No Chains Shall Bind Me (The Good Doctor's Tales Folio Seven) Read Online Free PDF Page A

father told her how he would organize things and how she needed to do what he told her ‘for the good of everyone’.  She ignored him and sped through the dinner.  Her mother told her, “Don’t worry, we still love you anyway.  You might not want to get too close to those other Transforms.  They’re not very clean.”  Right.  There will be twenty to thirty of us crammed into a two hundred square foot mobile home because we will be poor as church mice because your generation has this idiotic ‘thing’ about Transforms and I’m not going to get too close to them?  Gail just smiled and kept her thoughts to herself.
    Her parents finally left, far past the time she wanted rid of them.  At least she held her temper and didn ’t start any fights, though she had been tempted.  Gail gazed out the hospital window into the darkness of night.  She had been out for five days and her whole world had changed.
    The worst thing was, she had missed five days of news, and no idea how she would get those five days of newspapers to read!
     
    (4)
    “Okay, listen, and I’ll tell you what I know,” Gail said.  It was almost midnight before Gail got a chance to talk to Van and Kurt.  The doctor had given her aspirin for her headache, but he said he didn’t think the aspirin would work.  It hadn’t.  Down the hall, Sylvie, Melanie, and the witch bitch had all fallen into an exhausted slumber, but she was fully awake.  She had finally managed to corral Kurt and Van, but she wasn’t sure how much they had left in them.  Kurt perched on a folding metal chair borrowed from the nurse’s station, thoroughly worn out from his frolics with Sylvie.  Van, with a hollow look around his eyes, must not have slept in days.  He sat on the cushioned chair and Gail sat cross-legged on the bed.  She had cranked up the head of the bed as high as possible and sat with her back resting against it, eating yet another meal, her second in three hours.
    Both men were worried.  The wait hadn’t been an easy time for either of them, five days of not knowing if any of the women would survive their transformations.  One in seven didn’t.
    Van Schuber was a tall man without enough meat on his bones, who had a tendency to hunch.  He had a long, narrow face, and light brown hair he wore back in a ponytail.  He was working on his PhD in History and Gail had been living with him for a year and a half.  She liked the arrangement and didn’t have any intention of changing things.  However, this was before the Focus thing.  She wasn’t sure how well he would deal with her transformation.
    Kurt was Sylvie ’s husband.  He was shorter than Van, but only barely, with dark brown hair and darker eyes, and a scruffy beard that never seemed to have enough hair.  He had an easy smile and a friendly way with people, and a way of never taking life too seriously.
    He appeared serious now, though, and leaned forward attentively when Gail spoke.
    “You ’ve probably guessed I’ve been going through a few changes,” Gail said.  Both men smiled.
    “I cancelled our apartment lease already,” Kurt said.  The practical one.
    “So much for that.  Down to business.  How much do you know about Transform Sickness?” she said, echoing Dr. Mendell’s condescending question of hours earlier.
    Kurt and Van answered “Lots” in unison, and then glanced at each other wryly.  They had all been friends for years.  Van wasn’t much into speaking when he didn’t see a need, but he read the newspapers almost as passionately as Gail.
    “Sylvie, Melanie and the Witch Bitch are my Transforms and I ’m a Focus.  They’re special, what they call Focus Attendants.  They caught the Shakes from me.  The rest is exactly what you suspect.”
    Van and Kurt nodded.  Gail leaned back on the bed and ran her fingers through her lank and stringy hair.  She still hadn ’t found time for a shower.  Kurt leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, nothing on