Constantine - The Novelization - Whoa is (Not)

lock the spirits who healed, once he got sick.And he had every reason to believe Hell wanted him dead. Hell hungered for JohnConstantine. It owed him an eternity of torment for frustrating so many of its plans....He stared at the dark mass in his lungs, until Archer switched the light off. Then the diseasedlungs vanished. He just sat there, on the edge of the exam table, staring into space."Twenty years ago you didn't want to be here, Constantine," Dr. Archer said, smiling sadly."Now you don't want to leave. You should have listened to me."Constantine lit a Lucky Strike. If Archer was going to needle him...Archer snorted, glaring at the cigarette. "That's a good idea."A long vengeful drag of smoke. It felt good - and it spurred him to an ugly wet fit ofcoughing.He found the Vicks bottle in his coat pocket, swigged right from it, twice. The coughingeased. He took one more drag, blew a plume of smoke at the ceiling, and stubbed out thecigarette on a stainless steel instrument tray.Archer waved the smoke away, coughing herself."John - you need to prepare. Make arrangements."Constantine managed a dreary chuckle as he got up and headed for the door. "No need. Iknow exactly where I'm going."--Angela strode through the hallway, looking for the elevator. She just wanted out of thehospital - if she could only find the way. She'd been here many times, but now it all seemedstrange to her. The fluorescent lights overhead buzzed-they seemed so horribly loud. One ofthem flickered, in a kind of semaphore. A steel table on wheels, covered with a white cloth,waited beside an operating room door. She had a feeling if she looked under the white clothsomething terrible would be there.Ridiculous.Where were the goddamn elevators? She couldn't get oriented. She forced herself to stop andtake a slow breath.She remembered when her mother had died she'd felt nothing at first, or so she thought, but forweeks afterward she was clumsy, forever dropping things. Forgetful, distracted. At last she hadrealized that she'd been caught up in high emotion all along and that trying to stop it hadoverwhelmed her, so that she couldn't live an ordinary life until she faced her grief.It was happening again - lost in the hospital because...Isabel was dead. She was really gone. She'd heard the coroner say, It was the glass that did it,really. It cut her throat. She bled to death in the pool.Angela shuddered. God, but she wanted out of this place.An elevator door chimed, and Angela dashed around the comer, looking for it. There it was -a man was stepping into the elevator, a pale man with a rumpled black coat, two days' growth ofbeard, a haggard, inward expression.'Wait!" she shouted. "Hold the door!"She was a few steps away. He just stared at her, blinking. Put his hand to his mouth tosmother a cough."You going down?" she asked, almost there."Not if I can help it," he said, as the doors closed in her face.--There was a drunk transsexual on Hollywood Boulevard that bright afternoon; and there wereseven laughing Japanese tourists, a busload of German tourists getting out to take photos of thestars in the sidewalk, two punk rocker girls begging with their flea-bitten dog, a man jugglingtied-off condoms filled with water, a young black man freestyling rap, teenagers from a youth