Crazy Heart by Thomas Cobb

Author:Thomas Cobb [Cobb, Thomas]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Music, Western
ISBN: 9780062325525
Google: icvTAAAAQBAJ
Amazon: 8806204890
Barnesnoble: 8806204890
Goodreads: 864129
Publisher: Einaudi
Published: 1988-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

The doctor, the nurse tells him, will be in to see him before long. In the meantime, she wants to know what kind of medication he is taking for his blood pressure.

“None,” he says. “An occasional whiskey. But only once in a while.”

“Terrific,” she says. “Your blood pressure is one eighty-five over ninety-five.”

“That’s not good, huh?”

“That’s not real good.”

“I could drink a couple more, I guess.”

The problem, the doctor explains, is not really the ankle. It’s a pretty clean break and should heal without undue complication, though at his age, who really knows? He will have to stay off it for at least six weeks, but he can leave in the morning. The problem, as the doctor sees it, is his general condition, or lack of condition. His blood pressure is way too high, his heart has a fairly pronounced arrhythmia, and there is considerable chest congestion. And from the responses he gave the nurse earlier in the morning, it is clear that his drinking and smoking have slipped to something beyond excess.

“I was still asleep then,” Bad says. “I didn’t know what I was saying. If I’d been awake, I would have lied. Then we’d both be happier.”

The doctor is young and sweet-looking. He has short brown hair, a neatly trimmed beard and wire-rim glasses. He wears a western shirt and a bolo tie below the open collar. He wears corduroy jeans, and Bad knows that he wears rounded shoes with crepe soles. He is sincere, and sincerely trying to be kind. But Bad figures that anyone who is willing to stick two fingers up your ass and poke around like that enjoys his work. The pretense of kindness doesn’t go very far.

The real problem, the doctor tells him, is not that he is going to die. That’s not a problem, that’s a simple fact. The real problem is that he probably is not going to die for quite a while yet. Bad does not consider this a serious problem.

“Let me explain it to you this way,” the doctor begins. “If it was simply a matter of life expectancy, you might decide that it is worth the gamble. You go on living the way you are, the way you seem to think you want to live, and then in a couple of years, four or five angels lift you up into heaven with a lot of harp music in the background. That would be great. You’ve paid your money, you’ve taken your choice. You’ve traded ten or twenty years of your life for the right to live any damn way you choose. Good enough. The only thing is, it doesn’t work that way. The kinds of stuff we’re talking about here—emphysema, congestive heart failure, cancer, an extremely good chance of stroke—are more debilitating than quickly and cleanly fatal. They will kill you, there’s no mistaking that, but they’re going to do it slowly, painfully, and humiliatingly. You’re going to end up helpless as a child, in all probability.

“Mr. Blake, are you going to talk to me?”

“About what?”

“Look, Mr.

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