Walkers Read Online Free

while Dr. Hovde pumped a tranquilizer into him. Last he heard, the kid was in a private sanitarium, still blasted out of his skull. Fortunately, the parties here ran to booze and grass, and maybe a little coke.
    Dr. Hovde slid open the glass door. Outside stood a young man and woman, their faces tight and anxious.
    "It's a girl, doctor," the young man said. "She was in the pool. She looks drowned."
    "What's been done for her?"
    "Her boyfriend is giving her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation."
    "All right, let's go." The doctor took his compact emergency case from the end table where he kept it and hurried out, the strains of Mozart fading behind him.
    He followed the young people at a jog around the building and into the courtyard where the recreation deck and pool were located. A cluster of people stood on the strip of grass beside the pool.
    "Here's the doctor," called the young man. "Let him through."
    The people gave way and Dr. Hovde saw the still form of the girl lying on the grass. Another girl held her head while a young man the doctor recognized as Glen Early breathed into her mouth. He looked up dazedly as the doctor came through the crowd.
    "Keep it up," Hovde said, and Glen picked up the resuscitation without missing a count.
    Hovde took hold of the girl's icy wrist and felt for a pulse. He could find none. He peeled back an eyelid and grimaced when he saw the dilated pupil. The girl's skin was unnaturally white. The doctor feared he was too late.
    He snapped open the case and filled a hypodermic syringe from a vial of digitalis. Sometimes a massive shot directly into the heart muscle could get things started again. From the looks of the girl, it was not going to work this time, but he was a doctor, and the people expected him to do something .
    The girl coughed.
    Dr. Hovde knelt with the hypodermic syringe in his hand and stared at her unbelievingly.
    Glen Early pulled his head back from hers and spat out pool water and phlegm. The girl rolled her head to one side and coughed again and again. Water sprayed from her lungs. The girl who had been holding her head began to cry.
    Glen Early buried his face in his hands. "Joana," he cried, "Ah, Joana!"
    Dr. Hovde snapped back to his senses. "Get her inside," he said. "Wrap her in blankets to keep her
    warm."
    "We can take her into my place," said Glen. "I'm right over there."
    Three of the young men made a cradle of their arms and gently carried the girl across the recreation deck to Glen Early's apartment. Dr. Hovde picked up his bag and followed slowly. His mind clicked like a computer, searching for a medical explanation for what he had just seen.
    For Joana the fragments of sound coalesced slowly into voices. Real voices this time, not words being spoken inside her head the way it was in the other place. Gradually she could make out what was being said.
    Glen: "Is she going to be all right?"
    An older man: "She seems to be coming around surprisingly fast. Her pulse is weak but steady, and her temperature is climbing back up to normal."
    Landau: "Do you think there'll be any... brain damage?"
    Oh, nice thought. Thank you very much, Peter.
    The older man: "It's hard to say. It depends on how long the oxygen supply to her brain was cut off."
    Glen: "It couldn't have been more than two or three minutes."
    The older man: "Let's hope not. Five minutes is usually the critical period."
    Joana opened her eyes and her vision cleared. She was lying on a sofa, the familiar sofa in Glen's apartment where they had sat so often watching television and drinking wine, and sometimes making love while the late movie flickered on unwatched.
    A semicircle of faces looked down on her. She saw Glen first, his light hair in a tangle across his brow, his eyes full of relief. And there was Peter Landau watching her curiously. Looking for the first sign of brain damage, no doubt. Standing beside the sofa was a professional-looking man with steel-gray hair and a nice tan. Joana tried to reach out