The Ward Read Online Free PDF Page A

no place to hide anything and no way of
sneaking it out.
    The bus would be along any minute.
They had to get down there. Otherwise, it would be twenty minutes
waiting in the freezing cold before the next one came
along.
     
    ***
     
    Doctor Gordon was stuck in traffic, on
his way to do the evening rounds at the Institute. Like many an
art, and surely psychology was an art, it was also a full-time job.
His patients, or anyone really, could call him twenty-four hours a
day, seven days a week, and expect to get an answer.
    His wife had given up on all hopes of
privacy or getting him to take a weekend off long ago.
    Now she just lived with it.
    He had his cellular phone up to his
ear as the BMW sat, purring quietly behind a dump truck that was
half in one lane and half out of the other. His windshield wipers
were clapping out a tempo…some song on the radio.
    “ Hello. Doctor Gordon
here.” He had no idea who was on the desk tonight. “I may be a
little late, but not too much I hope. Who’s this?”
    He’d been tied up in departmental
meetings all day and at some point a man had to eat. Once in a
while he made a special point to eat some real food, and so he made
the mistake of leaving the building in light flurries and sleet.
The squalls were getting worse.
    The roads were miserable, and yet he
was barely ten minutes up the road, at least in good
weather.
    “ This is Amy Bedard.
What’s up, doc?”
    “ Ah. Nurse Bedard.” He
spoke through a brief grin at her little jibe. “Did Rene Silvers
sign herself out as planned?”
    “ Ah, yes, doctor, she
did.” Nurse Bedard checked the log. “She went out at four
forty-seven p.m.”
    “ Excellent. Good for
them.”
    “ Yes.” There was a smile
in her voice. “Try not to worry, Doctor.”
    But he would, of course.
    “ Okay. It’s possible I’ll
be in at my usual time—I hope.”
    “ Yes, Doctor.”
    With someone like Ben, who had simply
run out of money, and stopped taking his meds, you picked them up,
dusted them off, and set them back on their feet again. Ben wasn’t
stupid, and he was a pretty responsible person. On the other hand,
he needed those medications. It was no wonder he ran into trouble.
The key thing was for him to keep working. In this economy, with
his skills and spotty work history there would be some obvious
challenges.
    With Rene it was a different story.
One had to wonder how it would go, but having someone around that
loved you was important, and two heads were always better than one
when it came to running a household. It was a question of how much
support was available in the greater community. This was something
he had spoken of often, publicly and otherwise, sometimes even to
some avail.
    He sighed, deeply.
    “ Sometimes…sometimes
there’s just nothing more you can do, Doctor.”
    The nurse was right. Traffic slowly
began to move up ahead, what little he could see of it.
    The dump truck eased over some more to
the left. He could see a clear lane just ahead of it.
    There came a point when there was
nothing more you could do. Ben would be starting over from
scratch.
    Rene, if she found the courage, would
be starting over from scratch.
    They were luckier than
some.
    That was the hell of it,
sometimes.
    Sometimes that was the only answer you
had, at the end of a long and busy day.
    It was the only answer you were going
to get.
     
     
    End
     
     
    About the Author

     
    Constance ‘Dusty’ Miller has written
fiction, non-fiction and worked for newspapers and magazines, even
working for a brief stint as sports editor of a small-town weekly.
She likes to make people laugh as well as think. Her erotica has
strong qualities of literary romance. Out of work and recovering
from a life-threatening illness, someone suggested writing erotica
which she initially rejected for lack of confidence. But love makes
the world go around, and Dusty can no longer deny its pull. Dusty
squeezes a little writing in between raising a daughter and
building up her