Indivisible (Overlooked by Liberty) Read Online Free PDF

of courtesy; Barry felt cool to the touch.
           "Helen," said the doctor, "I'm sorry, your son has been dead for awhile."
           "That's impossible.  He was alive fifteen minutes ago," She snapped.
           "Not according to his temperature."
           Deb looked at Helen's face but kept working.  Helen didn't answer.  She just kept staring down at her boy and squeezing the resuscitator.  Tater shoved her nose between the double swinging doors, walked over and sat below Barry's table.  She had sniffed and probed and finally found her way to her friend.
           The doctor exploded: "How'd that dog get in here?  Deb, get it out of here!  Deb?"
           Deb never changed her rhythm, meanwhile pleading with the doctor silently with her eyes.  She couldn't stop, not until Helen was ready.
           "Helen, I sympathize with you, but you can't bring him back.  Touch him.  Come on, there might be other wounded coming in and we're understaffed as it is."
           Helen stopped resuscitation and took Barry's mouthpiece off.  She rubbed some of the dirt blotches off his face.  It was as if he slept like a toddler.  She flung herself over her boy and wailed.
           Tater pranced and whimpered at the sight.  But a whimper was all she could do; the dog couldn't bark, a hunting accident several years earlier left the animal without voice.  She nudged Barry's hand with her nose and waited for a response.
           Deb Philbin left the table so Helen could be alone with her boy.  Though many years older than Helen, they were best friends and she felt the loss.  She wondered about her grandson who was also on the mountain.
           The doctor affirmed to Deb, "Look, I believe I gave you an order.  Get the damn dog out and get this place ready in ten minutes."
           Dr. Tim Remington was new in Colebrook.  He hated being there.  Transferred from a larger urban hospital by the Federal Health Board, he resented the lack of respect nurses gave him.  He had graduated from an Ivy League school as a surgeon; now here he was, stuck in a backwater village to replace doctors who defected from the local health alliance.
           Helen pulled her son to an upright position and hugged him--rocked him like a baby.  Deb watched, motionless.  She turned to Tim and spoke deliberately, "She needs a little time."
           "Don't use this tragedy as an excuse to undermine me again.  I'm sick and tired of it.  Get the dog out and clean up the place or I'll write you up for insubordination."
            "You don't understand.  They killed a mother's son!" Deb shouted.  Then she couldn't stop her own tears, " You get the dog!"
           Tim walked past Deb, pointing his finger in her face, "I'm writing you up!"
            When the doctor reached for the animal's collar, Tater snapped at him with flared teeth and bit his outstretched hand.  "Ahhhhh!  That damn dog bit me.  The sheriff will take care of this."  Tim stomped toward the door.  To Deb he repeated, "And I am still writing you up."
           Deb set her jaw, "Kiss my ass, Doctor!"
           Helen continued to rock her son, now singing a lullaby.  Her worst fear had been realized: Now, she was thoroughly alone.
           Tater watched and somehow knew.  She'd seen death before in the hunt, partaken of it in feast.  This was different.  A friend who had been a daily part of her life for seven years lay cold as the groundhog had.  And the soul who laughed and tossed sticks for her to chase, had gone elsewhere.  Tater collapsed below the table with chin on forepaws, feeling an emptiness she couldn't understand.
     
           Lush green rolled from hill to hill; all was cut to carpet level.  The tree lines lacked the usual scruffy weeds that customarily line a golf course.  Artificial rock formations rose above the grass here and there.  On the far side of a pond,