When the Wind Blows - James Patterson [60]
Max put down People magazine, which she said she read every week, and since we’d discussed the physical exam beforehand, she started to take off her clothes without my having to ask. I kept wondering who had examined her before this?
What I saw now squeezed the breath out of my body. I felt exhilarated, but also more nervous than ever, and afraid. I felt as if I had suddenly been recruited onto the National Bioethics Committee. This was definitely medical history. This was a miracle.
The young girl standing before me had no nipples, no vestige of breasts. The massive depth of her chest was incredible. The drape of her smock when I first saw her and the bulk of Kit’s shirt had disguised a rib cage fully two times as deep as mine.
That was understandable, I was thinking, as I prepared to examine her. Max had to pack an awful lot of musculature into that chest in order to fly. Also, her flight muscles had to be anchored into something very solid. Perhaps a superheavy breastbone, or a Y-shaped collarbone. How had this happened? Who had created her—and why? It made me dizzy and weak-kneed.
I moved closer. “Stethoscope,” I said, and she nodded that it was okay with her.
Her shoulders were broad, and her pectoral muscles were anchored to an oversized breastbone called the pectoral crest. Absolutely extraordinary. As I pressed my stethoscope to her back, or “sternal keel,” she took a deep breath and then released it.
She knew exactly what she was supposed to do. She was accustomed to physical exams. By whom? For what reason? What was the School all about?
“Is the stethoscope too cold?” I asked Max.
“No,” she said. “Toasty warm.”
She spoke very well for a young girl. Her language could be colorful and descriptive. I’d heard her use both humor and irony. She was bright. Why? How? Who had taught her to speak? How to act? To be polite and considerate, as she certainly was.
“Would you take another deep breath,” I said. Max nodded. She did as she was asked. She was being very cooperative, and she was almost always polite. Max was a very sweet young girl.
I couldn’t believe what I heard inside her chest. She didn’t have the billow-type action of mammal lungs. Hers were relatively
small, and from what I could hear, attached to air sacs, both anterior and posterior. What lungs! I could write a book on her lungs alone. Man, oh man! I was having a little trouble breathing now myself.
I couldn’t be sure, but it followed logically that her bones were hollow, that some air sacs intruded into her bones.
“Thanks, Max. That’s great.”
“It’s okay. I understand. I’m a freak.” She shrugged her shoulders.
“No, you’re just special.”
I turned her to face me and placed my stethoscope over her heart. Jesus. It was at a resting rate of sixty-four beats a minute, but it was booming.
Max had the heart of an athlete, a great athlete. The organ was huge. I figured it weighed a couple of pounds. She had the heart of a good-sized horse.
A large, powerful heart could pump a lot of blood. The connecting chain of air sacs indicated a one-way flow of air. A big pump and a lot of air surface made for a very efficient means of exchanging carbon dioxide for oxygen. This was understandable to me. It made good sense. It would give her the endurance she needed to fly long distances and would also keep her cells saturated with oxygen at high altitudes, where the atmosphere was thin.
As if she’d read my mind, Max began to beat her wings.
Chapter 62
YOU HAVE DONE THIS BEFORE,” I said and smiled. I couldn’t help myself. She was such a cool little girl. Relaxed, well mannered, and funny.
“Millions of times,” Max said.
She lifted a foot off the ground and hovered there.
I stood on a footstool and pressed the stethoscope to her chest again and listened to her heart as it pounded far too fast for me to count. I stopped listening and looked at her. I marveled at Max. My mind was in the process of being completely blown away.
“I can get it up to two hundred beats a minute without straining,” she said. Then she winked. “Pretty cool, huh?”
“Very