a sudden—and averred, tearily, “It’s not an end, only a beginning.” And Riley, the novelist, whose imagination had put him in any number of scenes like this, which always managed to fall flat on the page, said, “You talking molecules or God?” “Jesus,”Tom…

But to be on your own was always an adventure—and this adventure was unfolding in Paris, City of Light, where the possibilities were as multitudinous as the raindrops that were beginning to slicken the pavement outside.

A physician friend of his had told him that if you were terminally ill you could legally end your suffering by depressing a plunger on the IV tube that would flood your veins with benzodiazepines and morphine, but the rub was that you had to have the ability to use your hand, your thumb, your brain.